Mass attendance in Quebec plummeting from 95% to 5% but heck, don’t worry, be happy the Church has 5% of her happy clappy people in the field hospital that is this renewed Church. And there is a way to make lemonade out of lemons! And the field hospital sedates you so that you are comforted as you go to hell in your mortal sins, no amputations allowed!
Be sure to press get transformed!
Be sure to press get transformed!
12 comments:
What we need are more rainbows. Flags, vestments - maybe rainbow colored hosts.
Bee here:
My two favorite quotes from the article are:
1) “I don’t feel any taboo in transforming a church into a theater, as we are remaining true to the church’s mission of serving the community,” Mr. St-Georges said."
Success! The new renewed Vatican II Church got the message across! People understand! Religion isn't about worship of God and following the commandments and precepts of God the Father, the Creator; and Jesus Christ His Son, who came to show us the way to salvation; and about the Holy Spirit, who continues to make Himself present to us to help us on our way back to the Father... NO! Religion is about serving US, the community!!!!
Whew! It took some 50 years, but people FINALLY understand!
And my second favorite quote:
2) "Throughout the centuries in Quebec, the church provided health and education, and dominated life. Towering old crosses still dot hills across the province, monuments to this past.
But the church also opposed divorce, censored books and bullied women to reproduce, and in the 1960s, a generation rose in revolt, a period known as “The Quiet Revolution.”
I love the implied, "Well, the Church did some good for society, but the harm they caused....well...especially in their control of what people read and forcing women to simply be child producing machines and to stay married..."
But favorite part is "bullied women to reproduce".... !!!!!
Now, that's a good one!!!
The purpose of this article? To announce the conversion of Canada is complete, Comrades!
(By the way, note how the New York Times does not capitalize the word "church" when speaking of the universal Catholic Church. You'd think they would know better. Oh, maybe they do... Subtle. Very subtle.)
And they say the NY Times is unbiased in their reporting. Okkayyy....
God bless.
Bee
If the bishops were treated like business executives in the corporate world they would have been fired for delivering a substandard product.
There was always some politics in the Quebec Church since the English regime took over the colony. The Church was almost single handedly responsible for protecting the French culture against the English who were mostly Protestants. Yes, you do hear stories of parish priests calling for more French Catholic babies, but you have to wonder where those stories come from. Having many babies was not limited to Catholics in those days, and using artificial contraception is still sinful.
The problem for the Church in Quebec began with Vatican II and its "opening up" to the so-called modern world. Right after the Council, there were big fundamental changes, so much so that She was unrecognisable by the early 1970's. Being closed-rank defensive, the priests dutifully followed the commands of the bishops, who dutifully followed the commands of Rome. The latter meant change, change, change, in morality, liturgy, politics, social doctrine, and so forth. Everything was up for grabs now, and how do you think the people felt? They still wanted a religion, but now turned to the earthly religion of the state (politics) rather than the fake religion of the Church, Who demonstrated its fakery when by a single stoke of a Council everything changed, proving the Church was nothing more than earthly power mongers controlling people according to their whims. The changes affected everything people ever believed in. What is sad is that the there is some truth in this because the neo-Modernists at the Council were the power mongers, and continue to be so, judging by what is happening in the Church today.
Hierarchy: Nothing to see here......Get with the times! Catholics are happy, satisfied and actively participating! How vibrant!
Laity: Are you @#$%! kidding me??? What parallel universe are you living in????
Victor, my father was from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (Anglo heritage). The first family trip for me was in 1963. St. Andrews in Judique, CB was still in the pre-Vatican II mode. The men sat on one side during Mass, the women on the other (I had never seen this). But this small Catholic village had a very nice stone church built in the 1920's. The pride of that Catholic community was an ornate imported marble altar with a magnificent altar. The interior of the church was ornate compared to my home parish in Augusta and I had never seen such a beautiful altar with a reredos like that.
The piety and simple faith of the people amazed me as a small child and their public displays of piety outside the Church was wonderful, like making the Sign of the Cross each time they passed by a Catholic Church.
We went back again in 1969. Guess what, St. Andrews was recovated, the pride and joy of the Catholic community was dismantled and bits a pieces used to make a new free standing table type altar. Statues were gone, the tabernacle to the side and modern looking accoutrements. I was dumbfounded as a 16 year old at the time to see that and very sad and the Catholics in this small village were outraged. Thus the great polarization of parishes and the Church was on steroids in Canada at that time. And today they are paying the price!
The post Vatican II liturgy was more stripped down that ours in Augusta.
I returned to Nova Scotia often in the 70's and 80's and was struck by how progressive the Church was there compared to the Diocese of Savannah. It wasn't the Catholic Church of my diocese at all!
Bee your comments are very true and I felt the same way because that guy really believes that is good! It is called denial.
I should add, that the Church in Quebec is the best case study in business school for what an organisation must never do, even better than the Target store fiasco in Canada. The organisation is there to cater to the wants or needs of the people. In the case of Target in Canada, when you went to their newly opened stores, but found the shelves empty in very many places, choices limited, and prices not that competitive at all, the organistation quickly collapsed. When you went to a church in Quebec after the Council and saw that it was now de-sacralised like a meeting hall, had the worst music imaginable if there was any, and no longer focused on God first but on the community for which the priest faced the community, its collapse was immanent. People went to church to personally pray to God, the Supreme Being, but found this new strict code of active participation a distraction from personal union with God. French Canada had always been a community, there was no need for this artificial community created in the liturgy by the mere shacking of hands, a real turn-off for so many people, as if the liturgy were just another secular event in the "community." It is no wonder that TLM churches are that little mustard seed, expanding not just in Quebec, but around the world, making a lot of people in Rome and in the ivory towers nervous.
"By the way, note how the New York Times does not capitalize the word "church" when speaking of the universal Catholic Church."
Yeah, it does.
"The radical makeovers of Quebec churches reflect the drastic decline of the Catholic Church in a..."
"Officials from Quebec’s Roman Catholic Church said the repurposing of..."
Where the NYTimes does not capitalize "church" is where it appears without "Roman Catholic" or "Catholic." It is not up to the Times to follow our particular usage.
Well, how about some good news? The Columbia (State), as in the newspaper for the capital city of the Palmetto state, has an article today which, while mostly focusing on the decline of Protestantism in the state (dozens of Protestant churches closing in recent years), also mentions the rise in the number of Catholics in the state. Who knows, maybe the state will have two dioceses someday, maybe a Low Country one below Columbia and the Up Country one running north from the Fall Line, like Aiken, Columbia and Camden, SC.
Hello Holy Farhers st al on here,
While I cannot speak specifically of Quebec, what I can say is that, clearly the biased Vatican II fathers/periti and well meaning bishops who ignorantly (maybe?) trusted liturgical experts with the Wrong (or even unread) agenda of the False Spirit of Vatican II, truly rejected what it was meant as the REAL New Evangelization.
The TRUE New Evangelization wasn’t just a one year thing back in 2012 from the Vatican for the Universal CHurch, which was abused by many pastors and ill-/well meaning lay leaders as a buzzword for current or new kinds of “pastoral” efforts for their parishes. The real origins of the New Evangelization can be found in Paul VI’s Apostolic Exhortation in 1975, Evangelii Nuntiandi, seen here: http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_exhortations/documents/hf_p-vi_exh_19751208_evangelii-nuntiandi.html.
Now other papal documents from Popes even up to Francis are part of that real NE (though I can’t recall right now) but in that document is the REAL foundations of what it means to engage in the New Evangelization. Were pastoral and lay efforts TRULY founded in such documents, as well with pairing with solid orthodox liturgy, there would have been MUCH better fruit of the Council/N.E. And while things such as what is happening in Quebec would still happen overall worldwide, there would be much more revival of our parishes and our Church happening today. This is exactly what happens when our clergy and pastors and lay leaders don’t do their homework (as in don’t read the ACTUAL documents,) get sick with the spiritual deadly sin of Pride and disobey Holy Mother CHurch and the Popes and the Scriptures.
Bee here:
Well A.G.S (at Aug. 9, 2018 at 10:59 AM), as I understood it, I was to use a lower case "c" when referring to a church building, but when referring to the denomination as a whole or when using the word appeared in a name I should use the upper case "C."
I did verify on a grammatical site:
"In reference to the church as a collective group—including reference to historical occurrences of the church, such as “the early church”—the word “church” should ordinarily not be capitalized.
In reference to a particular church (a local congregation, or a denomination) the word “Church” should ordinarily be capitalized, including when the words stands alone in reference to the named body; thus:
“The Presbyterian Church in America” as referred to in this example: “the Church passed the resolution at their annual assembly…”
In reference to local churches in general, without describing a particular named body, the word “church” should ordinarily not be capitalized."
I believe NYT was referring to Catholic churches which are being sold off and used for other purposes. Maybe the writer applied the third criteria.
Oh well. Sorry to quibble.
God bless.
Bee
Post a Comment