Saint Vincent de Paul Parish in Baldwinville and silence before Mass

La Salette Journey ^ | April 8, 2014 | Paul Melanson

[cleghornboy]

Those who are bent on making their own unauthorized changes to the liturgy or who otherwise promote or tolerate various liturgical abuses often fail to appreciate how such an endeavor can constitute grave sin. I know this because some have accused me of making a mountain out of a molehill for my opposition to various liturgical abuses. Dr. Germain Grisez explains: "There are many reasons why it is wrong for priests intentionally to make unauthorized liturgical changes. Two are especially important. First, such changes sometimes embody or imply deviations from Catholic faith; even when they do not, they often omit (see here for example) or obscure something of the liturgy's expression of faith. Thus, the Church teaches: 'The law of prayer is the law of faith: the Church believes as she prays. Liturgy is a constitutive element of the holy and living Tradition' (cf. DV 8). For this reason no sacramental rite may be modified or manipulated at the will of the minister or the community. Even the supreme authority in the Church may not change the liturgy arbitrarily, but only in the obedience of faith and with religious respect for the mystery of the liturgy.' (CCC, 1124-1125).

Dr. Grisez continues, "..in the Eucharist, a priest acts in the person of Christ, who joins humankind to the Father; but in making unauthorized changes, a priest obscures Jesus' action, focuses attention on himself, and becomes an obstacle to the relationship between God and His People that priests are ordained to serve...Priests are agents ordained to deliver God's gifts to His People. If they deliver some substitute for what Jesus has entrusted to them, they interpose themselves between - and defraud - both God and His People...

There are five additional reasons why unauthorized changes should not be made in the liturgy..

[Mach9]

And folks wonder about the nostalgia for the Tridentine Mass. The simple fact is that even the aura of that Mass was different. It wasn’t “social.” It was time we owed to God, not to our “community.”

But another issue: what about the intention-prayers prepared by the parish council (or whomever)? Can’t they, too, be misleading or confusing or egregiously political? This past Sunday, we were to answer “Lord, hear us” to a request for “respect for God’s creation and greater attention to the distribution of the world’s natural resources.” I wasn’t sure whether God was supposed to re-resource the world or implant in various civilizations’ brains the technological knowledge of how to USE the resources at hand, or both. I WAS sure that the Rat party was alive and well in the parish.