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| Not without prayer! |
Of course I belaboured the Bishops and the liberal majority but it was a note from a priest friend that made me take a closer look at the main impediment to the return of Mass in the Extraordinary Form.
My priest friend (PF) stated that it was all too often the Parish Priest who blocked the way, and after some head scratching I think that he is correct.
In parishes where there is a Senior Priest and an assistant priest (what we used to quaintly call 'a curate') then it goes without saying that the junior partner defers to the senior.
And most 'Senior Partners' were probably ordained in the fresh and heady times of the aftermath of Vatican II when change was the thing and babies were being chucked out along with the bath water.
Now that those young ordinands of the 70s and 80s have established themselves comfortably in the rather relaxed mode of modern Holy Mother Church, it is, perhaps, asking too much of them to revert to a Mass that they must surely feel uncertain of.
Liturgically, the EF is a world apart from the OF and to have to swallow one's pride and actually take lessons in the offering of the Mass must be a galling prospect.
Worse still to wake up on a Monday morning to find that the curate has forgotten to return the sanctuary to its OF format and that the altar is facing the 'wrong way' and that the front row of pews has been moved forward to act as communion rails.
It is quite natural for the PP to expect the curate fall in line with his own wishes and only the power of prayer (and time) will resolve the situation.
I sometimes think that we at the traditional end of HMC forget what a potent weapon we have in the Rosary and that a regular group meeting up to say the Rosary together would bring about more of a change of attitude than all the letters to the Bishop and beyond.
True or false?
Great to find you posting again Richard, and God bless you!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you're right. One day we will get our Church back from its current custodians.
Wishing to remain anonymous I just wanted to note that in a Mass that has recently been requested that it is the priest who is putting up barriers.
ReplyDeleteIt appears that it is the move forward to a new Mass format that is causing some troubles.
The technicalities of the EF must be extremely intimidating for the post-conciliar priests who have never been trained up properly in seminary.
In slightly more positive news I note that the EF Mass was requested by the largest seminary in the world, in Mexico. The request was granted and I believe that literally 300 seminarians attended the Mass.
The young priests today are made of different mettle...they are very keen to learn the EF Mass, many are doing both and the newly growing conservative association of priests is becoming well established. Very exciting.
DeleteSorry, I have to go Anon too as I cannot figure out the options (technipeasant).
Whoop! Whoop! The Linen is hanging out on the Hedgerow, so glad and happy to hear the Voice again.
ReplyDeleteFilled a 'certain Mug' with tea for my gardener, son of a parishioner ( to get on topic of course) and, knowing he was a lapsed Catholic even thou walking distance from my mums Catholic Church I know he doesn't attend, he asked about where we go and then he said he would like to go and, btw, so would his mum!!!!! She only happens to be the Sacristan and Eucharistic Minister of our local n.o. church. Could be a coup coming up.
Hoorah!Good to hear your voice.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you again!
ReplyDeleteDon M says
ReplyDeleteThere is another road block to the TLM that is very difficult to discuss.
I suspect many Bishops and Priests know, that when a priest begins to embrace the Traditional Latin Mass ; the priest begins to struggle with a conflict in his conscience.
The Priest begins to see {with clarity} what is lacking or harmful in the Novus Ordo.
The Bishops do not want this conflict to grow, ther-go they block the TLM.
When one considers the ramifications of blocking such a Holy Act {TLM}in order not to confuse the Priesthood or the faithful...To try and stop a conflict of conscience, for the priesthood .
The best definition is diabolical confusion.
Relieved and gladdened to see you back.
ReplyDeleteIt is so nice to see your return, you have been missed.
ReplyDeleteI do hope that your treatment is successful.
Glad you're back, and I agree
ReplyDeleteGreat to see you back Richard. Keep on recovering, stay well, God Bless.
ReplyDeleteGood to see you back Richard. Keep tabs on the Reverend James!
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
Why should it be up to the assistant priest to return the altar and things to their NO shape? What happened to lay help? I know many parishes where the Altar and Rosary ladies help out with the altar and the men do the heavy lifting.
ReplyDeleteAs to the pp's being the obstacle, in my years of NO/EF watching, this has not been the case, but the bishops objecting.
I only know of one pp who objected and he is not American or English by birth, and used to happy-clappy Masses.
If the laity want the TLM, they have to work for it.
None of the Latin Rite bishops at Vatican II were educated in the theology of their time, were ordained priests from the 1920s or so, had never celebrated any Mass but the Tridentine Mass. When those 2,800 bishops returned to their dioceses they understood that Sacrosanctum Concilium provided them with the mandate to disgard Latin as the language of theological education, the language of the Church and the language of the liturgy. They commit it to history.
ReplyDeleteWhat those bishops implemented in their dioceses is the true, authentic hermeneutic of Vatican II.
Latin as the universal language of the Church is finished and the Latin Mass is a relic. It is all over bar the moans of those who are persuaded that the status and shape of the Church became fixed at the death of Pius XII and that God can only communicate revelation in Latin.
If the Latin Mass is over then can you explain why England has gone from having 6 Latin Mass centres to 187 Latin Mass Centres in only seven years?
DeleteIf the radical liturgical implementation you describe were the "true authentic hermenuitic" of Vatican II, as you contend, that would show definitively per se, that the Vatican Council II was not in accordance with the Sacred Tradition, the Sacred Deposit of the Faith.
DeleteRead what I said, Lynda. The authentic criterion for understanding or interpreting the meaning of the Council is what the Council Fathers did with the documents they created. Many, if not most of these documents, represent theological compromise. Look at Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes and you will see the stresses and conflicts between at least two substantially different ecclesiologies and models of Church governance. It is what those 2,800 bishops chose to implement in their dioceses that determines what is the correct interpretative tool.
DeleteRelevant to the present discussion, those bishops decided that the age of Latin and the Tridentine Mass had served its purpose and that the Vernacular was now demanded. This was confirmed by Pope Paul VI.
The Tridentine Mass was only restored as a free available option to priests by Benedict XVI because he wrongly believed that it might attract the Lunar Right of the SSPX back into the fold. That has not worked and never will.
Francis has no time for Benedict's attempt at re-Latinisation. It's time is over and the last minute attempts at spin from the Ultra Trads to describe the Tridentine hybrid form as the 'Immemorial Mass of the Ages' are delusional at best, fabricators at worst.
@ Cyprian
DeleteThis is quite simply not true.
Pope Paul VI was dismayed when he saw what Card. Bugnini and 'helpers' had come up with as the New Mass! He described it as “a many-sided inconvenience” and “nuisance”, which would cause “the feeling of annoyance”, “regret” and “bewilderment”. With these words, one can hardly think he saw this Mass capable of "raising the mind and heart to God" I would think!
30 years after the Council Cardinal Ratzinger wrote: “I am convinced that the crisis in the Church that we are experiencing today is to a large extent due to the disintegration of the liturgy.” He referred to the Novus Ordo Mass as “a fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product”. This was long before his Motus Propio SP, which was solely because he knew the value of the Traditional Latin Mass - that Fr. Faber called "the most beautiful thing this side of Heaven". It had nothing to do with using it as a tool to bring the members of the SSPX back into the fold.
The sublimely beautiful and holy TLM is returning thanks to the growing number who are (re)discovering its splendour. Those who refuse to believe this are ones who are "delusional".
Kathleen
Vat II did not give bishops a mandate to disgard Latin cf Sacrosanctum Concilium 36.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, never considered the Rosary to be 'a potent weapon'. I'm sure it was never meant to be..
ReplyDeleteSue.
You are joking, I presume! The Rosary has always been one of the most powerful prayer weapons against evil and for the defence of good.
DeleteAnonymous, Satan hates the Rosary, which is a strong protection against him. The Rosary is not a weapon like a giant bomber, but perhaps like the swords of St. Michael and St. George.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Mac, you're right of course. A reasoned argument is so much more potent than a knee-jerk reaction.
DeleteSue
Vat II can now be seen, with the perspective of 60 years, to have been the occasion for one of the great disasters in the history of the Church.
ReplyDeleteThe bishops during the Council were out-manoeuvred by the liberal/Relativist factions so warned about by St Pius X, and afterwards were simply swept away by the current secularist thinking of the time.
Sacrosanctum Consilium in no way authorised the destruction of the Catholic Mass of the Western Catholic Church. It did not justify the Pauline Mass, and certainly not, the myriad unauthorised and implicitly heretical versions we have to cope with today.
There are two things we must all keep in mind about Vatican II.
a) It defined no dogma at all and the doctrinal position before and after the Council was the same.
b) It did not in any way abrogate the Mass defined by St Pius V. It could not. It did not have the authority to do so. Quo Primum stands today as before as the document defining the principle Mass of the Western Catholic Church, and the language of that Mass, and indeed of the Catholic Church, continues to be Latin.
It is true that the present Holy Father is unlikely to take this view. We are in the midst of a Relativist Reformation. Remember it was some 50 years (and 3/4 popes?) before the Protestant Reformation was recognised as such and a hundred years before the term was widely used.
The earliest acknowledgement of the present Reformation I have found, apart from Wiltgen that is, was Muggeridge about 1980 I think. Since then Davies, Mosebach, Kwasniewsky, many others and of course Bishops Athanasius Schneider drawn attention to the startlingly obvious, so widely denied by all and sundry.
The Church is effectively split at present. Whether this becomes formal remains to be seen. The coming Symposium on the Family, which effectively will consider permission for those in a state of Mortal Sin to receive Holy Communion, might well be decisive.
But the Church will survive, although as Benedict XVI said, in a very much smaller form for some time.
None so relativist than yourself 'Jacobi' as you camouflage yourself under the mantle of 'orthodoxy' and 'orthopraxis' while all the time being a sedevacantist and on its extreme Lunar Right. The catalogue of authorities is indication enough that your reading and appeal to genuine scholarship are shallow. effete and neurotic.
DeleteThe paper trail of your moaning, bleating, whining narrowness is traceable all over blogdom. So too your 'markers' on every 'telephone pole' you trot past
Still shifting deck-chairs on the Titanic, Cyprian?
DeleteWell said Jacobi! Thank you for your faithfulness to the One True Catholic Church - the Bride of Christ - still vibrantly alive (never doubt it) as She rises like the Phoenix from the ashes of the destruction wrought by traitors within her gates, in the 50 years since Vatican II.
Kathleen
Another live one from the same stable as Jacobi the Heterodox and there is no known cure for it beyond the biological solution!
DeleteThat reply Cyprian (and in fact everything that you have written on this blog insulting and disparaging people) shows very clearly that you are no Christian - let alone a Catholic!
DeleteI shall pray for your conversion.
Kathleen
Different names but same demented dastardly diatribe. Blessed Michael, the Archangel, defend us . . .
DeleteI think that it was disastrous was clear from the beginning.
ReplyDeleteYou would say that wouldn't you Lynda but you wouldn't be able to explain why you said it. You're reading from the SSPX script. Lefebvre died outside the Church. Most of them will and those who follow them too.
DeleteThink for yourself.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteFrom "Cyprian":
ReplyDeleteyou camouflage yourself under the mantle of 'orthodoxy' and 'orthopraxis' while all the time being a sedevacantist and on its extreme Lunar Right. The catalogue of authorities is indication enough that your reading and appeal to genuine scholarship are shallow. effete and neurotic. The paper trail of your moaning, bleating, whining narrowness is traceable all over blogdom. So too your 'markers' on every 'telephone pole' you trot past."
The above passage is defamation pure and simple. If I were Jacobi, I would be taking legal action against "Cyprian" for the above libels, which are devoid of a scrap of evidence. British laws against calumny are very severe; Jacobi would certainly win such legal action; and the result would probably be the closing down of this entire blog.
When, when, when will the average Catholic perceive the obvious truth that unlimited free speech has never been, is not now, and never will be, part of Catholicism? Those who enable the dissemination of filth must share in the culpability of those who are originally responsible for it. The least Mr Collins can do is ban Cyprian forthwith.
"Cyrprian", "Cosmas" and "David" seem to speak in the one spitefully-defamatory voice.
ReplyDeleteLynda showing her true colors in the fruit loop Mundabor:
Delete"I simply don’t have the words for this evil targeting of the good. What’s worse is that no cardinals or bishops are shouting out in condemnation. What a sick Church. Lord have mercy! Reparation!"