The two Masses and a stark comparison

If you are a devotee of the new Mass, you may not wish to watch this video. It leaves you in no doubt as to which form of the Mass is the most profound, most reverent and most focused on the Holy Trinity.

There are, however, some OF Masses that have a far greater aura of sanctity than the example shown.
Where Latin is used and the Mass celebrated ad orientem.

But, even so, there is a stark difference between the two.

We should not forget that many priests 'have' to celebrate Mass in the Ordinary Form.

Immense pressure would be brought to bear on them if they attempted to introduce the Mass of all Time, the Latin Mass.

O gentle Jesus, call Thy priests back to Thee. 

Lay open their hearts to hear Thy call, and answer Thy call with fervour and a burning love to lead Thy flocks to Thee. Amen.



Something missing?

 

A ten minute film that encapsulates what we have lost.... "architecturally bankrupt" a nice turn of phrase......

 

 

Plan A is the Catholic Church - Plan B....there is no Plan B!

The old apologetics case that states: "If you have twenty faiths all proclaiming the truth but all different in their doctrines then either only one can be right or they all can be wrong. There is no other conclusion" is one that I can readily identify with.

But it does mean that, Protestants, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and fur lined ocean going Seventh Day Adventists and others are on the wrong bus.
There is not a Plan B, only the Catholic Church.

I will leave on one side the concept of people of other faiths gaining an eternal reward; I am sure it does occur, through the redemptive qualities of Holy Mother Church but, if it was me, I would not leave anything to chance; I would want to be within the fold of 'the one true Church'.

In many ways, Plan A was much simpler before Vatican II (and I use the Council in this instance as a punctuation mark in the history of the Church in the twentieth century).

We were all Catholics in 1961. We all believed the same truths, it was all so very black and white. We did not say things like: "My conscience guides me not the Church" or, "I think the Pope is wrong in this instance".

We were all Catholics then, sturdy and well rounded

Photo: Art & Interiors


We all abstained from meat on Fridays and, in England and Wales at any rate, we were recognised as being Catholics because our stance placed us at odds with secular life. We did not join in with office gossip and blue film groups; we declined social invitations on a Sunday in order that we could attend Holy Mass, we asked for time off from work on Holy Days of Obligation and we would consult our parish priest before attending a wedding or funeral in a non Catholic church.

We were not saints; we drank too much, fought occasionally and frequently lived the high life but always within certain parameters.

But....we all had the imprint of Catholicism writ large on our foreheads.

Of course, this is an idealistic picture. It cannot surely all have been like this? But, that is what I remember, I am sure that there are holes to be picked in my recollections but, by and large, I am not very far from the truth.

Photo: Zazzle

Yesterday I bumped into an old colleague, also a Catholic but very much in the modernist wing of the faith. He told me of several Catholic acquaintances who had 'left the Church' to become Protestants. He did not rise to my lighthearted crack "But I thought you were already Protestant" but the meeting did leave me with a feeling that all could not be right with the faith when people migrate so readily. It was a small sample, I agree, but it would have been unheard of 50 years ago.

What has changed? What has altered the thought processes of so many good people? Why have so many gone in search of a non existent Plan B?

There are many answers and many reasons for the change but the overriding one has to be a disregard for authority.
Discipline has become a dirty word - but that is what we had pre Vatican II.

Of course, opponents of traditional Catholicism will call it oppression and blind obedience but it was not. We had our route map and, by and large we stuck with it.

Admittedly, there was the syndrome of young people who fell away from the faith at the age of 18 or 20 but part of the pattern was that they returned stronger and more self assured within a very few years.

What I am really saying, in a roundabout sort of way, is that a collective spirit was good then but does not exist now.

We have fragmented and the major element has departed far from the truths, far from what the Holy Father wishes.

It is vital that a knowledge of Catholic life before the 1960s is maintained. That spirit that we had then was far from perfect but it was much, much better than the one we have today.

Those left wing liberal and modernist Catholics who continue to disregard the example and guidance of the Holy Father are just as bad as those few within the SSPX who veer too far to the nutty right.

The reform of the reform is under way albeit slowly but it will be truly be a great day when we can all say once more: "I am a Catholic" without any prefixes whatsoever.

Time for Novus Ordo Catholics to step up to the mark?

Fr Z's brick by brick philosophy is all well and good except that, in Great Britain it would appear as if the bricks are still in the ground in the form of clay - sticky, claggy and unmalleable, at present at any rate.

First, make your bricks - a slow
 process in England & Wales

Abuses continue to abound in Churches but, apparently, only in those where the Ordinary Form of Mass is celebrated. We don't do liturgical shenanigans in the Extraordinary Form.
The rather wonderful thing is that a large proportion (I estimate) of OF Catholics are as opposed and dismayed by such goings on as the Traditionals.
The trouble is, they labour under a heavy yoke of what they falsely believe is 'obedience'. For 'obedience' read 'do nothing'. Obedience in my book relates to conformity with Rome not to Father Jimmy and his hippy, hippy shake dance at the Offertory.

It seems to me that our OF Catholic brethren turn a blind eye to abuses in the fond hope that they will suddenly disappear. Instead, the bizarre antics become a routine until such time as accepted as the norm.
Back in the 1980s at the height of insurrection in Northern Ireland I had to travel to Belfast on business. My Protestant agent looked after me well showing me the sights (Falls and Shankill Roads) and we had a good pub meal somewhere. He insisted that the bombings and shootings were isolated occurrences that only happened in specific, contained areas and that the troubles did not affect the ordinary man in the street. He was telling me this as we left the pub and walked to his car whereupon he dropped on all fours to check to see if someone had planted a bomb under the vehicle. The bizarre had become so everyday that he had forgotten what was normal.

So what other abuses besides prancing around the sanctuary are there that OF Catholics might make a stand against?
Here are a few for starters, I am sure others might like to add to the list:-

1. Talking before and after Mass
2. Not genuflecting
3. Guitars, flutes and whistles used against the Holy Father's 
    wishes
4. Kiss of peace where, instead of a manly handshake, people
    embrace, hug and generally behave in a silly fashion
5. Eucharistic Ministers of Holy Communion who give blessings to non
    Catholics presenting themselves at the altar rails
6. EMHCs who undertake the priestly duties of purification of vessels
7. Liturgy of the Word ceremonies
8. Turning the church into a coffee bar after Mass
9. Queuing for Holy Communion while chewing gum
10. Inappropriate dress
11. Ad libs from the priest during Mass
12. Extraneous bits of prayer and ritual added to the Mass
13. Use of a card table as an altar
14. Clapping at any time

I could go on.....but I shan't.
I am very grateful to some good friends with whom we had coffee yesterday. They step up to the mark, they inspired this post.

Repent for the end is nigh!

The end, that is, of the Novus Ordo Mass (at least according to The Catholic Knight).

Picture: The Catholic Knight

Many have been speculating on how the EF and OF Masses are beginning to "merge" together, not, I am sure to become one, but to remain separate with a much more solid liturgical base.

We should remember that the EF Mass is not immune from change; even Archbishop Lefebre believed that a certain amount of 'progression' was required, it was just that other things got in the way.

Read The Catholic Knight post HERE

This is the committee that drafted the Novus Ordo Mass



Pope Paul VI and part of the team that 'designed' the new Mass

I make no apology for bringing this subject up again, it impacts on everything that is taking place in the Church today. The above picture comes from the Last Papist Standing  blog. It shows Pope Paul VI with most of the team that hammered out the wording and actions of the Novus Ordo..........and.....with the exception of Mgr Bugnini, they were all Protestant ministers. I shall repeat that because it is such an extraordinary fact...they were ALL Protestant Ministers! Others missing from the picture include a Rabbi and a number of liberal Catholic priests (the 'periti') who schemed and lobbied to achieve liturgical change, often without the knowledge of the Holy Father. Bugnini was finally exiled in disgrace to Iran amid rumours of his membership of a Masonic lodge but not before the damage was done and the new Mass format laid in place.

I do not know how many priests and nuns in Britain left their vocations in the wake of the changes but it ran into thousands. Many prospective vocations drifted away like snow on a hot shovel. The whole episode, for many years, was shambolic, I remember it well. Our Canon stood in the porch after Mass loudly proclaiming in a hectoring voice:
"It's exactly the same Mass you know". Except that it wasn't the same Mass you know.
On holiday in Dulverton, Somerset we went to Mass and a funny old choir sang the Tridentine Latin Mass in English to psalm like chants.
Guitars and washboards (Google the word skiffle if that puzzles you) made their way on to the sanctuaries and good, plainchant choirs were dismissed, not just the odd one here and there but hundreds of them (most parishes had a choir in those days). Kumbaya became the choral currency and Byrd and Purcell disappeared, despite the strictures placed on maintaining both Latin and Plainchant by Vatican II.

Father Oswald Baker of Downham Market took up cudgels and his parishioners (hundreds of them) backed him. They took over the church and maintained the status quo until the time came that 'they' got him out and he spent the rest of his days a sad, Sede Vacantist.
In France, Latin Mass loving Catholics took over and occupied (in good French fashion) St Nicolas du Chardonnay church and there they remain to this day as part of the Society of St Pius X.
Some of the great Catholic academics and Heads of Divinity in seminaries ran off with a woman in tow (this happened increasingly during the 60s and 70s - why remain celibate when the reasons for doing so have been flushed down the drain?) Some of them emigrated and ended up in Canada and Australia, holding folk Masses supported by their 'wives' and administering sliced bread and bottles of plonk in earthenware mugs to a sundry assortment of the unwashed. Others took to drink.
Purges began in the seminaries for anyone that had a hint of the 'Roman' about them. They were outed and then ousted. Most left but some more determined souls gritted their teeth and found a traditional base somewhere that enabled them to achieve their desire.
Father JohnTrigilio in the States writes of his seminary experience:

"If you wore a cassock you were a 'reactionary daughter of Trent'. If you wore women's underwear they'd make you seminarian of the year!

And the laity? They voted with their feet and left the faith by the hundred thousand.  And most of the new wave of priests left within 5 years of being ordained and became probation officers and social workers, that was what they had been trained for.

We moved parishes along with a new job and were shocked (coming from a parish where the Novus Ordo was celebrated very reverently) to find 20 plus children swarming over the priest as he sat down to receive the Offertory gifts from a medley of what appeared to be emigres from the local Socialist Worker group.
Holy Communion was a scrum with lines of folk jostling for position and a team of Extraordinary Ministers distributing the Sacrament. We objected and asked the Canon to administer directly to those who wished to receive from the priest. he refused and, the following week read a statement from the pulpit to the effect that no one was to refuse Communion from an EM, in fact, it was our duty to receive from an EM!
The chaos continued until, thoroughly fed up with the liturgical capers and nonsensical direction from the pulpit (where Ghandi was held up as being the perfect role model for us to follow and we were told that we HAD to vote Labour), we snapped and went "dry" - alone and publicly branded as heretics by the curate who, within 6 months had run off with a mother of four.

That's a very brief snapshot of what it was like when the changes were implemented; and it all reverts back to the deprivation and banning of the Latin Mass - why do they hate it so?
Now, I believe that the Ordinary Form of Mass is valid and I believe that those who wish to attend this Mass are at perfect liberty to do so. But I would like those same rights applied to those of us who want the Extraordinary Form of Mass - parity, equality, fraternity!

Given the appalling state of today's Catholic Church in Britain I think the Bishops need to start making rapid moves in the right direction.
There is a definite mood of non acceptance of more crass liberalism by the orthodox
faithful. They have had enough, read the press, Andrew Brown, Ed West, Damian Thompson and others - it is now unacceptable to brand decent, God fearing people with the label of "Lefevbrist",  "Right wing," "Fundamentalist". We are all Catholics; we have been over tolerant for over 40 years, enough is enough! Some of us want the Tridentine Latin Mass, is that bad? Is that evil? Is that fundamentalist? We also like the doctrinal truths that go with the Extraordinary Form, moral clarity - doctrinal certainty. Who would deny us that?
Apparently, the Bishops would.