As well, the fact that Archbishop Nelson Perez is a priest of Philadelphia made him an odd candidate to become the city's archbishop. No diocese has a more pronounced reputation for clericalism, and his task is to continue to dismantle that clerical culture. Perhaps it is easier for someone to do it from the inside. During his installation sermon in Cleveland, he recalled what he had told the people at the church when he first became a pastor: "Do not make the mistake of making this about me." That kind of humility is a good antidote to clericalism. He went on to say, "Fifty years from now, I will just be a picture on a wall."
I copy the above quote from the nastiest commentator at the National Chismatic Reporter (NCR), Michael Sean Winters. You can read the complete nasty commentary HERE. He hates Archbishop Chaput because he teaches the Catholic Faith and is a culture warrior like so many saints of old (in the pre-Vatican II Church, many martyred for their Faith for be such, by the way).
Michael Sean Winters, though, seems to lament, the hypocrite that he is, that Archbishop Perez isn't a culture warrior in the "leftist" sense of the word, promoting a post Catholic Church that acquiesces to the culture rather than challenges the prevailing culture. That says much for Archbishop Perez, though.
However, I agree with what the new Archbishop of Philadelphia had to say about priests and bishops.
Certainly there were celebrity priests prior to Vatican II, but they didn't make their celebrity with the Mass, although they may have preached with a flair. Why wasn't the Mass all about who they are?
1. The Mass was/is ad orientem.
2. The Mass was in Latin
3. And if the priest sat down during Mass, it wasn't at a throne dead center and at the highest point of the church, it was off to the side and never facing the people!
The Ordinary Form of the Mass can learn a lot from the Extraordinary Form of the Mass about humbling priests and getting rid of clericalism during the Mass.
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Some readers here may think that Sacrosanctum Concilium is a divinely inspired document, but I think it is one of the worst Church documents on the liturgy ever. While stating wonderful instructions, it almost always allows exceptions for their contrary which eventually become the rules through the claim of their divinely inspired origin- a typical neo-Modernist ploy of the Liturgical Movement in the 20th century. Take for example the limited use of the vulgar tongues (as opposed to the 3 sacred languages) in the Mass which this document allowed for but which quickly became the universal rule.
The biggest fraud in the document, and it touches on the issue in this post, is the instruction that in any liturgical reform the active participation of the faithful is to be considered before all else. On the surface this seems to be a good idea to get faithful people to heaven more quickly because the liturgical movement was itself divinely inspired to see that the liturgy is the truth, the light, and the way for this. The problem is that it also allowed for its contrary, which is that the entire liturgy is to be reformed according to that principle of active participation. No longer are just non-essential aspects of the liturgy dealt with for restoration but the entire liturgy is changed with that one and only principle of active participation in mind.
But behind that principle is the idea, which the Protestants venerated, of the priesthood of believers. No longer are ministerial priests special: they are merely part of the same worship crowd and are there as mere earthly worship leaders, contradicting the Council of Trent on the priesthood. Turn around the altars, so as to make people part of that altar to actively participation in everything as the priest does. But a leader of crowds can only be a good leader through charisma and charm and whatever else it takes to have strong entertaining leadership skills, leading to unadulterated clericalism in the new Mass.
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