I’m with you on this. Somehow I doubt God is in his heaven fuming at all those Catholics who aren’t studying the particulars of what makes a valid Mass. At some point it becomes a question of form over function. The priests may be on God’s S-list, but for the rest of us, our intent is good, and I think that’s what matters to the Man Upstairs.
I shall now don my asbestos suit and await incoming.
“I shall now don my asbestos suit and await incoming.”
No incoming from this direction.
I do, however, feel no obligation to attend an invalid or irreverent Mass. Although most, if not all, of our local Masses are in some ways illicit, few are irreverent or invalid.
With the nearest Mass, which can be counted upon to be licit, being a seven plus hour round trip, I can only hope we don’t get another flaky padre.
LOL! Here, come sit next to me in the last pew...closest to the door. Wanna look at my new (old) St. Joseph's Daily Missal? It's got lots of pretty pictures!
“...but for the rest of us, our intent is good, and I think that’s what matters to the Man Upstairs.”
That sounds very nice and neat (actually it sounds rather protestant), but it is not only the intent of the people in the pews that matters. In fact, it’s irrelevant to the manifestation of the Sacrament. It’s possible for the intention of the priest to invalidate a consecration. Not just illicit, invalid, in specific circumstances. It’s not your belief in the Sacrament of the Eucharist that makes it a sacrament. There is a real danger of your being deprived of Grace regardless of your good intent if the priest is not fulfilling his duty.
“Somehow I doubt God is in his heaven fuming at all those Catholics who aren’t studying the particulars of what makes a valid Mass. “
I don’t think that was implied, or that it is the point.
In every parish of this diocese I have seen parishoners that are so poorly catechised that they not only sit still for all sorts of nonsense, they seem to think it’s the way things are supposed to be.
I will never forget the shock I felt at seeing an entire church full of people make the Nazi “Seig Heil” gesture. Nobody turned a hair when a priest celebrating Easter Mass clapped on a cowboy hat and marched back and forth in front of the altar prattling about how it was his “Easter bonnet.” He said nary a word about Our Lord’s Resurrection.
Another church carted in a hot tub and plonked it down in front of the altar so they could do full-immersion baptisms. The secretary in the altar told me it was the coming thing in the Church. That priest also got up and told his parishoners that the Miracle of the Transfiguration didn’t happen.
No church in the diocese has a proper crucifix near the altar. Tabernacles are hidden. The host and wine are placed in glass vessels for consecration. Music is exclusively OCP tripe played hootenanny style. Platoons of extraordinarily obnoxious laymen and lay women block the aisles so that you can’t reach the priest to receive the Eucharist from consecrated hands.
Now, nobody would think that God “fumes,” but I hardly think that He is pleased with this sort of disrespect.
I prayed a Rosary for the intention of finding a priest last week. Subsequently a freeper mailed me a phone number for a priest a few hundred miles from here. That priest was gone, but the lady that answered the phone gave me the number of the priest who replaced him. This priest is a 70-year-old FSSP priest. It did me a lot of good to talk to him.
He also said that if the masses are that bad, I don’t have to go. That’s not much of a solution, as I have only been able to receive the Eucharist twice since April 2006, because the bishop and priests of this diocese are so miserly with the sacrament of absolution.
If a priest doesn't do what is necessary to bring about the changing of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, no good intention on our part will change that.
Since Jesus commanded us to "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,'" we must make an effort, to the best of our abilities, to understand our faith. And since the Eucharist is "the source and summit of the life and mission of our church," we are obligated to learn what constitutes a valid consecration.