HAS ANYONE SEEN THE STATEMENT OF THE BISHOP OR ORANGE, CALIFORNIA EXCORIATING THE SACRILEGES LITURGY AT THE RECENT RELIGIOUS EDUCATION CONFERENCE HELD IN HIS DIOCESE? IF YOU SEE IT, LET ME KNOW SO I CAN PRINT IT!

Given the fact that even progressive minded liturgists commenting  on this Mass are equally aghast at it as are more tradition oriented Catholics, tells me that most priests will not carry this penitential act or style of the "liturgy" back to their parishes and implement it, although I suspect some priests my age and older will do so.

But this is eye opening for younger clergy and laity. The way the Ordinary Form Mass came to be a disaster is precisely by clergy and a clique of liturgy committee minded laity going to workshops here, there and everywhere in the 1960's, 70's and 80's and immediately upon returning to the parish implementing all the cool things they were taught, saw and experienced in the liturgy, all the creativity. This included dogmatic statements about how to renovate traditional churches and how to design new ones. Of course there is nothing dogmatic, official or necessary taught, modeled or mandated at any of these conferences, only self-serving ideologies and narcissism.

I can remember doing it myself in the early 80's. I saw at a convention a Mass where the Opening Hymn was interspersed with the arrival of the priest at the altar and then him making the Sign of the Cross and greeting everyone while the instruments played the melody softly and then picked up with another verse of the hymn and then the Kyrie, followed by another verse of the hymn and blah, blah, blah.

Say the black and do the red is not a liturgical ideology; it is a mandate to save the Church from people like this who celebrate the Mass in this way. In no way could this liturgy be classified as what Vatican II desired, or what Pope Paul VI's Consilium mandated or what the GIRM or Rubrics of the Ordinary Form foresee or allow. What happened in the Diocese of Orange, California is a perversion of the Ordinary Form Liturgy, which when celebrated in Latin, ad orientem, with the propers chanted and communicants kneeling to receive Holy Communion from the clergy has much, much, much in common with, in continuity with the Mass from which it came, the 1962 Roman Missal.

The tragedy, as with the sex abuse scandal, is that the Bishop of the Diocese of Orange in which this occurred (where Disneyland is) did not come out with a statement about this horrid liturgy and saying it will never occur again in his diocese, this type of sacrilege. The priest, the committee that planned the liturgy and others responsible for it should have been publicly excoriated. Shaming can be put to a good end. The pope does it all the time with his cardinals, bishops and priests. It is effective.

I apologize to the Bishop of Orange if in fact he did excoriate this liturgy in a public forum and announced to the clergy and laity that it would not happen again in his diocese.  If you find a statement of some kind from the bishop, please let me know and I will print it.