Please. Don't slam on Fr. Zuhlsdorf. He has been in the trenches a long time fighting the liturgical wars. He is not some disgruntled traddy, but a genuine diocesan priest and Latin scholar. He is a true blessing for the Church.
I didn't say a word about Fr. Zuhlsdorf.
Your interest in "correcting" traditionalists is... shall I say... oddly disproportionate to your interest in understanding the things we care about.
Who in the Trad Internet? The Cafeteria is Closed? The Curt Jester? (That is where I first heard it.) Perhaps a specific example would help.
I gotta get me one of those huge red balls. Those were cool.
Scott:
See my update for a few examples.
Daniel:
I don't *have* a burning interest in what Traditionalists care about. That's not a put down, just as my lack of interest in liturgical music is not a put down of liturgical musiscians and my lack of interest in chess is not a slam against chess players. I record my observations, not because of my alleged loathing for Traditionalists, but because I have often seen some forms of Traditionalism take the routes I have described.
I thought it was "save the cheerleader, save the world"?
+J.M.J+
>>>When I entered the Church I heard of the dreaded Clown Mass. But I never ever saw one. Nor have I met anybody who has.
Same here. I've heard a lot about Clown Masses, but never seen one or heard of one in my area. Most of the ones I've heard of (online) were Episcopalian, not Catholic. Yet some people speak as though every single Pauline Rite Mass were a "Clown Mass."
Here's a page I came across just in the past week that invokes the dreaded "Clown Mass":
http://benedicaria.8m.com/holywater.htm
(Though granted, the guy who runs this site is apparently a schismatic vagrante bishop who believes that the occult and magic are compatable with the Catholic Faith. So he's about as off-the-wall as the Clown Mass he derides.)
In Jesu et Maria,
That was my response when I saw that a parish in France had a televised Mass in which they integrated the performance of a local circus troupe...
"Danged Trads are at it again!"
Oh, c'mon guys...they're FRENCH. Good grief.
Mark:
And I don't care about backgammon or know the first thing about it.
The difference is that I haven't written articles for multiple periodicals explaining what all the pathologies of backgammon enthusiasts are, and why they are wrong.
Since I don't know the first thing or care the least bit about backgammon, I am in no position to tell anyone why its enthusiasts are wrong about anything. They could be right for all I know.
DM:
That's probably because you haven't had backgammon enthusiasts tell you that you are an enemy of the true faith, a traitor to all that is good and right, a heretic, a fool, etc. for your lack of interest in backgammon. I've gotten that sort of treatment multiple times from Tridentine zealots. And I'm not alone. A lot of us second class "Novus Ordo types" have been informed of our half breed status many many times by the representatives of True Catholicism in the Rad Trad ranks. I kind of feel it my obligation to set the record straight when that happens.
I've been to several Masses outside of my parish over the past eight years (on the East Coast) and have never experienced the extreme abuses I hear reported.
It's been irritating stuff like asking the congregation to sit down during the reading of the Gospel, phrasing the dismissal in such a way that makes you forget the response, and calling children to surround the altar during the consecration.
Ok ... so "go forth to love and serve the Lord, your sisters and brothers, and make sure you smile when you encounter strangers during your work day and while you're shopping."
Scott:
See my update for a few examples.
Great, that explains what I wondering. Thanks.
Mark:
Your criticisms go far beyond "those Rad Trad types" who are bothering you when you can look at a picture of sacrilege and see in it only an opportunity to criticize trads. And frankly, I have friends, who never bothered you a day in your life, who were seriously insulted by your Chronicles article on the subject.
I know that when you write these things, you couch your language in so many qualifiers that you can always retreat into saying that you are only talking about Novus Ordo Watch, but frankly, a great deal of what you have written against traditionalist attitudes on the liturgy applies to pretty much every enthusiast of the TLM I've ever know, myself included.
IF you really don't care about the matter, then don't write about it. But if you want to write about it, at least pay us the courtesy of trying to understand what we value and why.
DM:
The reaction of your friends to the Chronicles piece is precisely what I'm talking about. The major weakness of the Trad movement is that it cannot take "yes" for an answer and is eager to maximize offenses and turn even allies into enemies where possible. I was astonished at how eager so many readers of that piece were to turn it into an "attack" on True Catholicism, instead of take it for what it was: a plea to stop treating us Paul VI folks as second class citizens.
That eagerness to take scandal is exactly what I'm talking about here. Until Trads can figure out a way to get past that, they will continue to drive away converts. After all, if you treat people who are basically sympathetic as enemies, how do you expect to win *real* enemies to your cause?
Mark, I think you unfairly discount "traditionalist" angst. I think the vineyard has indeed been at least partly raped. I look at my cousins (of 13 baptized, I am the only one who still goes regularly to mass) or my confirmation class. Haven't kept tabs on all of them, but of the 5 of the 15 total that I have, I am again the only practicing.
The fruit of the Council? Maybe?
Personally, I would never throw my lot with the "RadTrads" and think sedevacantism is moronically reductive ecclesiology.
I have far more sympathy with the Orthodox & Byzantine East. Their critique of papal authority and our current travails is far more radical.
The question seems whether Pope Paul was wise, or even had the necessary authority to do what he did.
I pretty sure that no pope prior to the rise of the Carolingians & Islam, prior to Byzantium's withdrawl from Rome & the West, would have conceived of themselves as having the power to radically reinvision the liturgical & cultural practices of the entire Church.
But that is what has been done, at least in the Roman Rite.
The challenge posed by Eastern Catholics such as the Melkite Patriarch of Antioch Gregoire III strikes me as pretty incisive.
I just recently read an interview in 30 Days with him here.
http://www.30giorni.it/us/artico...olo.asp?
id=9596
To Quote: "I am cum Petro but not sub Petro. If I were sub Petro, I would be in submission, and I couldn’t have a true frank, sincere, strong and free communion with the Pope. When you embrace a friend, you are not “below”. You embrace him from the same height, if not it wouldn’t be a true embrace. Unita manent, united things last."
The interviewer then asks:
But do you mean to say that the link with the Church of Rome is a bit tight on you?
Patriarch Gregoire replies: "On the contrary! The papacy, since John XXIII, is the most open authority in the world. In no other Church is there such openness and such democratic praxis as in the Church of Rome. But then there are those who want to appear as the super-Catholics, and they then insist and always only on the sub Petro and sub Roma. And so, according to me, they contradict the true sense of the papacy itself, its office to confirm the brethren in the faith. We have suffered for our communion with Rome. For a hundred and fifty years we have said mass in the catacombs, in Damascus, because we were forbidden do it in public because of our communion with the bishop of Rome. We’re more Roman than the Romans! That’s why we want to benefit from this communion as from a treasure, a gift, a help for our faith. As Saint John says, our faith is our sole victory."
Take that RadTrads & Spirit of Vat II progressives!
Check out the entire piece. I think our ways of conceiving things like Islam and Universal Church history is very impoverished in the West. The Patriarch and I are on the same page, I think.
"I kind of feel it my obligation to set the record straight when that happens."
Or when a circus troupe is incorporated into a Mass celebrated in the ordinary form.
Ok. I'm going off topic for a moment, feel free to skip this post and go on with your discussion.
There's only one explaination of "WTF" I know and it's not nice. I resent the abbreviation as much as i resent the actual words.
Thanks,
You can return to your regularly scheduled arguing.//discussion.
Mark:
If you understood Catholic traditionalism a little better, then you would know exactly why your article provoked the reaction it did. My friends are not idiots. You wrote an article touching upon complicated and difficult and important matters - without bothering to even make an attempt to understand them - and then, when people react, you are astonished.
And I'm curious as to what bizarro-world you inhabit where it is the Paul VI Catholics who are treated like second-class citizens. Traditionalists lost everything; you got called names by a stranger on the internet. Stop using that meager grievance as an excuse to discount the real, intellectually rigorous, cause for traditional Catholicism.
Franklin:
I think "WTF?" *is* setting the record straight on that silly and stupid "improvement" on the Mass. It's a mystery to me what the brain-dead priest was thinking.
DM:
I'm not in the least astonished by the reaction of many Trads to me piece. I've come to expect it because, as I say, the besetting problem of Trads is that they cannot even treat most friends as something other than enemies. My point remains: the Catholic faith is supposed to be an *evangelizing" faith. A faith capable of dealing with a wide diversity of people. Tradism is not, by and large, capable of doing this. In many cases, it doesn't even *want* to do it. It wants a safe bunker, not a dangerous world of people who are extremely different. And so it manages to chase off even people like me, who really have a lot of sympathy for Trad concerns. If they do this with people who are already 95% on their side, how on earth do they hope to evangelize people who neither know nor care about all the nitnoid details of Trad gripes about the post conciliar Church?
I don't identify myself as a Trad. I go to the Novus Ordo Mass. I even sing in the choir, using the dreadful "Gather" hymnal. My parish's pastor is the Vicar General of my diocese.
And on All Soul's Day, our assistant pastor went into a tirade during the homily against using the color purple for the vestments when we should all be *CELEBRATING* the lives of the deceased, when there's no reason at ALL to think of sorrow or penitence, and he proceeded to rip off his chausable and say the rest of the Mass in his surplice.
I guess Father's never heard of Purgatory, or thinks 'the Council' did away with it. I know from past experience that complaining about Father's action is worse than useless: one is branded a cold narrow closed-minded eeevil Traditionalist for caring in the slightest about such matters. The way I see it, though, the only recourse for the laity is to keep our mouths shut and our heads down and pray that things will get better.
So I do resent, just a little, the attitude that liturgical craziness is either very, very rare or all in the mind of the beholder. I'm a cradle Catholic who grew up in the postconciliar Church, and I've been to far too few Masses where Father Z.'s other slogan, "Say the Black, Do the Red" has actually been implemented or followed on a consistent basis.
Mark:
1. I always have to laugh when I hear you complain that NO are treated like 2nd class citizens by Trads. If you want to know what it is like to be treated like a 3rd or 4th class citizen then be come a Trad. Even with the promulgation of the recent MP on the Latin Mass the vast majority of bishops have errected so many interpretative road blocks that for all intents and purposes it has been rendered DOA.
2. I'm kind of tired of your unthinking clericalist mantra of "I'm happy with whatever liturgy the Church gives me." It reminds me of the Protestant tendancy to believe that liturgy is unimportnt or less important than other aspects of our religous life. Liturgy as public prayer is probably the most important part of the Church's work on earth and it something for which we must fight. As Archbishop Chaput has written:
"As the old Latin saying goes, lex orandi, lex credendi. In other words, how we pray shapes how and what we believe. Right worship feeds right faith, and right faith leads us closer to God. Wrong worship, of course, leads in a different direction. This is why any discussion of changing the liturgy is usually so long and so animated."
http://www.archden.org/
archbisho..._02_missal1.htm
DM, (love your art, BTW), I think one of the things that Mark is talking about is the implication that Traditionalists (and Traditionalists ONLY) have the total deposit of faith. It's an attitude that crops up a lot online, and it's pretty annoying--especially when you're a Catholic who has spent a great deal of time and effort trying to spread orthodoxy among fellow Catholics.
I've come up against it a lot myself, especially among other Catholics around my own age (which is weird, especially when they try the "Traditionalists like me lost everything" argument--it makes me want to say, dude, you were born in 1979!) It's annoying and shallow, and tends to be kind of like liturgical LARPing for some people.
That said, I have nothing but respect for mature Catholic advocates for the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. I just wish there were more of them online, instead of the 20-something geek/goon squad that tends to dominate the discussion.
Marv, try going to a parish that has both the Indult and the Novus Ordo. Attend the Novus Ordo. Then introduce yourself to the Indult folks. Then, report back.
A faith capable of dealing with a wide diversity of people. Tradism is not, by and large, capable of doing this. In many cases, it doesn't even *want* to do it. It wants a safe bunker, not a dangerous world of people who are extremely different.
Funny. The Traditional Latin Mass, in one form or another, was capable of serving and evangelizing every culture, nation, spirituality and temperament in the entire Roman Catholic Church from the time of the Fathers until 40 years ago. Traditionalism wants to do that again - that is, to be the normative expression of the Roman Catholic Church. At least that is what ever Trad I know wants. But apparently Mark Shea is the expert here on what our real motivations are. Seriously, can you even hear the condescension dripping off of that statement?
Mr. Shea's point is well taken. I have never been to a "clown Mass," or anything remotely like it. Those suggesting that such abberations are the norm are well off the mark.
At the March for Life in DC last week, our group (mostly young teens) came across a marcher holding aloft a Crucifix with a big sign: "Latin Mass= Truth; New Mass = Abortion".As I respectfully disagreed with him, he brought up receiving the Eucharist by hand, as if that somehow that had to do with saving unborn children.
What a disdainful way to hijack the cause for life, and to deliberately seek division when unity is desperately necessary. THat attitude--whether on the net or in that public instance--is not obedience to the HOly Spirit.
I was astonished at how eager so many readers of that piece were to turn it into an "attack" on True Catholicism.
I'm not in the least astonished by the reaction of many Trads to me piece.
Um...
Disclosure of my position: I think the TLM is waaaay better than the NO, though I can't consider myself a Trad if the definition is anything like, "The Faith is more important than obedience."
Having said that, I have noticed that some trads are almost happy if they have a terrible liturgical abuse to criticize. But this is not characteristic of trads; it's characteristic of human nature. I regularly see Catholic blogs gleefully enter bashing mode whenever the Piskies or other denominations do ridiculous things. Or if the liberals are being dumb again we can't wait to say "Sin makes you stupid!"
I remember being distinctly disappointed once when I heard that Madonna had said in an interview that she was settling down, that with her two kids and husband she was loving the family life and trying to keep them away from anything crude or inappropriate. I should have been glad she was apparently improving. But some part of me wanted her to remain a disgusting person trying desperately to shock us; I didn't think she deserved to find the happiness that comes of living more like God intended.
When something's really bad, you want it to be worse, the better to feel the righteousness of your own position. Trads do it and so does everybody else.
Duly noted and corrected here...
"A lot of us second class "Novus Ordo types" have been informed of our half breed status many many times by the representatives of True Catholicism in the Rad Trad ranks. I kind of feel it my obligation to set the record straight when that happens."
Or when a circus troupe is incorporated into a Mass celebrated in the ordinary form.
Seriously, if we're going to hear about how nasty Trads are every time a priest does something goofy in the ordinary form...
DM:
Fair enough. My point in the first quote is that I was surprised at how *many* Trads there were who didn't seem to get it. My point in the second that is that, having seen how widespread the bunker mentality is in Tradism, I'm not particularly astonished to see it yet again.
What can I say, I write fast (and certainly not for the Ages. 
John Herreid,
There has been no indult for quite some time. Do try and keep up.
DM:
I don't claim to be an expert on the "real motivations" of TLM folk. I can't read minds. I can only read things like "Latin Mass= Truth; New Mass = Abortion". And I'm just here to tell ya that if TLM types think this is the way to evangelize then they've gotten pretty rusty at it and need to rethink things.
Marv, try going to a parish that has both the Indult and the Novus Ordo. Attend the Novus Ordo. Then introduce yourself to the Indult folks. Then, report back.
I do both in Indianapolis (Holy Rosary) and Chicago (St. John Cantius). When the local hierarchy and parish leadership show respect to both rites and treat them as equals (and expect both to show each other respect) it is amazing how well both sides get along.
It's just my gut impression, but many - not all - of the enthusiastic TLM supporters are, well... people that make me cringe, want to run away, find more pleasant company, contemplate the love of God....
Rachel, I think you said it best. Thank you.
Rachel:
You get what I'm saying. Thanks!
Mark:
The man who made that sign did so as an individual.
Isn't he whole point you were making that it is silly to make broad generalizations about groups ("TLM types") based on individuals?
Or does that only apply to ringmaster-priests?
I can't read minds. I can only read things like...
... like any of the countless intelligent books, articles and websites devoted to explaining Catholic traditionalism in detail. But that would be harder than using broad stereotypes based on internet trolls and the occasional second-hand example.
If anything, I might suggest that you exhibit a sort of dark *joy* and *relish* of your own whenever provided a fresh example of some horrible cranky traditionalist. I wouldn't be surprised if the plurality of Novus Ordo Watch's traffic comes off of your blog.
DM:
I don't go looking for Trads who tell me I'm second class. They come to me. Often.
I'm not a trad.
But I do "get" that one of their most valid proposals is, in fact, to acknowledge "that the Mass is God's before it is ours..."
What the crazy French beach ball people did was make the Mass "theirs." They were making the statement of ownership.
That can happen with any of us, but at least the rationale behind the TLM is "we receive a tradition; we don't try to DIY the Mass."
Emphasis: "receive."
Rachel:
You get what I'm saying. Thanks!
However, Mark, what she is saying (and what you are saying) could apply to you also.
Marv, I wish that were my experience!
You know, I don't think associating the widespread breakdown of reverence for the sacred [represented (for example) by blithely receiving the Blessed Sacrament in the hand] with the breakdown in respect for life in the womb is that much of a stretch.
The bishops have allowed it, just as they have relaxed to the point of irrelevance our rules on fasting.
I accept their decision. It's all too easy. By the letter of the law you are permitted to eat a full breakfast before mass, if only you finish before hopping in the car to drive thirty minutes to the church.
A "meal and a collation" on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday? That's how I often eat, normally, anyway. No sweat. No challenge nor much reflection, and also no sweat.
I accept it all, but I think it's all a tragic travesty.
Again, as I suggest above, see how these sorts of things divide us from the East. See how they allow us to unconsciously meld into the secular patterns of the world.
Notice how we are so accepting of all the laxity. I've never seen clowns at mass. But I have seen skits performed in the place of homilies (even on one occasion a dramatization of the Gospel put on by students at a mass at UW Madison). I've seen a few ghastly liturgical dances.
And I've heard a priest replace the name of God with the word "Allah" throughout the canon of the mass, this in an English speaking parish (with a retired bishop in residence, no less) in Pacific Grove, CA.
Not to mention weird homilies galore in which (for example) the feeding of the 5,000 is metaphorized away, the 70 disciples Christ sent out are hinted to have been homosexual (I kid you not) and many other things that earlier generations would have cried heresy at.
I never have cried. I have begun walking out, though.
I respect you, Mark. I just think it is wrong to suggest that all is fundamentally well with the Church these days. Or that the Trads do not have reason to be agitated. Many of their concerns, though often obsessively held, I believe are all too legitimate.
I never said that Trads have no reason to be agitated. However, your post does do a fine job of illustrating my point about the exaggeration to which the factional spirit is prone. Linking abortion to receiving communion in the hand is, well, ridiculous and insulting to a *huge* number of active prolife Catholics.
Marv:
Of *course* what Rachel is saying can apply to me also.
I think what is often missing is the first step. Christ said 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. when we have this one right, we are ready to move on. The second is to Love your neighbor as yourself. When I came back to the Catholic Church I was blessed to find a priest who helped me to start on the journey to get number one right. I think as he saw progress in this and the second most important, he led me to another priest who loved the Catholic Church. He taught us what the Church believed and even more important why that led back to the first two steps.
If we love enough, when we are confronted with things that concern Jesus Church, we seek truth with trust for we know that in finding truth, we will discover love. Some who made changes to the liturgy over the years did so by lying about what Vatican II actually taught. In doing so, they led many away from the belief that the Eucharist was actually the body and blood of our Lord. To lose this is to lose the essence of what the Catholic Church is all about. The reason for such dedication to the actions we take in praying the mass is because for centuries, they helped the common man continue to believe. If a mother half heartedly tells their child not to run in the street, they run the risk of accident. If they make it abundently clear by action not to run into the street, they do so out of love.
Having said all this, I too am turned off by some of the traditionalist because I sense they have never got number one or two right. They seem to be missing that essential component of love. But I have also met some very devoted and loving traditionalist who have seen the Eucharist turned into a symbol. Watch how a parish goes up to communion next mass and that will tell you much about that parish and its priest. Do they appear to be going up to recieve the actual body and blood of our Lord? Do they stay away if they are in the state of sin?
Mark, we need both love and we need truth that will bring us to our cross. To say it is not of interest to us is OK because some are not drawn to spend the time to understand fully. But then they need to have our respect out of love. Traditionalist that are missing the love, need our prayers that they might find that missing piece Our Lord said was most important in steps one and two.
Mark,
if you think about liturgy and religious practice in anthropological terms, as a setting apart of time and space so as to encounter the sacred and transcendent in a untrammeled fashion; I think you might see how attempts to smooth away distinctions between liturgical space and time by making it less "strange" or formal tend to undermine the integrity of the act.
Approaching the sacred casually, in non ritualized fashion, tends to loosen its hold upon our collective imagination. To less our appreciation and respect for it, and thus desacralize our culture, generally.
When, for example, the Rev. Archbishop George H. Niederauer communes two homosexual activists dressed in drag as nuns from the Sister of Perpetual indulgence, he makes the connection between sexual & moral collapse and liturgical meltdown very explicit.
My own former parish priest, Fr. John Harris, was the webmaster of St. Sebastian's Angels, the international homosexual webring. He also oversaw what many might deem the wreckovation of my home parish, Saint Anthony's in Jackman, ME.
Not to pick on homosexuals. There are couples in that- my- parish who are unmarried, living together with the knowledge of the current pastor, who are never challenged or denied communion.
My own father is an Episcopalian who has never been received as a Catholic. He too is allowed to commune, whether Father knows my Father's status is to me irrelevant. I've never asked our priest. But then, our pastor has never asked either, or challenged my father to go to confession in over a decade. I have challenged my Dad, but no one else has. Dereliction? I think so.
This is not to mention the annulment scandal, or the pastoral meltdown on Humane Vitae.
It seems to me there is a strong correlation between all of this moral chaos and the liturgical "reform."
And know I say this as a normal Latin Rite Ctholic, no "Radtrad."
Troy, NY: late 1970's. I attended a Catholic Mass where the ordained Catholic priest celebrated the liturgy in a clown suit. I may be the only one on the internet who remembers, but it really happened.
You know, I don't think associating the widespread breakdown of reverence for the sacred [represented (for example) by blithely receiving the Blessed Sacrament in the hand] with the breakdown in respect for life in the womb is that much of a stretch.
Receiving in the hand does not equal a breakdown of reverence or 'lack due thought or consideration'. It is a humble (like a beggar) and obedient (to the norms set by our Church) posture.
It is an offense to all the faithful to associate our obedience & humility of receiving in the hand with a breakdown in respect for life in the womb. It makes Mark's point about RadTrad's uncharitableness perfectly.
So you say.
We needless to say disagree. A lot of other people do, too.
When I was young I never really understood what we were doing at communion. Never properly prepared. I was never taught. The casualness of the affair left me indifferent.
Later, along with my brother and my best high school friends (all Catholic, representing a third of the people I was confirmed with) all began professing agnosticism.
I am the only one of us who has returned. The rest are currently lost to the Church, and living lives of relative moral vapidity.
Lex orandi, lex credendi. We got happy clappy pap and no catechisis.
We were never shown reverence, so we never gave it.
I am off the wall furious about this,
it was all too casual for something so serious. The only thing that matters, and we trivialize it, act as if the tradition is ours to up end and screw with, then get all puzzled when we lose two thirds of a generation or more.
Two thirds of my generation. My beloved.
So I have stretched patience for people who think taking the host in your hand like a cracker is as reverent as taking on your knees
on the tongue with a paten.
There is no other Apostolic Church (Orthodox or Catholic) that does. All receive on the tongue. All of them.
Only we are aberrant.
And if you parse the tradition, you will likewise come up barren:
St. Sixtus I (circa 115): "The Sacred Vessels are not to be handled by others than those consecrated to the Lord ."
St. Basil the Great (330-379) "The right to receive Holy Communion in the hand is permitted only in times of persecution."
The Council of Saragossa (380) excommunicated anyone who dared continue receiving Holy Communion by hand. This was confirmed by the Synod of Toledo.
The Synod of Rouen (650) "Do not put the Eucharist in the hands of any layman but only in their mouths."
The Sixth Ecumenical Council, at Constantinople (680-681) Forbade the faithful to take the Sacred Host in their hand, threatening transgressors with Ex-Communication.
St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) "The Body of Christ must not be touched by anyone other than a consecrated priest. No other person has the right to touch it, except in case of extreme necessity."
The Council of Trent (1545-1565) "The fact that only the priest gives Holy Communion with his consecrated hands is an Apostolic Tradition."
Pope Paul VI (1963-197
"This method [on the tongue] must be retained." ("Memoriale Domini")
Pope John-Paul II “To touch the sacred species and to distribute them with their own hands is a privilege of the ordained” (Dominicae Cenae, 11).
But whatever. Like no big deal. Reverence for Christ has nothing at all to do with reverence for humanity.
And the Novus Ordo is just oozing reverence. Oozing it.
Has anyone thought to think that Mark is speaking about the radical traditionalists and not all traditionalistic people in the church? Take a deep breath already everyone.
Neither the TLM nor the Novus Ordo mass is the "great evil" the 'other side' purports it to be. One of the best masses I go to is First Friday Mass with the liturgy of the Eucharist in Latin and liturgy of the word in English. I won't go into the abuses in my home parish that would make Mark really blow a gasket.
I agree with Mark there are people who are so gung ho Tridentine they treat others who aren't as "real" catholics. Maybe if you have a problem with someone making that observation then perhaps a plank is skewing your vision.
Corretion:
I agree with Mark there are people who are so gung ho Tridentine they treat others who aren't as not "real" catholics. Maybe if you have a problem with someone making that observation then perhaps a plank is skewing your vision.
"It's annoying and shallow, and tends to be kind of like liturgical LARPing for some people."
Ok, just had to say I did actually spit water out on this one.
Fr Z is doing a service to point out the absurdity of such abuse. IT was televised, after all. If somebody doesn't say this is just wrong, you really think the folks not up on their Faith will know the difference?
And dang, Mark, you ever notice that you are always ready to slam traditionalists who criticize abuse, but you don't pipe up a word against abuse itself?
"Maybe if you have a problem with someone making that observation then perhaps a plank is skewing your vision."
Boy, if our Lord admonished us for diagnosing our brother's speck, imagine what he'd say about this...
"Boy, if our Lord admonished us for diagnosing our brother's speck, imagine what he'd say about this..."
Franklin;
I am in no way saying that we don't all have planks in some respect. I drives me up a wall when those who think that N.O. is invalid just because it is N.O. and any time any one calls them on anything they blow a gasket calling other people names and putting words in their mouths or declaring them "not Catholic enough". I am well aware that a good number of times I have a plank in my own eye, the point of my remark was that everyone needs to take a deep breath on the whole bloody issue.
I said "I agree with Mark there are people who are so gung ho Tridentine they treat others who aren't as not "real" catholics. Maybe if you have a problem with someone making that observation then perhaps a plank is skewing your vision." Note the point about people having a problem with Mark making observations about those who think that if you aren't a TLM Catholic aren't "real" Catholics, I was not making a generality about all people. Context is a wonderful thing.
Kat,
A little lectio divina might be in order, because I really see no evidence whatever in your self-justification that you understand what our Lord was saying there.
As long as you have a beam in your eye, that is to say sin, you should refrain from pointing out the speck in your brothers eye.
That is, if you understand him rightly, and also feel justified in pointing out these planks, you must be without sin. Because until we hit that point, we're supposed to keep our yap shut about what might distort our brother's vision.
Capisce?
Franklin;
Obviously neither of us understand it.
The key difference being I've not wasted tons of electrons justifying myself.
Franklin;
Again;
Obviously neither of us understand it.
Not sure how a sacriligeous Mass celebrated in the cathedral of the diocese can be described accurately as a "last gasp" of the revolution.
Folks like Mark need to calm down and realize that pointing out that this hootenanny nonsense is only realizable in a post V-II world, and that therefore a sound remedy might be to return to our tradition, is NOT to denegrate anyone's personal piety or attachment to the ordinary rite. Hence Fr. Zuhlsdorf's blog, which pretty persuasively argues that the more we turn to tradition, the likelier we will eliminate such sacrileges.
"Folks like Mark need to calm down and realize that pointing out that this hootenanny nonsense is only realizable in a post V-II world, and that therefore a sound remedy might be to return to our tradition, is NOT to denegrate anyone's personal piety or attachment to the ordinary rite."
Study church history. You will find all kinds of odd things happening at liturgy; it's not just post Vatican II that you find it.
Right.... lots of circus Masses from 1570-1969. I'm talking outright sacrilege, not whether the priest turned to his left or to his right when giving the "Dominus vobiscum."
If there were things like this French liturgy happening in the years mentioned, proof please.
"Approaching, therefore, come not with thy wrists extended, or thy fingers open; but make thy left hand as if a throne for thy right, which is on the eve of receiving the King. And having hallowed thy palm, receive the body of Christ, saying after it, ‘Amen.’ Then after thou hast with carefulness hallowed thine eyes by the touch of the holy body, partake thereof; giving heed lest thou lose any of it; for what thou losest is a loss to thee as it were from one of thine own members. For tell me, if anyone gave thee gold dust, wouldst thou not with all precaution keep it fast, being on thy guard against losing any of it, and suffering loss?" (A.D. 390, Cyril of Jerusalem : Catechetical Lectures 23:22).
His little ol lamb, you gotta admit that Charles Curtis has a valid point. It is interesting that there are numerous accounts of Church Fathers writing against receiving in the hand and the one in defense of receiving in the hand, the one you quote, tends to be the only one ever brought up, and not to mention it may very well be instructions which apply only to those who receive in the hand during times of persecution. He also has a point that all Apostolic Churches, save the Roman Church, reject communion in the hand.
Now, having said that, the manner of reception of the Holy Mysteries is a discipline of the Church which is not a part of the deposit of Holy Tradition, therefore, the Church as she deems appropriate and in her wisdom may change such things. This is what makes it an acceptable practice for me, but I am not averse to the Church requiring reception on the tongue in all cases either.
It started as an act of disobedience in Belgium. Rome eventually relented out of pastoral concern. If you want to do it, you can.
But that doesn't mean other folks are going to pretend its anything but a pastoral provision allowed to keep some from taking their
ball and going schism-o.
It's certainly not a sign of humility and obedience to touch the sacred species with unconsecrated hands... more like hubris.
There was a reason the practice was suppressed, and very early on. You can see why in your local Catholic Faith Community this Sunday at communion time.
No judgments against second class NO Catholics here, Tom. Nosirree. And that business in the Fathers about "enthroning Christ" in our hands? Hubris!
Message received: when the Church agrees with you, that authentic Catholicism. When it doesn't, you are here to set the Church straight, whether is communion in the hand or the DP. That's humility. Got it.
Mark,
There is really only one thing that concerns me about reception in the hand. This past week in my parish, it was reported that 2 hosts were found desecrated in a public park. Now, there is no proof that these were even consecrated nor is there proof that they were they from my parish in particular since I live in a heavily Catholic part of the country, but receiving in the hand rather than on the tongue certainly makes this sort of thing much easier. Or another example was the guy who kept a consecrated host from a Mass at which John Paul II (of blessed memory) celebrated and put it up for auction on e-Bay after the great pontiff's death. I dare say that all Catholics were offended by that.
I am not an advocate for disobedience to practices the church has deemed appropriate and acceptable. On the other hand, desecration of the Most Holy Eucharist is perhaps the supreme act of disobedience to Christ and His Church, so if requiring reception on the tongue is what it would take to curtail that, then I am all for it.
Dr. Brian:
I agree that this is a problem (though I expect that somebody who is really *determined* to desecrate a Host would not be stopped by communion on the tongue). The Black Mass is a lot older than Vatican II. But you are right that it would prevent the mere casual blasphemies of clueless dopes like the eBay guy (who, no doubt, probably thought highly of JPII).
Dr. Brian is obviously a tool of the radtrads and trying to define Catholicsim in his own likeness and image. After all one Church Fathers (not "Fathers", Mark) apparently referred to the practice. But that the Church had important reasons to suppress the practice, as evidenced in part by Dr. Brian's point, occurs not to him. That St. Thomas, and hundreds of holy Popes, theologians, and councils, opposed the practice? Eh, that was yesterday, brother!
That the practice is the fruit of a lawless spirit of rebellion by certain priests and bishops in the 1960's to which Rome gave in very unwillingly, matters not.
No, to the positivist Mark, it is legal and therefore good, holy, and right, and no one may suggest otherwise!
The good news is that one day when the practice is again banned because of the open, obvious, and widespread abuses to which it leads, Mark will certainly say that the Church is right to ban it, and those fuddy-duddys who long for Communion in the Hand are just a species of radtrads in reverse.
Coincidentally, Abp. Ranjith, who runs up the Vatican's department on sacraments, must also be a radtrad NO-hater. Sheesh, you can't even point out the obvious problems with some of what the revolution has wrought without getting accused of all kinds of stuff by the combox cardinalate and the chief high priest himself.
Check out the radical Abp. Ranjith:
http://www.catholicnewsagency.co...new.php?
n=11659
God bless you, Tom.
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