The ongoing suppression of the TLM is clearly linked to the on-going promotion of the “new morality” that was at its pinnacle of promotion way back in the early 1970’s. The new morality, supposedly promoted by Vatican II, enabled sin of all kinds and is in a partnership with the “world, the flesh and the devil.”
The new morality, under the guise of “conscience” and proper consultation makes room for scammers, fornicators, adulterers, the abortion industry and those who take advantage of the poor to flourish and feel no remorse.
It denigrates the “rigidity” of the old morality that most Catholics learned and tried to live prior to the novel new morality of the 1970’s finding new encouragement in the current life of the Church, a kind of backwardism to say the least.
Here’s the money quote from Cardinal Sarah. Yes His Eminence nails it:
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome, linked the attempted suppression and rejection of the Traditional Latin Mass within the Church to the rejection of traditional Catholic morals and Europe’s wider defection from Christianity in what he called “practical atheism.”
The comments on the attempt to cast off the Church’s ancient liturgy within the Latin rite came in a talk Cardinal Sarah offered at the Catholic University of America (CUA) on Thursday, June 14, at an event titled “An Evening with Robert Cardinal Sarah,” sponsored by the Napa Institute and the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C.
16 comments:
The old rite was profoundly continuous with Jewish temple worship, the religion continuous with Jewish worship, the obligations of priests in reciting the divine praises continuous with Jewish priests, the practices of its people's morals continuous with the Jewish people's.
All that was cast aside to follow a shallow and false Hollywood semi-hippy coat of many colors version of Jewish, along with Hollywood morals.
In the Byzantine East, tradition is core, it is unquestioned, it keeps us grounded and rooted in what Christ himself established and the Church Fathers organized. Our strength, morals included, is a byproduct of that adherence as I have no recollection of anyone questioning what we're about and where we are going.
To me, the Roman Church will, long-term, be better off following a similar, clear path.
ByzRus, that is exactly what we did until of relatively late, and boy are we paying for it now...but once it gave up the monolithic belief and practices, things have fissioned same as protestantism, and same as nuclear fission, no putting it back in the bottle....only hope is smaller and faithful groups carrying on, but with Rome now not even sure as a guarantor (something always taken for granted until now), it nearly leaves them following only the Orthodox model, which has not been an especially sparkling success either in avoiding heretical tendencies at times.....whatever it takes to repair the damage, or even IF the damage repaired, it will be lifetimes, centuries....
Totally unrelated, Father McDonald, but immediately below this thread, you have a photo of Francis in rare regalia, and a female in unrare regalia....past the hair/make-up touches (easy to deal with), it appears to be the same person...some of the more outageous right wing political movement church groups should be alerted to this immediately, as it would explain much about this papacy, to them.
ByzRus, Exactly, we receive, don't innovate. Something I've made reference to before is that Rome's major issue is the mindset towards tradition, it's not seen as a gift and something to be preserved, but rather something that can be trampled upon.
Bob, even we Orthodox would be scandalised by how Rome is treating its own traditions. If someone was to hold Rome accountable for these times when it's treating its own tradition like junk, I wonder if things would have gotten to the way that they are now. I agree that it's going to take lifetime and centuries to recover from the damage that Rome has inflicted upon itself.
Christ hath ascendeth: Into the heavens!
From the LifeSiteNews article in question:
"Robert Sarah...linked the attempted suppression and rejection of the Traditional Latin Mass within the Church to the rejection of traditional Catholic morals and Europe’s wider defection from Christianity in what he called “practical atheism.”
=======
Actually, the "rejection of traditional Catholic morals and Europe’s wider defection from Christianity in what he called 'practical atheism'" has been underway for centuries, according to Cardinal Sarah.
That is, if we accept Father Joseph Ratzinger's horrific assessment of the Church that he offered via a 1958 A.D. lecture. It is that lecture from which Cardinal Sarah's "money quote" has drawn inspiration.
The TLM was in place throughout the Latin Church...Pope Venerable Pius XII had served nearly 19 years as Pope...when, in 1958 A.D., Father Joseph Ratzinger noted the following, as we learn from the LifeSiteNews article.
From the article:
"Referencing a 1958 lecture of then Joseph Ratzinger — which Sarah said “suggests our current situation has roots much deeper than the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s” — the cardinal quoted Ratzinger, who said, “This so-called Christian Europe for almost 400 years has become the birthplace of a new paganism, which is growing steadily in the heart of the Church and threatens to undermine her from within.”
"Ratzinger argued in his 1958 lecture that the Church “is no longer, as she once was, a Church composed of pagans who have become Christians, but a Church of pagans who still call themselves Christians but actually have become pagans."
"Paganism resides today in the Church herself (The New Pagans in the Church, 1958),” Ratzinger wrote."
"Sarah pointed out that as “harsh” a critique of the Church as it was, Ratzinger made his comments in 1958."
“So the criticism that there exists a practical atheism in the Church is not new to this moment,” he said.
========
Even when the TLM was in place, the problem in question has plagued the (Latin) Church for centuries, according to Joseph Ratzinger/Cardinal Sarah.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Joe,
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory Forever!
I hope you had a blessed feast day and are keeping well.
Agree, we receive and we never innovate. We are protective of our inheritance, the treasure handed down through the ages and are diligent stewards during our time as mortal caretakers. We aren't forced to do so, we WANT to do so because we love the liturgy as well as our traditions. Organic change would take centuries to achieve.
Conversely, the Roman Church has in many respects disregarded its own traditions and patrimony. Some seem proud to continue down that path. Others, believers here among them, have to endure seemingly endless distractions which by appearances, prevents the focus on spirituality. I feel badly for them should this be the case. To be sure, we have our challenges and your church may very well have its own, but, administrative/personality flareups aside, there's nothing in the way of me being reassured by both tradition and the rule of prayer in an unbroken way. As you and I have crossed paths elsewhere on the web, I'm sure you know that which I am referencing.
I will never understand why it is so critical that holy mass be reduced to such a simple denominator as the most effective means of aiding the sinner, helping the sick, feeding the poor etc. as was intimated in an earlier post on this blog. To some, it wasn't good enough before, but not all had a say in what could be considered a rupture. To many, it still isn't good enough yet they don't have a say in any sort of realignment. In sum, it just seems contrary to what was received and what awaits us as noted in the Book of Revelation.
Joe -
One other thing, WE don't spend time debating the liturgy is it doesn't require discussion in that way. WE are constantly learning from all that it has to teach us. Our church temples do not have decor, they have appurtenances that aide our worship and provides continuity to Christianity's very origins. Iconography isn't "decoration"! Rather, icons are written, not painted, being the visualizations of scripture. Our theology of the temple structure is unchanged and exacting in meaning as we enter the narthex then drawing near to the Holy Place. I have a priest friend who posts a lot of content on FB each day. His content is mostly quotations of the Fathers, Saints, many are shared between us and he often quotes more recently glorified Orthodox saints. My point? We aren't distracted in the way many in the West might be. Excluding regional/jurisdictional differences which are not significant, all happens the same way. Yet, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone in our circles who thinks our liturgy and the temples in which it occurs to be analogous to theatre occurring in museums. On the contrary, they, respectively, couldn't be more alive! I think this reliable and timeless structure, order and resulting sanctification and prayer life is what guys like TJM, who regularly posts here, desire.
Cyrus, prior to VII, we didn’t debate the liturgy, except for an elite group oh liturgical academics. Today it remains a mess with everyone who attends M complaining about something.
Byrus thank you spell check!
Here is Father Joseph Ratzinger's bleak 1958 A.D. lecture, which Cardinal Sarah referenced in regard to the notion that within the Church, we have experienced "the rejection of traditional Catholic morals."
In addition, there is the matter of "Europe’s wider defection from Christianity," which Cardinal Sarah labeled "practical atheism."
=======
-- The New Pagans and the Church. A 1958 Lecture by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI). Translated by Fr. Kenneth Baker, S.J.
https://www.hprweb.com/2017/01/the-new-pagans-and-the-church/
Excerpts: Father Joseph Ratzinger:
"According to religious statistics, old Europe is still a part of the earth that is almost completely Christian. But there is hardly another case in which everyone knows as well as they do here that the statistic is false:"
"This so-called Christian Europe for almost four hundred years has become the birthplace of a new paganism, which is growing steadily in the heart of the Church, and threatens to undermine her from within."
"The outward shape of the modern Church is determined essentially by the fact that, in a totally new way, she has become the Church of pagans, and is constantly becoming even more so."
"She is no longer, as she once was, a Church composed of pagans who have become Christians, but a Church of pagans, who still call themselves Christians, but actually have become pagans."
"Paganism resides today in the Church herself, and precisely that is the characteristic of the Church of our day, and that of the new paganism, so that it is a matter of a paganism in the Church, and of a Church in whose heart paganism is living."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
I found the following of interest:
Father Joseph Ratzinger's 1958 A.D. lecture included his prediction that the Church would collapse into a much smaller flock. He said:
"And so, either sooner or later, with or contrary to the will of the Church, according to the inner structural change, she will become externally a little flock."
=======
Father Joseph Ratzinger's 1958 A.D. lecture also included his claim that "The fact that today, even given an optimistic evaluation, certainly more than half of the Catholics (here we are considering only our Church) no longer “practice” their faith..."
=======
Even with the TLM in place in 1958 A.D., Father Joseph Ratzinger insisted that the widespread rejection of traditional Catholic morals within the Church had been a reality for centuries.
He insisted also that for centuries, the defection from Christianity had been widespread throughout Europe.
Even more telling in regard to his 1958 A.D. assessment of the Church during that time: Father Ratzinger promoted in unrelenting fashion his view that the "traditional" Roman Mass was in dire need of radical reformation.
For that matter, the entire Church was in dire need of radical reformation, according to Father Joseph Ratzinger.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Father McDinold, your spelczech are be broke. I don't use it, which shows in nearly every post.
ByzRus,
Thanks for your support!
Mark, wonderful set of quotes supporting Father McDonald's point, as those quotes were aimed directly at the folk who were trying to modernize everything from worship to morals.....but, of course, you just happened to once again skip saying that part...shocked, I am...shocked.
ByzRus, I couldn't have said it any better than you have. In agreement with everything! Prayers are always appreciated!
Post a Comment