POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE AND NOBLE SIMPLICITY CAN BE HAD IN EITHER FORM OF THE MASS, ALTHOUGH THE OF'S FORM OF POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE IS MORE PERSONALITY DRIVEN THAN THE EF'S

"It's beauty is beyond discussion, at least to reasonable people" and that is the problem, reasonable people for those who hate this are really unreasonable!

My parents married in 1945 and I was born in 1953 as the youngest of three. So we were a pre-Vatican II family until 1965 when we became a post-Vatican II family, so I am an eye-witness to this grand historic shift in the Church, but my parents would have had a more nuanced understanding of it at the time.

My father was an early to bed and early to rise sort of person. He was a simple person too. He liked the early Sunday morning Low Mass because, well, it was short and of noble simplicity. So that is the Mass we attended until the Sunday anticipated Mass was possible in the late '60's and then that was the Mass of choice on Saturday night.

But we did go to the Tridentine's High Mass for Easter and Christmas and maybe a few times during the year, but not frequently. I never attended a Solemn High Mass with deacon or subdeacon until I actually celebrated it a couple of years ago as a Requiem.

When I was ordained a deacon in November of 1979 in Baltimore at St. Mary's Seminary, the next day (Sunday) I took my family to the Cathedral of Mary our Queen around the corner from the seminary for their sung Mass. I happen to love that Cathedral, which the Episcopalians would call, the Cathedral of Mary "Their" Queen. It was as high as an Ordinary Form Mass could be in a very high Cathedral. I don't remember who the priest was but he gave a stunning homily which impressed me at the time, though I couldn't tell you now what he said. But afterward my family, including my sister and father said that it was "too high-faluting for them." By that they meant the grandeur of the Cathedral itself, but also the pomp of this humble Ordinary Form Sung Mass.

Keep in mind our parishes in Augusta are simple church buildings and by that time in the late 1970's the noble simplicity of the Mass meant barely any singing of the Mass itself and certainly no incense, pomp and circumstance, that was all pre-Vatican II stuff.

But even the EF Mass can be celebrated simply certainly as a low Mass and even as a Sung "High" Mass. It is the Pontifical High Mass that has all the pomp and circumstance that can be off putting for some, especially with all the brocade and lace that seems to bring out homophobia of progressives to no end.

But most parishes seldom if ever had a Pontifical High Mass or even a Solemn High Mass. Their Masses when sung or spoken were by the book although I do think that many priests but not all would speed read the Mass and be rather sloppy in their reading of it, but since the Mass was mostly quiet and with the priest facing the liturgical east, it wasn't as noticeable as it is in the OF Mass if that take place.

And in the OF Mass, if one adds a lot of pomp and circumstance, it is based on what the priest of liturgy committee wants, not what is necessarily prescribed, since so little is prescribed in the rubrics or GIRM for choreography and ceremony of the OF Mass. So in the OF Mass the cult of the personality either of the priest or the parish is foisted upon the congregation by the creativity employed to "dress" things up.

Not so in the EF! You have strict rubrics and instructions for each form of the EF Mass from the Low Mass, to the Sung Mass, to the Solemn Sung Mass to the Pontifical Sung Mass. It is not left to the creativity or idiosyncrasies of the liturgy committee or the priest as to how any of these will look. It written in the ceremony and in great minute detail.

The National Catholic Reporter has a snarky blog on the Pontifical High Mass that has Cardinal Burke making comments on the EF's beauty and the need to recover this beauty. YOU CAN READ IT BY PRESSING HERE, BUT NOTICE THE COMMENTS THAT FOLLOW! "The pomp, the color, the splendor, the lavishness, the gold -- especially the impossibly gold vestments, the gold candlesticks, the gold statues -- is just overwhelming. This, Burke explains, is the sort of worship Jesus wants. The video is titled "The Call of Beauty." I wonder what the reaction of thoughtful Catholics might be."

But nothing in the NCR's brief blog nor the video shows anything but a Pontifical High Mass celebrated by the books. But to describe this setting and this style of the EF Mass the typical Mass in the typical parish shows how prejudicial the blogger is and how prejudicial those who only want the OF Mass and a very stripped down version of it or a very puffed up version based upon the celebrant's idiosyncrasies want today. It is sad to say the least.

PRIDE IS THE NEMISIS OF EITHER FORM OF THE ONE LATIN RITE

The problem with worship is also its strength. It is very personal and we all have our personal preferences, many of which are built upon our fallen nature, the sin of pride. So what is a Catholic to do with his pride? He should acknowledge it as sin, repent, confess, do penance and go and sin no more.

For example, we all have our own preferences for certain parts of the Mass and now that we have two forms of the one Roman Rite, we each have our own preferences depending on which form we attend. Normally, there should not be mixing and matching, unless the rubrics or the General Instruction allows.

For example, some have commented that they don't like being distracted by singing, or should I say, chanting, during Holy Communion, yet the GIRM of 2002 states that the Communion Chant begins while the priest is receiving the Sacrament. How does one square their personal preference for the law of the liturgy in the Ordinary Form?

So let's review what the law is and in humble obedience which means setting aside one's pride, should we not follow it?

The pertinent GIRM requirements for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at Holy Communion, the Sacred Meal and Sacred Procession:


159. The Communion chant begins while the priest is receiving the Sacrament (cf. no. 86).

160. The priest then takes the paten or ciborium and goes to the communicants, who, as a rule, approach in a procession.

The faithful are not permitted to take the consecrated bread or the sacred chalice by themselves and, still less, to hand them from one to another. The norm for reception of Holy Communion in the dioceses of the United States is standing. Communicants should not be denied Holy Communion because they kneel. Rather, such instances should be addressed pastorally, by providing the faithful with proper catechesis on the reasons for this norm.

When receiving Holy Communion, the communicant bows his or her head before the Sacrament as a gesture of reverence and receives the Body of the Lord from the minister. The consecrated host may be received either on the tongue or in the hand, at the discretion of each communicant. When Holy Communion is received under both kinds, the sign of reverence is also made before receiving the Precious Blood.

161. If Communion is given only under the species of bread, the priest raises the host slightly and shows it to each, saying, Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ). The communicant replies, Amen, and receives the Sacrament either on the tongue or, where this is allowed and if the communicant so chooses, in the hand. As soon as the communicant receives the host, he or she consumes it entirely.

If, however, Communion is given under both kinds, the rite prescribed in nos. 284-287 is followed.

162. The priest may be assisted in the distribution of Communion by other priests who happen to be present. If such priests are not present and there is a very large number of communicants, the priest may call upon extraordinary ministers to assist him, i.e., duly instituted acolytes or even other faithful who have been deputed for this purpose.[97] In case of necessity, the priest may depute suitable faithful for this single occasion.[98]

These ministers should not approach the altar before the priest has received Communion, and they are always to receive from the hands of the priest celebrant the vessel containing either species of the Most Holy Eucharist for distribution to the faithful.

THE "NORM" AND THE "ABNORM" FOR RECEIVING HOLY COMMUNION

Apart from the official norms for receiving Holy Communion, Catholics have always had some leeway in terms of their own piety as it regards personal devotional acts. For example, in the EF form of distributing Holy Communion, there is no rubric that states that the communicant bow before kneeling, or genuflect before kneeling as the actual kneeling is the sign of reverence; but today, at the EF some do what I describe. It is not illegal but it isn't prescribed. The same with making the Sign of the Cross either before or after receiving, this is custom for some but not in the rubrics.

In the OF Mass, the actual norm for receiving Holy Communion is that it is accomplished standing, with a bow prior to receiving and that the person place the Host in their mouth before completely departing the minister. This usually is accomplished by taking one step to the side and place the host in one's mouth before departing. Some though place the host in their mouth immediately without stepping to the side. Many of us witness communicants taking the host and placing it in their mouth as they walk, eating on the run as it were.

But for about 20 years we have seen people genuflecting in the place of a bow prior to receiving Holy Communion, making the "Sign of the Cross" either prior to receiving or after receiving or both. Some kneel on the hard floor to receive. None of these are prescribed in the OF rubrics or General Instruction of the Roman Missal.

Of course we know that more recent instructions have indicated that no one should be refused or harassed if they choose to receive Holy Communion kneeling. It is allowed in the OF by way of exception.

At Saint Joseph Church, we have placed kneelers that are very stable with a wide desk for the hands in front of the Host ministers. This makes it quite easy, safe and comfortable for those who wish to kneel to kneel. My own experience of distributing Holy Communion from behind the kneeler is that when those who approach to receive standing and either in the hand or mouth, it is as though the kneeler isn't there; I don't have to reach further out to them to give them Holy Communion.

What is your experience of receiving Holy Communion in your parishes? Is it rushed, do you have legitimate options and what personal devotions do you bring to receiving Holy Communion. If you kneel on the floor has any one tripped or nearly tripped behind you or someone else you observed? And what about congregational singing as you are in the Procession to Holy Communion?

"MUSIC" IN THE LITURGY, SHOULD IT BE "CHANT" IN THE LITURGY?

The elephant in the room of the post-Vatican II Mass is the so-called liturgical chant that is promoted as the wave of the future, the way to keep young Catholics engaged. Yes it does engage young Catholics sense of entertainment and that will keep them coming to Mass for the music. But will the Church's prophetic message find a place to be planted and grow? Will they grow in authentic Catholicism, her faith and morals? I wonder.

The following examples are what is considered by the progressive wing of the Church as the way Catholics should worship. They frown on the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, kneeling for Holy Communion and receiving the Host on the tongue. They have an antipathy for the chant norm of the Church, Gregorian Chant.

Watch the last video and the Chow line for Holy Communion and the bodily actions of the communicants in this "procession" to get their Jesus!

Obviously the music below from Saint Monica Church in Santa Monica, California is performed very well, but in the most secular way possible. This is what modern liturgists want for the Ordinary Form of the Mass and there is a battle royal going on between them and those promoting chant. Pray that chant wins the battle!

Is this stuff really Catholic? Is this why there is an SSPX today? Watch the videos below. Watch the last video, this is the Holy Communion Procession! Talk about trivializing the most sacred moment of Cafeteria Catholicism! Like the video above it, it is pure "magic"! How does the Los Angeles Archdiocese promote this stuff, but watch their religious education conference Masses, they think this stuff is great but would be horrified if the SSPX is regularized! I report you decide:

I don't have a survey to prove this, but I suspect that the vast majority of parishes in the USA hear this type of "chant" Sunday after Sunday and now for decades. What does this do to Catholic liturgical identity and sensibilities? I report, you decide:
I attended Mass at this Church in California on Epiphany this past January, it is St. Monica Church in Santa Monica, a beautiful Church that has inculturated its liturgy with Hollywood style music! What does this do the Catholic spirituality and sensibilities? This is what progressive liturgists shove down our throats saying this kind of music will save the Church! And if entertaining you with liturgical music isn't enough, why not throw in some liturgical dance! Some more "good" contemporary Catholic liturgical chant! And just imagine people get to watch all this too, not just listen, how inspiring! This a Holy Communion procession which is more like a liturgical chow line--progressives hate altar railings and the accompanying reverence of authentic chant and kneeling for Holy Communion! The Musical Shape of the Liturgy, by William Mahrt, WHICH YOU CAN PURCHASE HERE is the first full treatise that maps out -- historically, theologically, musically, and practically -- the musical framework of the Roman Rite in a way that can inform audiences of all types. Mahrt demonstrates that the Roman Rite is not only a ritual text of words, but is a complete liturgical experience that embeds within it a precise body of music that is absolutely integral to the rite itself. In other words, the music at Mass is not arbitrary. It is wedded to the rite as completely as the prayers, rubrics, and the liturgical calendar itself. Everything in the traditional music books has a liturgical purpose. When they are neglected, the rite is truncated; the experience is reduced in splendor. These claims will amount to a total revelation to most all Catholic musicians working today. As Mahrt points out, genuine Catholic music for Mass is bound by an ideal embodied in the chant tradition. This tradition is far more rich, varied, and artistically sophisticated that is normally supposed. It is the music that is proper to the Roman Rite. The opening section of the book provides a four-part course in the musical structure of the liturgy covering the origin, history, and liturgical purpose of the ordinary chants. The second section explores the particulars with detailed commentary on particular chants and their meaning. Further commentaries reflect on the polyphonic tradition that became part of the ritual experience of Mass in the middle ages, as well as the use of organ in Mass. The third section turns to the specifics of putting all of this into practice in the contemporary world. This section is the one that is of the highest practical value for pastors and musicians today. What is missing most from today's Catholic world is the awareness of the the musical shape of the liturgy - that essential structure of what is supposed to take place in the Roman Ritual itself.

ONLY THE BLIND, DEAF AND MUTE, WHO HAVE NOSTALGIA FOR THE 1960'S AND ''70'S CATHOLICISM BELIEVE LIBERAL CHRISTIANITY IS WORTH SAVING AND THAT IT CAN BE SAVED--SILLY, SILLY, SILLY!

UPDATE: Offending hyperbole removed, and apologies to those who were offended by it! :)

MY COMMENTS FIRST: The elephant in the room of the Catholic Church is that progressive liberal Catholics are, how shall I say, like ostriches with their heads buried in the sand or like the caricature above where they see, hear and speak no evil against progressiveness that has diminished the Church. I don't mean to be hurtful, but they have presided over the Catholic Church, which by nature, its Divine Nature, is a conservative institution, but have tried to make it a liberal marshmallow. It has failed miserably. They fail to accept the havoc they have wreaked on the liturgy, on religious life, on Catholic morality and discipline and on Mass attendance, continue to protest that they have the key to the new springtime of the Church. Simply stated, they are either totally in denial or completely enamored with what they have wrought. At any rate, it is my most humble opinion confirmed by ROSS DOUTHAT of the New York Times, that the progressive agenda that transcends Protestant and Catholic affiliations is the culprit that has caused the woes that Protestants have and are experiencing and the Catholic Church too. I suspect the same decline has been experienced in liberal Judaism and would also be experienced in Islam if they had a progressive branch, which I don't think they do.

On another blog, there is a constant mantra about the conservative nature of the current hierarchy of the Church that calls a spade a spade and recognizes that the SSPX has more to offer the future of the Church than the SSPX's mirror images, that of the LCWR, Voice of the Faithful, Called to Action, Hans Kung and Charles Curran combined! This blog continues laments the new and improved English translation of the Mass, the return of the Ancient Mass and the reform of the reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass although there has been a bit of a openness to it which provides a glimmer of hope for moderation in its attitudes towards the reform of the reform and the hermeneutic of continuity.

It is well past time and patience to say as the New York Times article below declares that liberal Christianity cannot be saved and I say enough is enough. The New York Times article below should be the clarion trumpet of warning to them and that the only remedy is the reform of the reform which needs to be placed in high gear. Vatican II must be understood within the context of the Church as it was when the Council was in session.

Liberal Catholicism like liberal Protestantism and it's modern incarnation the Episcopal Church is doomed to failure, is dying and in a generation or less will be gone. It is a failed experiment whose cost of failure is quite high, but resurrection of true Catholicism only by the resurrection grace of her Savior will obliterate that. It's well on the way and it will continue. It's time for liberal Catholicism and those stuck in the 1970's to give up the ghost and call upon the Holy Ghost to shove them into the reform of the reform and interpreting Vatican II within the hermeneutic of continuity.

As for the Church of Christ, well, the gates of liberalism shall not prevail against her and never will for it is intrinsically flawed and inimical to what the true Church is.

From the New York Times, How can this be? Will wonders ever end?

Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?
By ROSS DOUTHAT

IN 1998, John Shelby Spong, then the reliably controversial Episcopal bishop of Newark, published a book entitled “Why Christianity Must Change or Die.” Spong was a uniquely radical figure — during his career, he dismissed almost every element of traditional Christian faith as so much superstition — but most recent leaders of the Episcopal Church have shared his premise. Thus their church has spent the last several decades changing and then changing some more, from a sedate pillar of the WASP establishment into one of the most self-consciously progressive Christian bodies in the United States.

As a result, today the Episcopal Church looks roughly how Roman Catholicism would look if Pope Benedict XVI suddenly adopted every reform ever urged on the Vatican by liberal pundits and theologians. It still has priests and bishops, altars and stained-glass windows. But it is flexible to the point of indifference on dogma, friendly to sexual liberation in almost every form,willing to blend Christianity with other faiths, and eager to downplay theology entirely in favor of secular political causes.

Yet instead of attracting a younger, more open-minded demographic with these changes, the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace. Last week, while the church’s House of Bishops was approving a rite to bless same-sex unions, Episcopalian church attendance figures for 2000-10 circulated in the religion blogosphere. They showed something between a decline and a collapse: In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw churchgoing increase.

This decline is the latest chapter in a story dating to the 1960s. The trends unleashed in that era — not only the sexual revolution, but also consumerism and materialism, multiculturalism and relativism — threw all of American Christianity into crisis, and ushered in decades of debate over how to keep the nation’s churches relevant and vital.

Traditional believers, both Protestant and Catholic, have not necessarily thrived in this environment. The most successful Christian bodies have often been politically conservative but theologically shallow, preaching a gospel of health and wealth rather than the full New Testament message.

But if conservative Christianity has often been compromised, liberal Christianity has simply collapsed. Practically every denomination — Methodist, Lutheran, Presbyterian — that has tried to adapt itself to contemporary liberal values has seen an Episcopal-style plunge in church attendance. Within the Catholic Church, too, the most progressive-minded religious orders have often failed to generate the vocations necessary to sustain themselves.

Both religious and secular liberals have been loath to recognize this crisis. Leaders of liberal churches have alternated between a Monty Python-esque “it’s just a flesh wound!” bravado and a weird self-righteousness about their looming extinction. (In a 2005 interview, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop explained that her communion’s members valued “the stewardship of the earth” too highly to reproduce themselves.)

Liberal commentators, meanwhile, consistently hail these forms of Christianity as a model for the future without reckoning with their decline. Few of the outraged critiques of the Vatican’s investigation of progressive nuns mentioned the fact that Rome had intervened because otherwise the orders in question were likely to disappear in a generation. Fewer still noted the consequences of this eclipse: Because progressive Catholicism has failed to inspire a new generation of sisters, Catholic hospitals across the country are passing into the hands of more bottom-line-focused administrators, with inevitable consequences for how they serve the poor.

But if liberals need to come to terms with these failures, religious conservatives should not be smug about them. The defining idea of liberal Christianity — that faith should spur social reform as well as personal conversion — has been an immensely positive force in our national life. No one should wish for its extinction, or for a world where Christianity becomes the exclusive property of the political right.

What should be wished for, instead, is that liberal Christianity recovers a religious reason for its own existence. As the liberal Protestant scholar Gary Dorrien has pointed out, the Christianity that animated causes such as the Social Gospel and the civil rights movement was much more dogmatic than present-day liberal faith. Its leaders had a “deep grounding in Bible study, family devotions, personal prayer and worship.” They argued for progressive reform in the context of “a personal transcendent God ... the divinity of Christ, the need of personal redemption and the importance of Christian missions.”

Today, by contrast, the leaders of the Episcopal Church and similar bodies often don’t seem to be offering anything you can’t already get from a purely secular liberalism. Which suggests that per haps they should pause, amid their frantic renovations, and consider not just what they would change about historic Christianity, but what they would defend and offer uncompromisingly to the world.

Absent such a reconsideration, their fate is nearly certain: they will change, and change, and die.

RUMOR HAS IT THAT THE SSPX WILL REJECT THE HOLY FATHER'S INITIATIVE TO REGULARIZE THEIR STATUS WITH THE TRUE CHURCH--WILL THAT MAKE THEM A FALSE RELIGION? I REPORT, YOU DECIDE!

Two birds of one feather?

Rorate Caeli is reporting an eye-witness rumor of the following:

"There will be no return to Rome. The Superior of the Lefebvrians for Spain and Portugal, [Fr.] Juan María Montagut, will inform the faithful, after the 11 AM Mass, that the hierarchy of the SSPX, assembled in Écône, has decided to say "no" to the Vatican.

The followers of [Abp.] Marcel Lefebvre do not return to the Roman fold. Mainly because they are not willing to accept the Second Vatican Council in all its farthermost points.

The Vatican, by way of the [then] Prefect for the Doctrinal of the Faith, Cardinal Levada, had asked from them "the full acceptance of the Council". And the Lefebvrians are not willing to return under this condition. They believe that accepting the Council would imply accepting its errors that, according to them, are particularly centered in the chapters on "religious liberty, ecumenism, and conciliarism" [? - Collegiality?...]"

Thus by rejecting the Supreme Pastor's (Pontiff's) initiatives to bring this group back into the full communion of the truth of the true Church and true faith, have they thus reiterated their "false religion" status?

It is very serious for any Catholic or group of Catholics to reject the authority of the pope in the areas of faith, morals, and canon law (Church discipline) and to do so indicates that such people or groups of people do not have the fullness of truth when it comes to the true religion, causing them to form their own "false" religion no matter how much or how little of the truth they have--like Protestants, they become neo-Protestants, thus a "false" religion.

To reject the authority of the popes and an Ecumenical Council also seems to be a decision for schism similar to the Old Catholics just after Vatican I and its definition of Papal Infallibility.

Wikipedia's definition of Old Catholics certainly can be applied to the SSPX:

The term Old Catholic Church is commonly used to describe a number of Ultrajectine Christian churches that originated from Catholics after the Pope declared certain doctrines within the Roman Church. The Old Catholic Church remained faithful to the original teachings of the Church and the Roman Church split from the Old Catholic Church over certain doctrines, most importantly that of Papal Infallibility. These churches are not in communion with the Holy See of Rome, but their Union of Utrecht of Old Catholic Churches is in full communion with the Anglican Communion[1] and a member of the World Council of Churches.[2] The formation of the Old Catholic communion of Germans, Austrians and Swiss began in 1870 at a public meeting held in Nuremberg under the leadership of A. Döllinger, following the First Vatican Council. Four years later episcopal succession was established with the ordination of an Old Catholic German bishop by a prelate of the Church of Utrecht. In line with the "Declaration of Utrecht" of 1889, they accept the first seven ecumenical councils and doctrine formulated before 1054, but reject communion with the pope and a number of other Roman Catholic doctrines and practices. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church notes that since 1925 they have recognized Anglican ordinations, that they have full communion with the Church of England since 1932 and have taken part in the ordination of Anglican bishops.[3]

The term "Old Catholic" was first used in 1853 to describe the members of the See of Utrecht who did not recognize any claimed "infallible" papal authority. Later Catholics who disagreed with the doctrine of Papal Infallibility as made official by the First Vatican Council (1870) had no bishop and so joined with Utrecht to form the Union of Utrecht.

TRUE RELIGION AND FALSE RELIGION, HOW CAREFUL SHOULD WE BE WITH THESE DESIGNATIONS?

There is something about using the term false religion that I find offensive especially when it was directed to me as a young person growing up in the south and from my Protestant friends. Couldn't they have been a bit more sensitive and "politically correct" about what they believed to be the case about Catholicism?

Yet, we as Catholics rightly believe that our Faith is the true faith, the fullness of faith. We believe that outside the Church there is no salvation. For example in heaven is the Church Triumphant, and if there are Buddhists there they are former Buddhists who have been saved through Jesus Christ and His ministry through the Church He founded, especially the Church's ministry of the Word and evangelization, but more importantly of prayer and sacrifice for the living and the dead.

But are Protestant denominations false religions? Is Judaism a false religion? Is Buddhism a false religion and the like?

The Second Vatican Council couched this discussion in Christian, Catholic charity. For Protestants we acknowledge now that if they have a valid Baptism, they are a part of the Catholic Church in so far as that Sacrament and what they hold in common with the Catholic Church as it concerns their beliefs and ministry. We would not call them a false religion, but a religion that needs to be purified and brought into the full communion of the true Church, the true religion.

As it concerns Judaism we would not call them a false religion since Jews are our elder brothers and sisters in the faith and from their many covenants, the new and eternal Covenant was established by Jesus Christ and in and through His ministry and most importantly is sacrificial passion, death and resurrection. Catholicism is the fulfillment of Judaism and Judaism in light of Jesus Christ prefigures Christianity and foretells the coming of the Messiah.

But are there false religions? Certainly and we can name them as Mormons, Church of Scientology,Jehovah's Witnesses and the whole array of neo-pagan religions of the past and present.

But even some of these have a kernel of God's truth in them that could lead their followers to the true faith. Do we have to insult them and push them away by calling the religion a false religion or do we simply say, we are the true religion and let sleeping dogs lie?

1975 AS ACCURATELY DEPICTED BY CARDINAL GIUSEPPE SIRI WHICH EVERY CATHOLIC TODAY NEEDS TO KNOW AND APPRECIATE FOR IT TELLS US WHERE WE CAME FROM AND WHAT WE NEED TO PURIFY

Please note my comments at the end of Cardinal Siri's remarks way back in 1975!

"The perennial revolution of the Progressives"

Thoughts of Cardinal Giuseppe Siri from the "Rivista Diocesana Genovese", January 1975

First, confusion was sown in the field of ideas. […] Then, after having sown confusion about the Faith, the foundation of everything, morality was attacked so as to render the norm null and void and give freedom of expression to every human act.

At this point, exterior elements that “held together the ecclesiastical structure of the Clergy” were attacked with whimsical confusion in innumerable cultural events: the religious habit, seminaries ... . Then, in place of Heaven, the idea of a sociological paradise on earth was introduced, of a “perennial revolution” instead of peace, and symbolic value was given to the worship of a Lord, by this time, confined to the mist.

Priestly celibacy was attacked, even by teachers, ignoring that the Church had never been able to better and lead the people there where celibacy was abolished. The latest and ongoing discovery: discussing matters that are defined, as if they were not, as if they were not from Jesus Christ Himself. Not everyone has arrived at this level, many have retreated behind the lines without realizing the consequences of the intermediate states. Others, at the same pace, have skipped everything and everyone. Nevertheless, we still have the people, who are good and whom God is evidently looking after.

Slogans abound, while catechism is not taught; “pastoral” is continually mentioned, while sacred ministries are gradually abandoned; there is talk of the Word of God - yet it is taught as if it were all a fairy tale. There are dissertations about closeness with God, while at the same time the Most Blessed Eucharist is mocked or ridiculed. At least in practice. And all of this is progress!


MY COMMENTS: At the time that I was most confused and most questioning of so much, faith included, the time of my profound adolescence from about 1967 to 1974, so too was the Church in a major crisis of unbridled, zit producing, adolescence. The Church having been a rock of certitude up to the Second Vatican Council had suddenly become a marshmallow of incertitude. While it gave one a bounce, it was usually a bounce away from the truths of Catholicism into heterodoxy or just plain anarchy in one's personal and communal life.

By the time I got into the seminary of the fall of 1976, the Church was in full crisis and redefining itself against the Church prior to Vatican II. In fact, as I have stated many times here, the worst insult any Catholic could receive was to be labeled as "so pre-Vatican II!" By that, it was meant you actually believed in the teachings of the Baltimore Catechism, liked more formal liturgy even if in the vernacular and wanted nuns in habits, and priests with a priestly identity and not living their lost adolescence publicly or privately. You were "so pre-Vatican II" if you thought celibacy shouldn't be questioned and the Church should have a strong discipline and that virginity wasn't a four letter word, nor chastity.

When I read Cardinal Siri's lament about the Church in 1975, we have an eye witness to Church history of the post-Vatican II Catholic culture up until that point and it is accurate, accurate, accurate.

In terms of the attack on the faith and from within and from those who should have been our shepherd, bishops, priests, nuns and brothers as well as theologians, there was also a decisive attack on traditional Catholic morality in this period of time that would be termed the "new morality" which in retrospect was really the Church's "old immorality."

It is not surprising to this eyewitness to Church history and the seminary culture of the time that the greatest amount of sexual abuse of adolescent boys as determined by the John Jay Study of the sex abuse crisis in the Catholic Church happened precisely in the year 1974!

Everything in the Church was in flux, not only traditional doctrinal and dogmatic beliefs, but sexual morality itself! Who knew most about the theological and moral melt-down in the Church that was being promoted at "renewal?" It was the bishops, priests and religious of the Church who were reading these new theological writings, and most of whom were being informed by the National Catholic Reporter. I read it at that time and through the 1980's and 90's as though it was the Bible!

While the NCR still is a rag of a paper appropriate for the bird cage or as fish wrap, back in the 1970's and 80's it advocated (AS IT STILL DOES) out right rebellion against Church authority and against anything traditional in the Catholic Church and at the same time, as ironic as it was, it broke the sex abuse scandal in the early 1980's in the most self-righteous way, while never taking some responsibility for it in inspiring a generation of Catholic priests who read their paper as though it was the gospel, who took their radical liberal drivel to the homes of unsuspecting parishioners and their adolescent boys.

All that Cardinal Siri writes above about 1975 is true and we have yet to recover from it. The reform of the reform and interpreting Vatican II within continuity of what preceded it will help us to come out of this dark night of the collective soul of the Church, but time will be needed to see the generation who promoted all this bad stuff die off, those who are reaching retirement age today!

THE CLICHE, SAVE THE LITURGY, SAVE THE CHURCH IS TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, BUT ONLY IF THE LITURGY ONCE SAVED IS BUILT UPON THE CHURCH'S TRADITIONAL FAITH AND MORALS, OTHERWISE WE BECOME LIKE HIGH EPISCOPALIANS WHEN IT COMES TO THE LITURGY, ALL OF THE GILT BUT NOT OF THE GUILT OR CATHOLIC-LIGHT, ALL OF THE FACADE BUT NONE OF THE SUBSTANCE!

And on a related note, Mark Silk who blogs for Religion News Service, writes the following piece that is depressing but true and which is still the elephant in the room of the Catholic Church and until it is identified and purified, there won't be much forward motion in the Church's healing and recovery, but healing and recoverery will come about by God's grace and our acknowledgement of sin and repentance from it and the necessary penance even if it is secular penance, time in prison:

Blogs » Mark Silk - Spiritual Politics
What if Catholic Church = Penn State?

Mark Silk | Jul 13, 2012


Imagine an alternate universe where the Catholic Church behaved the way the trustees of the Pennsylvania State University have when confronted with evidence of the cover-up of sexual abuse of minors by the leadership of one of its important institutions.

Let's call that institution the archdiocese of Boston, headed by one Cardinal Bernard Law. And let's say a newspaper, the Boston Globe, published an investigative series showing a disgraceful pattern of covering up sexual abuse of minors by a large array of priests.

Faced with the evidence, what does the Vatican do? It turns to a distinguished law enforcement official--say, a former head of the FBI--to conduct an independent investigation. The result? To paraphrase yesterday's report on the Penn State affair:

The most saddening finding by the Special Investigative Counsel is the total and consistent disregard by the most senior members of the archdiocese for the safety and welfare of the child victims.

Not only are the perpetrators of abuse indicted and convicted, but so are the masters of the cover-up. Cardinal Law and his immediate subordinates land in prison.

The pain and humiliation are great, not only for the perpetrators but for the many who held the now disgraced officials in the highest regard. But the larger institution, the institution that is far greater than the sum of the sinful individuals in charge of it at any given time, comes out with its moral credibility restored. It has confronted its own failings, and insisted that justice take its course. It weathers the storm.

Of course, we do not live in that alternative universe. We live in the one where Penn State behaves a lot better than the Catholic Church.

THE HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL ASPECTS OF THE CHURCH AND HER WORSHIP ARE BOTH NECESSARY BUT IN THE PROPER ORDER AND DEGREE AND THE "OUT" MINISTRY, THE 3-D OF BEING CHURCH

Our life in Christ as Catholics is meant to have three very powerful aspects. The first is the vertical aspect. God comes to us in Christ Jesus but mediated in the human nature of the one Divine Person of the Blessed Trinity. Jesus directs us to God the Father through Jesus' ministry to us as One Divine Being, with two natures, human and divine. Already in this divine scheme of things, we see the vertical and the second aspect of God's saving activity, the horizontal, at work in God's relationship to us, especially in the "abasement" of His son, our our relationship to God in our "elevation" to God through Christ.

Through the Church, God continues this activity of the horizontal and vertical aspect of our salvation individually and collectively through the Mass, other official prayers of the Church and in our own private devotions. The transcendence of God is very important for us to understand and experience. Without that transcendence we can become a congregation closed in on ourselves and no different than any other service club, country club or civic organization.

The third aspect of our celebration of Mass and life in the Holy Spirit is our service dimension, going out from ourselves at Mass to the world where most of the laity live, work and play bringing the love of Christ to all venues of one's life and serving the needs of family and the broader community, especially those most in need, and not just materially in need, but spiritually in need also.

But with that said, the horizontal aspect of being Catholic should never be neglected. By that I mean our relationships with each other as Catholics. The starting point is what we have in common as Catholics, our same beliefs, morals and obedience to the teachings of the Church and the living Magisterium of the Church in all things pertaining only to the faith and morals of the Church as well as the Church’s canon law.

We should accept it all, even that which is not “infallibly defined” since picking and choosing what we will believe as Catholics disrupts the horizontal unity we should have with one another. But if a profound vertical relationship with our transcendent God through a strong personal faith and accompanying good works is missing, the horizontal aspect of our relationship to each other is simply dross.

So as with so much in the Catholic Church, it isn’t either/or but both/and.

In the Diocese of Arlington, Virgina, catechists who are called by the Church to serve the Church's ministry of "teaching" the faith are being asked to make an oath of fidelity to the faith and moral teachings of the Church--the one aspect of the horizontal aspect of being Church that is absolutely necessary, without which we become a flock in disunity. And yet some don't get that, those who are into fierce individualism and verticality absent of the horizontal that is so important in Jesus' ministry to us:
READ THE WASHINGTON POST STORY BY PRESSING HERE!

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM CAMPAIGN: IT'S ONLY JUST BEGUN!

This is an excellent article by Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. She hits the nail on the head!

Sister Mary Ann Walsh

Director of Media Relations, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

The bishops' Fortnight for Freedom is over, but the concern for religious liberty has only begun to be heard. The two-week launch got people listening and praying. Now where do those who want to stand up for religious freedom go?

The answer is everywhere because religious freedom is a worldwide concern. Read the newspapers and you see massacres in churches in Nigeria and Iraq. Look to neighboring Cuba and you see how religious freedom has been severely restricted under the Castro regime.

Look in the United States, where freedom of religion is guaranteed by the First Amendment's free exercise clause, and you see a sophisticated type of assault. It is unbloody, but far-reaching. Ironically, the assaults are not from some guerilla group or despot, but from the government. Foreign nations that look to the U.S. to protect their religious freedom have to shudder.

The assaults vary, but what they have in common is preventing religious bodies from operating according to their moral standards. For example, through the new Affordable Care Act most employers, including many religious ones, are compelled to provide free-of-charge to employees and their families contraception, female sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even when they violate church teachings. Government, in a miserly gesture, says it will grant an exception to entities it defines as religious enough to merit protection of their religious liberty. That means the parish church is religious enough but not the church's hospitals, schools, colleges, soup kitchens and other social services. You may think the latter obviously are religious works but the government says they are not if you serve needy people other than your co-religionists.

Catholicism calls Catholics to help those in need.

Hard to live out the free exercise of your religion with this HHS mandate, the first of its kind in U.S. history. To add insult to injury, for centuries these church services have very effectively helped people who otherwise would have had to rely on government for such care. In fact, one out of six people in the U.S. who need hospital care get it at a Catholic hospital.

Catholic foster care and adoption services were forced to close in major metropolitan areas when Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia and the State of Illinois drove local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services. They did it by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts or both because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit. While the Catholic Church holds that a marriage is between a man and a woman and that children are best raised in a mother-father family unit, the government says if you hold that religious view, you have to give up a longstanding church ministry through which orphaned or otherwise needy children have been helped.

It's not just Catholics who are afflicted. New York City adopted a policy that barred the Bronx Household of Faith and other churches from renting public school property on weekends for worship services, even though nonreligious groups could rent the same schools for many other uses. Is prayer more threatening than hoops? A few days ago a federal court finally ended this discriminatory policy, though appeals may continue.

In its entire history, the University of California Hastings College of Law has denied student organization status to only one group, the Christian Legal Society, because it required its leaders to be Christian and to abstain from sexual activity outside of marriage. Does it threaten the public well-being to require a Christian organization to be led by a Christian?

A New Jersey judge recently found that a Methodist ministry violated state law when the ministry declined to allow two women to hold a "civil union" ceremony on its private property. Also recently, a civil rights complaint was filed against the Catholic Church in Hawaii by those wanting to use a chapel to hold a same-sex "marriage" ceremony. Is the country better for such in-your-face rejection of a church's teaching?

The religious freedom campaign has an uphill battle before it, but it is hard to imagine our nation won't be better for it. Not to mention those nations where people subjected to bloody religious battles barely have a prayer now.

Follow Sister Mary Ann Walsh on Twitter: www.twitter.com/USCCB

THE CRISIS OF FAITH AFTER VATICAN II AND THE DIMUNITION OF THE LITURGY

Zenit has an interview with Swiss Cardinal Georges Cottier, OP, which you can read in its entirety HERE.

He speaks of the successes of Vatican II which, as he highlights those successes, are primarily structural and sociological rather than successes in handing on the Mystery of Faith. By that I mean that Vatican II led to new structures of collegiality in the Church and an openness to dialogue with separated Christians, non-Christians, non believers and with the world in general. All of these developments are basically "sociological developments" what Pope Benedict would call the "horizontal" aspect of the Church in her relationship with her own members and then those outside of the full communion of the Bride of Christ.

But the Second Vatican Council saw these "horizontal" developments as a way for the Church to evangelize the world more effectively and to "convert" the world to Christ, not so much by proselytizing, but through dialogue and letting others know us as we are and thus opening a path to the Church and conversion.

The Second Vatican Council also saw the new "horizontal" structures of the Church assisting bishops and priests in their awesome three-fold ministry to "teach, rule and sanctify" not by some fuzzy democratic process that would lead to cafeteria Catholicism and the dumbing down of the faith through a hermenutic of a dramatic rupture in that historic faith, but to allow the pastors of the Church the listen to the expertise of the faithful in the secular aspects of the Church's operations, what is lacking in the faith formation of Catholics and how to deal with the ethical lives of all Catholics from the perspective of the Deposit of faith, not some made-up democratic, secularizing of the Catholic faith that is in process now amongst the voice of the faithless.

But what thwarted all this and made so much of Vatican II just a sociological movement was the loss of Catholic Faith, our heritage and patrimony, the rupture that "spirit of Vatican II" bishops, priests, theologians and laity foisted upon Vatican II. This manifested itself in Catholics, while working on structural reforms and dialogue with others, losing their Catholic faith and thus creating a great crisis in the Church. The wrong implementation of Vatican II's Sacrosanctum Concilium, first by flawed historical studies and "resourcement" that led Pope Paul VI to approve a form of the Liturgy that was weak and easily manipulated led secondly to a grand distortion of Pope Paul VI's Liturgy by rank and file clergy and laity on the local level.

Today clergy who are of Cardinal Cottier's generation, which begins around my age of 58, but usually more so with those who are now 60 and older have a nostalgia for the giddiness of the experimentation in the area of discontinuity with the Church's heritage of that period of the 1960's and 70's especially in their so-called liturgical renewal and pseudo-Vatican II ecclesiology applied to the Liturgy that removes distinctions between the priesthood of all the baptized and the ordained priesthood. They are unable to give up their radical thoughts. These would be men like Fr. Hans Kung, Fr. Charles Curran, the aging religious in the LCWR, the We are Church and Voice of the Faithful (less) movements and the like.

90 year old Cardinal Cottier sums it up best when he says:

"I believe that, basically, there must be an act of faith in the Church. The great crisis that appeared after the Council in many Catholics, was that they did not regard the Church as a mystery of faith, as Body of Christ, people of God, Bride of Christ – all these beautiful images -- but as a sociological event. So, why does this happen? Because some are mistaken in the idea. Hence it is that the first need consists in having eyes of faith on the Church, as well as a serious study of the Council, because I don’t know if the documents have been sufficiently studied to be accepted. Having said this, it’s true that in my generation, more than in young generations, there are persons with nostalgia for what they have lived . However, in regard to this, one must be able to give some things up."

WE NEED MORE WOMEN LIKE THIS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH: EVERY THING PERTAINING TO THE LITURGY MUST BE MARKED BY BEAUTY!

What she is saying goes way beyond the Anglican Ordinariate Liturgy to the heart of what the normal Liturgy of the Latin Rite should be. Liturgy must give people a sense of transcendence focused on God, not the local community.

An Example of the Anglican Ordinariate Mass which suspiciously like the Reform of the Reform if the Ordinary Form of the Mass I celebrated for the Solemnity of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist:

MYOPTIC HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE LEADS PROGRESSIVE LIBERALS TO SUGGEST OUTRIGHT HERESY TO SOLVE THE CHURCH'S CONUNDRUMS IN THE FUTURE: NEVER HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST AND WON'T IN THE FUTURE, HERESY IS NOT REFORM

This was sent to me and comes from the Huffington Post, my comments at the end! Sheldon and this skit pretty much sums up my feelings about the article below:
(RNS/ENInews) Influential church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch said he believes Christianity faces a bright future, but predicted the Roman Catholic Church will undergo a major schism over its moral and social teaching. "Christianity, the world's largest religion, is rapidly expanding -- by all indications, its future is very bright," said MacCulloch, 60, professor of church history at Oxford University and an Anglican deacon. His latest book, "Silence in Christian History," will be published in the fall by Penguin. MacCulloch said in an interview that "there are also many conflicts" within Christianity, "and these are particularly serious in the Roman Catholic church, which seems on the verge of a very great split over the Vatican's failure to listen to European Catholics." He predicted that Catholicism faces a division over attempts by popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI to "rewrite the story" of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council by portraying it as a "minor adjustment" in church governance, rather than as a "radical move to change the way authority is expressed." "Conflict in religion is inevitable and usually healthy -- a religion without conflict is a religion that will die, and I see no sign of this with Christianity," MacCulloch said. "But the stance of the popes has produced an angry reaction among those who want to see the council continue. No other church in history has ever made all its clergy celibate. It's a peculiarity of the Western Latin church, and it looks increasingly unrealistic." The Vatican's refusal to allow Roman Catholics to talk about married or female clergy was "not the reaction of a rational body," MacCulloch said. MacCulloch, a specialist in early modern history and a fellow of the British Academy, co-edits the Cambridge-based Journal of Ecclesiastical History and was knighted in early 2012 for services to scholarship. Among numerous awards, he was the 2010 recipient of the Cundill Prize in History from Montreal's McGill University for his 2009 book "A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years," which was accompanied by a BBC television series. MY COMMENTS: The author of this blather is a deacon of the Church of England, which itself is in such decline due to its liberalizing reforms that one wonders if this author can be taken seriously when suggesting ways for the Roman Catholic Church to improve. We all know going the liberal way as Liberal Protestantism is wont to go is a disaster and has led to the near extinction of the liberal Protestantism and the Church of England and its American counterpart, the Episcopal Church aren't too far from total collapse.

The only Protestant Churches that are faring well and even growing are the Evangelical Conservative ones and the Mega non-Denominational Churches which are highly congregational and individualistic.

The Catholic Church has always had to deal with heresy and schism and has never resolved it, even in the Great Schism or the Protestant Reformation by giving in to heresy or schism. It won't happen now either although there may well be schism. The FSPX has the potential for it because it has such strong top down leadership, but I doubt it will happen in terms of left leaning liberal progressive Catholics who despise authority and have a contempt for top down leadership which means their schism is doomed to failure and multiples of fragmentation.

One cannot really take Deacon MacColloch thesis seriously, in fact given its source, it is to laugh and like Sheldon!

WHILE EXERCISING THIS MORNING, I HAD A BRAIN STORM ABOUT THE RITE OF THE MARRIAGE AND ITS REVISION FOR US POOR MAIN-LINE LATIN RITE CATHOLICS

As you know the Anglican Ordinariate just issued new guidelines for the Rite of Marriage. This is one part of the rite below:

At the day and time appointed, the persons to be married come into the body of the Church with their friends and neighbours, and there stand together, the man on the right hand and the woman on the left.

The Admonition and Scrutiny follow immediately
.
Admonition and Scrutiny

The Priest shall say:

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and in the
presence of this congregation, to witness the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony; which is an honourable
estate, instituted of God himself, signifying unto us the mystical union that is betwixt Christ and his Church; which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee, and is commended in Holy Writ to be honourable among all men; and therefore is not by any to be
enterprised, nor taken in hand, unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly; but reverently, discreetly, soberly, and in the fear of God, duly considering the causes for which Matrimony was ordained.

First, it was ordained for the increase of mankind according to the will of God, and that children might be brought up in the fear and nurture of the Lord, and to the praise of his holy Name.

Secondly, it was ordained in order that the natural instincts and
affections, implanted by God, should be hallowed and directed aright; that those who are called of God to this holy estate, should continue therein in pureness of living.

Thirdly, it was ordained for the mutual society, help, and comfort, that the one ought to have of the other, both in prosperity and adversity. Into which holy estate these two persons present come now to be joined.

Therefore if any one can show any just cause, why they may not
lawfully be joined together, let him now speak, or else hereafter for ever hold his peace.

Speaking to the persons that shall be married the Priest shall say:

I require and charge you both, as you will answer at the dreadful day of judgment when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any impediment, why you may not be lawfully joined together in Matrimony, do you now confess it. For be you well assured, that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Holy Church doth allow are not joined together by God; neither is their Matrimony lawful in the sight of God.

At which day of Marriage, if anyone does allege and declare any
impediment, why they may not be coupled together in Matrimony,
by God's law, or by the laws of the nation, then the solemnization
must be deferred, until such time as the truth be ascertained.

If no impediment has been alleged, Mass begins with the Introit,
and the Greeting.

Introit

Greeting

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the
communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

People: And with thy spirit.

The Kyrie eleison is sung or said. The Gloria in excelsis follows when not proscribed.

The Collect follows.

MY MOST HUMBLE RECOMMENDATION FOR THE REFORM OF THE REFORM OF THE ORDINARY FORM NUPTIAL MASS:

1. The wedding procession as is customary

2. At the foot of the Altar the priest gives the exhortation as above or similar to what the EF Latin Rite has a prescribed homily.

3. Skipping the just cause part in the Anglican Use, after

4. After the exhortation, the priest goes to kiss the altar and then to his chair as the Official Introit is chanted.

5. The Mass begins with the Sign of the Cross, Greeting and immediately into the sung Kyrie and Gloria, then Collect.

WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT, IF IT IS IN THE RUBRICS, SAY THE BLACK AND DO THE RED?

The big difference between the photo below and what follows is that this is what is prescribed for an EF's Pontifical Solemn Sung Mass in its highest form whereas the next entry is purely idiosyncratic on the part of the praticipants at this "Clown Mass" and very much an extreme but typical expression of post-Vatican II "spirit of things" which is not to be found in the Extraordinary Form of the Mass or in Pre-Vatican II praxis:

Some people who hate the pre-Vatican II Church and their Roman Catholic patrimony and heritage absolutely go apoplectic when they see a prelate wear the Cappa Magna. They compare it to the clown Masses that were and are common in some places in the post-Vatican II era.

But there is a difference. Clown Masses have no rubrics to them mandating or even permitting a priest or bishop to wear the garment of a clown or his facial make-up. This is an idiosyncratic quirk of the personality of the priest donning the clown outfit. Not so for the prelate wearing the Cappa Magna in the Extraordinary Form of the Pontifical Solemn Sung Mass. It is in the rubrics for the preludal procession prior to being vested in all the accoutrements of the high priest.

Recently Cardinal Raymond Burke who often wears the Cappa Magna when celebrating the EF's Pontifical Solemn Sung Mass made some excellent suggestions for the reform of the reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass by bringing back the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, the EF's Offertory Prayers and the Last Gospel, but he also recently offered some sober words about priests tinkering with the rites of the Mass:

In a wide-ranging interview, Cardinal Burke also outlined the reasons why a priest should not ad-lib his own words or prayers during Mass, since he “is the servant of the rite” and “not the protagonist – Christ is.”

“So it is absolutely wrong for the priest to think, ‘how can I make this more interesting?’ or ‘how can I make this better?’” he said.

He also noted with approval how the 1917 Code of Canon Law – since superseded by a new code promulgated in 1983 – explicitly stated that a priest should “accurately and devoutly observe the rubrics of his liturgical books to beware lest he add other ceremonies or prayers according to his own judgment.”

“What kind of thinking is it on our part for me to think that I can improve on the liturgy that has been handed on in the Church down the centuries? This is absurd,” Cardinal Burke stated.

My final Comments: As recently as a couple of years ago some of our deacons were complaining that a Jesuit priest who came to teach them during their formation would often ad lib the parts of the Mass because he felt his version of the Mass was better than what was written in the Missal. This was prior to the new English translation.

I was formed in the 1970's in the same school of thought that encouraged priests to ad lib here and there and for about the first six years of my priesthood I did precisely that--more so at "informal Masses" [These were common in the 80's especially at "home Masses"] and less so at Sunday or daily Mass, but ad lib I did! I stopped once Bishop Raymond Lessard placed his thumb on me when word of my ad libbing after I got assigned to the Cathedral reached the holy ears of the high priest of the diocese. But I digress, God bless those holy snitches.

But I have been faithful to a fault since that time, so don't condemn me for 6 years of rather nice ad libbing when I've been a paragon of virtue for 26 years since. I've repented, I've moved on and you should too.

But this got me thinking about a couple of things I've done in an experimentation form at a couple (and just a couple) of our Reform of the Reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass:

1. At our Saint Joseph Feast Day Mass with Schubert's Mass, I celebrated the Ordinary Form of the Mass entire Ad Orientem with the Roman Missal on the Epistle Side of the Altar for the Collect and then transferred to the Gospel Side during the Gospel Acclamation, although the Liturgy of the Word was at the Ambo as is normal for the OF Mass. I also celebrated the normal Penitential Act beginning at the foot of the altar and then moving up to the altar as the Kyrie was sung--I did nothing different word-wise, but added that movement--should I be reprimanded? Oh, I also kissed the altar each time I turned from it to the congregation as in the EF and I added the double genuflections at the Consecration and one after the Great Amen! So if I was wrong in doing so, count this as an earnest repentant confession.

2. Twice now at a reform of the reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass, I have celebrated as a prelude to the Ordinary Form of the Mass, the Extraordinary Form's Rite of Sprinkling Holy Water. I've justified doing this as it is, even in the Extraordinary Form, a prelude to the Mass and optional, but clearly not a part of the Mass and even the vesture is different-cope for the priest. Would that be a case of mixing rites and thus I should be censured? Keep in mind no one blinks an eye at a children's prelude pageant at Christmas Eve Masses or a choral prelude and even Cardinal Wuerl after the Processional hymn concluding the Fortnight of Prayer had everyone sit down prior to the Sign of the Cross and had a 25 minute pep rally and introduced all the celebrities at the Mass and a couple of them offered remarks!

3. Finally at three of our Sunday Masses, I am offering the option of Intinction and at all of our Masses now the "Minister" who distributes the host stands behind a stable kneeler allowing those who should choose to do so to kneel for Holy Communion. I make clear that "standing is the norm, kneeling is the exception, both are allowed and the choice is yours!" Is this an innovation and an ad lib and should I be censured for it?

Apart from these innovation, I am pretty much a say the black and do the red sort of person. Your thoughts on my innovations!

THE GLORY OF GREGORIAN CHANT--NOT!

This is a recording of Gregorian Chant from a monastery in Europe, France I believe, recorded in 1903!!! So it has to be beautiful, no? Well, no! Maybe this contributed to the dramatic decline in French Catholicism? Give me "Day by Day" any day over this!

OVERCOMING LITURGICAL RIGIDITY

Often when one thinks of the FSPX, one thinks of liturgical, dogmatic and moral rigorism and rigidity. To the outsider, it appears that they want nothing to do with the Ordinary Form of the Mass even if celebrated in Latin, with only boys and men serving and minor clerics reading and only the schola singing and ad orientem. I don't know if this is completely true, but I think it is. They are rigid, rigid, rigid and quite judgmental to a fault toward Vatican II and the vast majority of faithful Catholics who have embraced it.

But this same rigidity is also found at the other spectrum. There are some post Vatican II Catholics who claim to be very faithful Catholics who absolutely despise their pre-Vatican II heritage and want absolutely none of it to touch them again. They were schooled in the secular school of suspicion of authority a la 1960's, fierce individualism when it comes to morality and contempt for natural law. Situation ethics is their foundation.

Being dogmatic and moral relativists, they fight tooth and nail, like the FSPX but in a different orientation, to keep what the FSPX want out of the post-Vatican II Church. They hate the pre-Vatican II Liturgy, now called the Extraordinary Form and are aghast and flummoxed at the suggestion that the EF Mass should enrich the Ordinary Form and that any of the so-called accretions to the EF Mass should return to the OF Mass, such as the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, the EF's Offertory Prayers and the Last Gospel, not to mention the quiet Canon.

Somewhere in the middle is the vast majority of Faithful Catholics who will accept what the Magisterium proposes to them although they may be flexible in terms of their own personal morality and acceptance of others who reject the Church's moral teachings.

They have a live and let live attitude about the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, but do like clarity when it comes to moral teachings and the dogmas and doctrines of the Church, even though they personally struggle to accept them all in our pluralistic society and Church.

The great sleeping giant that is the majority of faithful Catholics will always support their Church and accept good Liturgy in whatever form they encounter it.

They want warm community, personal relations with faithful Catholics and a transcendent and awe inspiring Liturgy that is also warm and appealing and touches not just the mind and soul, but the heart and emotions.

If the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, the EF's Offertory Prayers were restored and the Last Gospel added to the reform of the reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass, they would like to know why and then within six months if not less be totally at home with it.

And if the Magisterium banned guitars, bongos, snare drums, pianos and other non-liturgical instruments, and, let's say, only allowed no instrumentation for singing or the pipe organ, brass and classical strings, not to mention the tympani, I think they'd handle it a bit better than the extremes I mention above.

Where do you situate yourself in the grand orchestra of faithful Catholics and how flexible are you?

THE NUPTIAL LITURGY CONUNDRUM

This past Saturday I had my second Nuptial Mass since the new revised English missal came into use. I've had plenty of Nuptial Liturgies outside of Mass, but Saturday's was my second Nuptial Mass using the new missal.

The new missal has a very unusual rubric. The penitential act is to be omitted and now it explicitly says to say or chant the Gloria.

Without the Penitential Act's introduction, it is awkward to get from the Greeting to the Gloria. For example to say or chant "The Lord be with you" and its response, do you then go directly into the Gloria?

On Saturday, I said some spontaneous remarks that in retrospect was simply poor liturgical blather.

I don't think it would have been forbidden to have the Rite of Sprinkling with Holy Water, but I don't know.

The Anglican Use Rite for the Nuptial Mass has the Kyrie chanted or said after the chanting of the Introit and the Greeting followed by the Gloria. How does that sound?

Love of God or Love of Mass?

The Catholic Church has always had various rites for the Mass, both in the East and the West. The differences between western rites and eastern rites are rather pronounced. Since the Second Vatican Council, the differences in the same Latin rite, depending on parish, have become even more pronounced.

But even with the Tridentine Mass there was and is a vast difference between the sung Mass and the low Mass.

Everyone has their own individual tastes and sometimes we have to set those tastes aside for the common good of the Church universal and the parish local.

For example, I take very seriously that the norm for the Ordinary Form of the Mass as codified in its GIRM is that the sung Mass be the norm although there is now allowed a flexibility with what is sung and also what is known as a progressive solemnity.

Shortly after arriving at St. Joseph Church in 2004 we began to implement the new GIRM of the Roman Missal in the Ordinary Form. This meant that our first Mass on Sunday morning would have a processional hymn, sung Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Mystery of Faith, Great Amen and Agnus Dei. We also began singing the Processional hymn from the hymnal as well as a recessional hymn and a Communion Procession hymn that is congregational.

For our 9:30 AM and 12:10 PM Sunday Masses we did all that plus the priest would sing the collect, prayer over the offerings, preface and post communion collect. The Lord's Prayer is also chanted along with its embolism. The greetings are chanted too.

Our 4:30 PM Sunday Anticipated Mass on Saturday as well as our 5:00 PM Sunday Mass are similar to our 7:45 AM Mass. In the last three years we have begun chanting the Collect, Prayer over the Offerings and Post Communion Prayer as well as the Our Father.

We use incense at all the proper places at the 9:30 AM and 12:10 PM Masses.

In the last three years our cantor at all the Masses chants the official Introit as the procession begins which shifts smoothly to a metrical hymn from our hymnal. The Offertory and Communion antiphons are chanted too in addition to congregational singing at the Communion Procession.

As well everything is sung by for the priest's parts at the 9:30 AM and 12:10 PM Mass.

At our daily 8:00 AM Mass, the Alleluia, Sanctus, Mystery of Faith, Amen and Agnus Dei are chanted. Everything else is spoken and the Introit and Communion antiphon are spoken by all, led by the lector.

Other than our EF Low Mass each Tuesday at 5:00 PM, St. Joseph has no silent Mass.

Does everyone like that? No. But I no longer receive any suggestions for a low Mass on Sunday or during the week as I did when the changes above were implemented.

But this brings me to the point of this post. Do we love Jesus, His word proclaimed to us during Mass, His one Sacrifice re-presented in an unbloody way at the altar and His Risen and Glorified Body and Blood given to us in Holy Communion to keep us a part of Him and His Church, which is all of us who are baptized?

Or have we become so enamored with the form of Mass and its externals, that we have made the Mass into a false god, an end in and of itself, rather than simply the means to full Communion with Jesus Christ and His Church.

No matter how poorly or majestically a Mass is celebrated, if it is valid by shear force of "ex opere operato" than Jesus is present and Jesus will save us. We have to have this simple faith and humble attitude when attending any Mass and in whatever form.

ONCE AGAIN MY HUMBLE SUGGESTION FOR THE REFORM OF THE REFORM OF THE ORDINARY FORM OF THE MASS

Cardinal Raymond Burke made some outstanding observations about the reform of the reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass and primarily the recovery of beauty in the Mass and the primacy of Christ as the "Actor" of the Mass.

So a future reform of the reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass should not look like this:

But the future reform of the reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass should look like this:

My humble suggestions for the reform of the reform of the Ordinary Form of the Mass in the future:

You can have EF sensibilities without tweaking the OF Mass that much. I don’t agree that it is necessary to have Psalm 42 in the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, especially since the official Introit is a Psalm and in the EF Psalm 42 is omitted for Requiem Masses and it was eliminated in the 1965 missal and it does tend to extend in a cumbersome way this part of the EF Mass. So my most humble suggestions for a future reform while not tinkering too much with the order of the OF Mass:




Processional Chant consistent with one or more of the themes of the readings

Penitential Act at the Foot of the Altar to include the Sign of the Cross, all kneel, ministers bow for the introduction to the Penitential Act which becomes, “I will go unto the altar of God, with its response, and the exclusive use of the Confiteor and absolution. Afterward all stand and the Official Introit is chanted, the altar is kissed (incense if used) and the priest goes to the chair for the Kyrie, Gloria, then the Greeting and Collect.

Having the Penitential Act at the Foot of the Altar gives it some visual, artistic elements currently totally lacking and situates it as a prelude to the actual Mass, a sort of purification rite prior to approaching the altar of God. In place of this penitential prelude, the Extraordinary Forms Rite of Sprinkling Holy Water could take place and would similarly be a prelude to the Mass and approaching the altar during the chanting of the Introit.

The official Offertory and Communion Antiphons should be made mandatory in the OF GIRM but not to exclude additional motets or anthems at that time to cover the action of the offertory and the Communion procession.

It wouldn’t be that dramatic to return to the former offertory prayers, but I wouldn’t see this as absolutely necessary.

The Last Gospel was eliminated in the 1965 missal. I don’t advocate its return to the OF Mass, but if it were to be returned it should be after the Prayer after Communion and prior to the blessing and dismissal.

Of course another solution is to leave the OF alone but offer an EF order of the 2012 missal but leaving in tact the OF Liturgy of the Word and calendar. That would be simple and it could be the EF order in the vernacular or Latin.

A slight revision to the OF calendar should occur too and use the Anglican Ordinariate’s well-done version of it which you can find by pressing HERE.

Then the 1962 missal would be only for those communities that want it and under the SSPX Ordinariate if that comes about or the FSSP under the local bishop.