Mike Lewis of “Where Peter Is” blog had an inane post about St. Pope Paul VI condemning traditionalists or conservatives, as they were called in his day, for causing dissent and disunity in the Church. Thus he wrote an exhortation calling for reconciliation in the Church for the Holy Year of 1975.
I have already called out Lewis for his rewriting of history through the lens of Pope Francis’ papacy and the renewed liturgical wars that the now deceased Holy Father caused and the great polarization of his papacy.
So what was the origin of the original liturgical wars?
1. Orthodox Catholics, while not liking all the changes of Vatican II, accepted them in obedience to the Pope and the Church—they were the original “pray, pay and obey” Catholics.
2. Heterodox progressive Catholics were the dissenting class of Catholics during Paul VI and through Benedict XVI’s papacies. They originated the idea of “faithful dissent” beginning with Humanae Vitae.
3. Heterodox progressive Catholics were the ones fomenting liturgical abuses and grotesque ones that not only deformed the Mass but ate at the heart of Orthodox Catholic doctrines and dogmas concerning the Mass and the Most Holy Eucharist as well as the reservation of the Most Blessed Sacarmanet. The Mass for them was not a sacrifice but a congenial meal.
4. Heterodox Catholics dissenting from dogmas and doctrines of the Church said, by way of lies and deceits, that all they were doing was commanded by Vatican II. As it regards the liturgy, the casual approach to the Mass, the removing of altar railings, the wreckovation of churches, standing for Holy Communion, receiving Holy Communion in the hand and lay Eucharistic Ministers, altar girls, were all called for by Vatican II—THE BIG LIE!!!!
Fed up with the heterodox Catholics hijacking of Vatican II and all the liturgical abuses they foisted on orthodox Catholics, the then so-called conservative Catholics reacted and demanded the proper reading of Vatican II and the proper celebration of the New Mass:
1. They wanted the New Mass celebrated by the missal, in other words, the priest was to read the black and do the red and follow the General Instruction of the New Roman Missal
2. They wanted the removal of altar railings and the wreckovation of churches to cease!
3. They wanted a return to kneeling for Holy Communion distributed by an ordinary Minister of Holy Communion.
4. They wanted the preservation of some Latin and Gregorian Chant as Vatican II actually taught.
5. They wanted reverence, awe and wonder in the manner in which the New Mass was celebrated
6. They wanted an end to banal music dragged into the Mass, such as silly folk songs, secular music and sentimental ditties of the 1960’s and 70’s and then broadway tunes set to religious music and piano bar sounds in church!
7. Only a very small minority of Catholics wanted the Traditional Latin Mass fully restored. Most accepted the New Mass as Pope Paul VI intended it to be celebrated; like him they decried the liturgical abuses of the progressive heterodox left and the grotesque dissent the left fomented in the Church during Paul’s reign!
8. They wanted priests to stop ad libbing and turning the Mass into a one man star of the Mass for themselves of which they were the MC and orchestrator of the cadre of people participating in formal ministries
Those my age and older, correct me if I am wrong!
12 comments:
As the wise saying goes, "Wantin' ain't gettin'."
To be fair, there were proto-trads among the clergy and laity opposed to Pope Paul VI's sweeping de-construction of the Church's rites. However, unlike progressives and modernists, who got very soft-handed treatment if they received any treatment from the Vatican, Pope Paul in 1965 publicly attacked those particular critics as "spiritually lazy". Gee, I wonder if that might've set the tone for the debates and disagreements surrounding the Church's liturgy.
Nick
And a decent translation of the Missal into decent, reverent English
But waitin’ and prayin’ we did gettin’
"Spiritually lazy?" Who knew Paul VI and Francis had something in common, i.e., denigrating their critics
It's simply astonishing that that is the kind of personal attack a pope would choose to make, especially at such a time. But you'd better believe all of his decisions are irreversible and holy, holy, holy!
Nick
Dear Father, I am older than you, and you are correct. We would mourn the innovations, but we were told that they would convert many Protestants, so we accepted them. At first, there were no EMHCs or altar girls, or Communion in the hand, so Mass was not as shocking as it grew to be.
At my former parish, the song "Who is the Alien" by True and Bringle was sung during Mass:
"These are our neighbors, ...
Different in practice, and patterns of loving
Partnered in ways that seem strange to our own,
These are the outcasts we bar from the table..."
"Patterns of loving?" "Different in practice?" (Try not to picture those practices.)Yet we are criticized for driving many miles to a parish with the Tridentine Mass.
"We were the alien; we were the outcast,
Captive in Egypt, our parents were slaves.
We knew the anguish and then the deliverance,
freed by our Maker, whose mighty hand saves!
Who is the alien? Who is the outcast?
Who is the hungry one barred from the feast?
Who is the widow, the slave, and the orphan?
These are our neighbors the last and the least.
Different in practice and patterns of loving,
partnered in ways that seem strange to our own:
these are the outcasts we bar from the table,
failing to witness the grace we were shown.
Women and others our labels belittle,
people whose bodies bear limits of skill:
these are the outcasts whose gifts we discourage,
closing our hearts to God’s open-armed will.
Christ is the outcast who calls to the table,
stretching his arms from the cross to enfold
sisters and brothers, alike in God’s image,
breaking his body to make us all whole.
Who is the alien? Who is the outcast?
Who do we cast aside with foolish pride?
We must decide to walk beside.
Let none divide, let all abide.
We must provide a place at the table."
The woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11) had a pattern of loving that was different in practice. Did Jesus cast her out? Or the Samaritan Woman at the Well (John 4:4-42) who also had a pattern of loving that was different in practice, as if being a hated Samaritan wasn't enough. Did Jesus cast her out? The woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and dried them with her hair before anointing them with perfume was known to everyone present as a sinner! (Wanna guess what her sin was... Care to picture those practices?) Did Jesus cast her out?
Is that a hymn or a morality play?
But Father, the sinners you cite from Scripture were repentant. The song celebrates the unrepentant and argues that we are not to “bar from the table” those who are persisting in sin. (The song is listed in “Songs for the Holy Other: Hymns Affirming The LGBTQIA2S+ Community”. (See patheos. com for details.)
Would you approve of a song calling for unrepentant murderers, blasphemers, adulterers and pederasts to receive the Eucharist without Confession and resolving to go and sin no more?
As mentioned above, I am even older than Fr McDonald, so I must ask if Church teaching has changed. I blush if I seem to be correcting a holy priest, but I do not understand what you are saying.
gag, we suffered through a Folk Group for years, Besides the fact I detest folk at mass, they sucked, I referred to them as the howling cat quartet. New priest wanted to stop it but the committie said the were volunteer so they didn't want to. So Fr hired them and then fired them 2 months later
Laura - In the words of the late, great Pope Francis of happy memory, "The thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity. I see the church as a field hospital after battle. It is useless to ask a seriously injured person if he has high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars! You have to heal his wounds. Then we can talk about everything else. Heal the wounds, heal the wounds. ... And you have to start from the ground up."
I do not ask each person who presents him/herself for communion if he/she is repentant or in a state of grace. That is not the task of the priest or other ministers of communion. And if a person sitting in the pew is making these judgments as people walk up to communion - "I know she's a adulterer," or "I know he's the CEO of a corporation that makes birth control pills," or "The last time I saw them they were at a swingers' party at the clubhouse," - then the person sitting in the pew has missed the point.
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