HAVING ATTENDED A PROGRESSIVE/LIBERAL 1970’S SEMINARY, I CAN SMELL ITS 1970’S FAUX DOGMATISM, INFALLIBILITY AND BLEEDING HEART MIXED IN WITH THE WOUNDED HEALER—IT IS SO TRITE

What the young liberal/progressives were not able to accomplish under Popes Paul, John Paul and Benedict, as an aging cabal on life-support, they feel they can do it under Pope Francis. But in the title above I use the word trite, because what they offer is 1970’s stale, its overused by this cabal and consequently of little import as it lacks in originality or freshness.

This liberal/progressive cabal will not let any tragedy, scandal or misstep go unused. In an infallible and dogmatic way, they will say that the Church has been corrupt for 2000 years because of a clique of clerics who have wounded the Church. That clerical clique needs to be replaced with laity who are clericalized and clergy who are laicized and that will lead to a recovery of authority in the Church.

In other words, the old canard of a Church in hermeneutics of rupture with what has preceded it is the only way forward. Did I say this was trite? 

Authority in a wounded church: Leaders see ‘synodality’ as way forward

“The reform of the church is even more necessary because of the religious and sexual abuses that have been uncovered recently. The church must be a safe place for all. It has now to admit it is fragile and to change the way power is exercised in order to get back some credibility,” Xaviere Missionary Sister Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, told Global Sisters Report in April.

Nowhere has the abuse scandal and a synod journey coincided so dramatically as it has in Germany.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, who was president of the German bishops’ conference when the bishops and the lay-led Central Committee of German Catholics launched a “Synodal Path,” recently offered to resign at the age of 67, saying that bishops must begin to accept responsibility for the institutional failures of the church in handling the clerical sexual abuse crisis.

“Have I not helped to foster negative forms of clericalism by my own behavior and the false concerns about the church’s reputation?” he said bishops must ask themselves…

Australian Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen of Parramatta, in a June lecture on his hopes for Australia’s plenary council, said that “few Catholics have any appetite left for cosmetic changes, mediocrity or worst, restorationism dressed up as renewal.”
“We have struggled under the weight of the old ecclesial paradigm of clerical order, control and hegemony with a penchant for triumphalism, self-referential pomp and smugness,” he said in the lecture, the text of which was published by his diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Outlook.
The church in Australia, he said, has been “humbled and reduced to near irrelevancy by the sexual abuse crisis,” but awareness of the gravity of the sins of the past has generated “unprecedented momentum for deep reform.”
“We yearn for a church that commits to a God-oriented future of equal discipleship, relational harmony, wholeness and sustainability,” he said. “Until we have the courage to admit the old ways of being church, which is steeped in a culture of clerical power, dominance and privilege, we cannot rise to a Christ-like way of humility, inclusivity, compassion and powerlessness.”

READ THE REST THERE

HOLY OBEDIENCE

 In the 1950’s this child ate a hotdog on Good Friday and did so knowing it was serious matter to do so and he did it with full consent of the will and with forethought and planning as he decided to do it on Holy Thursday during the Evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper.

As he took the last bite, he choked on it and died. To this very day his immortal soul is burning in the eternal fires of hell, thus no need to pray for his immortal soul or seek any indulgences for him on All Souls’ Day:

When I was a child and the church had the strict Friday abstinence each Friday and under the pain of mortal sin if one willfully ate, for example, a hotdog, that person would go to hell if unrepentant prior to death, even a sudden death.

My Protestant friends would ridicule such an idea that eating a hotdog on Friday would send one’s immortal soul to hell if one did so willfully.

Well, of course, even in elementary school I knew that it wasn’t the hotdog that sent me to hell, but my willful disobedience of the Church and its proper authority over me in her faith, morals and canon laws. 

The mortal sin was/is disobedience towards the Church and her rightful leaders, the pope, bishops in union with him and priests and nuns in union with the pope too.

Thus, who knows what Summorum Pontifcum II will bring when released and rumor has it that Pope Francis will release it on Friday, the Feast Day of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel.

But as for me and my household, we will be obedient to Holy Mother Church and the Vicar of Christ even if we disagree with the document and even if we think eating a hotdog on Good Friday is perfectly moral.  

POPE FRANCIS RELEASED FROM HOSPITAL

 The Holy Father, driving his Ford Focus, first makes a pilgrimage to the Basilica of St. Mary Major, and then proceeds to the Vatican Motel 6, His Holiness’ domicile.

THE PASTOR OF HAITI’S CATHEDRAL OF SAINT ANNE POINTS OUT THE TERRIBLE EVIL OF THE POLITICAL IDEOLOGY OF ABORTION PROMOTED IN THE USA

 

THIS IS A FASCINATING INTERVIEW GIVEN TO THE PILLAR:

Fr. Louis Merosne, rector of (Haiti’s) Cathedral of St. Anne in Anse-à-Veau, talked with The Pillar about the state of affairs in his country, and where he sees God in the midst of tragedy.

It was a fascinating interview, conducted over several phone calls on Monday. Why did it take several phone calls? “Because Haiti,” Fr. Louis said to me, laughing, as his phone cut off every 15 minutes or so.

Here are some excerpts:

So spiritually, the question might be: ‘God, where are you? Why do we suffer so much? Why have we been suffering so much?’ 

And you know, some are saying that it’s punishment. It’s punishment for the spread for voodoo. It’s punishment for the evils that we have done.  It’s because we are very bad. And it’s not as if God doesn't punish. However, we should be careful with that narrative because we don’t want Haitians to think that they’re the worst people in the world, and therefore they suffer the most. Because that’s not the case at all.

 

Haitians are very good people. …

Yes indeed, there are different religions in Haiti, including voodoo. But when we look at a country like the U.S. which kills its own babies in the womb every single day by the thousands legally, I don't know anything that Haiti does that is worse than that. And yet America thrives.

AND

I think it’s a scandal that as brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church —  all over the world, as one big family —  it is scandalous that some members of the family are literally dying of starvation while others are feasting to the point of not knowing what to do with their excess food. 

This is not, by the way, to give guilt to any particular person. And I give the benefit of the doubt to my brother and sister Catholics who are in a different situation. This is describing a situation. But it’s scandalous that that is happening.

It means, therefore, we need to be conscious of this fact that it’s happening and we need to feel a sense of urgency and responsibility for our brothers. 

Read the whole thing here. 

WHO WILL BE THE NEXT POPE?

 Sandro Magister has an article that is insightful and clearly delineates where the Church is now after eight years of the current pontificate. You can read the full article here.

But I excise the most pertinent part of the longer article for your contemplation on prospects for the next pope:

13 lug 

Conclave in View, Everyone Backing Away From Francis

Francis is a known quantity. He has his favorites for the succession. The first is the Filipino cardinal, a bit Chinese on his mother's side, Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle, prefect of “Propaganda Fide” and for this reason one of the best known cardinals in the world.

For Tagle, it is objected, there is the obstacle of age. He is 64 years old and therefore could reign too long for cardinal electors to bet on him. But above all he is considered too close to Jorge Mario Bergoglio not to end up overwhelmed by the many grievances over the current pontificate, which will inexorably come into the open in a future conclave.

For this reason Tagle has been lying low for some time, he who in the early years of the current pontificate had been so active and vocal. He is prudently keeping his distance, all the more so now that the pontificate is at an end and its shortcomings are increasingly evident.

In particular, Tagle has shrewdly put a damper on that interpretation of Vatican Council II as a rupture and new beginning which he learned during his theology studies in New York, at the school of Joseph Komonchak, and then set down in writing, under his signature, in a key chapter in the history of the Council that is the most widely read in the world, produced by the so-called “school of Bologna” founded by Fr. Giuseppe Dossetti and Giuseppe Alberigo.

*

Another cardinal dear to Francis is the German Reinhard Marx, 68, enrolled by the pope in 2013 into the small group of cardinals called to assist him in the government of the universal Church and promoted in the curia to the presidency of the council for the economy.

It is true that the “synodal path” set in motion in Germany, with Marx among the promoters, seriously distresses Francis, on account of its disruptive objectives. But the pope continues to keep this cardinal close, perhaps planning to call on him to put the brakes on the skid.

But to all appearances Marx means to play on his own and distance himself from a closeness to Bergoglio that could harm him in a conclave. He has left the presidency of the German bishops’ conference and above all - asserting a collective responsibility of the bishops in the sexual abuse scandal - offered his resignation as archbishop of Munich and Freising.

The pope refused this, but some observers have interpreted the cardinal's move as aimed precisely at Marx’s self-nomination for the succession, naturally for a pontificate that would mark the drastic overriding of “Roman Catholicism,” in deference to the secular anti-Roman complex of the Catholic Church of Germany, always tempted by an assimilation to Protestantism.

*

Then there are the cardinals who to Francis are the most distasteful. Angelo Becciu is so unbearable for him that the pope brutally stripped him ten months ago - without any explanation and before any due process - of all the “rights” of the cardinalate, including access to the conclave.

Properly speaking Becciu was never a papabile, but a major elector yes, thanks in part to his membership in the international network of cardinals and bishops who are friends of the Focolare movement, one of the ecclesiastical lobbies most serviceable in arriving at consensus. By putting Becciu out of the game with ignominy, Francis has in fact also disarmed the network that looked up to him.

Pietro Parolin is another of the cardinals that Bergoglio has contributed to removing from the list of the papabili. But properly speaking, Parolin has already put a lot of his own effort into disappointing those who initially saw him as a desirable successor, capable of setting back on the right course the ship of the Church in the storm created by Pope Francis, correcting his drifts without betraying his spirit.

In fact, since everyone can see the mayhem in the secretariat of state under his management, it is difficult to imagine that he is capable of governing the Church, which is a reality incomparably more vast and complex. Not to mention the chain of failures of his diplomatic initiatives, “in primis” with China.

*

Instead, among the moderates there are those who would gladly see on the chair of Peter a cardinal like the Hungarian Péter Erdô, 69, archbishop of Esztergom and Budapest and for ten years president of the council of the Catholic bishops’ conferences of  Europe, highly appreciated by many also for having guided with wisdom and firmness, in the twofold synod on the family of which he was relator general, the resistance against the advocates of divorce and the new homosexual morality.

In two months Erdô will preside over the 52nd International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest, and Pope Francis will go there to celebrate the concluding Mass on September 12. This would be an excellent opportunity to shine a light on him as a high-profile personality of the college of cardinals, with many talents for being elected pope.

The fact is, however, that Bergoglio has tried every trick in the book to downplay his trip to Budapest and cast a shadow over this possible, but above all feared, successor of his. He first added and then extended to four days a visit to neighboring Slovakia, and in this way he has reduced his presence at the Eucharistic congress to a hasty stopover, visibly discharged against his will.

*

A successor like Erdô would certainly bring the papacy back into the furrow of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, meaning precisely those two popes seen as having interrupted - according to the two books cited at the beginning - the happy intertwining between Church and society, between “evangelization and human promotion,” of the first post-conciliar season.

Because it is instead Riccardi and company who would have the right candidate. He is Cardinal Matteo Zuppi (in the photo), 66, archbishop of Bologna and grandnephew of another cardinal, Carlo Confalonieri (1893-1986), who was also secretary to Pope Pius XI, but above all co-founder, with Riccardi, of the Community of Sant’Egidio, unquestionably the most powerful, influential, and omnipresent Catholic lobby of recent decades, at the worldwide level.

As general ecclesiastical assistant of the Community of Sant’Egidio and parish priest of the Roman basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere until 2010, as well as auxiliary bishop of Rome since that year, Zuppi has found himself at the center of an incomparable network of persons and events on a planetary scale, both religious and geopolitical, from the peace agreements in Mozambique of the years 1990-92 to today’s support for the secret agreement between the Holy See and China, from the interreligious meetings in Assisi to the “humanitarian corridors” for immigrants in Europe from Africa and Asia.

Having adapted like a chameleon to the two pontificates of Karol Wojtyla and Joseph Ratzinger, with Francis the Community of Sant’Egidio has reached its apogee, with Vincenzo Paglia at the head of the Vatican institutes for life and the family, with Matteo Bruni at the head of the press office, and above all with Zuppi, promoted as head of the archdiocese of Bologna, made a cardinal and now also in the running for the presidency of the Italian bishops’ conference.

The path from this point to his election as pope is by no means sure, but it is seriously in the order of things. All the more so with a college of cardinal electors in disarray, uncertain in their views and easily led, this time by a lobby not of cardinals - like the legendary “mafia” of St. Gallen that is said to have facilitated Bergoglio’s election - but one certainly more influential and decisive, that has that very name, Community of Sant’Egidio.

Zuppi likes to be called a “street cardinal,” as in the documentary he has already put into circulation, and he had the shrewdness to sign the preface to the Italian edition of the pro-LGBT book by the Jesuit James Martin, dearly beloved to Pope Francis.

JOHN ALLEN, NO ITALIAN, BUT LIVES THERE, IS DOING THE ITALIAN THING AND THE FIRST ATTEMPT THAT I HAVE READ AT DOING SO

 

Yes, this Italian, your most humble blogger, brought up the possibility in a previous post of the big two “c’s” afflicting Pope Francis: COLON CANCER. Today, though, John Allen of Crux is even more ominous in promoting conspiracy theories about the Vatican not telling the complete truth about Pope Francis first and major health crisis as pope. Is there more to what is going on with the pope’s health than what is being told. Italians have their theories:

With pope staying in hospital, is this the part where we panic?

• John L. Allen Jr.
  Jul 13, 2021

Here is a money byte by Allen, not Allan, but Allen:

…this is the first significant time in the Francis papacy when an optimistic statement from the Vatican about the pope’s health has been disproven by reality, which makes one wonder: Is this the part where we panic?

In most papal health scares, a moment comes when people become convinced that things are actually much worse than the Vatican is saying, and that the pope is either about to die or become significantly incapacitated. That conviction typically spawns dark theories about who’s really in charge and what agenda is being pursued.

Usually that speculation begins and reaches its zenith in the Italian press, because of the cultural truths about this country is that Italians have never seen a conspiracy theory they’re not prepared to believe. They even have a word for it, dietrologia, meaning the study of what’s going on behind closed doors.

READ THE REST THERE

My comment:

John Allen makes a good point about no real way to deal with an incapacitated pope who is not free to resign due to the incapacitation. Canon Law nor any papal decree/bull/encyclical has any way out.

May I suggest an idea? What about a “vice” pope? It might be the Secretary of State, who is designated to step in and become a caretaker of the papacy especially as it regards administrative issues, not faith and doctrine, but confirming the naming of bishops, removal of bishops who are errant and the other canonical stuff. 

This could last for years of course, but at least there is something in place and codified by a papal decree that has authority. 

AS A CATHOLIC WITH A CANADIAN HERITAGE, I APPRECIATE THIS EDITORIAL

 

Canada’s Trudeau Fans the Flame of Blame

EDITORIAL: In the face of recent attacks on Catholic churches it’s urgent to communicate a central pair of truths about the residential schools of Canada.

HERE ARE SOME SOUND BYTES:

First, the creation of Canada’s residential-school system was a historical injustice, based upon prevailing assumptions about Indigenous peoples that tragically failed to recognize their personal and collective dignity and respect their existing cultural practices. 

And second, the primary responsibility for this assimilationist system of schooling rests overwhelmingly with the Canadian government, not with the Catholic Church or the other Christian denominations who were contracted by the government to operate individual schools. 

The government set up the system, funded the schools (or, more accurately, underfunded them), and mandated that Indigenous students attend them. As a result of this political initiative, Indigenous children were uprooted from their families and communities in order to be schooled by the dominant Eurocentric culture. They were housed in substandard facilities that were breeding grounds for the infectious diseases that caused the deaths of the vast majority of former students whose bodies now lie buried in nearby graves. 

READ THE REST THERE.

THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT AND HER PEOPLE HAD ITS OWN VERSION OF RACIST ATTITUDES TOWARD AMERICAN OR NATIVE AMERICAN INDIANS. FORTUNATELY OUR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE DID NOT INVOLVE RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS TO DO THE WORK OF THE STATE AS IN CANADA:

Trail of Tears

HISTORY.COM EDITORS

Read the rest there

AND THE CONTROVERSIES CONTINUE

 This is copied from Rorate Caeli:

Cardinal Sarah intervenes on the debate over Summorum Pontificum

Cross-posted from FIUV.org

A series of Tweets sent but Robert, Cardinal Sarah, @Card_R_Sarah, at 12pm on 8th July 2021 (translated from French).

History will remember Benedict XVI, not only as a great theologian but also as the Pope of Summorum Pontificum, the Pope of liturgical peace, who built an ecumenical bridge with the Christian East by means of the Latin-Gregorian liturgy.

 

He will be remembered as the Pope who had at heart the desire to find again the Christian roots and unity of Europe. He opposed meaningless secularism [laicisme] and the disintegration of European culture.

 

Following the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, despite difficulties and resistance, the Church embarked on a path of liturgical and spiritual reform, which, though slow, is irreversible.

 

Despite intransigent clerical attitudes in opposition to the venerable Latin-Gregorian liturgy, attitudes typical of the clericalism that Pope Francis has repeatedly denounced, a new generation of young people has emerged in the heart of the Church.

 

This generation is one of young families, who demonstrate that this liturgy has a future because it has a past, a history of holiness and beauty that cannot be erased or abolished overnight.

 

The Church is not a field of battle where one plays to win by trying to harm the spiritual sensitivity of ones brothers and sisters in the faith.

 

As Benedict XVI said to the French bishops: “In the Church there is room for everyone,” because we know how to treat each other with respect and live together, praising the Lord in His Church and remaining in the one true Faith.

 

The liturgical crisis led to the crisis of faith. In the same way, respect for the two forms of the Latin liturgy, ordinary and extraordinary, will imbue us with a missionary impetus for evangelisation, and we will finally be able to escape of the “tunnel of crisis”.

EVEN A PRAYELL POSTER ACKNOWLEDGES THE CRISIS IN THE CHURCH BUT CAN’T OR WON’T CONNECT THE DOTS

 Shed of the Year

July 9, 2021 Fr. Neil Xavier O'Donoghue 5_  Art and Architecture  Church ReformOrdinariate Liturgy  Uncategorized

I am not the most optimistic person in the world.  So looking at the situation of the Church, I often despair that it will all come tumbling down. Reading stories like this one which tells of how the Archdiocese of Barcelona, Spain is combining parishes to form 48 new parishes down from 375 in 1950.  When I read Ratzinger’s 1969 “prophecy,” originally a radio broadcast, now published in his Faith in the Future book, I tend to agree that the Church of the future will be much smaller institutionally.

Talking to seminarians I have sometimes posited that these young men might not always have a parish “plant” (to use the U.S. term) at their disposition. They may not have their own church, parish house, school, parish centre, and even a steady salary at their disposition. I have suggested that they might to get a regular job and welcome the local Christian community into a chapel in their homes on weekends.

READ THE REST THERE

My comment:

It is clear that Catholic Mass attendance in this country (and after the pandemic) is as low as 10%, if not less, in some parts of the country and as high as 25% in other parts.

Of that percentage, I think it would be incumbent on bishops to commission a study of the few practicing Catholics and ascertain what these Catholics actually believe about what the Church teaches, believes and practices to be revealed by God.

It would be good, too, to compare EF Catholics with OF Catholics, the two forms of being Catholic in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

I suspect that in Extraordinary Form parishes, the Catholics there will believe what the Church teaches about the Catholic Faith and will be more committed (rigid) to accepting and sharing these teachings. Not so much in Ordinary Form parishes, although there are certainly very committed (rigid) Catholics to be found in Ordinary Form parishes. 

The clergy of EF parishes will be more orthodox than OF parishes although, certainly there are more orthodox (rigid) priests in orthodox parishes. 

And when it comes to what the Church believes about the Mass as sacrifice and that the Sacramental real presence of the Risen Christ is truly made real under the “accidents” of Bread and Wine—that is, the Risen and Glorified Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, EF parishes will be far, far, far ahead of Ordinary Form Catholics although even here, there will be faithful (rigid) Catholics. 

Why is it that EF parishes produce more faithful (rigid) Catholics who believe in the Mass as Sacrifice and the Real Presence in the Most Holy Eucharist and those in Ordinary Form Parish don’t?  

THE WAY YOU WORSHIP IS THE WAY YOU BELIEVE—PURE AND SIMPLE!

Distribution of Holy Communion at OF Mass where anyone may do it:

Distribution of Holy Communion at EF Mass where only the ordained, with anointed hands to consecrate may use their anointed hands (flowing from the act of service of consecrating the Most Holy Eucharist may touch the Host in order to distribute the Sacred Host) but it is truly Christ offering the Host to the laity who reverently kneel to receive and would never take the Host in their hands and run off with it as happens consistently in OF parishes where only the rigid (those who believe) kneel:

APOLITICAL, AMORAL AND AINTERESTING

 Apart from my blog, it appears that Catholic priests do not bring up race or politics in their homilies as much as Protestants do. Have priestly homilies become too sterile, amoral, apolitical and just plain boring? I ask; you answer:

Pew: Catholic homilies mention election, racism less than Protestant ones

• Mark Pattison
  Jul 9, 2021
  CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

Demonstrators in Washington rally in support of voting rights legislation June 23, 2021. (Credit: Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters via CNS.)

WASHINGTON, D.C. — As news events made headlines across the United States for months last year — particularly the 2020 election, the coronavirus pandemic and racism in America — priests’ homilies did not mention these events nearly as much as did sermons by Protestant preachers, according to a report issued July 8 by the Pew Research Center.

Compared to their Protestant counterparts — whatever the stripe, be it mainline, evangelical or historically Black — Catholics brought up the rear when it came to sharing at least one sermon about the election last fall. Overall, 67 percent of churches did, but just 41 percent of Catholics. And just 19 percent of Catholic parish websites mentioned the election, compared to 28 percent of all churches surveyed.

While 20 percent of Catholics’ election-referenced homilies encouraged voting — on par with all Christian sermons surveyed — just 36 percent discussed issues, candidates or political parties, the lowest percentage of all Christian groups.

READ THE REST THERE

LET’S BE CLEAR, IF IT IS THE MANUFACTURED LITURGY OF VATICAN II OR THE HISTORIC LITURGY CODIFIED IN THE 1962 ROMAN MISSAL, THE POINT OF BOTH THE MANUFACTURED ONE AND THE HISTORIC ONE IS TO WORSHIP GOD AND GIVE HIM PROPER PRAISE AND WORSHIP

 The manufactured Ordinary Form of the Mass celebrated by Pope Francis ad orientem in organic continuity with the organically developed Extraordinary Form of the Mass:

Finally Father Anthony Ruff, OSB of Praytell confirms what Pope Benedict XVI often said about the “reformed” Mass now known as the Ordinary Form of the Mass. It was manufactured and imposed upon Catholics both clergy and laity. It did not develop in an organic way as the Tridentine Mass did over the centuries with the final organic development encoded in the 1962 Roman Missal.

This is what Fr. Anthony says about the manufacturing of the “Reformed Liturgy” which confirms Pope Benedict’s critique:

All the evidence indicates that the fathers of Vatican II intended not that the old rite continue, but rather that it be entirely replaced by a reformed rite. Here is a quick selection of relevant phrases from Sacrosanctum Concilium:

… “reform of the liturgy,” “rites revised,” “a general restoration of the liturgy itself,” “elements subject to change,” “both texts and rites drawn up,” “new forms,” “liturgical books revised as soon as possible,” “revision of the liturgy,” “rites should be short, clear, and unencumbered by useless repetitions,” “more reading from holy scripture, more varied and suitable,” “no rigid uniformity,” “legitimate variations and adaptations,” “drawing up rites and devising rubrics,” “adaptations,” “an even more radical adaptation of the liturgy,” “restoration of the liturgy,” “necessary experiments,” “rite of Mass revised,” “rites simplified,” “elements discarded,” “elements restored,” “more representative portion of the holy scriptures,” “prayer of the faithful restored,” “communion under both kinds,” “new rite for concelebration,” “changes have become necessary,” “particular rituals prepared,” “catechumenate restored,” “both rites of baptism of adults revised,” “rite for baptism of infants revised,” “baptismal rite should contain variants,” “a new rite drawn up,” “rite of confirmation revised,” “rite and formulas for sacrament of penance revised,” “number of anointings adapted,” “prayers of rite of anointing revised,” “ordination rites revised,” “marriage rite revised and enriched,” “sacramentals to undergo a revision,” “rite of religious profession drawn up,” “rite of burial of infants revised,” “Compline drawn up,” “Matins adapted,” “Prime suppressed,” “revising the Roman office,” “psalms no longer distributed throughout one week,” readings from sacred scripture arranged,” “liturgical year revised,” “more use of baptismal features proper to the Lenten liturgy,” “an edition prepared containing simpler melodies,” “revision of the liturgical books,” “laws less suited to the reformed liturgy harmonized or abolished” …

My comments: The Ordinary Form of the Mass is what it is and even since 1970, there has been some 51 years of organic development of that 1970 Roman Missal. The best organic development was the new and glorious English translation of the Mass which may need some further organic development. 

What Fr. Anthony doesn’t get is that in terms of the organic implementation of Vatican II with the hermeneutics of continuity which is a valid hermeneutic by the way, a future pope, like Pope Benedict reinstated the 1962 Roman Missal as a valid liturgy for the Universal Church just as the Ordinariate’s Liturgy is such also. 

But, and this is a big but for both the orthodox and heterodox to recognize, the liturgy is for the worship of God and in the Ordinary Form today, chances are that a person will attend Mass in a language unknown to them but it won’t be Latin. 

But even if I attend Mass in Chinese and don’t understand a word of it, that Mass is still the worship of God. 

And no one should go to Mass because there is an army of liturgical ministers, especially Eucharistic Minsters, parading throughout the church building at Communion time to show that the Mass has lay ministers. That is not worship of God that is a sociological function in the extreme horizontal way. 

The Tridentine Liturgy erases such silly sentiments and places the focus on the worship of God alone.  

I SUPPORT THE BISHOP OF LACROSSE AND HOPE MORE BISHOPS WILL TAKE THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO REPRIMAND THOSE UNDER THEIR PASTORAL CARE WHO BECOME RENEGADES

 Bishop Lessard used to say that priests are not in private practice. I think this would also apply to the laity too under their bishop’s pastoral care.

Thus, I look forward to other brave bishops, like the one from LaCrosse, to reprimand and censure those under their pastoral care like Fr. James Martin, Fr. Michael Pfleger and President Joseph Biden. 

WHEN PAPAL OPINION IS PORTRAYED AS AN INFALLIBLE STATEMENT FOR ALL TIME AND ALL PLACES ONCE THE OPINION IS STATED AND NOT EVEN FROM THE “CHAIR!”

It is so sad when a Benedictine who runs a liturgical blog believes that a pious but erroneous opinion of a previous pope, stated in an off-the-cuff way is dogma, defined truth, immutable and henceforth for all ages and places to be implemented in the most authoritarian and rigid way.

This is what Father Anthony Ruff, OSB writes today in his Praytell blog. I guess that settles it. Pope St. Paul VI declared it infallibly and now it is a dogma of the Church subject to no dissent or contrary opinions, such as the future pope, still living in a twilight zone emeritus predicament, His Holiness Benedict XVI!

What is this new dogma and infallible statement from Pope Saint Paul VI? Here is Fr. Ruff’s rigid interpretation:

Paul VI on Readmitting the Pre-Vatican II Liturgy: “Never.”

July 7, 2021 Anthony Ruff, OSB 5_  Vatican II

The fundamental ideas of the liturgical constitution belong to the core theological content of Vatican II: pastoral bearing, connection between liturgy and ecclesiology, Church as a sacrament, and history of salvation. … Losing the connection between the liturgical reform and the rest of the theology of Vatican II means leaving the other documents of the council without their primary and ultimate framework of solemn expression in the Church, the liturgy. …

The philosopher and friend of Paul VI, Jean Guitton, asked the pope why he did not concede “the Missal of 1962” to Lefebvre and his followers. the pope replied:

Never. This Mass so called of Saint Pius V, the one we see in Econe, becomes the symbol of the condemnation of the council. I will not accept, under any circumstances, the condemnation of the council through a symbol. Should this exception to the liturgy of Vatican II have its way, the entire council would be shaken. And, as a consequences, the apostolic authority of the council would be shaken.

— Massimo Faggioli, True Reform: Liturgy and Ecclesiology in Sacrosanctum Concilium (Liturgical Press, 2012), 149-150

PALPABLE JUBILATION, JULY 7, 2007 OR 7/7/07!

 

IN THE LAND OF “WHAT IF?”

 What if, when St. Joseph Church in Macon, Georgia underwent its renovation/restoration, that the celebration of the Liturgy of the Eucharist even in the Ordinary Form, was encouraged to be ad orientem and no free standing altar need be placed in front of a fixed ad orientem only altar/reredos? 

It would have led to a cheaper renovation and I think a more handsome renovation although what was accomplished is a marvelous compromise given the obsession with so many that the Mass be celebrated westward even for the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Just look at the work in progress image of St. Joseph. If we were allowed not to have a freestanding altar, all that needed to be done was to get rid of the horrible, rinky-dink post-Vatican II freestanding altar which would return the focus to the original altar with its three steps up from the foot of the altar. 

What I do not have a picture of is the fact that the celebrant’s chair in the pre-renovation photo along with the two servers’ chairs on ether side of it, was placed at the top of the third step hiding the mensa of the old altar and making the priest’s and altar server chairs the highest point in the sanctuary. 

I would have then not elevated the rest of the floor for the new altar. I would have simply moved the altar railing to the renovated position which would have made the sanctuary look extremely spacious compared to the original placement of the altar railing. The new position of the altar railing is certainly safer to use for the laity companies to having the laity, to include older ones, walk two steps up to it. I can only image how many people tripped down those two steps returning to their pews.

As I mentioned in the previous post, everything remains as it was under the 2000 renovation: