Thursday, March 31, 2022
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
REVISITING SOMETHING NOW WHICH IS REALLY, REALLY, REALLY IMPORTANT! GOD WRITING WITH CROOKED LINES?
As you know I have been having separation anxiety because I needed to trade in my 2012 Nissan Murano with 200,000 miles on it for a new car. I was conflicted if I should get a 2022 Murano or downsize to the 2022 Rogue.
I was vacillating between the Murano with it V6 engine and the Rogue with a 3 cylinder turbo charged engine. Of course a 3 cylinder engine was off putting to me no matter how turbo charged! Then I discovered the Rogue has the gas tank access on the wrong side of the car, the passenger side!
But as I departed this morning for the Nissan dealership, I vowed to remain open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and Divine Providence as to which car I would buy and I had my heart on buying it today.
When I got to the dealership, we talked about what I wanted. I said I want to see the Rogue, sit in it and test drive it. Guess what? They had no Rogues in stock!!!!!! That to me was a sign from God that I should not get a Rogue!
So we talked about the Murano, the SL version I wanted. They had only one and it was in the show room and a bronze orange color which I have never liked since it was introduced a few years ago. So I wasn’t about to buy a rusty orange Murano! The salesman said they could look for the white one or even a silver one but could not guarantee getting one in a timely fashion.
Then he exploded the bombshell I did not consider. And here it is! They just received a used 2020 white Murano SL and it only has 8,000 miles on it! I looked at it; I test drove it; and I bought it! I saved about $8,000 over a new 2022 one. I purchased an extended warranty on everything for 100,000 miles to be on the safe side.
I bought a used Murano! God arranged it for me as a part of His Divine Providence, and not my plan to say the least!
More photos of my new used Murano and the 2022 I refused to buy due to the color (last):
LET THE DEBATES BEGIN: PREPARING FOR THE NEXT CONCLAVE…
The National Catholic Reporter has a report on progressive cardinals, bishops and theologians gathering in Chicago to slam the rest of the Church throughout the USA and the world who don’t agree with their repressive policies or see Vatican II exactly like they see and interpret it.
I was schooled in progressive Catholicism’s arrogance which denigrated all Catholics who liked the Church and their Faith and the Liturgy prior to the Council. There was uncharitable name calling towards these people who would not walk lockstep with them.
I also found then and find today that progressives in order to get their way have to resort to imposing their vision on others in a dictatorial and pre-Vatican II sort of authoritarian way.
As you read the article in the NCR please note the arrogance of those speaking. It is as though Pope Saint John Paul II and Pope (now Emeritus) Benedict simply were too stupid to see how wrong and retro they were compared to them who are so enlightened.
Note too how Pope Benedict chose to propose rather than impose his vision of Vatican II using the method of reform in continuity and the progressives seek to impose their vision through threats and belittling previous post Vatican II popes and their vision for Vatican II.
Press the NCR title for the article:
Cardinals, theologians gather to plan how US church can support Pope Francis
Monday, March 28, 2022
AN EARLY APRIL FOOLS JOKE, PRAY GOD?
These are the new altar and ambo at Vienna’s magnificent cathedral. Compare the new altar being consecrated with the one behind it. The new one’s a joke, right?
And popes and bishops wonder why so many question the validity of Vatican II!
PERHAPS THE BRIGHT, VIBRANT SUNLIGHT MADE THIS EPISCOPAL CHASUBLE LOOK LIKE HOT PINK RATHER THAN DUSTY ROSE?
The sunlight thing did the same thing to me a few years back:
Sunday, March 27, 2022
DOES YOUR CLERIC WEAR ROSE ON LAETARE SUNDAY AT CHURCH AND IN THE WORLD?
Yours truly and a parochial vicar did!
THE WEDDING OF CHURCH AND STATE AND HOW IT CORRUPTS THE CHURCH AND EMBOLDENS THE STATE
The Russian Orthodox Church has been compromised for decades now, first through Communism and communist clergy masquerading as Church leaders and now the Russian Patriarch complimenting a mass murdering dictator.
It is a similar situation with Islam and the state in the Middle East. Their clerics are powerful political figures wielding weapons of mass destruction.
It is also similar to the Catholic Church and the state in European countries during the Medieval and Middle Ages where popes were even crusaders.
The point in all of this is to show how political power draws politically corrupt men to become clerics, not for religious purposes but for political. But yes, there is a religious purpose, to manipulate it for a political purpose which is corrupt.
Putin has put on a facade of being a Russian Orthodox Christian. He had the nerve to complain that the west is trying to cancel him because he opposes gender ideology and the LGBTQ etc etc etc movement.
Here he is trying to use Christian morals to manipulate evangelical and O/orthodox Christians, and yes, with a big O and little o, to side with him in what he presents as a culture war. Of course it is a corrupt power mongering war with mass murdering results.
Maybe he has sexual morals? Who knows and who cares! I doubt this narcissist has any morals. But like so many corrupt Catholic politicians, he claims his Christianity as a badge of honor and motives. He uses the cover of religion and culture warrior morals to promote his own murderous interests. That is called corruption and it has happened and does happen in the Catholic Church. Think Biden and other Catholic politicians of any party who use religion to promote their corrupt ideologies, like promoting mass murdering abortion policies as good. And popes and bishops refuse to call them out by name. Sound familiar?
Saturday, March 26, 2022
ENTERING ONE’S TWILIGHT YEARS HELPS TO BECOME INTROSPECTIVE AND FUTURE ORIENTED AT THE SAME TIME
Auxiliary Bishop Athanasius Schneider of Astana, Kazakhstan:
Since Vatican II we observed within the life of the Church a shift to an ecclesiastic anthropocentrism where the horizontal, organizational, bureaucratic realities and human action gained primacy over prayer and contemplation and the supernatural, strictly divine realities. This tendency manifests itself first in the liturgy. The loss of the supernatural is a turning of man toward himself, a focus on self and this is reflected very visibly in the manner of celebrating Mass facing the people after the council. We can see here the primary disease of the life of the Church in our day, the disease of anthropocentrism.
I call this situation liturgical exile because Christ, who is the very center of the liturgy, finds himself in our day during the liturgical man-centered celebrations, as it were, in exile.
As I head toward my 70’s and a life more retired than active, I find myself nostalgic about my past and evaluating so many false gods I thought important as a seminarian and priest. What really matters and what doesn’t in the life of faith and as one looks forward to the dreaded four last things that we will all face together and the purpose of our “walking together”: “death, judgement, heaven and hell.”
Crux has a good interview with Bishop Anthanasius Schneider on the Mass and I agree with him although I know that he is viewed as a right winger and a “Francis critic”. You can read it there:
Francis critic sees the church in a time of ‘liturgical exile’
My liturgical journey beginning with 1965 was a mixed bag of liking and disliking the changes in the Mass and Church. Initially it all seem to be cosmetic and a sense of a more repressive or authoritarian, paternalistic Catholicism coming to an end.
As an adolescent and young adult wanting to be adult I liked that the Church was calling adults to be adult in their faith and not like small children in their relationship with priests and nuns who were very paternalistic.
I liked the vernacular Mass, the priest facing the people and modified habits for nuns which most Catholics in the south could not understand how the poor nuns could live in the heat of the south and wear so many layers of clothing. We felt relief when the sisters in the south in pre-Vatican II times were allowed to change from a black habit to a white one for the summer months.
But things went south around 1968. All discipline in the Church was collapsing and no one was happy. There was alarm among traditionalists about doctrinal decline and change and anger as well and alarm and anger from progressives that things were not going forward fast enough. No one was happy! And criticism of this, that and the other, especially the Mass and what was happening in the priesthood and religious life were at a high. And young Catholics of my generation at the time were aghast at Humanae Vitae and its prohibition against contraception and what was seen as the Church meddling in the sex lives of laity and without any knowledge of what the laity’s sex life was like and the challenges it presented within and outside of marriage.
And I a teenager looking to the Church for some stability and answers found only chaos and marshmallow like indifference. Who needed that!
In 2007 when I started celebrating the pre-Vatican II version of the Mass, I discovered that all my false gods about the liturgy were just that false gods.
What are those false gods? And yes they are. It begins with an ideology of lay participation that blurs the distinction between clergy and laity and tries to eliminate it. That has implications for the identity of the Church in all areas but in the liturgy it has to do with lay lectors, communion ministers and a more horizontal approach to the Mass which dumbs it down, makes it pedestrian and without mysticism or reverence.
Yes, in the pre-Vatican II Church, the fact that laity could not touch the Host or Sacred Vessels with their hands and only receive Holy Communion from a priest created an ambiance of sacredness. The clergy were for worship and the laity for the profane things of the world like politics and the public square.
That all became blurred in the late 60’s forward. And the laity were being made into a new caste system of clerics and they were a minority in the parish, but clericalized nonetheless.
For example, the standard for a good, practicing Catholic in the 1950’s was that laity went to Church each Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation, gave their children a Catholic education and believed what the Catholic Church taught. They went to confession regularly and tried not to give scandal to others. That was it. They weren’t chastised for passivity during Mass and not being more involved in what mattered at Mass like becoming lectors and communion ministers. They weren’t even chastised for not receiving Holy Communion at every Mass or that priests gave them Communion from the tabernacle not from the Mass just celebrated.
After Vatican II, the super laity were those who became churchyfied. They were communion ministers and lectors and involved on the parish council and finance council and cozied up to the priests and religious in the parish. They were in the in-crowed and the others, well we were on the periphery and looked down upon.
The pre-Vatican II Mass taught me that all those things are false gods presented as gods.
Bishop Schneider is right about the crisis in the Mass.
MAKING TOO MUCH OUT OF LUCY?
I am not talking about Charlie Brown’s Lucy, but I Love Lucy Lucy’s. There is an article in The National Catholic Reporter on Lucille Ball and more specifically on Nicole Kidman who plays her of the 1950’s period in a movie that is nominated for an Academy Award. The movie focuses more on the “real” Lucy rather than the Lucy part she plays although that is a part of it.
You can read the article here and tell me if it has any spiritual or Catholic worth. BTW the real Lucy was married to a Catholic although he was a pretty bad sinner when it came to fidelity to the real Lucy but apart from that seems to have been a nice guy that one would like to be friends with and Lucy remained friends with him after the divorce and seem to still be in love with him until he died although she was remarried. Nicole Kidman is Catholic who seems to take her Faith somewhat seriously as a celebrity.
Here it is with my commentary below:
In 'Being the Ricardos,' Nicole Kidman captures how Lucille Ball preached through joy
My comments: As a disclaimer, I am a Lucy fan and liked all her stuff especially I Love Lucy. The real Lucy always fascinated me even as a child. When she appeared as herself on talk shows or interviews she was always a very serious and no nonsense sort of person. Her early life was difficult. She worked hard and liked working hard and found meaning in life through her work.
I think she would have converted to Catholicism if Desi Arnaz had been a better example of it. I think his infidelity humiliated her in many ways. She found solace in more psychological brands of Christianity and the power of positive thinking.
But her children were baptized Catholic and reared as Catholics and Lucy and Desi saw to it that their civil marriage was convalidated in the Church. Lucie Arnaz I think practices her faith.
All of us are complex, face our demons and those who are demonic towards us and struggle throughout our pilgrimage in life. We don’t all walk together, some to the beat of our own drummer, yet we are all together in one way or another. Is that the Catholic message of Lucy?
Friday, March 25, 2022
RECAPTURING 1960'S EXCITMENT IN THE 2020'S? NO WAY, JOSE!
As I reviewed the 1964 Mass card that I posted below this post, I was struck about how exited I was as a 12 and 13 year old experiencing the Mass to change from old and stuffy to new and improved. I liked the priest facing the congregation, although I had to agree with my mom at the time that it was rude for the priest to eat and chew the Host in front of us and we were asked to watch like voyeurs this private priestly moment of intimacy with the Lord. There was and is something wrong with watching someone eat when no one else is eating.
I loved the vernacular too.
I was excited about the changes in the Church at the time, but by 1968 or 69 when I realized how sloppy things were getting, how poor the music was and how confused Catholics were and no one knew what we as Catholics believed anymore and that despite protestations from the pope and some bishops that only discipline was changing not doctrine, we wondered and still do today!
And now it appears that Pope Francis enamored with the headiness and excitement of the 1960's and with a really, really, really strong desire to return the Church to that period of excitement thinks his synodal way will do it.
But will it?
This is from a commentary in the National Catholic Register which you can read the whole story here.
Synod on Synodality
(Dr.)Faggioli has styled the multi-year “Synod on Synodality” as the most important ecclesial event since Vatican II. But now even he thinks it will be a flop, asking, “if synodality can’t get young people interested in the Church, then what can?” It may be, Faggioli, concedes that the whole exercise in global meetings “may be coming at a bad time.”
As the synodal process grinds on, Francis will have to see whether it is possible to generate any actual interest, or whether it will be hijacked by special interests.
No one is excited about the synod on synods except for management at the Vatican and the current pope and no amount of demanding excitement from clergy or laity will change that!
And the only real excitement in the Church was from young people excited about the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and its way of being Church. And guess what--they get clobbered! Yes, the pope did that to young Catholics very engaged in the Faith and to what purpose? It does not fit his vision of a 1960's Church!
We don't want to worship Vatican II, ecclesiology, change, walking together, smelling like sheep, processes or synods or talk on synods or a synod on synods. Enough with it already!
Thursday, March 24, 2022
FROM THE COBB WEBS OF MY MINE--LITURGICALLY SPEAKING
These are pew cards. The first is the one I discovered at St. Joseph Church in Macon when I became pastor there in 2004. This was a pew card from the late 1950's to facilitate lay participation in the Low Mass, known as the Dialogue Mass of 1958. I never thought I would use it again in 2007 but we resurrected it and printed it anew for Summorum Pontificum and the Low Mass at St. Joseph Church each Tuesday at 5 PM.
This card was a bi-fold. It was given to us at St. Joseph Church in Augusta the first weekend that the altar had another altar placed in front of it to allow the priest to face the nave. This is how the 1965 Roman Missal was presented to us on that historic First Sunday of Advent, 1964:
This is a 1958 laity's hand missal for daily Mass. It is in the original box, with original paper wrapping and plastic wrapping to keep the book closed. This missal has never been open! Is it a collector's item and how much do you think it is worth?
THE NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER DOES HAVE A COUPLE OF EXCELLENT REPORTERS AND CHRISTOPHER WHITE IS ONE OF. THEM
This is an excellent analysis of papal and Vatican policy as it comes to diplomatic endeavors especially as it concerns Russia and the Russian Orthodox Church.
Behind the frontlines of the Vatican's Ukraine-Russia strategy
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
NICELY RESTORED AND VERY TASTEFULLY TOO!
Before and After: St. Patrick's Oratory in Green Bay, Wisconsin
And only one main altar, not one in front of the other! Kudos!
BECAUSE I AM SO HUMBLE, I DON'T WANT TO GLOAT, BUT YES, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE DEADLY COMMON CHALICE AND RIGHT FOR DECADES NOW! NO BRAG; JUST FACT!
For those who have been in denial about the epidemic and pandemic producing common chalice, please no longer be in doubt and no longer quote outdated science to remain in your delusional denial.
This is an article from the National Catholic Reporter, and you can read the entire article in full by pressing the title.
But what I never thought about is how capitalism has promoted the common chalice as it concerns those who produce sacramental wine. I never thought of that before--its a money making scheme for them!
As pandemic eases, will the Communion cup ever make a comeback?
Money Quote:
Respiratory viruses can transmit from one person to the next as germs are spread through the air, by touch and on surfaces, said Enbal Shacham, a professor of public health at the St. Louis University College for Public Health and Social Justice, the country's only accredited Catholic school of public health.
With COVID-19 far more contagious and deadly than the flu or common cold, the risk of transmission is greater, spurring public health officials to recommend preventative measures like sanitizing surfaces, limiting large gatherings, wearing masks and avoiding shared items, including a cup.
"The major point of contact, from one mouth to the next mouth, it doesn't get very much more intimate than that," Shacham said.
BOMBSHELL IMPLODES AND LITURGICAL QUIRKS AND ABUSES A LA 1970’S RESURRECTED…
Pope Francis promulgated in Italian his revision/reform of the Roman Curia. For the most part, it seems good to me except for the 1970’s theological ideology that blurs the distinctions between the baptismal priesthood and the ordained priesthood. That was corrected in subsequent decades, but going back to the past happens not to be just the problem of those who like the 1950’s Church over the post-Vatican II Church. It appears that the heterodox and orthodox are cut from the same cloth after all.
But after the Holy Father promulgated his new decree, and named the pre-Vatican II liturgical books by Pope Benedict’s name, Extraordinary, he took it back a couple of days later and returned to the “pre-Vatican II liturgical books” nomenclature. No big deal or is it?
This is what a commenter at Praytell who broke the bombshell naming of the older books by Benedict’s name, extraordinary, had to write about the bombshell imploding the change a couple of days later:
And here was poor me thinking that an Apostolic Constitution was the kind of thing that isn’t normally tweaked once it was promulgated!!!!!!!
And then there is this photo that captures the 1970’s in an way that makes one lose their appetite and food just consumed:
When I was at St. Mary’s Seminary in Baltimore from 1976 to 80, our Masses in the chapel seem to be in constant reform depending on who the celebrant was. While we seminarians when serving or reading simply wore lay clothing, the deacons and priests were properly vested.
That was not the case for our small group Masses in priest’s apartments in our seminary building. Often the priest would not wear any liturgical garb. They would sit at their couch in front of their coffee table upon which the Eucharist was confected. One priest, who was the rector of the place, did place the stole, folded, on the coffee table, but his clerical collar was open to make the Mass even more casual. That description of the Mass was traditional compared to others I attended with different priests who reformed the Mass in different more radical ways.
But never did I see concelebrants stand at the altar and concelebrate Mass in our chapel without at least an alb and stole.
What was Pope Francis thinking, if he was, and what message was he sending when as pope he concelebrated Mass without any liturgical vestments whatsoever. What did that gesture mean and what processes was he hoping to start and what is the logical conclusion?
I guess one is rigid if one expects priests, to include the pope, to wear proper vestments at liturgical functions and to follow the GIRM and liturgical and canon law.
But, let’s be realistic, that is not how we do things in the return of the 1970’s because that was not done when it was the 1970’s!
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Monday, March 21, 2022
Sunday, March 20, 2022
THE TWO SCHOOLS OF THE POST VATICAN II CHURCH: THE SCHOOL OF RUPTURE AND THE SCHOOL OF REFORM IN CONTINUITY…
Although it is a stressful time in terms of one’s theological and cultural awareness and affinity for Catholicism, what we are seeing is Vatican II’s two major schools developed in the late 1960’s still playing out today and with basically the same people, now aging dinosaurs.
These two schools are represented by two popes only ten years different in age, a so called “emeritus” Pope, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and Pope Present Francis I.
The two schools of the vision for the post Vatican II Church could not be clearer as embodied by these two pontiffs both of whom are still living at the age of 95 and 85 respectively.
The advantage that the 95 year old has is that he actually was present at Vatican II, had been a progressive throughout the 1960’s but soured on that around 1968 when he saw what the unbridled spirit of Vatican II unleashed in Germany and elsewhere in the world, laying the foundation for the malaise we experience now with only about 5% to 20% of Catholics actually being Catholics.
The 85 year old, ordained a Jesuit in 1969 (seven years before I entered the seminary, btw) was imbued with the school of rupture which Latin American Jesuits embraced with gusto and mixed liberal politics, usually of a Marxist tinge, to their mission. It caused violence and death against many in Latin America including Jesuits, many of whom were disappeared by more conservative military regimes there.
Both of these two men are on borrowed time and about to expire in their mortal bodies.
Who will be elected the next pope? Someone of the 85 year old’s school of theological thought, or someone of the 95 year old’s school of theological thought?
And will that person be of a third school not fully articulated yet, but a blend of the popes since 1978?
Might the next pope take the name, Pope Benedict Francis I? That would send a clear message about that new pope’s perspective, no? And I kind of like that double name and it flows from the tongue relatively easily.
If one truly believes the Holy Spirit leads and corrects the Church over the period of decades and centuries, what kind of pope do you think will be elected after the current papacy and what changes might the Church experience especially on the parochial level?
Time will tell.
EXCELLENT AND TRUE PERSPECTIVE ON POPE FRANCIS’ TRADITIONALISM; YES YOU READ THAT CORRCTLY…
There’s enough Italian in me to understand and appreciate that grass roots Catholicism isn’t about academic pursuits as it regards doctrine nor is it about rigid observance of canon law. In that sense Pope Francis and I are kindred spirits.
John Allen’s commentary on Pope Francis’ traditionalism is spot-on. I do think that Pope Francis would have been and could have been far more effective if he could get rid of the baggage of 1970’s theological ideology. While he is pastoral, there is a snarkiness in the 1970’s Church which he embraced and still does, especially in challenging people to give up previous ways of being Catholic to the point of pushing them away from the Church into the hands of non-denominationals and nones. I was schooled in that way of being Church in the 1970’s. The old adage applied back then as a sort of scorched earth theology with a tinge of compassion: “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” But are any of us truly comfortable? And is afflicting anyone really Christian?
Press title for article:
Meet Pope Francis, the traditionalist by his own lights
Saturday, March 19, 2022
BOMBSHELL! THE EXTRAORDINARY FORM IS WHAT THE 1962 ROMAN MISSAL IS CALLED IN POPE FRANCIS’ REORIENTATION OF THE ROMAN CURIA AND THE NOW DICASTERY FOR DIVINE WORSHIP
FROM PRAYTELL WHICH YOU CAN READ THE FULL COMMENTARY HERE:
The only other noteworthy point that struck me in my first reading is that the name of “Extraordinary Form” seems to be back. Thus solving the linguistic quandary as to how we should refer to the celebrations of the Eucharist according to the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal promulgated by Pope John XXIII. Article 93 says “The Dicastery deals with the regulation and discipline of the sacred liturgy as regards the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite.” While there is a lot that could be said about the merits of this term, at least it gives us a common vocabulary for these debates.
NOT SURE WHAT THIS MEANS FOR LOCAL DIOCESES AND PARISHES, BUT HERE IS A COMMENTARY…
Money byte that makes it worth it…
Cooperation and turnaround
For decades, the Roman Curia has been seen as a disorganized and dysfunctional body where members of the same department hardly knew each other, let alone members of other departments, and where a lack of internal cooperation and coordination was notoriously a recipe for basic mistakes, a chronic lack of motivation, and simply not getting things done.
The curia has also long been seen as a place where pastoral drive goes to die, as priests often get stuck in their Vatican gigs for decades, having little to no pastoral experience at all, but get lost in the inner workings of the Vatican’s bureaucratic machine, or who attempt to climb the ladder to more prominent positions in and around the Vatican curia.
In moves largely aimed at combatting this cycle of dysfunction, apathy, and careerism, Pope Francis has implemented several changes, requiring regular departmental meetings and imposing strict term limits for curial officials.
Among other things, the pope takes aim at what many observers have claimed over the years is a lack of spirituality in the curia and stresses the importance of fostering a stronger spiritual environment within curial departments through moments of common prayer and spiritual renewal, and the periodic celebration of Mass for department members.
Pope writes his vision for the Church into new constitution for Roman Curia
LET’S GET REAL ABOUT PAPAL CONCERNS…
Rocco Palma and many others in the Church like to villainize those who are concerned about the direction of the Church under the present pontificate. I don’t think it is just mean-spirited traditionalists or neo-traditionalists and neo-cons in the Church, many of whom are mean-spirited. There are others, who aren’t mean-spirited, but are quite worried about the potential of schism on a large scale which was not present on 3-13-13.
Perhaps those who have become ultra montane and to the extreme since 3/13/13, should provide a balanced view of what is going on in the Church and Germany in particular and how a Jesuit Cardinal who heads the synod on synods speaks heresy about human sexuality and how that heresy enables a transgendered form of Holy Orders, itself another heresy and there is no correction from Rome anywhere near the correction foisted upon those who prefer the Latin Ancient Mass and the clarity of teachings its ethos provides.
Thus, let’s be fair to balanced well-meaning and faithful people in the Church who are gravely concerned that the Synodal process of Germany and its ethos is actually what the pope wants. It isn’t far fetched at all to think that.
From Rocco Palma:
Given the global obsession over Pope’s Annunciation redo of the Fatima Consecration “for the conversion of Russia,” lest anyone forgot, Friday won’t be Francis’ first rodeo at the task – what’s new is the forces who seek to take down “The Bishop in White”: bit.ly/3CTAlku
THE MODERN MASS, MAINTAINING THE “BLAH AND ORDINARY” FACTOR OR KICKING IT UP A NOTCH TO THE “AWE AND EXTRAORDINARY” FACTOR?
At Saint Anne’s and with my bishop’s approval, we celebrate the Latin Modern Mass with Latin Ancient Mass sensibilities. At our All Souls’ Mass, the choir chanted the Propers from the 1974 Graduale Romanum, the Gradual replaced the Responsorial Psalm and the Dies Irae Tract was chanted.
The Introductory Rite up to the absolution is ad orientem and at the foot of the altar. The Kyrie was chanted as the priest ascended the altar and the Collect is prayed at the Epistle Side of the Altar.
The Liturgy of the Word was from the Ambo in the vernacular (except for the Gradual) as is normal for the Modern Mass.
Without further description, this Mass appears, for the most part, to be the Latin Ancient Mass but it is the Latin Modern Mass.
But here’s the point, many who participated in the All Souls’ Mass said to me afterward that they had not been to a Latin Mass (meaning the pre-Vatican II Mass) since the mid 1960’s. They exclaimed how beautiful and reverent it was and inspiring to them. Many were brought to tears.
Recently our diocesan monthly magazine, The Southern Cross, focused on the Eucharist. One exceptional article by our retired priest, Father Doug Clark, was excellent in providing the understanding of the structure and theology of the Modern Mass with an emphasis on Transubstantiation. It was straight forward, erudite and orthodox.
But I found it only to be academic and descriptive which an atheist would appreciate learning about from an educational point of view. It did not move beyond that to touch the heart and soul, to move a person to an experience of faith, awe, reverence and wonder. That’s the problem with the Modern Mass.
The problems include, also, too many variabilities to include what I do for our Latin Modern Masses. But our All Souls Mass and our Latin Modern Low Mass each Tuesday touch more the heart and soul rather than the mind and intellect. That is what needs to be recovered. Of course it isn’t either/or but both/and.
Yes, Father Fox says no one is pleased with the Modern Mass as everyone wants to do something either to change it or improve it. That’s a huge problem and bespeaks of the undergirding problems of the Modern Mass. There is only one person who can change that and it is the pope. He seems preoccupied with other concerns presently.
We do need to get the priests’ personalities out of the celebration of the Mass and to challenge the laity who love the antics of various celebrants to examine why they do so and why it is so alien to authentic Catholic worship and the experience of liturgy.
How do you do that in the present climate of the clerical cult of the priestly personality during Mass?
Ad orientem eliminates that for the most part. Also saying the black and doing the red does too.
But what is good about the flexibility of the Modern Mass is that good things can be chosen as an option. Eventually, I would like our Tuesday Latin Modern Mass to be more like the 1965’s revision of the 1962 Roman Missal—the changing parts of the Mass in the vernacular.
Then Vatican II’s vision for the “reform” of the Mass would be realized in a perfect way.
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