IS CHRIST PRESENT IN PROTESTANT SERVICES?

Methodist or Presbyterian Lord's Supper:

How the Lutheran Communion Service looked at the time of the Reformation:

I would say yes, Jesus is present in Protestant services. Jesus is present wherever two or three are gathered in His name and He is present when His word is proclaimed and studied.

But what about their Holy Communion? I would say yes, to the extent that they believe He is present. I don't think any Protestants believe in the Sacrificial aspect of their "Lord's Supper." They don't believe in transubstantiation. For most they simply believe "it" is a symbol of the Lord, like a picture of Jesus would be.

Some High Episcopal/Anglican parishes approach our dogma of transubstantiation, but I think they, nonetheless, have a different term.

But less, we forget, for the valid celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, you need a valid priest to be the sacramental sign of the one and only High Priest, who is also the Victim in the Holy Sacrifice. That is Jesus Christ, not only High Priest and Victim but also Bridegroom--the Church is His bride.

But you might ask, in the Church there are male and female; how can man/men be brides? Our souls, no matter our physical gender, are feminine to receive the sanctifying and actual graces Jesus gives us as He gives us Himself. In Latin and most Romance languages the term soul "anima" is feminine.The maleness of the ordained priesthood is the proper "matter" for the Sacrament of Holy Orders since Christ is High Priest (not priestess) and Bridegroom, not bride or transgendered.

Anglicans don't have that nor do any other Protestant sects. Only the Eastern Orthodox Churches  do.

But their Holy Communion services aren't devoid of the presence of Christ. And perhaps the Catholic Church supplies what is lacking for them?

A PRESBTERIAN'S VIEW ON EUCHARISTIC DIVISION

The Augusta Chronicle has been running a series on the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. I hope there will be a Counter-reformation series as a follow-up.

I find Dr. Rich's take on Luther's interpretation of the real Presence of Christ interesting and how the on-going revolt against the Catholic Sacramental principles caused Protestantism to further protest each other over and over again to deepen in heresy and apostasy:

500 years of the reformation

An unfortunate legacy – conflict and the quest for unity

By Dr. Matthew A. Rich Special to The Chronicle

AbOUT THE SErIES

In 2017, we commemorate the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Over the next seven weeks, this series will reveal the variety of ways in which life today bears the marks of the Reformation and its legacy.

Sept. 16: Why we commemorate the Reformation Sept. 23: Education Sept. 30: Politics Today: Conflict and the quest for unity Oct. 14: Marriage and family Oct. 21: Economics Oct. 28: Evangelism and missions

MIKE ADAMS/SPECIAL The Rev. Sam Davis hands out bread that represents the body of Christ during Communion at the Oct. 1 service marking the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation at St. Paul’s Church. An unfortunate legacy of the Reformation has been division in the church. Early on, the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper caused controversy between two reformers: Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli.

(my musing in red)

We each share a very small window of perspective on history, but the ardent divisions around race, political party, religion and national origin seem to be as stark today as they have ever been. As we commemorate the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, Protestant Christians must confess that an unfortunate legacy of the Reformation has been to exacerbate divisions in church and the world.

Rich

The conflict began early in the Protestant movement. In 1529, just 12 years after Martin Luther had nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church, a crack had emerged among those opposed to the church in Rome. The Protestants now protested each other.

Two reformers stood at the center of this controversy: Martin Luther in Germany and Huldrych Zwingli in Switzerland. The doctrine in question was the Lord’s Supper. The meal that Christ had given the church as a sign of its unity and peace had become a chief cause of division.

To briefly summarize their dispute: In a slight change from the Catholic doctrine, Luther argued that in the celebration of the sacrament, Christ’s body was truly and physically present in the bread despite the fact that the bread continued to be bread. In the same way that Jesus was fully human and fully divine, at the Lord’s Supper the bread becomes both fully bread and fully Christ’s body. Literally, “this is my body.” (1 Cor. 11:24)

Zwingli, however, focused on the second sentence in 1 Cor. 11:24, “Do this in remembrance.” In a significant departure from the theology of Catholic Church, Zwingli argued that the meal was just a meal. The bread was just bread, the wine was just wine. So as the church gathered to celebrate the sacrament, they did it at Christ’s command because the meal was a memorial or commemoration through which the church demonstrated its faith. Literally, “Do this in remembrance.”

For three years, the two men traded papers and barbs. But by 1529, the stakes had risen. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was preparing to put down the Reformation by force. So some German princes, sympathetic to the Reformers, attempted to create a military alliance between the territories and city-states of southern Germany and Switzerland. Only one major obstacle stood in the way of this Protestant alliance: the controversy between Luther and Zwingli about the Lord’s Supper. It is hard to believe today, but in the 16th century, theological division impeded international politics.

In the face of great political pressure, the two men and several of their associates met at a castle in Marborg, Germany, in October 1529. There were 15 total items in dispute and after four days of conversations, agreement had been reached on the first 14.

As Luther and Zwingli sat down at a table to discuss number 15, the Lord’s Supper,(The loss of the Cross and Sacrifice/altar!) Zwingli asked Luther for a scriptural passage to prove his doctrine. Luther pulled back a scarf lying on the table to reveal words he had written before the meeting began, “This is my body.” Zwingli responded with the words from the sixth chapter of John: “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing.” (The recovery of the heresy of Dualism/Gnosticism in Protestantism! Spiritual better than physical, body/soul division and the loss of the sacramental principle!) From there, the debate spiraled as each man quoted this scripture and that scripture in defense of his understanding of how the body of Christ was present when the congregation gathered for the sacrament. Ultimately, despite their true desire for unity, Luther and Zwingli finally admitted, “we have not agreed at this moment whether the true body and blood of Christ be corporeally present in the bread and wine.” The conference ended and the princes’ military alliance remained only a dream.

While perhaps one of the most well-known early divisions in the Protestant Christian movement, the Marborg Colloquy was certainly by no means the last. Conflicts often turned violent. The Thirty Years War, fought between 1618 and 1648, began as a religious war between Catholics and Protestants, but developed into a more general conflict between political states. The result was the longest and most deadly war in European history with more than 8 million casualties.

Over the centuries, the divisions and splits within the Protestant movement have grown. Some estimate there are more than 30,000 Protestant denominations with at least 100 distinct congregations. That number swells when one attempts to count the wide variety of independent churches and worshiping communities in towns such as Augusta, much less throughout the world.

Protestant Christians need to confess and repent for the way our quest for purity of doctrine and practice has fractured the church and tarnished the message of love and reconciliation entrusted to the church by Christ. In a world so beset by divisions, is it possible to demonstrate a different and better way to bring unity to the world?

Since 1967, the Joint Lutheran-Catholic Study Commission has been meeting to dialogue, pray and seek common ground on topics of disagreement. In 2015, the Commission released a paper A Declaration on the Way that identifies 32 “Statements of Agreement” where Lutherans and Catholics already have points of convergence on topics about church, ministry and the Lord’s Supper. These agreements signal that Catholics and Lutherans are indeed “on the way” to full, visible unity.

As we mark the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, this witness to growing unity speaks a vital message to a world where messages of hope and reconciliation are often drowned out. Other Protestant denominations and theological traditions such as the Reformed (Presbyterian), United Methodist, Anglican (Episcopalian), and Baptist have entered similar dialogues and continue to seek ways of unity and communion.

Despite the Reformation’s many gifts to the church and our communities, the Protestant churches must recognize the ways we contribute to the deep divisions that plague the world. May we take this anniversary commemoration as an opportunity to come alongside one another, to repair a relationship in our own lives that has been broken, to offer and ask for forgiveness, and to seek a better world. For God is not finished with us yet and by God’s amazing grace one day we will all join together around a common table.

Dr. Matthew A. Rich is the pastor of Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church in Augusta.

OLD MONASTICISM AND NEW MONASTICISM

I copy this from the New Liturgical Movement. Please note the link to a video on 1950's monasticism and the video posted on today's monasticism:

As a follow up to last week’s post of a documentary on monastic life made in the 1950s, here is a beautiful new documentary on the monastic life of our friends at Silverstream Priory in Ireland.

PROGRESSIVE LITURGISTS WILL CHASE AFTER EVERY LITURGICAL FAD, FALLING ALL OVER THEMSELVES TO BE OPEN MINDED ABOUT CLEARLY DUMB EXPERIMENTS,! BUT THERE IS NO OPEN MINDEDNESS ABOUT THEIR OWN LITURGICAL TRADITION WHEN IT COMES TO THE CELEBRATION OF THE 1962 ROMAN MISSAL!

Academic liturgists betray their shallowness when you find them flexing their open mindedness about liturgical experimentation and fawning all over it especially if it supports their ecumenical open mindedness.

How do you spell the capital sin of P-R-I-D-E?

Just read here this Praytell article noting the comments by open minded Catholic liturgists who are narrow minded when it comes to their own liturgical Tradition.

WHO WOULD HATE THE SPLENDOR OF BEAUTY?

For the life of me, I am baffled why so many modern clergy, especially so-called liturgical theologians have such an antipathy for this form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass--could it be Satan has sowed hatred in their hearts for that which is beautiful, edifying and holy?

I copy this from Fr. Z's blog:

The Bishop of Lancaster, England, Most Rev. Michael Campbell, OSA, posted on his blog about celebrating a Pontifical Mass at the Throne.  The church was recently entrusted to the Institute of Christ the King, which is raising it to new life.
I was struck by this observation. The bishop wrote:

It seemed to me as if this venerable place of worship was once more breathing fully in both lungs, and through its splendid liturgy praise and worship were offered to Almighty God.

He didn’t let the church die.  Instead, he thought so far inside the box that what he did was outside the box, it was avant-garde: he returned the church to the purpose for which it was made.

Yes, I think this is avant-garde, which implies that more bishops will do the same as they wake up to the possibilities.

BE THERE OR BE SQUARE, LAFAYETTE SQUARE IN SAVANNAH THAT IS!

Yours truly will be the main celebrant for the Cathedral's High EF Mass, this Sunday, October 8th at 1 PM:

Traditional Propers for the Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost   Vestments:  Green   INTROIT Ecclesiasticus 36: 18 Give peace, O Lord, to them that patiently wait for Thee, that Thy prophets may be found faithful: hear the prayers of Thy servant, and of Thy people Israel. -- (Ps. 121. 1). I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: we shall go into the house of the Lord. V.: Glory be to the Father . . . -- Give peace, O Lord . . COLLECT -  Let the exercise of Thy compassion, we beseech Thee, O Lord, direct our hearts: for without Thee we are not able to please Thee. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth . . . EPISTLE I Corinthians 1: 4-8 Brethren, I give thanks to my God always for you, for the grace of God that is given you in Jesus Christ, that in all things you are made rich in Him in all utterance and in all knowledge, as the testimony of Christ was confirmed to you; so that nothing is wanting to you in my grace, waiting for the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who also will confirm you into the end without crime, in the day of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. GRADUAL Psalms 121: 1, 7 I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: We shall go into the house of our Lord. V.: Let peace be in thy strength, and abundance in thy towers.   Alleluia, alleluia. V.(Ps. 101. 16). The Gentiles shall fear Thy Name, O Lord; and all the kings of the earth Thy glory. Alleluia.   GOSPEL Matthew 9: 1 - 8 At that time, Jesus entering into a boat, passed over the water and came into His own city. And behold they brought Him one sick of the palsy lying in a bed; and Jesus seeing their faith, said to the man sick of the palsy: Be of good heart, son, thy sins are forgiven thee. And behold some of the Scribes said within themselves: He blasphemeth. And Jesus seeing their thoughts, said: Why do you think evil in your hearts? whether is it easier to say: Thy sins are forgiven thee; or to say: Arise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins (then said He to the man sick of the palsy): Arise, take up thy bed, and go into thy house. And he arose, and went into his house. And the multitude seeing it, feared, and glorified God, who had given such power to men. OFFERTORY Exodus 24: 4 - 5 Moses consecrated an altar to the Lord, offering upon it holocausts, and sacrificing victims: he made an evening sacrifice to the Lord God for an odor of sweetness, in the sight of the children of Israel. SECRET - O God, Who, be Thy venerable intercourse with us in this Sacrifice, dost make us partakers of the one Supreme Godhead: grant, we beseech Thee, that as we know Thy truth, so we may follow it by worthy lives. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost . . . PREFACE (Preface of the Most Holy Trinity) - It it truly meet and just, right and for our salvation, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto Thee, O holy Lord, Father almighty, everlasting God; Who, together with Thine only-begotten Son, and the Holy Ghost, art one God, one Lord: not in the oneness of a single Person, but in the Trinity of one substance. For what we believe by Thy revelation of Thy glory, the same do we believe of Thy Son, the same of the Holy Ghost, without difference or separation. So that in confessing the true and everlasting Godhead, distinction in persons, unity in essence, and equality in majesty may be adored. Which the Angels and Archangels, the Cherubim also and Seraphim do praise: who cease not daily to cry out, with one voice saying: COMMUNION Psalm 95: 8, 9 Bring up sacrifices, and come into His courts: adore ye the Lord in His holy court. POST COMMUNION - We who are fed with Thy holy Gift, O Lord, do offer our thanks unto Thee: beseeching Thy mercy that Thou mayest make us worthy to share in it. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity . .

THE REIGNING POPE EMERITUS BENEDICT XVI CONTINUES TO TEACH AND CLEARLY SO!

My comments first and the reigning Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI's recent comments in writing on the Liturgy below my comments: 

 Sacrosanctum Concilium rightly describes the Liturgy of the 1962 Missal as the "Source and Summit" of our faith, our Catholic identity and who we are to be as the Mystical Body of Christ in the world, once dismissed from the Sacred Liturgy.  I say the 1962 Missal, because the 1970 Missal with its extremely poor implementation in rupture with the 1962 Missal had not been invented. 

Pope Benedict declares and promulgates again: 
 
"The deepest cause of the crisis that has upset the Church lies in the obscuring of the priority of God in the liturgy."

What does this mean? Since Vatican II, in my opinion, more emphasis has been placed on Vatican II in an idolatrous way, than on God and His omnipotence. More emphasis has been placed on the so-called revised "ecclesiology" of Vatican II in an idolatrous way, a kind of worship, that pushes God, the true God, to the side or obscures His omnipotence. This worship of "ecclesiology" emphasizes the ability of Catholics and congregations to formulate themes for the Mass, be busy about reading, offering Holy Communion, directing the singing of the congregation and a army of people doing, this, that and the other and less so contemplating the mystery and omnipotence of God! 

Active participation as opposed to "actual" participation means eating, drinking, listening, responding, processing and moving and all the other distractions that keep us from entering in to MYSTERY, CONTEMPLATION, REVERENCE and FEAR and TREMBLING OF THE LORD!

The key to the renewal of the Liturgy lies in the proper reading, meaning, going to the actual source of the renewal--Sacrosanctum Concilium and revising the 1962 Missal in the most conservative way possible, meaning doing what SC requested! That strikes fear and trembling into the hearts of modern liturgists who are throwbacks to the 1970's theology of rupture.  

From the Reigning Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:

Let nothing be preferred to the sacred liturgy. With these words in his Rule (43:3) St. Benedict established the absolute priority of the sacred liturgy over any other task of monastic life. But even in monastic life this was not immediately taken into account, because agricultural and intellectual work was also an essential task for monks. In agriculture as well as in the crafts and the work of formation, there could be some temporal matters that might appear more important than the liturgy. Against this backdrop, Benedict, with the priority given to the liturgy, unequivocally emphasizes the priority of God himself in our lives: “On hearing the signal for an hour of the divine office, the monk will immediately set aside what he has in hand, yet with gravity.”

In the consciousness of the people of today, the things of God and thus of the liturgy do not appear at all urgent. There is an urgency about every possible thing. But the matter of God does not seem to be urgent. Now one might point out that monastic life is in any case something different from the life of people in the world, and that is certainly correct. And yet the priority of God whom we have forgotten holds true for everyone. If God is no longer important, the criteria for establishing what is important are displaced. Humans, in putting aside God, submit themselves to the constraints that make them the slave of material forces and thus at odds with their dignity.

In the years following the Second Vatican Council I became aware again of the priority of God and of the sacred liturgy. The misunderstanding of the liturgical reform which has spread widely in the Catholic Church has led to more and more emphasis on the aspects of education and one’s own activity and creativity. The doings of people almost obliterated the presence of God. In such a situation it became increasingly clear that the Church’s existence lives from proper celebration of the liturgy and that the Church is in danger when the primacy of God no longer appears in the liturgy nor consequently in life.

The deepest cause of the crisis that has upset the Church lies in the obscuring of the priority of God in the liturgy. All this led me to devote myself to the theme of the liturgy more than previously because I knew that the true renewal of the liturgy is a fundamental condition for the renewal of the Church. Based on this belief, the studies that have been collected in this volume 11 of the Opera Omnia were born. But fundamentally, the essence of the liturgy in the East and West, albeit with all the differences, is one and the same. And so I hope that this book will also help the Christians of Russia to understand in a new and better way the great gift that has been given to us in the sacred liturgy.

--translation by Fr. Anthony Ruff

CARDINAL MUELLER EXPLAINS POPE FRANCIS' STYLE OF REASONING WHICH CAUSES SUCH CONFUSION FOR THOSE WHO AREN'T INTO THAT STYLE OF REASONING.

"In Europe, theologians immediately have to have the exact Council text ready when words like 'faith' or 'mercy' are used. This kind of theology with which we are familiar doesn't exist in Latin America. they are more intuitive (inductive?) there...they look at a text without considering it as part of a whole. We must somehow respect and accept this style. But I nevertheless wish that as far as teaching documents are concerned, clear theological preparation must take place."--Gerhard Cardinal Mueller

When I was on sabbatical in Rome last year at this very time, we had a local theologian try to explain Pope Francis' primary way of "doing" theology. Contrasted with Pope Benedict and almost every other pope prior to His Holiness, Pope Francis' method uses almost exclusively inductive  reasoning whereas the papacy prior to His Holiness, as well as academic theologians in Europe and the USA use a more deductive method of "doing" theology and teaching the faith.

Below is an article I reproduce on the differences in deductive and inductive reasoning. I reproduce it from a blog named  wiseGEEK.  It helps us to understand Pope Francis as well as Cardinal Muller's astute insights about Pope Francis' confusing method of reasoning and teaching which is quoted above. 

  wiseGEEK
clear answers for common questions:

Inductive and deductive reasoning are both approaches that can be used to evaluate inferences. Deductive reasoning involves starting out with a theory or general statement, then moving towards a specific conclusion. Inductive reasoning, on the other hand, takes a series of specific observations and tries to expand them into a more general theory. Each approach is very different, and it is important to be aware that both inductive and deductive reasoning can end up with false results, especially if the initial premise of the reasoning is false, in which case the results are said to be “unsound.”

Inductive Reasoning

A simplistic example of inductive reasoning might start with an observation such as “All of the cows I have ever seen are spotted.” One might, in turn, think that therefore all cows must be spotted. This is not actually the case, but given the available information, one might be forgiven for thinking it. The next step in this logic might involve attempting to find things which disprove the assertion that all cows are spotted, as might be done by asking other people if they have seen cows which are not spotted.

Inductive reasoning is commonly seen in the sciences when people want to make sense of a series of observation. Isaac Newton, for example, famously used inductive reasoning to develop a theory of gravity. Using observations, people can develop a theory to explain those observations, and seek out disproof of that theory. As can be seen in the cow example above, one of the major flaws with inductive reasoning is that it is dependent on observations, and when observations are incomplete, unsound results may be formulated.

In a famous example of inductive reasoning, some people in the ancient world believed that meat spontaneously gave rise to maggots. Their conclusion was based on the observation that if meat was left out, maggots would appear on it. Someone else decided to test this theory by seeking for disproof — would it be possible to leave meat out and not have maggots appear? By sequestering meat in various containers next to fully exposed meat, the scientist realized that the maggots were, in fact, the result of eggs laid by flies.

Deductive Reasoning

With deductive reasoning, one takes a general theory or idea, tests it, and moves through a sequence of ideas to arrive at a specific conclusion. It is possible to arrive at an unsound result by using an initial premise which is false, as in this case: Every animal that eats mice is a cat. Rover eats mice. Therefore, Rover is a cat. The goal of deductive reasoning is to arrive at a valid chain of reasoning, in which each statement holds up to testing, but it is possible for deductive reasoning to be both valid and unsound.

Both Useful Approaches

The brain is so adept at both deductive and inductive reasoning that it often does it on a level which people are not fully aware of. Especially in the case of children, this type of reasoning is used to make sense of the world and the things observed in it. As can be seen, it is possible to use both approaches to explore a logical problem.

WHAT ROLE DOES THE DEVIL HAVE IN THE MASS MURDERS WE EXPERIENCE THROUGH TERRORISM AND FROM MAD MEN IN THE USA?

Pope Francis is doing the Church and the world a great good by once again recovering the Church's teaching on the influence of Satan on disordered human beings. Ralph Martin has said, "Pope Francis, after perhaps too many years of a disproportionate silence about the devil, seems to be restoring the balance in his frequent comments on the reality of the devil without a sensationalist preoccupation."

As Catholics, we know the devil can tempt us to use our free will to rebel against God, to be disobedient to the laws of God. But we know too, that the influence of Satan can cause us to become minions of the devil robbed of our free will through demonic oppression or possession. Our free will is a gift from God, a gift that the devil hates and he tries to take from us in order to control us.

The devil enters where we are weakest, in our disorders and our disordered affections. It is there that he can wreck the most havoc on our lives and the lives of others.

It is said that the mass murderer in Las Vegas became a dark, horrible person when he was drinking. While we do not know if he was intoxicated at the time of his mass shooting, certainly Satan could enter into the hole of this disordered reaction to alcohol and manipulate this shooter into doing his demonic deeds as though he was a robot of the devil completely under his influence and devoid of free will that could combat this take over.

Someone once wrote that an increasing number of people, including Catholics, no longer see the risks of experimenting with the occult or even Satanism. Sometimes this is masked by godless secularism, itself influenced by Satan.

More and more God and religion is shunted from the public square. Satan takes delight over his influence in this area for it opens people to his power and ability to rob them of the great gift of free will. And thus he controls them to do his demonic deeds.

POST VATICAN II LITURGISTS CALLED FOR BIG SIGNS AND I WOULD SAY THE EASTERN RITE WAS A BIT AHEAD OF THEM!

I like the New Liturgical Movement's commentary on the Eastern Rite below this photo:

It is currently, for some odd reason, fashionable to admire the colorful extravagance of the Byzantine liturgy while contemptuously dismissing anything in the Latin tradition suggestive of the same. We admire gigantic gold vessels and rich vestments in the East while settling for unsightly cups and drab drapes in the West; we catch our breaths at an impressive iconostasis, while shaking our heads at altar rails and other signs of separation between the nave and the sanctuary; we extol the marvelous poetry of the kontakion or troparion sung to a haunting traditional melody, while leaving our own incomparable Gregorian repertoire out in the cold. I doubt NLM readers are afflicted with this peculiar double standard or hypocrisy, but its ubiquitous presence in the halls of academia and power suggests that we are dealing with a psychological disorder, a kind of self-loathing that compels some people to strip themselves of the treasures of "the other" and to force themselves into a plainness that is almost a punishment or an echo chamber of one's own emptiness. We can point to the beauty elsewhere, like a tourist passing through Versailles, as long as we deprive ourselves of it here and now, and suffer our democratic fate.

WELL DONE, GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT!

Sister Noreen Dennehy, MFIC

November 19, 1920 – September 22, 2017

“Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters that you do unto me.”

Sr. Noreen Dennehy was born on November 19, 1920 to John Dennehy and Mary Ann O’Brien, in Mauntenane, Killoughlin, Co. Kerry, Ireland.  She had three brothers and three sisters:  Margaret, Michael, Patrick, Nancy, Bernadette and John.

At the tender age of 17, on February 23, 1938, Noreen entered the Community of Missionary Franciscan Sisters in Bloomfield. Then two years later, shortly after pronouncing her first vows, Noreen was sent to our Mother House in Rome, Italy. This was a very significant ministry that spanned 1940 to 1965 with one year back in Bloomfield in 1955.  She was there during the years of World War II and was involved with the hiding of the Jews and Allied troops in our Mother House.  She knew and worked with the brave Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty who rescued over 6500 people in and around Vatican City during the German occupation of Rome.

His activities are immortalized in several documentaries and in the film The Scarlet and the Black in 1983.  

Sr. Noreen was quoted in the biography of Msgr. O’Flaherty by Brian Fleming:

I am very happy to tell you that I, personally, worked with Monsignor O’Flaherty in Rome during the tragic years when he risked his life in order to help the Jews in Rome.  Time after time, Monsignor came to our Franciscan Generalate. . . He often asked us to house the persecuted Jews.  Since we had a very large Generalate, we were able to accommodate as many as fourteen or fifteen at any one 

Noreen and several of our sisters, who were in Rome at the time, often told the story of providing food and clothing, as well as doing laundry and cleaning to help care for the Jews hiding in our Generalate.

In 1965, Noreen came to the United States and began another ministry in East Boston, Brooklyn and the Bronx.  The Community published a religious magazine called The Annals of Our Lady which was renewed each year by direct visit to the customers.  The sisters who performed this ministry often listened to the stories and sufferings of the people and offered to remember them in prayer.  For eight years Noreen worked with other sisters in carrying out this arduous mission in all kinds of weather.  Only God knows the amount of good done to those who subscribed to our magazine.

A move to Yonkers, NY, initiated another new ministry for Noreen.  She received a certificate of Health Care,qualifying her to care for the “convalescent, the aged, the young and the newborn.”  Several notes of thanks were among her papers, praising her for the compassion and care she shared especially with the elderly.

Traveling to Augusta, Georgia, in 1986, Noreen embarked on the mission and ministry of the Social Apostolate.  Serving the needs of the poor and working for the rights of migrants was her calling and crusade.  She advocated for migrant workers in South Carolina who were being abused by landowners who refused to pay wages and housed the migrants in deplorable conditions.  Sr. Noreen was interviewed by Tom Brokaw on the TV show “60 Minutes” where she testified to the deplorable situation.  

From 1986 to 2006, Noreen continued ministering in Georgia.  She is remembered fondly by clients and sisters,as well, for her sweet disposition and hard labor.  Yet, she had a fun side to her life.  She enjoyed singing and dancing and even participated in shows.  Visiting her family was energizing to her and travel was a great relaxing experience.

Then, at age 86, she retired to Newton, MA, but remained active in the household chores.  In 2008 she moved to Tenafly, NJ, to form community and begin the awesome ministry of prayer for all in need.  For nine years Noreen has been a kind presence to all in Tenafly: pleasant, grateful and joyful.  With her niece Josephine Weir keeping her company and several sisters praying at her bedside, Noreen was taken Home to the Lord on Friday September 22, 2017, as gently as she had cared for others.  May she be at rest and continue to sing and dance in the company of God and all her friends and Sisters.  We will miss you, Sister Noreen.

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING! NONE OF US HAVE CHANGED SINCE WE WERE SWEET 16!

I worked at the Dairy Queen/Brazier in Augusta from April of 1968 when I was 14 years old until 1972. While I was there the two others in the photo above, Danny and Angie (Courchaine) Danilovich worked there as well, but for less time than my sentence.

They met on the job at the DQ (although most of us said, the Brazier) and when they both were barely 19 they married. Both are practicing Catholics and live in Conyers, GA. I have not seen them since 1980, 37 years ago.

They were vacationing on nearby Hilton Head Island, a bit of paradise one hour north of Richmond Hill.

So I joined them Monday night at an Italian restaurant on Hilton Head to celebrate their 46th wedding anniversary on that very day, October 2nd, the Feast of the Guardian Angels. How nice and it was!

BOMBSHELL!!!

"Pope Benedict has stated very clearly: changes in the church need to be made with the hermeneutic of continuity. A beautiful phrase. This hermeneutic develops: certain things change but the whole is entirely in continuity. It does not betray its own roots, it explicates them, makes them better understood."

--Pope Francis, yes! You read that correctly! Pope Francis in French book length interview!

WHAT'S UP WITH THIS VIDEO? THERE ISN'T A SINGLE PERSON MY AGE AND OLDER INTERVIEWED! ONLY YOUNG PEOPLE!

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Modern liturgist have turned Vatican II and its so-called "spirit" into an idol. They have also turned the so-called ecclesiology of the post-Vatican II experiement into a god. Church became all about us and the revised Mass as promoted by modern, "spirit" of Vatican II liturgists is all about the human stripped of the loftiness of the sense of the sacred so evident in the Mass prior to Pope Paul's idea of what the revised Mass should be. 

I will take reverence over ecclesiology and its ideology any day of the week when it comes to the Mass!

The greatest complaint about the direction the revised Roman Missal of Vatican II was and is that the sense of the sacred was lost compared to the Roman Missal that immediately preceded the 1970 version--the 1962 Roman Missal. Just note the video above about that!

I am not sure that the 1970 Missal concocted by academics and theologians had an agenda intended to remove the Catholic sense of the sacred and holy reverence, but they wanted the revised Mass to be more in keeping with Protestant sensibilities to promote an unbridled ecumenism and the reunion of the Protestant sects, or at least some of them, with the Catholic Church. Thus meal was emphasized over sacrifice, casualness over reverence and flexibility over ritual which is always fixed and somewhat rigid. Rubrics were deemed robotic and unuseful for creativity.

Certainly the vernacular allowed priests for the first time to ad lib or change the words of the Mass to be to their individual tastes. Individualism and Congregationalism began to take root in the post Vatican II Church especially when priests and their liturgy committees could have fun with the Mass and make it up as they go creating new "traditions" that were meaningless, like puppet Masses and themed Masses.

The Mass facing the people allowed to priest to treat those in front of him as his audience and thus he played to his "fans" and began to read the prayers of the Mass toward them as he established eye contact and gestured to him.

Pastoral musicians tried to inculturate the music idioms of the day into the Mass, secular music with religious words. Often this took the form of folk music, polka Masses, and sounds that were more like current Broadway ditties or had Protestant devotional qualities.

Involving lay men and women in the roles of lector and extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion often was accomplished with little or no training, the encouragement of lay clothing of all types often today very casual and a very casual approach to the Mass in general.

All of this destroyed the ancient spirituality of the Mass with its devotion of reverence so evident in the video above.

Even the Revised Mass could have maintained the patrimony of the Church's sense of the sacred if radical shifts at the foundation of the revised Mass that led to irreverence had not been promoted by self-serving liturgists and clueless bishops. Ad libbing, casualness and facing the congregation by the priest are the three main culprits plus the dumbed down method of translating the Latin into the vernacular stripped the English Mass of style, reverence and beauty as well as the devotional theology of the original Latin.

The way back to the reverence in the Ordinary Form of the Mass is found in more Latin, ad orientem and attention to detail in what is worn by lay and ordained participants in the Mass and well-formed and informed clergy and laity.

WHAT DO I MEAN BY LITURGICAL NARROW MINDEDNESS?

In a previous post about Praytell's antipathy about the EF Mass, I wrote about the Benedictine's narrow mindedness about the 1962 Missal, a prejudice against it and the elevation of Vatican II into some kind of savior or god, which is idolatry.

But let me explain why I call the good Benedictine narrow minded.

Prior to Vatican II there were many distinct "rites" in the Latin Rite each having slight or major differences from the normative Latin Rite of the pope and most Americans.

But there were also Eastern Rite Liturgies, similar to the Orthodox Church's liturgies but with the unique additional Maronite Rite which has no "Orthodox" counterpoint.

No one saw this as a threat to the liturgical unity of the Church, having these additional unique rites for small minorities of Catholics in union with Rome.

The problem with Praytell's Benedictine priest is that he sees the EF Mass as a threat to all of Vatican II and its ecclesiology and liturgical reforms. IT IS NOT! And if it is seen as such, the problem lies with a theology of rupture and a lack of continuity between the pre Vatican II Church and the Post Vatican II Church which is a sin!

I am a priest who celebrates as well as I can the Ordinary Form of the Mass and I allow all the normative option, including male and female lay readers, altar servers and horror of horrors male and female extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion.

While I have my preferences in styles of music allowed in the OF Mass, I do not impose my own tastes but allow an eclectic approach in my parishes.

I encouraged my last parish to appreciate both forms of the Mass. And in Augusta where there was an Eastern Rite parish, I know that most Augustans where aware of it and many attended it to see what it was like. It was not a threat to the normal Latin Rite parishes.

Open mindedness is absolutely necessary in today's liturgical landscape. I would recommend this not only for the Benedictine at Praytell but many who comment here. Elitism is not good!

And trying to suppress legitmate liturgical rites of the Church in the west or the east is simply authoritarianism and narrow mindedness!

I THINK I WAS ONE OF THE FIRST BLOGGERS TO GIVE PUBLICITY TO THIS HBO MINI SERIES BEFORE THE DEBUT A FEW MONTHS AGO

It is interesting the Vatican has taken note. The show is a bit silly but beautifully filmed giving its wild plot credibility:

Vatican newspaper chimes in, finally, on ‘The Young Pope’

• Associated Press
  October 1, 2017

This image released by HBO shows Jude Law, left, and Silvio Orlando from the HBO series, "The Young Pope." (Credit: Gianni Fiorito/HBO via AP.)

The Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, finally wrote about the Vatican-inspired series "The Young Pope" starring Jude Law as an unlikely American pope. Editor-in-chief, Gian Maria Vian, said he didn't want to write about it during the time it was airing, because "They wanted us to either bless it or excommunicate it, and I didn't want to play that game." 

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VATICAN CITY - The Vatican newspaper has broken a yearlong silence and weighed in on director Paolo Sorrentino’s “The Young Pope,” giving the television series generally positive reviews despite what it called the “frivolous,” ”caustic” and “grotesque” way it painted the Vatican.

L’Osservatore Romano dedicated a two-page spread in Sunday’s edition to the 10-episode series, which began airing in Italy in October 2016 and in North America earlier this year.

The main essay was penned by Juan Manuel de Prada, a Spanish intellectual who explored the contradictions - in Sorrentino, in the character of Pope Pius XIII, played by Jude Law, and in the Vatican hierarchy - that were presented by the series.

“The Young Pope” opens with the improbable election of Lenny Belardo as history’s first American pope. Despite his youth, Belardo charts a deeply conservative, controversial and at times vicious papacy, still haunted by the trauma of being abandoned by his parents and raised by a nun.

The series features Diane Keaton as the nun, Sister Mary, who is convinced Lenny is a saint, and Silvio Orlando as the scheming secretary of state who spars with him. Orlando’s Cardinal Voiello, named for a popular brand of Italian pasta, is a perfect amalgam and caricature of real-life past Vatican secretaries of state in both his love of soccer and his devotion to a severely disabled child.

In his review, de Prada found that inside Sorrentino’s anti-clerical rants there was also a “docile admiration for the church.”

Sorrentino doesn’t manage to penetrate the church’s mystery “but he manages to convey his own perplexity to the viewer, who will ask how it’s possible that an institution run by ambitious, lascivious braggarts could survive all these shipwrecks,” de Prada wrote.

The newspaper’s silence during the Italian run was notable, since other Catholic media were almost unanimous in their criticism. L’Osservatore’s editor-in-chief, Gian Maria Vian, said he specifically chose not to enter into the Catholic media debate while the show was airing.

“They wanted us to either bless it or excommunicate it, and I didn’t want to play that game,” Vian said in a telephone interview Saturday. “But we intervened now because it’s an important television series, an important cultural phenomenon.”

A top L’Osservatore columnist, Lucetta Scaraffia, looked at Sorrentino’s screenplay, which she says has “criticism of the existing church, but in some way hope that something good might come from it.”

I STILL DON'T GET THE NARROW MINDEDNESS AND ANTIPATHY OF SO MANY AGAINST POPE BENEDICT'S GENEROUS ALLOWANCE OF THE 1962 ROMAN MISSAL

Why are some so wiling to make an idol out of Vatican II? Why are so many opposed to the EF Mass?

Here's a silly diatribe revealing a serious insecurity:

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The Traditional Latin Mass in the New York Times

October 1, 2017 Anthony Ruff, OSB 5_  Reform of the Reform

“Catholics attached to the Latin Mass have suffered a great deal since the introduction of the vernacular liturgy after Vatican II,” Matthew Schmitz complains in an odd piece that appeared today in the New York Times,“The Latin Mass, Thriving in Southeastern Nigeria.”

For Schmitz, senior editor of First Things, the 2007 document of Pope Benedict XVI Summorum Pontificum, which gave universal permission for the celebration of the unreformed pre-Vatican II liturgy, is “a sublime vindication.” Schmitz quotes approving the statement of Benedict XVI, “What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too.”

Actually, no. It’s the kind of statement that has the ring of truth and sounds right at first, but does not withstand critical scrutiny.

Sorry, Pope Benedict. I do not contest the Pope’s authority to readmit the preconciliar Mass or the canonical authority of Summorum Pontificum. But as a theologian I claim my right to examine the arguments offered in support of that papal decree. I don’t believe they entirely hold up.

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