My Thoughts on Various Things

[Glaurung]

Traditionis Custodes​

Having had some weeks to reflect upon the pope's crackdown on the Traditional Latin Mass I maintain that Traditionis Custodes is a cruel overreach. Accompaniment it seems is held out only to those who dissent leftward. That is to those who believe the Church's teachings should be tailored according to the prevailing opinions of secular modernity.

On the other hand those Catholics attached to the traditions of their faith are cracked down upon as an existential threat to a 'unity' that has long ceased to exist. Why has traditionalism grown? Could it be that Catholic worship has lost too much of its sense of the sacred? If the hierarchy really wants to fix the root issue then the Novus Ordo needs to better reflect the vertical aspects of Catholic worship. You cannot legislate away the reality that many who most deeply care about the faith find the modern liturgy to be distressingly banal.​

Taiwan & WWIII​

It wouldn't be the first time a megalomaniac dictator caused a worldwide conflict. Although I question who would side with China should the CCP be crazy enough to actually attack Taiwan. China has alienated much of the world and I don't see what Russia would gain by getting involved on the Chinese side. As much as the prospect of such a war distresses me, I think the democratic world would be craven to abandon Taiwan to invasion and subsequent tyranny.

Despite everything Taiwan has become a prosperous democracy which gives the lie to the CCP's claims that their brand of obsessive authoritarianism is necessary for Chinese greatness. Because that's what this really about. An obsessive ideological dictate on part of the CCP. Or rather, Xi Jingping.

Venomous Animals ​

I live in Australia where just about everything is venomous. The other day at work I encountered a snake which at the time I assumed to be a brown snake. An aggressive and extremely venomous animal. It was obscured by garden plant life so I did not get that good of a look but my heart almost leapt out of my chest when I realized that its head was off the ground poking out of the garden and looking directly at me. Fortunately, I had plenty of clearance to walk back past the snake.

I felt sick for the next hour as the shock of nearly walking into an animal capable of killing me left me rather shaken. (Assuming it was a brown snake, it may have been a python in retrospect). I only noticed it by hearing a rustling in the plant life as I walked past the animal otherwise unaware of its presence. Had I been only slightly more oblivious to my surroundings it could have ended very badly for me.

It makes you consider the fragility of life. That even in a developed safe nation like Australia there's no guarantee you'll see tomorrow's sunrise.

That's It for Now​

It's 01:20 and I should head to bed. I may add to this thread later or I may not. It will depend on my motivation to post.

 

[PureX]

Even changes that are right, necessary, and long overdue still scare and upset people. Especially people who have been benefiting from the old status quo while ignoring those who have been made to suffer from it. These times of re-evaluation are essential, however, just the same. A faith that cannot embrace change and seek improvement is stagnant, and on it's way to becoming a dead faith: a repetition of words and rituals with no value or meaning.

 

[pearl]

That is to those who believe the Church's teachings should be tailored according to the prevailing opinions of secular modernity.

Consider for instance the number of sacraments, what if a pope decided seven is too many or not enough? You might say 7 is the 'tradition', but it has not always been clarified until The number of sacraments was finally fixed at seven during the medieval period (at the councils of Lyons 1274, Florence 1439, and Trent 1547). Paul VI allowed, for years, the reception of 1st communion before the sacrament of penance. There is Tradition and there is tradition, the latter is changeable, and has historically been so.

Could it be that Catholic worship has lost too much of its sense of the sacred?

The sense of the sacred is greater than language. The only reason the Liturgy was in Latin is because at one time it was the common language of the people, it no longer is. In entering the Church one crosses the threshold from the profane to the sacred. But this is all lost if we are so consumed and blinded by change that we are unable to know the sacredness and beauty of the Mass.

 

[Glaurung]

Even changes that are right, necessary, and long overdue still scare and upset people. Especially people who have been benefiting from the old status quo while ignoring those who have been made to suffer from it. These times of re-evaluation are essential, however, just the same. A faith that cannot embrace change and seek improvement is stagnant, and on it's way to becoming a dead faith: a repetition of words and rituals with no value or meaning.

The status quo is indeed the problem. What the Church offers as its normative form of worship in the Roman Rite is a stale refection of the 1970's. It's a reflection of a mindset that sought a steep reduction in the vertical aspect of worship in exchange for a horizontal focus on the community as a collective action. The result is a liturgy that at times borders on being insufferably banal.

The high altar was replaced by a plain table; the organ by the guitar and tambourine. The communion rails were torn out and the interiors of sometimes historical church buildings were gutted and 'improved' to better reflect the faddish ideas of the modernist clergy. Now Vatican II called for none of this but can you blame people of more pious dispositions for becoming ambivalent towards Vatican II when all this was done and continues hold sway in the council's name?

The sense of the sacred is greater than language. The only reason the Liturgy was in Latin is because at one time it was the common language of the people, it no longer is. In entering the Church one crosses the threshold from the profane to the sacred. But this is all lost if we are so consumed and blinded by change that we are unable to know the sacredness and beauty of the Mass.

The Novus Ordo is a far more profound of a change than simply the use of the vernacular. As I allude to in my response to PureX, sacredness and beauty have been studiously minimized if not exercised from parish liturgy for over fifty years because neither sacredness or beauty is in line with the mindset that still holds sway in so much of the Church. Sacredness and beauty speak to something beyond ourselves which is at odds with the project of boomer Catholicism which sees liturgy as a vehicle for affirmation of the self in community.

The boomer Catholicism that still dominates parish life is not compelling to anyone. Traditionalists find it insipid and the liberals it is intended to appeal to don't even bother attending Church anyway. The children of yesterday's liberal Catholics are today's irreligious.

 

[PureX]

The status quo is indeed the problem. What the Church offers as its normative form of worship in the Roman Rite is a stale refection of the 1970's. It's a reflection of a mindset that sought a steep reduction in the vertical aspect of worship in exchange for a horizontal focus on the community as a collective action. The result is a liturgy that at times borders on being insufferably banal.

As opposed to a ritual in a language people couldn't even understand? And after all, the whole point of religious Christianity is to bring the message and the promise of Christ to all humanity. And that's inevitably going to mean meeting people where they are. Not excluding them because you like being in a secret club.

The high altar was replaced by a plain table; the organ by the guitar and tambourine. The communion rails were torn out and the interiors of sometimes historical church buildings were gutted and 'improved' to better reflect the faddish ideas of the modernist clergy. Now Vatican II called for none of this but can you blame people of more pious dispositions for becoming ambivalent towards Vatican II when all this was done and continues hold sway in the council's name?

I think people of more pious dispositions need to remember that Christ does not live in a building, or a ritual, or in some obscure language. Christ lives in the hearts of human beings. And if a song on a guitar helps us to recognize this spirit within ourselves while ancient gothic derges on an organ do not, then so be it.

I think it's important not to let religion and it's trappings become confused with the reality of Christ. Or we end up praying to statues to feel 'holy' while ignoring the people all around us.

 

[Glaurung]

As opposed to a ritual in a language people couldn't even understand? And after all, the whole point of religious Christianity is to bring the message and the promise of Christ to all humanity. And that's inevitably going to mean meeting people where they are. Not excluding them because you like being in a secret club.

As far as the TLM goes invest in a missal. It is not difficult to become familiar with the Ordinary of the Mass. It is the same every week. But in any case I don't actually object to the availability of vernacular Masses. I myself attend the Ordinariate which uses Early Modern English in its text. The idea being that formal worship in the vernacular should at least make use an elevated register of the language.

What I do object to is a pope who has repeatedly insinuated that those who love the tradition; those who are attached to an older iteration of the liturgy are defective believers if not mentally ill. What I object to is the fifty year long crusade to transform Catholic worship into a shallow affirmation of secular liberal ideals and lifestyles. Jesus did not merely meet people where they were, he elevated them and demanded they respond by taking up the impossible path of perfection.

I think people of more pious dispositions need to remember that Christ does not live in a building, or a ritual, or in some obscure language. Christ lives in the hearts of human beings. And if a song on a guitar helps us to recognize this spirit within ourselves while ancient gothic derges on an organ do not, then so be it.

I remember a comment left on a blog by a young Catholic which essentially said: "I'm tired of these boomers telling me what I want".

I too am tired of being told what my feelings should be. That my love for the smells and bells of the traditional liturgy is invalid. I'm tired of being told that I'm mentally ill for finding value in Latin, in incense, in high altars and in chant. That I am not allowed to have a 'High Church' religious sensibility because grey haired biddies are threatened by anything which even hints that the Church existed before the 1960's. True story, we had an older woman bust into Mass one time screaming that ringing the church bell is turning back the clock. Yes, that's how absurd some of these people really are.

It's what I said in my original post. The only valid feelings are those that lean leftward. I'm not allowed to find God in bells and incense because that's 'reactionary'.

 

[pearl]

The Novus Ordo is a far more profound of a change than simply the use of the vernacular.

Yes it is. You really have to understand that we were church before Trent! And the changes in the Liturgy reflect this, in some instances going back to 2nd cent. There were no high stone altars, table is still the Altar.
For the first seven or eight centuries of the Church's life, the Eucharist had been the people's Eucharist. The Eucharist was people gathering in community (often in house-churches) to express their praise and thanks to God. This is precisely what the word eucharist means: "giving thanks and praise."
Christians, gathered together for Eucharist, were conscious all the while that the risen Jesus was in their midst as they did so. They never even bothered to ask when Christ became present. It was enough to know that he was with them. There was no elevation of the host and cup at the words of institution. The only elevation came at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer. After the Eucharistic Prayer, everyone shared in the meal. Following the meal, Communion was taken to the sick. Later the custom developed of reserving the Holy Bread in a special place in the church to take to the sick in case this was necessary when Eucharist was not being celebrated. Eventually it happened that people would go to the place of reservation for private prayer.
The priest began to celebrate Mass with his back to the people. Few received Communion. They were content to look at the Jesus whom they felt now afraid to receive. More and more the priest did everything at the Mass. The people simply attended.
The Mass had drifted from a human experience of community in Christ, which called for people's participation, to a divine reality that called for a priest to act in the name of Christ to bring him down from heaven. The priest became the only one to be acting in the eucharistic celebration.
The theology of the Eucharist that emerged from the Council of Trent (a theology that persisted down to the Second Vatican Council),
it is clear that its approach to the Eucharist was that of medieval theologians. For them the essence of a sacrament was to be found in its matter and form.

The Eucharist was understood in similar fashion. The matter was bread and wine; the form, "the words of consecration" said by the priest over the bread and wine. The priest was the celebrant. He really did not need the people to have a Eucharist as it was understood.

The small group of people interested in liturgical renewal were given a basic liturgical principle by Pius X in the very first document of his papacy, an apostolic letter on Church music (November 22, 1903): "Active participation in the liturgy is the primary and indispensable source of the true Christian spirit." This became the watchword of a small number of priests and laity who sought to achieve fundamental changes in the celebration of liturgy. This group came to be called the liturgical movement. The unofficial publication of the movement, published at St. John's Abbey in Minnesota, first called Orate Fratres, is now named Worship."
In 1938 the first Father Stedman Missals were published. They used a number system to guide people through the various parts of the Mass. Instead of saying their rosary or reading their prayers, people were now able to follow the priest at Mass. In the 1940's with the advent of the dialogue Mass, in which people participated by making the responses that up to then had been reserved to the altar servers. On November 16, 1955, Pope Pius XII restored the Easter Vigil and then, later, the Triduum of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. Recentering liturgy around the mystery of the death and, especially, the resurrection of the Lord was a decisive preparation for the liturgical changes initiated by the Second Vatican Council. The most important thing the Council did was to give the Eucharist back to the assembly, to the people of God, it returned the Eucharist to what it had been in the beginning: an assembly of God's people come together, under the leadership of a priest, to praise God, to hear God's Word and to "break bread" with the firm belief that the Lord Jesus was present among them.---------The body of Christ is not only on the table, but at the table and around the table.

All the reforms of liturgy that have come out of Vatican II have had as their ultimate intent to make the Mass once again a human reality, namely, something that people do; yet always a human reality that moves beyond the human to the divine, that what people do at Mass, they do with a profound realization that the risen Lord is present in their midst.

 

[Glaurung]

@pearl With respect, I find your most recent post to be beside the point.

That the liturgy in the second century may have been comparatively simple is not in my opinion a compelling argument for the Novus Ordo. It is not a compelling argument for a policy that if maintained will see the TLM gradually banished into oblivion. In a sane church the TLM would be treasured even if it remained a minority preference. But instead we have a church with an authority who feels so threatened by the TLM that they would rather alienate some of its most ardent faithful to potential schism if not apostasy rather than ask itself why these faithful with no memory of the preconciliar era find so much value in the old rite over and above the new one. Tedious discussions about what the early Church was like avoids questions pertinent to the here and now. Frankly, no one on either side of the question cares what the liturgy was like in the second century. Yes, I mean that. No one cares. After all, I don't see you clamoring for public confession yet alone the harsh penitential disciplines of the early Church. So the argument that the TLM must be abolished because it does not resemble the second century liturgy in the ways the Novus Ordo superficially claims to is absurd.

The fact is, I do not find the Novus Ordo (as it is usually offered) to be conducive to Catholic conviction. And I've never been more filled with doubt in regards to the truth of the Catholic faith than I am currently.

That could change however, should I see a serious attempt to recapture tradition and reverence in the Novus Ordo. Ad orientem worship, communion rails, the use of incense and a greater use of plainchant would go a long way in quelling my objections to the modern liturgy. Even if it wouldn't quell my doubts about the truth of the Biblical revelation. But that's a whole different discussion.

 

[pearl]

After all, I don't see you clamoring for public confession yet alone the harsh penitential disciplines of the early Church. So the argument that the TLM must be abolished because it does not resemble the second century liturgy in the ways the Novus Ordo superficially claims to is absurd.

1st the TLM had not been abolished due to the language but not recognizing the authority of the Council and the privilege given to TLM was abused.
The harsh penitential 'disciplines' were eliminated by the Cluniac Reform. As for public confession, during Holy Week there is/was a public reconciliation service followed by private confession. Holy Week Penance Service – Liturgy Preparation. Association of Catholic Priests

communion rails,

In opposition to MT11:28,29.
There is no loss of incense.
As for a greater use of plainchant it certainly has its place, especially meditation, and during Lent and Advent.

There are elements in the Liturgy that are changeable, and those that are not. The Church he(Jesus) founded would have to develop and grow in many new cultures while simultaneously remaining rooted in the time when the Incarnate Word walked among us. This is why there are changeable elements such as languages and rites and unchangeable ones such as the use of bread and wine in the Eucharist which are intimately bound up with Christ himself.
The sources of the history of the liturgy are many and complex. Among the most important sources are the Jewish elements. As the Catechism says in No. 1096:

“Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy. A better knowledge of the Jewish people’s faith and religious life as professed and lived even now can help our better understanding of certain aspects of Christian liturgy. For both Jews and Christians Sacred Scripture is an essential part of their respective liturgies: in the proclamation of the Word of God, the response to this word, prayer of praise and intercession for the living and the dead, invocation of God’s mercy. In its characteristic structure the Liturgy of the Word originates in Jewish prayer. The Liturgy of the Hours and other liturgical texts and formularies, as well as those of our most venerable prayers, including the Lord’s Prayer, have parallels in Jewish prayer. The Eucharistic Prayers also draw their inspiration from the Jewish tradition. The relationship between Jewish liturgy and Christian liturgy, but also their differences in content, are particularly evident in the great feasts of the liturgical year, such as Passover. Christians and Jews both celebrate the Passover. For Jews, it is the Passover of history, tending toward the future; for Christians, it is the Passover fulfilled in the death and Resurrection of Christ, though always in expectation of its definitive consummation.”
The Church and the Birth of Christian Liturgy | EWTN

The fact is, I do not find the Novus Ordo (as it is usually offered) to be conducive to Catholic conviction. And I've never been more filled with doubt in regards to the truth of the Catholic faith than I am currently.

The purpose, the intent. of the Liturgy is not 'Catholic' conviction' but Christ.