To think with the Church.... In "the Spirit of Benny 16". Catholic Theology, Ecumenism, Interfaith relations, History, Liturgy, Philosophy and whatever topics are hot in the ecclesiastical world! Please comment - with gentleness and reverence! Our motto on this blog is: "Maior autem his est spes"
posted by Schütz @ 9:01 pm
15 Comments
Name: Schütz
Home: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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15 Comments:
Nice they can trot out the 1962 Bug Mass every once in a while a little easier now. It's a safe museum piece but should help with the illusion that this is the catholic church for some.
Yes, I am fully under that "illusion", PE. It's working for me!
With respect, Past Elder, it is not a musuem piece, but a living treasure. I presume you think that the liturgy of all the Eastern Catholic churches, not to mention the orthodox is equally questionable? Perhaps you should just say so.
Dear Anonymous (hey, that used to be my name when I started blogging!) --
Most emphatically, I do not regard the 1962 Bug Mass (though the pre-Bugnini Mass was better before he and his ilk warmed up for the novus ordo by tinkering with the real Mass) as questionable at all as an expression of the Roman Catholic Faith, and I do not regard the liturgies of the Eastern Church, Catholic or Orthodox, as questionable at all as an expression of the Eastern Church. So I can not just say so because I mean nothing of the sort. Matter of fact, I have served this Mass hundreds if not thousands of times, and to this day could probably do so with more ease than the young guys in the picture. When I was their age, this wasn't an "extraordinary" thing at all, just Mass, and I fully expected it would remain so for the rest of my life and on until the Second Coming -- with modificiations of course along the way such as the 1962 revision, whose immediate predecessor I also served hundreds if not thousands of times.
So the Church now presents this as a living treasure? Pig's bum (not sure if you're Australian or not; I'm not, picked it up from a longtime Aussie room-mate in grad school and find it a magnificent addition to English)!
When the novus ordo -- that foul parody of what you see pictured, unequalled by the stench of a thousand corpses rotting in the noon-day sun, and which under the Motu one must acknowledge as the valid ordinary rite, which no Catholic can do who holds the faith the now "extraordinary" rite encapsules -- was first foisted on the "faithful", first piecemeal and then in its full monstrosity by Montini, this "living treasure" was ridiculed at every turn as an unfortunate descent of authentic liturgy into mediaeval monarchial (to which was soon added patriarchal) triumphalism, made even worse by the spiritually autistic self-justification in the face of the Reformation that was Trent.
In what I could not understand at the time, but now know as typically Roman, the rite was kept on the books technically but effectively proscribed in a liturgical pogrom in which expressing any value in this rite at all was shouted down as not Catholic, apart from the mind of the Church, and a rejection of the Holy Spirit which moved at Vatican II.
They made their point quite well. Utterly and unmistakably clear. And that before I went to university and was taught by some of them.
And now this same church hawks it as a living treasure? This demonstrates nothing except there is no shameless duplicity, no self serving doublespeak, no theological sleight of hand in the absence of even the faintest hint of integrity, to which the Roman church will not descend.
It was bad enough when the only thing worse than the novus ordo celebrated in the "spirit of Vatican II" was the novus ordo celebrated according to its actual rubrics, as a complete standing on its head of the Catholic Faith. Now these mitred monsters and their minions have found something even worse by way of strange fire. Under the provisions of the Motu, to offer the real Mass is the worst blasphemy yet and an utterly vicious disgrace to the rite, a murderer dressing up in his victim's clothes to pass himself off as the same guy.
Now, yes, for the last nearly eleven years now I have believed what is called confessional Lutheranism. As a confessional Lutheran I would and do have issues with either the 1962 rite or the novus ordo. Those are not the issues expressed above, nor has it ever been my intent to engage in a Lutheran response to what it blogged here. What is expressed above I came to twenty years before I saw Lutheranism as anything more than a well intentioned but misplaced effort to be Catholic without being Catholic. Or to put it another way, had the Holy Spirit not graciously acted to grant me faith in the real catholic faith, taught in Scripture and accurately presented in the Book of Concord, I would still hold what I expressed above, except that, seeing no answer to the vile beast that the Roman church has shown itself to be instead of the church instituted by Christ himself I once believed it to be, I would watch such things as pictured in the post with an inexpressable sadness at what has truly shown itself to be the Whore of Babylon, marked with and led by the marks of Antichrist, which if this can happen to the church Christ instituted shows he was not the Christ at all and we must look for another.
Can you believe it? All that verbiage to tell us (yet again) that Past Elder doesn't like the Novus Ordo and considers the Catholic Church the Whore of Babylon?
Whew!
Wir sind noch nicht am Ende damit!
Anonymous,
Here's an interesting tidbit:
Since Benedict XVI's letter on the Latin Mass was released this summer, sales of the missal for the extraordinary rite have doubled, reported one publisher.
The London-based Baronius Press is reprinting an edition of the missal, which includes the full text of the papal letter "Summorum Pontificum."
John Newton, editor of Baronius Press, commented, "It would seem that 'Summorum Pontificum,' has generated a considerable amount of interest and excitement in the traditional Latin liturgy among the Catholic laity."
Baronius Press publishes classical Catholic works in beautifully made volumes. I just ordered "The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary", a classic reprint, from them.
It must be my imagination. I thought I had read a comment stating a presumption that I think the rites of the Eastern Church are questionable, itself presuming that I think the 1962 Roman rite is questionable, therefore why don't I just say so -- which is not even close to what I was saying.
When in Rome, where white is a deeper understanding of black and black a theological development of white, it gets real hard to tell. Must be. I misunderstood my own words. Yeah, that's it. The commenter's presumptions must be correct. Of course. How silly of me not to recognise my own thoughts.
Past Elder, well I must have misread your intention about the the Classical Use of the Roman Rite, and so apologise sincerly for having done so.
Nevertheless, as a Catholic, I can't agree with the other things you've said about the church: it is clear that much that is done in the Church's name is not right. We must not confuse the Church and the Faith with the people (ordained and lay) in it. I can't help feel that Lutheranism and the other protestant communities, together with so many Catholics, fall into that trap.
Dear Anonymous -- I take no offence at all. It happens all the time that a text is not necessarily read according to its author's intent, and is just one of the features of written language, whose limitations have been discussed since at least Plato.
In fact, I used to take this as one more sign that there would be an infallible teaching magisterium -- that knowing texts always function in this way God would hardly have left us texts as our sole guide with no reliable interpreter, and that the texts themselves (NT) do not promise more texts but the Holy Spirit.
The process I described, in which the prior order of Mass was violently suppressed, was not the individual or private action of some people within the Church, it was the Church itself. I would suggest there is another trap -- laying up what people in their official capacity do as their individual action when what they are doing is carrying out the Church's direction.
The actions of the Catholic Church against its former rite were not the same as a renegade professor offering his opinions in place of the Church's teaching or a neighbour whose life style does not witness well to the Catholic faith he claims. This was the Church and those who did it were acting in accord with it. And the reasoning was, that to not do that would create confusion in the proverbial faithful about the validity of the new order -- much in the same way that Trent found no objection per se to the vernacular, but due to its association with heretics it would seem to lend them support to adopt it.
Hence my position that for the Church at this point in time after its history since the council to dust off the old rite as an "extraodinary" form and begin speaking of one rite in two forms, pure Vatican II -ese doublespeak for two rites, is just an incredible act of duplicity. And given that its observance under the Motu comes with the recognition of the new order as the "ordinary" Roman rite, a rite which those who have stayed with the now "extraodinary" rite out of not just sentimentalism but as a matter of faith and doctrine find a rejection of the faith and doctrine expressed in the "ordinary" rite, its celebration under such auspices is no honouring of a living treasure but rank blasphemy at worst and an utterly vulgar joke at best.
In other words, were I still Catholic I would find in what you see pictured nothing but a cruel hoax, as I said before nothing more than the actions of a murderer dressing up in his victim's clothes and attempting to pass himself off as his victim, and would recoil from this monstrous duplicity of an "extraordinary" form even more than from the "ordinary" form, which for a person who holds the Catholic faith to participate in is at least a venial sin and whose concurrent use of a non-heretical rite may be a mortal sin.
And I add, I speak not from my present faith but my former one. Or in other words, seeking to avoid interpretation difficulties, I do not hold these things as a Lutheran or because of Lutheranism.
Methinks past elder doth protest too much.
Come home.
You are not the first to have thought so, BTB. But he appears resolute...
Great Zeus Cloudgatherer!
Let's see: having set out that the Roman Church is a fundamentally different church than the one I was raised in (Roman Catholic), that the Roman Church in fact is hostile to the one I was raised in, and now here most recently that usage of the Roman Rite by this church is a duplicity showing there is no depravity to which the Roman Church will not descend in trying to maintain its credentials as the former Roman Catholic Church, I am actually demonstrating that I need to rejoin it?
Has lobotomy replaced Baptism as the rite of initiation?
Guess what? I sm home. It's called the evangelical Lutheran church. And I praise God that in his mercy he did not allow my days under the sun to conclude without it.
Past elder is such a total missfit and that last comment is just way out of line. The Chuch is not depraved. Some members may be but that is the nature of the human animal - depravity is what we can all sink to if we are not careful But the Church is not - it is the living temple of God the Most High.
Julian A
btb and Julian, actually Past Elder thrives on those "come home to Rome" invitations because it's the point where he jumps in and restates (again and again) why he is not Catholic and why those of us who are (particularly those of us who are by choice) have made a grievous error in hooking up with the Whore of Babylon.
Please don't encourage him.
He keeps restating that he now HAS come home to the evangelical Lutheran church. You'd think that someone who has now found "the pearl of great price" wouldn't need to spend so much time on a Catholic blog, yet, trying to convince people of it.
Meanwhile, I've been visiting some other Lutheran blogs including the LCMS site and yep, the LCMS is descending further and further into American evangelicalism (see "The New Commission on Worship members and their congregations" on the This Side of the Pulpit blog). Lots of "contemporary", "blended" and "praise bands". But Past Elder keeps telling us that it is "catholic."
It used to be "catholic" back in my Lutheran days.
I'm glad to be home in Rome.
I did not say the Church is depraved. I said the Roman Church is not "the Church". And actually I did not call the Roman Church itself depraved per se (which is not to say it isn't), I said there is no depravity to which it will not descend to pass itself off as the Roman Catholic Church.
What apparently I have to say again and again is I am not here to convince you that I am really Lutheran, or to convince you that you should be. Or to convince you that the LCMS or any other Lutheran body is the perfect church, something I don't even believe myself. These things are entirely irrelevant to my point here.
Which is: even if one grants that there must be something such as the Roman Catholic Church holds itself to be, there is nothing further from it than the vile and grotesque parody of it that is the post-conciliar "Roman Catholic Church".
Or in terms of my own story: I renounce and denounce the present Roman Catholic Church first on the basis of the faith that was taught to me by the Roman Catholic Church; it is a monstrous perversion on its own terms, I thought so for more than twenty years before I became or even considered Lutheranism, and would remain so if I chucked Lutheranism, and the event pictured at the head of this post is nothing less than a murderer dressing up like its victim, a murder which I witnessed.
Good Lord. I was invited to "come home" with the implication that that is what I really want, replied that I have a home and am home, though that is not even my point, and now apparently am supposed to thrive on being invited to Rome.
Maybe lobotomy hasn't replaced Baptism as the rite of initiation.
Maybe it's LSD.
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