Posted on 05/11/2009 1:53:32 PM PDT by Pyro7480
After more than a year of assisting exclusively at Extraordinary Form Masses on Sundays, a Mass I have come to love, I had two occasions last summer to revisit the Roman Rite in its Ordinary Form in a large suburban Catholic parishthe same parish on both occasions. The following are my observations.
I begin with the positive. The church operates a Catholic school. Together they form a large, sprawling physical plant. The Masses are well attended. When you walk into the church, you are greeted by holy water fonts at the entrance, a prominently displayed crucifix above the altar, candles, an identifiable Tabernacle, baptismal font, and pews with kneelers....
I proceed, next, not to the negative, but to the ambiguous. One question that keeps recurring to me is this: What about this religious rite and ritual would be recognizably Catholic to someone who didnt know what it was beforehand?...
I proceed, finally, to the negative. If nothing else identified this place and this event as recognizably Catholic to someone already familiar with contemporary American Catholicism, all doubt would be banished by the withering ugliness of the architecture, the sloppiness of dress, the sheer shabbiness of the half-improvised liturgical form, the hideous banality of hymns, the utter lack of decorum and unmistakable note of tawdry casual chumminess struck throughout the event. For better or worse, this is what the vast majority of contemporary Catholics call home....
...Throughout the Mass I find that my focus is constantly diverted....I just want to "see God." I want to witness the Sacrifice of Christ, and to receive Him. Yet in countless ways, the elements of the Mass conspire to divert my attention away from Him, and towards incidentals....
(Excerpt) Read more at pblosser.blogspot.com ...
Nobody forces you to go to an “Anglican Use” Parish and hear the words of the “Heretic” Thomas Cranmer. I guess you approve of his Martyrdom by being burned at the stake by Catholics so I suppose you could reflect on that while you listen to the “Heretic’s” words.
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You bare right, of course. I rarely attend the N.O. but have never seen it sans abuse, sometimes so bad that I truly wonder if the intent of the presiding cleric really was what the Church would have as Her intent. That said I have no doubt that the ‘new’ Mass can be said correctly, reverently and with the attendant Graces of the Sacrifice of Our Lord. How sad then that He is so abused so often. Uniting with Him in that humiliation is, at least to me, a surreal revisitation to the scourging, the mocking and the taunting of His Passion.
bare = are
What the author describes may not be the Ordinary Form of the Mass, but it most certainly is the ordinary form of the Mass.
“Were you around when we had to fast from midnight?”
:)
If I recall correctly, they had a German mother superior.
I read it. I never intend to "revisit" the novus ordo. The last time I did was to attend a wedding, and since it was a wedding I didn't have to explain my tears.
Not at my Parish. Not at my school. Which invalidates your argument.
Neither had I but I still recall the family following this practice. When did you make your First Communion?
< snicker >
Glad to hear things remain straight up at HR. You folks are one of the very few in the northwest.
How is HR handling the AB’s new “Communion in the hand because of swine-flu” edict?
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