Please keep your elbows off the table.
Instead of this:
Posted on 08/13/2008 9:45:56 AM PDT by Pyro7480
...Like it or not, discourse among a great many Traditionalists is filled with anger and contempt for Catholics who do not share their... interest in traditional forms of piety.
So while I've never seen a Clown Mass, I have encountered lots of angry Trads who have compared the Paul VI rite to a Black Mass, made clear that "Novus Ordo types" are second class Catholics... and generally made their claims to be the Guardians of True Catholicism so repellent that I wouldn't touch the Faith with a barge pole if they were the True Apostles of it they claim to be. And that experience is not just mine....
In much the same way that I think Muslims need to stop whining about how people perceive Islam and focus instead on why so many people have such similar perceptions, so too I think not a few Traditionalist Catholics should focus more energy on changing whatever it is in their sub-sector of the Church that leaves so many of us with such a bad taste in our mouths.
When the outsider's principal experience of Traditionalism is of repeated and frequent encounters with mean people who are perpetually angry... he is not going to feel any obligation or interest whatsoever in "understanding the things we care about." Telling outsiders to Traditionalism that they need to overlook their experience and stop talking about what they have actually seen and heard will be about as successful as Muslim attempts to force people to not notice the less-than-lovely face that the Religion of Peace shows the world.
Is clinging to anger more important to Traditionalists than actually winning hearts and minds to their cause? If so, then their agenda is doomed and they have paradoxically abandoned the worship of God in the name of liturgical purity.
(Excerpt) Read more at insidecatholic.com ...
Please keep your elbows off the table.
Instead of this:
Now we have a Pope Benedict XVI who has given his full endorsement and approval to reinstating our 1962 Latin liturgy throughout the world. Guess what? Many more Catholics are now much more happy!
Deo Gratias!
Be careful what you promise. I may actually be out there in the next year or two.
Our parish is wonderfully orthodox (the parish newsletter just published a piece about why you shouldn't hold hands during the Our Father - while cautioning people to be charitable to visitors!) and our music is extraordinary.
Our music director has a doctorate in organ performance from Juilliard, and he can play anything. And does. Example: when I heard the postlude at the Papal Mass at St. Patrick's, it sounded like a French 20th c. composer to me but I couldn't place it. I asked our music director, but he hadn't heard the end of the service. So I E-mailed the music director at St. Patrick's (take the bull by the horns! it's surprising how often it works!) and got an almost immediate reply that it was "Tu Es Petrus" by the 20th c. French organ composer Henri Mulet. Passed the word to our music director at Wednesday night choir practice, he of course knew who Mulet was and gave us a capsule biography. And guess what the postlude was on Sunday? Yep, he just knocked it out with 2 days' rehearsal, wasn't even breathing hard . . . . and it's tough - give a listen here.
We sing Gregorian chant, Renaissance and medieval polyphony (with special attention to the English Renaissance composers like Byrd, Tallis, Farrant, etc.), and the good moderns.
I was worried about leaving the Episcopalian music scene -- they may be heretics but their musical taste is impeccable and they take their church music very seriously. But I need not have worried - Our Lady and St. Cecilia looked after us!
Dern, I was just in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago.
...and hold greater resentment for being deprived of the faith.
They say whether you're going to Heaven or Hell, you have to change planes in Atlanta.
It does have the same basic structure . .. .
I’ll take you to mass! All of you! Seriously!
Look at all the folded arms and irreverent behavior all around .. . and it looks to me like a rock band up there in the back. !!!!!???????!!!!!!!
I guess High Church Episcopalians are likely to have a LOT of trouble with sloppy, irreverent celebration. I sure do.
Anglican Use Rite at O.L. of the Atonement, San Antonio TX. If there were an Anglican Use service here, I'd be a regular visitor.
Comparing them to Muslims is shameful.
&&&
And so telling of his attitude.
The priest doesn’t merely ‘preside’ he is the representative of Christ. He faces away from the congregation and prays to God, not to the congregants.
&&&
Thank you. Thank you. That element is, for me, the most irksome among so many irritating practices.
First, the traditionalists, while growing steadily in numbers, are still a fairly small contingent among Catholics overall. They've had, in most cases, to fight with their bishops for everything that they've gotten, even the crumbs that they often have to settle for. Many, many local ordinaries have never been "generous," as the Indult urged, in supplying venues, priests, and permissions for other Sacraments to be given in the older Rite. This can lead to a certain pugnacious projection of appearance on the part of traditionalists. I don't say that that's a good thing; I am just saying that that is how human nature tends to work. Would that we were all saints bearing patiently with trials and adversity, but such is not the case. Such is often not the case among the mainstream, either, in their dealings with us. "Elitism" and smarmy condescension certainly cuts both ways!
Second, one needs to consider that, in the days of the Indult, when there was usually just one venue per diocese (among the ones granting the Indult at all, of course), the TLM at Saint So-and-So's might often attract some of the more..."colorful"... types in the diocese. This is only natural. At all times through Church history, there have always been a few unstable people in most any parish. Some of them have always manifested their instability via excessive pietism, rigorism, etc. Well, when there is only "one game in town" for people afflicted with some form of hyperpietism or whatever, reflected in a tenacious attachment to the TLM, they will naturally congregate in the one allowed venue out of proportion to the majority of more squared-away traditionalists. Here in Boston, we have always had a few folks a can or two short of a six-pack in the Traddie community. Sometimes, they say and do embarrassing things, and get press attention or diocesan attention way out of proportion to their actual numbers. At their peak, I would say the constituted no more than 15% of the Indult congregation. They're a much smaller proportion now. Certainly, there are many more than that among the sedes, but I'm not talking about them. I presume Mark Shea isn't either.
The vast majority of Traddies in the current Motu Proprio setup are quite stable, normal people, willing to get along perfectly calmly with their Novus Ordo fellow Catholics, and they aren't anywhere near the angry, ugly people Shea seems to imply are everywhere. And, again, there are more than a few Catholics in Novus Ordo parishes who are every bit as angry and ugly. They are not representative of the whole NO culture, either. Shea needs to get a better handle on both general human nature and how small populations within a larger culture largely ignorant of them, centered on (usually) one venue, tend to concentrate people with an "attitude."
As for all of the foregoing, now that the Motu Proprio is beginning to bear good fruit, and more venues are opening up for the TLM with a better "attitude" on the part of many bishops and priests (the result of a "talking-to" from Rome, perhaps, but a better, more open attitude, nonetheless), and a more mainstreaming capability is reached as overall numbers grow, we will see much of this "anger" disappear. In a couple more years, those Traddies who, up to now, have been disaffected over real and imagined slights will have either gone off the reservation to the sedes, or will have their concerns (finally) addressed and settle-in to life as the MP envisions it for them. A little respect and understanding from the majority can do wonders in fostering a little benignity among those who feel embattled!
Thanks!
I usually like Mark Shea, but this is unimpressive.
There is a direct connection between bad liturgy and bad theology.
In winking at bad liturgy and mocking those who deride it, he is, in effect, promoting contracepting Christianity, womynprysts, and the homosexual agenda within the Church. No, not directly, but he is promoting that which enabled all of those movements.
Maybe, just maybe, Mark Shea is revealing (in this article) some of his true inner feelings and beliefs...
Take a look at the links at the site of the original article:
Crisis Magazine
Shut down operations after publishing several articles viciously attacking traditional Catholics. Now they are "internet only" because they can't get enough subscribers to pay for printed copies.
"The Morley Institute"
Discredited foundation.
"Deal Hudson"
Discredited head of discredited foundation. Wants to preach to Catholics about voting for Republicans, but has trouble keeping his hands off his under-age students.
"Why I am a Catholic Libertarian" by Thomas Woods
Answer: Because I reject the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum and other Catholic teachings which prove they are incompatible.
"Why I am a Catholic Democrat" by Mark Strickerz
Never heard of this guy before, but the title tells you all you need to know.
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