Pointing out others’ golden calf! What is yours?
Of course, I have recently been blogging how progressives in the Church, like Praytell and the NCR are leading the Faithful into idolatry as it concerns sacramental theology and practice.
What are the most important aspects of liturgical sacramental theology for them? It is the following:
Vatican II; Ecclesiology; active participation; lay ministries; creativity, translations; you name it; but they leave out one thing and it isn’t an “it” or a “thing”, it is Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit!
But not Pope Francis! He gets it! This is what His Holiness said at this past Sunday’s Angelus:
“Being Christian is not first of all a doctrine or a moral ideal; it is a living relationship with him, with the Risen Lord: We look at him, we touch him, we are nourished by him, and, transformed by his love, we look at, touch and nourish others as brothers and sisters,” he said.
Please note, the Pope did not say being a Christian is following Vatican II or Ecclesiology; or active participation, or lay ministries, or creativity, or translations or you name it.
What the pope said on Sunday was directly linked to Cistercian monks who died protecting the Most Blessed Sacrament from desecration by French soldiers who had been sacking churches and monasteries in southern Italy, specifically my hometown of Naples.
They did not become martyrs for Vatican II, Ecclesiology, active participation, lay ministries, creativity, translations or you name it. They died for Jesus Christ in the Most Blessed Sacrament consecrated at the pre-Vatican II Mass. They died for the personal relationship Jesus had to them and they with Him! They died knowing Jesus saves them from the fires of hell through His passion, death and resurrection and that in Him the gates of heaven are flung wide open for them.
Theirs was a vertical relationship with God and God with them! And that saved them, thanks be to God!
7 comments:
"Theirs was a vertical relationship with God and God with them! And that saved them, thanks be to God!"
Personally, I am very attracted to the ancient Latin liturgy precisely because of the vertical nature of its worship of God. I become better aware of the presence of God not just in the church and at the this liturgy, but especially of His presence in me. It is not about community, but about my personal relationship with Him. It offers a time for deep prayer and silent conversation with God. I do not want to belittle the Novus Ordo, but I actually find it a distraction away from a personal relationship with God, with all its noisy attempts at active community participation, whatever that means anymore.
When I started reading works by Beauduin, the said founder of the liturgical movement, I was struck by his main assumption, that people attending the sacred Latin liturgy at the time were mere detached spectators. The rest of the book, and the main premise of the movement was founded on this assumption. I could not continue reading because I found this foundation hard to apply to those who take the liturgy seriously, and started wondering to whom did it actually apply, realising that there is a fundamental issue here that was never addressed at Vatican II. It seems that changing the liturgy for the correction of silent detached spectatorship is putting the cart before the horse, because sanctification through the liturgy can only come through a personal acceptance of God's grace.
That is to say, participation in the liturgy for one's sanctification starts with the person accepting God's grace. God is the direct cause of grace, whereas the sacraments are instrumental causes, as St Thomas has posited. One must have the proper disposition to receive God's grace through the sacraments in the first place. If one's faith is poor to begin with, one's interest in the liturgy will be poor, and changing the liturgy will not change one's disposition much. One need's to distinguish between the sacrament of the Eucharist as a means of grace, and the liturgy that clothes that sacrament, and this is not even that clear in Sacrosanctum Concilium, a pastoral document, not doctrinal. The liturgy needs first of all to promote a personal relationship with God, not some vague ideal of community worship. I am not saying that the Novus Ordo does not do this, but only that perhaps it is better suited for extroverted Catechumens, while the traditional Latin liturgy is better suited for the contemplative Faithful, the former being a kind of stepping stone to the latter. Just personal thoughts.
Defining orthodoxy by what one DOESN'T say?
No disrespect Father, but it sure seems like you are trying to force the round peg of Francis into the square hole of his role as pope.
I guess I should just be grateful that you respect the papacy enough not to say what so many of the rest of us are thinking.
Yes, respecting the papacy and the person of the pope is what orthodox Catholics are called to do no matter what, in good time and bad, in sickness and health, until death do us part. That's for retired pontiffs too.
This Sunday's EF Mass's Epistle is from the First Letter of Peter. Here's a portion of it:
“be subject to your masters with all reverence, not only to those who are good and equitable but also to those who are perverse. For whenever anyone bears the pain of unjust suffering because of consciousness of God, that is a grace."
The EF crowd in particular needs to hear this reading and reflect upon it, not only in terms of secular rulers but religious ones too.
Archbishop Vigano is calling out Pope Francis because of the composition of the Globalist Conference at the Vatican. Epic fail by the Vatican. No wonder the Church keeps shedding members
Globalism is an unstoppable force - and we are coming for your guns, too. (Vigano is a George Soros paid plant, btw.)
Illuminati K,
Your posts are getting more ludicrous
1 Peter ii has:
'Servi, subditi estote in omne timore dominis ...'
In other words slaves, not simply servants, are enjoined to be subject to their masters 'in all fear'. This goes a long way to explain why the Church did not condemn slavery, commonplace in the classical world, outright, and for many centuries afterwards was ambivalent about the subject.
The Pope is not a master in the secular sense, nor are we his subjects. Since the time of Gregory the Great the pontiffs have styled themselves 'Servus Servorum Dei', servant of the servants of God.
Peter is not concerned with ecclesiastical authority, as is obvious when one considers the whole of the epistle.
I respect the papacy as an institution but no Catholic is obliged to respect 'the person of the pope'. If this were so we would have been obliged to respect some very disreputable characters. I could name a few, but anyone conversant with Church history can compile his own list.
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