The Twenty Mysteries of the Rosary?

Seattle Catholic ^ | November 8, 2002 | John Vennari

[Salvation]

Bump to the top for more Catholic discussion. BTW, I agree with you!

[saradippity]

I read this article this morning and laughed. I laughed because at one time I attended a conference of Latin Mass devotees and John Vennari was one of the speakers. At that conference,he or one of the other of the five presenters suggested that the way things were going in the Church,it might soon be forced to go underground.

The answer to this imminent retreat to the catacombs was to remember the power of the rosary according to the speaker. He felt that Catholics could withstand a long siege by resorting to the recitation of the Rosary and asking Mary to pray for us until priests became available again.

I think I actually began,my now daily Rosary,as a response to that information. This article proves to me,beyond a reasonable doubt,that many of these "ultratrads", are obsessed with destroying the Primacy of Peter and Peter's Successor,himself. There is no depth to which they will not stoop to attack John Paul II. Here he is advocating for placing more emphasis on the Rosary,seeking to enrich and add to our meditations and contemplations about Christ and they use it as yet one more oppurtunity to point out how he errs. They are both very arrogant and misled at once.

[Dajjal]

The primary thing accomplished by the release of this encyclical was that in the blink of an eye, Rosarium Virginis Mariae rendered all previous writings on the Rosary OBSOLETE. From now on, any Catholic desiring literature on the Rosary will be steered toward some modern, phenomenological feel-good books solely because they "have all the mysteries," unlike pre-Vatican II books!

I find it outrageous that Pope John Paul II believes that unless he saves the day by tinkering with Our Lady's Rosary, the Rosary will fail!

Otherwise there is a risk that the Rosary would not only fail to produce the intended spiritual effects, but even that the beads, with which it is usually said, could come to be regarded as some kind of amulet or magic object. (RVM #28)

Unbelievable!

One motive behind this innovation is to undermine Our Lady of Fatima, who requested that Catholics say one third of the Rosary daily. Now that means 6.66 decades!

In RVM, the pope asks Catholics to stop saying the "Fatima Prayer" at the end of each decade! He does not name it specifically, but in #35 he desires that the "current practice" of ending each decade with a prayer of "custom" would "better" be replaced with some to-be-announced prayers specific to each mystery!

I have trouble believing that RVM was really written by John Paul II, whose reputation is of having a strong Marian devotion, especially for Our Lady of Fatima! In #38 the author of RVM believes that the "current practice" is to say the Glorious Mysteries on Sunday throughout the entire year! How could the pope have made such a mistake?

The association of Our Lady's Psalter with David's Psalter is intrinsic, and should not be tampered with.

#38 is also strange when the pope says that only contemplative religious and bed-ridden laypersons have the spare time to recite the full Rosary. I know many laypersons who have made the commitment to set aside the time throughout the day to recite all 15 decades. Roughly it means setting aside about 60 minutes or so from their busy schedules. But now, with the number of beads boosted to 200, this starts to approach the need for a layperson to set aside something more like an hour and a half from his schedule, and will thus discourage daily recitation of the full Rosary by laypersons!

[Dajjal]

Until October 2002, the Rosary was the only major Catholic institution to escape renovation. The Mass was changed to accommodate Vatican II's new ecumenical religion, we now have a "new theology," a "new evangelization," a new catechism, a new Code of Canon Law, Religious Orders liberalized their Rules and Constitutions, seminaries "loosened up," church interiors were gutted, the Breviary was revolutionized, Pope John Paul II changed the traditional Way of the Cross in 1991, adding a fifteenth Station. --from the rest of the article (click on the "source").

Yes, in case you didn't know, the Stations of the Cross were "updated" and "improved" by Pope John Paul II in 1991. No doubt, they were on the verge of failing, also.

"When one lives by novelty, there will always have to be a new novelty."
- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

It's just tampering for the sake of tampering. And here again, the primary effect is to render all previous writings about the Stations of the Cross obsolete and unusable.

[Dajjal]

The article in full.

[ultima ratio]

Enjoy? Do you measure all things by personal enjoyment? Is that what the faith has come to?

[ultima ratio]

Interesting how you always miss the point. It's not about you and it's not about John Paul II. It's about destroying the ancient Catholic faith.

[Dajjal]

It would have been quite simple for the Pope to have proposed a new "Chaplet of Meditations on the Public Ministry of Our Lord," without disturbing "Our Lady's Psalter" of 150 beads.

[ultima ratio]

Yes, but the end-game is not devotion, it is the eventual destruction of the entirety of our Catholic heritage. This was only another step in a chain of steps and is merely preparing the ground for more drastic tamperings. Remember how England was protestantized in the sixteenth century. It was step by step and very gradual. A hundred years later people woke up and found they were no longer Catholic but belonged wholly to the Protestant world. John Paul II follows the same course. Little by little he is protestantizing Catholics.

[ultima ratio]

I too have my doubts about John Paul II's mental capacity in recent years and whether he is in control. I attended an indoor audience with my family about six years ago--and at that time he looked frail and very weak and hardly capable of reading his prepared text, let alone have the kind of energy it takes to write prolificly and think deeply--in addition to performing all his other duties.

[Desdemona]

I don't see what the big deal regarding the changes is. And yes they fill a huge gaping hole regarding service to others, which is a huge part of CHrist's message and the gospel. And frankly, we need to hear more about how we should be serving others. That's supposed to be a huge part of our lives.

I'm not going to argue with the significance of the 150 to the psalms, but as we all now have access to a bible, is it needed in that form? And there's nothing that says we can't say it in that form. This is all fluid prayer, it's not written in stone anywhere. And nowhere do I remember reading that we were supposed to drop the Fatima Prayer. As a matter of fact, I had never heard it before I started going to the Rosary before the 5 on Saturday. Now, I even add the Memorarae (sp?) at the end. That's not written anywhere. This is all personal devotion choice.

Part of the great beauty of the church is that it can change. This is not Canon Law. It wasn't a matter of changing a charter or rewriting a gospel, it's prayer. And if we're talking in terms of mystery, the Luminous are more mysterious than some of the Sorrowful as precious as those are.

SOme people get their underwear twisted over some of the weirdest stuff. Come on, would the Blessed Mother really reject this idea? Somehow I doubt it.

[Salvation]

**Part of the great beauty of the church is that it can change.**

Thank goodness it is a church made up of living human beings and CAN change!!!

[Dajjal]

If the Blessed Mother had thought that there was a "huge gaping hole" in her Rosary, you'd think she would have mentioned it to St Dominic or the children of Fatima or somebody!

[LadyDoc]

The rosary is a man made prayer, originally it was 150 our father prayers in place of the 150 psalms.

There are many many other "rosaries". There are several scriptural rosaries, which have bible verses before each prayer. There is the Pro Life Rosary, which meditates on various levels of Christ's life and we meditate on how this is connected with threats against life today. The Divine Mercy chaplet is said on rosary beads. The Franciscan rosary has seven decades. The Angel rosary had seven groups of three. The Seven sorrows chaplet has seven groups of seven. I often pray the rosary of peace, where you pray for peace at various levels: self, family, town, country, world.

The rosary is not a dogma, nor even an important part of Catholicism. It is a "pious practice".

You don't like it? Fine.

Since you can read and write, try saying the Divine Office instead. You can buy it on Ebay for less than $100, and the shortened version for about $10.

And stop complaining about trivia. Prayer is lifting your heart and mind to God. Without this part of prayer, the rosary is just repeating useless words.

[ultima ratio]

The Mass is trivia? The Rosary is only the latest devotion to be sabotaged by this papacy. The whole of Catholic culture and devotional life, as well as the dogmas and theologies of the ancient faith are under attack. This is merely another small step in the overall dismantling of the Catholic Church.

[ultima ratio]

Change is fine if it is evolution, not revolution. The change in the rosary is significant only because it is still another break with tradition. This is a papacy, remember, that has rejected the Church's own past in favor of every conceivable novelty. The result has been apostasies at the highest levels and systemic corruption.