Images that I like

No silly capering or prancing, no guitars or liturgical dancing......these images spell out for me the essence of the Catholic faith, the traditional Catholic faith.
Thanks to Christine at Laudem Gloriae

Fish on Friday......

Catholics? Can't stand 'em!

...fish is now back on the Friday menu, thanks to the Bishops of England and Wales - but how many Catholics realise that it is a Church requirement that we must also engage in a fish dance on Fridays also?

A brief training clip follows:-

Irish Catholics show how to treat an improperly dressed priest

To those of you who have never read Brian Moore's 1972 novella called 'Catholics' or seen the DVD, I say hard luck! If you are a liberal church chattering Ordinary Catholic, you will hate it but, if you are a magisterium abiding Extraordinary, you will love it, despite the fact that the ending is far from satisfactory, despite an enigmatic twist.

It tells the story of an island community of Irish monks who maintain the EF Mass and who have gathered an ever increasing following which leads to a significant amount of dyspepsia in Rome. Trevor Howard is the Abbot and a very young Martin Sheen is the 'Vaticanista' Jesuit sent out to troubleshoot.

This is the scene where Sheen tries to board the boat sent by the Abbot, to collect him.
I think we should treat all priests who dress in jeans and sweaters the same way!

I am not a Traditional Catholic anymore!

Labels are so very tiresome aren't they? But they are a requirement in order for us to commence the process of understanding one another. Hence, Mr, Mrs and Miss are all at the primary end of the process.
In the Catholic Church of my youth we were all Catholics, no left wingers, no right ones, no charismatics (Deo Gratias) - we were just plain Catholics.

Now we are a little divided by the tags that range from modernist through to Taliban Catholic (not nice). There is nothing intentionally offensive about them per se, it is just a convenient way of establishing who you are speaking to and where the conversation is likely to lead you.

Now, I am certain that left wing, modernist, liberal Catholics are just as fed up with those tags as I am with right wing, orthodox, traditional ones so, I have experienced a eureka moment and come up with a solution.

It's so obvious that we have all ignored it over the past three or four years. The answer has been staring us in the face and, what is more, it comes with a Papal push behind it. Intrigued?
Let me bring you into the picture before the chest pains commence and hyper-ventilation sets in.....we have the Ordinary Form of Mass attended, by and large, by the ahem...left wingers and the Extraordinary Form attended by the err.... right winger lobby.
Therefore, we are either Ordinary Catholics or Extraordinary Catholics....simple!

Do you see an Extraordinary
 Catholic when you look in
the mirror?

I have quickly grown rather fond of the 'Extraordinary Catholic' title and frequently look in the mirror, Mr Bean style, admiring my Extraordinariness.

Of course, what those poor Ordinary Cs are going to do is another matter and, please, please do not comment and say that you attend both forms of Mass as that well and truly scuppers my scenario!

The knock on the door - pray that it's a double glazing salesman!

Every Sunday afternoon when I hear a knock on the door it sends a shiver down my spine. Am I about to be confronted with two followers of the Jehovah's Witnesses sect? Will I respond in a Christian manner and also convey to them that they are in gross error? (a difficult double act to achieve I find). Will I lose my cool and ask them to leave?
The trouble is, I just do not know the answer. You see, one part of me admires people who are strong enough in their faith to go out and evangelise on the doorstep. The other half despises the fact that they are not converting by example as Catholics do, or are supposed to do. They jab at my conscience and then it's very easy to send them packing ungraciously.

I do try to be as open and forthright with them as possible. My normal response is along the lines of: "Sorry but we are traditional Catholics and very happy with our position, thank you." Of course, that is a bit like holding a red raw fillet steak under a hungry Rottweiler's nose. They immediately come back with: "As Catholics you don't read the bible then?" To which my response is: "But we do, we read it every Sunday at least and it forms part of our liturgy". By then I may be getting a little fired up, much depends whether the JWs are a couple of meek old ladies or two blue suited horn-rimmed spectacled cocky males. I may then ask them if the Jehovah's Witnesses is a Christian faith. To which they nod vigorously in assent. Then I state that they must then recognise the divinity of Jesus Christ. Now we are on rocky ground and they generally start looking at their watches and admiring the roses before making their fond farewells.

It is always wisest to open the door to JWs in case they make alternative approaches

I am not being triumphalist about this; I try very hard to offer them the easy route to the front gate but, if they don't take it they must accept that it is legitimate to question their beliefs.
But it still leaves me a little queasy. I wish I had the rhetoric power of Vincent McNabb OP or Columba Ryan OP.
Maybe the abrupt approach is best. Any ideas? - Christian ones that is?

The Catholic Mass? - It could never happen said Fr Keegan

This is another extract from that prophetic novella by Brian Moore. Published in 1972 it was made into a television play a year or two later. Fr Keegan, a great Carmelite priest, was instructing my wife in the faith at the time and this book caused something of a stir among Catholics because it foretold a Church that had no time for the hermeneutic of continuity - for the link between tradition and modern day. It was, said Fr Keegan: "Not going to happen".

Sadly, it did happen. Here is a great piece of prose from the book:-

"The Mass! The Mass in Latin, the priest with his back turned to the congregation because both he and the congregation faced the altar where God was. Offering up the daily sacrifice of the Mass to God. Changing bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus Christ the way Jesus told His disciples to do it at the Last Supper.
"This is My Body and this is My Blood. Do ye this in commemoration of Me"
God sent His Son to redeem us. His Son came down into the world and was crucified for our sins and the Mass is the commemoration of that crucifixion, of that sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ for our sins. It is priest and people praying to God, assisting in a miracle whereby Jesus Christ again comes down among us, body and blood in the form of the bread and the wine there on the altar. And the Mass was said in Latin because Latin was the language of the Church and the Church was one and universal and a Catholic could go into any church in the world, here or in Timbuktu, or in China, and hear the same Mass, the only Mass there was, the Latin Mass. And if the Mass was in Latin and if the people did not speak Latin, that was part of the mystery of it, for the Mass was not talking to your neighbour, it was talking to God. Almighty God! And we did it that way for nearly two thousand years and, in all that time, the church was a place to be quiet in, and respectful, it was a hushed place because God was there, God on the altar, in the tabernacle in the form of a wafer of bread and a chalice of wine. It was God's house, where, every day, the daily miracle took place. God coming down among us. A mystery. Just as this new Mass isn't a mystery......"

Available from Amazon

The Mass is only a symbolic act - is that what we believe today?

"What is the Mass to you?"

(Kinsella answers:) "I suppose the Mass to me, as to most Catholics in the world today, is a symbolic act. I do not believe that the bread and wine is changed into the body and blood of Christ, except in a purely symbolic manner. Therefore, I do not, in the old sense, think of God as actually being present, there in the tabernacle......"

"Isn't that remarkable," the Abbot said, "And yet you seem to be what I would call a very dedicated young man".

"In what way is it remarkable, Father Abbot? It's the standard belief, in this day and age."

"Or lack of belief," the Abbot said, "I think I was born before my time. A man doesn't have to have such a big dose of faith anymore, does he?"

Kinsella smiled. "Perhaps not." He had been about to add that today's best thinking saw the disappearance of the Church building as a place of worship in favor of a more generalized community concept, a group gathered in a meeting to celebrate God-in-others. But decided that, perhaps, the Abbot was not ready for that step.

"Yes," the Abbot said. "I see now why the old Mass is now non grata.
And why you're here to tell us to cease and desist"

Extract from Catholics by Brian Moore