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Thursday, April 20, 2017

WHEN PRAYTELL BECOMES A CARICATURE


My previous post on Paul Inwood's concern about an Easter Vigil in America run amuck was startling to me because Praytell usually supports liturgical irregularities while deploring the EF Mass and those who attend it and wholeheartedly call for its expansion.

So I was relieved that Praytell has not abandoned its true reputation and posted a backhanded slap down of Inwood but in a nuanced sort of way, by Rita Ferrone who exerted Praytell's true Liturgical ideology:

Here's her comment on Inwood's post:

  • #7 by Rita Ferrone on April 19, 2017 - 6:54 pm 
    Is it a black parish? I notice all the songs substituted for the psalms are spirituals, and another song later in the liturgy sung by the choir is too. The ad hoc choir is drawn from the Eritrean community… they may be trying to accommodate the elderly who have sung spirituals all their lives? Such songs are actually a very important anchor in the black church, and while it doesn’t conform to liturgical norms for psalms, it’s the stuff people sing even when memory fails — and it’s lived theology. I wouldn’t judge it too harshly without knowing some more about how this came to be. I also note the author says there was an “altar call” which is a borrowed term from the Protestant (often Baptist) background that many black Catholic churches include because their families span the ecumenical gamut too.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I recently read Rod Dreher's book on the Benedict option. One disturbing section presents findings of recent neurological studies that certain types of internet viewing (e.g., pornography) physically rewire circuits in one's brain, resulting an inability to think logically, and rendering one susceptible to serious cognitive disorders.

Let me suggest that the PrayTell site is spiritual pornography, which I suspect that many victims of the spiritual abuse of 70s and 80s seminaries have a particular weakness for. So perhaps you really ought to stay away from it, Father.

rcg said...

Is this a joke? This woman touts her expertise in the liturgical habits of "Blacks" to explain the service? What Balkanising balderdash. Maybe the poor souls couldn't understand the big words in the missal without a guiding light from dear little Eva St Clair nee Ferrone. Maybe she can give us a quote from Cardinal Kasper to explain it.

Anonymous said...

Seems kind of racist to me.

Fr. McDonald you should check out PrayTell's praising of a Methodist church as the most significant in a century, only for it turn out this Methodist church celebrates ad orientem!