I friend of mine in Augusta posted this on her FaceBook. Her wedding in the 1960's at Sacred Heart Church, Augusta, Georgia, now Sacred Heart Cultural Center. The altar railing appears to be the exact style as St. Joseph's in Macon!
I friend of mine in Augusta posted this on her FaceBook. Her wedding in the 1960's at Sacred Heart Church, Augusta, Georgia, now Sacred Heart Cultural Center. The altar railing appears to be the exact style as St. Joseph's in Macon!
On Friday, I celebrated a Requiem for a life long member of Saint Anne. We print programs for our Requiems. At the end of the program, we had the words to the “Song/Chant of Farewell” and then following that was printed what the cantor would chant as we departed, “May the Angels Lead you into Paradise.”
As fate would have it, at the end of the Requiem when the burial is to follow immediately, there is no final blessing as the conclusion of the Requeim is the Rite of Committal. Thus the priest or deacon says the following:
“In peace let us take our sister to her place of rest.”
But there is no official response for the laity to say. Interestingly enough, the laity, seeing the words for the recessional chant, “May the Angels Lead you into Paradise” thought that that was their response. So as soon as I said, “In peace let us take our sister to her place of rest” they responded, May the angels lead you into paradise!
What a perfect response, indeed!
We must look at the visuals of the Mass, what the laity see. Does this help with awe, wonder, transcendence and reverence?
Or does this stance offer it better?
Does this cluttered sanctuary help with reverence, wonder, awe and transcendence:
Father Z had the old saying for the normative Missal: “read the black and do the red.” That is only part of the solution, but a major solution. There is way too much freewheeling the Mass by priests, way to much and the priest’s personality or lack thereof is too much of a factor in this Mass.
But here are the other problems with their solutions:
1. Music. There are way too many options for hymns or anthems which are superfluous to the Mass and some, when sung, even well, are not right for the Mass or its spirituality. The most requested hymns for funerals are from the 1970’s and ‘80’s with a sound hanging on superficial sentimentality. These are the most requested ones: Be Not Afraid; On Eagle’s Wings (what i call the you-who song) and Here I am Lord and others like these. Certainly these have Biblical words, but the mushy, tear jerking sentimentality of 70’s nostalgia is just too much.
But what to do? I don’t want to get into fights with parishioners at the time of grieving about music for the Mass which is allowed.
Bishops have to ban these and that would help pastors to implement the propers and have only a few hymns and anthems that are permitted. But the clergy and laity both have to be educated on proper liturgical music.
2. Sloppiness, a lack of choreography and casualness. None of these are what the normative Missal request. Even a “Low Mass” with one server and no music can be done with dignity and reverence. Sloppiness, casualness and lack of choreography lead to irreverence and banality.
3. Sanctuaries are a mess and cluttered with plants and flowers which often hide the altar and ambo. Candles are strewn about and change at the whim of the decorators or the interior decorator priest and his cohorts. The mandating of the so-called “Benedictine altar arrangement” even the slightly modified form of it that Pope Francis has maintained at St. Peter’s Basilica is a way forward.
4. As it concerns lay lector’s, Communion Ministers and altar servers, proper training and choosing the right adults for these ministries (and children who are capable) should be based upon capability but also fidelity to the Church, her teachings and their public witness to these teachings. They should be people of prayer too and few in number and properly trained.
And their dress must be examined and I truly feel that liturgical wear should be mandated. It seems to me a free flowing white alb seen as a symbol of the lay person’s baptismal garment is the solution.
Finally let me bang my drum once more, ad orientem at least for the liturgy of the Eucharist and kneeling for Holy Communion probably would restore the sense of reverence and transcendence more than any of the other solutions I propose above and kneeling for Holy Communion is even more important than ad orientem to accomplish this.
But, and this is a big but, bishops have to be the ones initiating these liturgical adjustments with their priests, not freelancing priests doing it on their own worrying that the bishop might call them on the carpet for doing these things. Bishops are the primary liturgists of the diocese.
But the problem here is that so many bishops are my age and older. They have a disdain for the older more formal and reverent pre-Vatican II Mass and were brainwashed by the theology of the Mass they learned in the 1970’s and 80’s. Some of these bishops have degrees in liturgy they earned in the 70’s and 80’s. And they are stuck there.
What to do? What to do? O, what are we to do?
It is 101 degrees in Richmond Hill today and we had a Requiem Mass in the UR Form. It was for a parishioner who was born in Richmond Hill and a member of one of the three Catholic families here who in 1955 pruchased the Martha and Mary Chapel from the Ford Foundation and founded St. Anne's Mission. She and her deceased husband were the first to have a wedding there in 1955:
I just saw these before and afters on the Facebook page, "I'm Fed Up With Ugly Churches" (My comments following the photos):
Oddly enough, I was a big part of the first renovation that began with a process dating to about 1979. I arrived as a newly ordained assistant pastor in 1980 and work began in 1981 with a change of pastors as the work began with the pastor who initiated this leaving a full two months before the pastor who inherited this came. It is Saint Teresa of Avila in Albany, Ga. Rambusch and Company was selected by the then pastor to guide the committee in making decisions. The stained glass windows above the altar while confusing, were designed and executed by Father Methodius of the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, GA. These were made of exquisite glass and brilliant colors and had symbolic meaning. But these were not well received but certainly a vast improvement over what had been there which were fiberglass windows with circular wood chips embedded in it with a gold color. I hope the colorful windows were preserved in another forum on church property. They were quite expensive, a controversial work of art, but art nonetheless and a donated gift.
My greatest save, though, is the crucifix which was original to the church which was completed in 1958. Rambusch wanted it removed and a resurrection image of Christ to replace it. I convinced the committee to reject that!
To be honest with you, I loved and still love the screen behind the altar for the tabernacle. The tabernacle is behind the sliding gold doors which we kept closed for Mass but open when Mass was not in progress which was the majority of the time. The tabernacle, not photographed, was quite beautiful and could be opened on either the front or the other side and there were chairs behind the screen for a more intimate experience of praying before the tabernacle.
While the old altar from a convent is quite beautiful, I think the original screen designed by rambusch and costing about $20,000 (1980 dolloars to include the tabernacle) complimented the architecture of the church.
Prior to this renovation, the tabernacle had been placed on a side altar and the priest's chair was directly behind the altar. I thought the screen with the sliding golden doors was a marvelous solution to hiding the tabernacle during Mass but exposing it otherwise given the ethos of the 1980's to rid the tabernacle altogether from the nave of the Church or have it shunted to the side.
A Clifton Diocese Initiative
Every Third Sunday of the Month
Bishop Declan wishes to express pastoral care and concern for our Catholic LGBT+ community and so has asked St Nicholas of Tolentino Church to celebrate a series of Masses for this community and their friends and family and all who wish to take part.
The intention is not to isolate , but rather to ensure a warm welcome and to integrate this community into Church.
I am please to inform all that the Parish Pastoral Council has decided resume these Masses from Sunday 16th August 2020 at 3.00pm. Safe distancing, extra hygiene measures, face masks and track and trace procedures will be in place to enable this Mass to resume. Thank you for your support and co-operation.
Clifton LGBT+ Ministry Email: inclusionforall@cliftondiocese.com
There was to be a Pontifical Solemn Chanted Mass in the UA form for next Saturday’s Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also known as, the Dormition of the Most Blessed Mother.
However, the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, formerly the Archbishop of Atlanta and my former Metropolitan Archbishop, in light of Pope Francis’ Motu Proprio, has forbidden this UA form of the Mass at the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.
What a lost opportunity for the Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, DC to offer a pastoral olive branch to those who had centered their vacations around this Mass while visiting Washington, DC.
The good Cardinal could have said that the Mass could go forward in the UR form of the Mass chanted in a solemn way in Latin and using the Basilica’s magnificent high altar, and the Communion rail for the distribution of Holy Communion, which in the UR form of the Mass are no longer used for some stupid reason.
Thus the choir could have chanted everything that it would have chanted. There could have been UA solemnity and reverence and the good Cardinal would have been a pioneer in showing the traditional community the way forward in light of a cruel hearted Motu Proprio.
And yet this type of Mass has no approbation and this is why Pope Francis’ Motu Proprio is such a scandal to Catholics who love the UA Mass:
Even progressives in the Church are scratching their head at Pope Francis’ autocratic, authoritarian and just mean-spirited Motu Proprio. It does show, I think, the problem with progressives in that they tout consultation, democratic processes, pastoral councils and a synodal way, yet they manipulate the outcome which they demand but the facade is not autocratic but has the cover of listening and consultation.
The only difference between the pre-Vatican II autocratic pastor and the post-Vatican II consultative pastor is that they are both autocratic, but one manipulates others to get his way or plots the outcome he wants. Thus the pre-Vatican II pastor was honest in what he was doing; the post Vatican II pastor is dishonest, duplicitous and hypocritical.
But with that said, the pastor is the pastor despite his methodologies and the pope is the pope.
Let’s enter the world of “what if?” Instead of Summorum Pontificum, what if Pope Benedict had issued a Motu Proprio making the post Vatican Mass more reverent and transcendent instead of normalizing the pre-Vatican Mass? And what if that Motu Proprio had some teeth, like the issuing of a new Vatican II Roman Missal.
I have written this before and let me write it again, what I am suggesting is no widespread revision of the post-Vatican II Mass but simply an organic development but going back to the original source for the new Mass, the pre-Vatican II Mass and what Sacrosanctum Concilium actually taught.
Here’s my plan again:
Keep the current Roman Missal but:
1. Revised the calendar to be more like the Ordinariate’s Roman Calendar which is more like the pre-Vatican II Calendar. This restores the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima and the ember days. It also would allow for Season of the Year, but without the term “Ordinary Time.” It would revert to Time after Pentecost and Time after Epiphany.
2. Mandate that the Introit, Offertory and Communion Antiphons be chanted or spoken.
3. Keep the Introductory Rite as is but only the Confiteor, Absolution and Kyrie and the greeting after the Kyrie/Gloria, prior to the Collect.
4. Liturgy of the Word as it currently is in the post-Vatican II Mass.
5. Make clear that ad orientem is an option with the pre-Vatican II altar arrangement or facing the congregation but still with the pre-Vatican II altar arrangement
6. Make kneeling for Holy Communion and on the tongue mandatory and the common chalice only for certain Masses, such as First Communion, Confirmation, Weddings, etc and by intinction only.
Finally, Gregorian Chant and Latin must be preserved as taught by Sacrosanctum Concilium. Let’s say the Gloria, Kyrie (Greek) Sanctus and Agnus Dei only.
Most of this can be accomplished without any changes to the Order of the post-Vatican II Mass.
If parishes are not allowed the pre-Vatican II Mass any longer, why not simply celebrate the post-Vatican II Mass in Latin and ad orientem using the 1974 Graduale Romanum?
Hopefully this will end silly comments, insulting comments and comments under multiple handles.
I will see how this works. If it doesn't I will go to another plan.
Our bishop, Bishop Steven Parkes installed the new pastor of my former church at their 11 am UR Mass. He then spoke to the UA Mass that followed the 11 am Mass as a prelude to it as he had to depart.
Please listen to the organ prelude as the procession entered. This is the historic Jardine Organ order from New York to be installed for the 1863 consecration of the church. However the northern blockade of the south during the war prevented it from being shipped. After the war and due to uselesss confederate money, the church could not afford to have it shipped. Thanks be to God for Most Holy Trinity’s associate pastor, Father Abram Ryan, the priest poet of the confederacy/south, raised money with his poetry readings in Augusta and the organ was installed in 1866.
We were able to fully and historically restored it in the late 1990’s. It had fallen into grave disrepair and not used for decades. There was talk of removing it. Thanks be to God that did not happen.
Another interesting point is that the three altars were manufactured in Baltimore. But those shipping them to Augusta were willing to risk the northern blockade and bring them to Augusta where these were installed in time for the consecration:
The 94 year old, His Holiness the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI seems to have called out not only German “c”atholism but also the synodal way as practiced by them. What do you think?
I wonder if these now and then interventions in any way contribute to the frustration the current reigning pope, His Holiness Pope Francis experiences which has led to the complete abrogation of the Emeritus Pope’s agenda for the Church to include the hermeneutic of continuity?
Was the new Motu Proprio a punishment for an Emeritus Pope who speaks?
I copy this from Crux which has adds between paragraphs. I cannot get the large spaces out in the copy and paste, so be sure to scroll down to subsequent paragraphs:
This is from CRUX this morning.
ROME – In a rare lengthy interview with a German newspaper, retired pope Benedict XVI reflected on his 70 years as a priest and lamented what he said is an increasing institutionalization of the Catholic Church in Germany, making it a functional entity rather than the living body of Christ.
In written responses to German magazine Herder Korrespondenz, published in their August edition on the 70th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, Benedict, 94, said his brief time as a young pastor before getting into academic work made it clear “that many of the functions relating to the structure and life in the church were performed by people who by no means shared the faith of the church.” (I would say that this is a critique of the use of the term “faith of the people” to change the Church when in fact it is the infidelity of the people which should be castigated not encouraged.)
Because of this, the Church’s testimony “must appear questionable in many ways,” he said, noting that faith and disbelief “were mixed together in a strange way, and this had to come out at some point and cause a breakdown that would eventually bury the faith.”
Benedict said that in his view, “a divorce was necessary,” in this regard, and cautioned against the idea of thinking of the Church as a body of saints who have already reached perfection. (I can’t help but think this is directed toward synodality as currently ideologized.)
“That this thought recurring in history is a false dream, which reality always immediately refutes, became particularly clear to me in my Augustine studies on Donatism,” he said, referring to an ancient Christian sect arguing that Catholic clergy had to be faultless in order for their ministry and prayers to be effective, and sacraments valid.
Under this belief, only people who presented themselves as true believers “without any stain” were qualified to become bishops, Benedict said, noting that this idea eventually pushed the sect “more and more into sectarianism and, in fact, proved forever that the church includes wheat and chaff, good and bad fish.”
From a pastoral perspective, then, “it could not be about separating good and bad from one another, but it could be about separating believers and unbelievers,” he said.
Since his pastoral days, the problem of this lack of faith “has become more and more apparent,” he said, insisting that in a swath of Church institutions – hospitals, schools, Caritas offices – “many people are involved in decisive positions who do not support the internal mission of the church and thus often obscure the witness of this institution.”
This seeps into the public and private statements the Church makes, he said, noting that the term “official church” was formulated “to express the contrast between what is officially required and what is personally believed.”
The phrase ‘official church,’ he said, “insinuates an inner contradiction between what faith actually wants and means, and its depersonalization.”
Unfortunately, he said, it is largely the case “that the official texts of the Church in Germany are largely formed by people for whom the faith is only official. In this sense, I have to admit that the term ‘official church’ actually applies to a large part of official church texts in Germany.”
Benedict recalled how while he was a young professor, he had asked a young bishop who was a friend of his to contribute a text to be published in the Catholic magazine Communio, in which the bishop described his work at the bishops’ conference.
“The manuscript he sent us, however, was obviously written by his section and was in fact the language of the apparatus, not the language of a person,” Benedict said, adding, “Unfortunately, this experience was repeated many times later.”
In this regard, Benedict was asked about a speech he made in the southwestern university town of Freiburg in 2011, in which he pointed to a tendency within the Church to place greater weight on “organization and institutionalization” than the Church’s “vocation to openness towards God.”
At the time, Benedict spoke of the need for a “de-worlding” of the Church – a term borrowed from German philosopher Martin Heidegger – meaning it is one detached from worldliness.
In his comments to Herder Korrespondenz, Benedict questioned whether Heidegger’s concept of “de-worlding” was the right term, saying “I don’t know whether I wisely chose the word.”
“What the church has to say ex officio, it says an office, not a person,” he said, noting that “As long as only the office, but not the heart and the spirit, speak in official church texts, the exodus from the world of faith will continue.”
“Therefore, then as now, it seemed important to me to get the person out of the cover of the office and to expect a real personal testimony of faith from the speakers of the Church,” he said.
The concept of “de-worlding” refers only to the negative aspect “of the movement I am concerned with, namely stepping out of speech and the practical constraints of a time into the freedom of faith,” whereas “it is precisely this side, the positive, that is not sufficiently expressed” in the term, he said.
Conducted in early summer 2021, the interview consisted of written responses to questions submitted by German journalist Tobias Winstel and focused largely on Benedict XVI’s brief time as pastor the at Precious Blood church in the Bogenhausen district of Munich after his ordination on June 29, 1951.
When asked if he believed he was a good pastor during that time, Benedict responded, “I don’t dare judge whether I’ve been a good priest and pastor,” but insisted that “I have tried in my own way to meet the demands of my office and ordination.”
At the close of his lengthy and wide-ranging responses, during which he addressed a variety of topics including his experience of hearing confessions, preaching to children, and his own path into academia, Benedict recalled his time at Precious Blood, saying, “Even if I will no longer be able to tread the paths of Bogenhausen in this world, they are a precious piece of my life, which I am sure will also be preserved in the hereafter.
In my most humble opinion, Pope Benedict’s hermeneutic of continuity which he enunciated in a very cogent way at his Christmas talk many years ago to the cardinals of the Roman Curia, was the centerpiece of is papacy and a way forward to heal the schism between the Church prior to Vatican II and the Church after Vatican II.
I embraced and embrace Pope Benedict’s theology and also that he wasn’t a dictator about it, which in hindsight may have been a mistake, but proposed rather than imposed his papal leadership.
A direct consequence of the theology of the hermeneutics of continuity was Summorum Pontificum and the letter to the world’s bishops that accompanied it.
The letter, in particular, was/is a good teaching devise for the theology it contains.
But now, and with the signature of the reigning pope, Pope Francis has completely destroyed the theological magisterium that Pope Benedict brought to his papacy and to the Church Universal.
And apart from anyone’s affection for the older form of the Mass or even the theology of Vatican II with the hermeneutics of continuity that preceded the Council, the authority of the papacy and the entire Magisterium of the Church is weakened by the current pope because the next pope can undo any and everything that the previous pope said and promulgated or any other pope or Council of the Church.
That’s the scandal of the Motu Proprio of the current reigning pope—he just pulled the rug out from underneath the entire papacy and its magisterium.
By Christopher Wells
As the Church marked the first World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, celebrated Holy Mass in the Basilica of St Peter, standing in for Pope Francis, who is still recovering from surgery.
Archbishop Fisichella read the homily prepared by Pope Francis, in which the Holy Father reflected on the Gospel for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, which recounts Jesus’ miraculous feeding of the five thousand with just five loaves of bread and two fish.
The Holy Father reflected on “three moments” in the Gospel: “Jesus sees the crowd’s hunger; Jesus shares the bread; Jesus asks that the leftovers be collected.” These three moments, he said, “can be summed up in three verbs: to see, to share, to preserve.”
The miracle of the loaves and fishes, said Pope Francis, “begins with the gaze of Jesus, who is neither indifferent nor too busy to see the hunger felt by weary humanity.” Instead, He is concerned for everyone, and “understands the needs of each person.”
Our grandparents look on us the same way, the Pope said. Their love helped us to grow, and we, in turn, are called to share our love and attention. “Let us lift up our eyes and see them,” Pope Francis said, “even as Jesus sees us.”
The Holy Father pointed out that Jesus fed the people with the loaves and fish shared by a young person. “At the heart of the miracle,” he said, “we find a young person willing to share what he had.”
Pope Francis insisted that “Today we need a new covenant between young and old. We need to share the treasure of life, to dream together, to overcome conflicts between generations and prepare a future together.” He added that without this “covenantal sharing in life,” we risk dying of hunger.
“I have often mentioned the words of the prophet Joel about young and old coming together,” the Pope said. “Young people, as prophets of the future, who treasure their own history. The elderly, who continue to dream and share their experience with the young, without standing in their way. Young and old, the treasure of tradition and the freshness of the Spirit.”
Reflecting on Jesus’ instruction to gather up the fragments of bread after the miracle, the Pope said, “This reveals the heart of God” who is concerned that “nothing be lost, not even a fragment.” This is especially true of people, he said, who must never be discarded.
“We need to make this prophetic summons heard among ourselves and in our world: gather, preserve with care, protect.”
Pope Francis emphasized the importance of “protecting” our grandparents, as they protected us as we grew. “Let us protect them, so that nothing of their lives and dreams may be lost.”
Grandparents and the elderly, said Pope Francis “are the bread that nourishes our life.” In the conclusion of his homily, he pleaded, “Let us not forget them. Let us covenant with them” so that, “together, young and old alike” might “find fulfilment at the table of sharing, blessed by God.”
At the conclusion of Mass, young people offered flowers to the elderly who were present in the Basilica for the Liturgy.
It is unanimous, everyone agrees that these four are related! Woody Harrelson is another grandson of my grandfather and Robert Vaughn is the long lost father of his son.
There is an article that shows how small of a minority are those priests and congregations which prefer the ancient Mass. I have to agree that we are a minority. There is a lot of bragging about how much we are growing and how young we are and that the desire for this Mass is not nostalgia but a desire for an experience of the Mass that incorporates more reverence from both the clergy and laity and is more transcendent than what is the standard staple for the more recent new order of the Mass.
Here are some statistics from “Latin Mass Hysteria”:
Above all, the list clearly demonstrates how geographically skewed even this tiny minority is: the United States, which is home to just six percent of the world’s Catholics, is home to nearly forty percent of all Tridentines Masses, with 658 sites. France, Great Britain, and Italy are the next most popular, with 199, 157, and 91 sites (which can be a parish or other chapel or designated spot) respectively. Indeed, Europe and the Anglosphere account for more than eighty-six percent of all Tridentine sites, and if you removed the fifty-seven sites in Brazil – the world’s most populous Catholic country – there would be hardly any in Latin America, Africa, or Asia, the continents where the Catholic population is largest and fastest-growing.
Yet, there is such an animus towards this Mass, the Holy Father felt he had to crush it. But why? If the more recent new order of the Mass can be celebrated in Latin, what is so different about it and the old order that the old order is viewed as some kind of poison?
And of the minority of Catholics who do celebrate the older Mass, how many are actually schismatic, meaning they do not acknowledge this pope or think they themselves are the elite remnant of the true Church that Vatican II, which they reject, has destroyed? How many?????
On this weekend when we celebrate for the first time Grandparents and the elderly, let us also recall that like the young, the old can be a mixed bag of wisdom but also narrow mindedness. There is a minority of older people in the Church that despise what younger people like and embrace. Older priests and bishops to include the pope who were when they were young at the forefront of going way beyond what Vatican II actually taught were critiqued by bishops and priests in the late 1960’s who themselves were in their 60’s, 70’s and 80’s.
There’s nothing new in the Church about this.
Today, we have Cardinal Kasper scratching his head, along with his very good friend to whom he has been a mentor, Pope Francis. Kasper is 88 and Pope Francis on his way to 85. Sometimes older people simply do not understand the desires and aspirations of the young who often make mistakes in procuring what they desire. It happened in the 1960’s and it is happening again and will always happen.
Unfortunately, some geriatrics in very high places in the Church are constructing a dead end street for this juvenile movement to stop them in their tracks when all that was needed was a detour sign to keep them on the right road but without ending their legitimate aspirations which helps the Church in the long run; does not compromise her.