Posted on 12/21/2014 9:34:41 AM PST by marshmallow
At noon I have to be at the local Catholic school—let’s call it St. Dismas—to train altar servers. I will arrive a few minutes early, and by 12:05 most of the kids will have trickled in. We are in Southern California, so most of the boys at St. Dismas wear short pants year-round. Students are required to attend one Mass per month with the school, but it has never occurred to anyone, not their parents, not the pastor, not the teachers, and certainly not the students, that they should wear pants to Mass. The girls wear skirts that in 1966 would have been described as “micro-minis.” When I told the boys’ parents that I expected them to wear their uniform pants to Mass when they become servers, the school principal—a genial thirty-something man who insists on the rigorous use of the title “Dr.” but often wears sweatpants and flip-flops to work—cornered me outside his office for a talk. He warned me that I might get some pushback from parents on the pants requirement. “We are only a medium-Catholic school,” he informed me. “We’re not really that Catholic.”
When we walk as a group into the nave (the church itself is almost barren of Catholic art or iconography), none of the kids bow or genuflect before the tabernacle. They are unaware that this is something they should do. They don’t know, because none of these children attend Mass on Sunday. When they do become altar servers, they will be dropped off moments before Mass begins and picked up by an idling SUV before the organ has finished the recessional. From time to time, the parents of altar servers can be seen standing outside the church, hunched over a smart phone, killing time while they wait for Mass to finish.
At this......
(Excerpt) Read more at firstthings.com ...
Time to change parishes.
Indeed.
We can all just go back to wearing robes...
There is something rollingstonemagazineesque about this particular First Things article, and it pains me to write that, both because I admire First Things and because much of what is described in the article is accurate about many parishes, meaning efforts to reform our churches will be hindered if it turns out this particular article is apocryphal.
The fruits of the Mahoney era!
Ah, the traditions of man.
We have 2 Daily Masses, 7:00 am and 8:30 am, with I'd say 50-60 attending total, if you include the kids. (It's a small school, K-8: 10 or fewer kids in each class.)
Our parochial school kids go to the 8:30 Mass 2 and usually 3 times a week:
Most of them who are Catholic will also come to Sunday Mass, because on Monday at the school Fr. Pete will ask them questions about it. (Some of the students, like the majority of the teachers, are not Catholic.)
However,despite my "We're better" report, thing at my parish are still awfully slack. We do have 4 hours of Confession a week (Wednesday and Saturday) but you never see more than 10-12 in a line, and never kids. So that would be 24 a week, in a parish of 1000+
We have a Perpetual Adoration Chapel, with adorers covering about 150 of the 168 hours a week. We a daily Rosary after the 8:30 Mass. We have TLM twice a month.
Our converts and our TLM'ers do better, I must say: a small, knowledgeable, committed, ardent cadre.
If persecution or hardship came, I've no idea who many slackers would turn ardent, how many would fall away as ash.
(Or how many would notice there was persecution? They don't do anything to get persecuted for.)
Look who kids and their tree hugging parents admire - Miley, Tayvon and those calling for police deaths. If the POTUS’s daughters can get the “but it’s what everyone else wears” pass on their micro-minis that are shorter than their sweaters, then why not the kids at your church be allowed to dress like hoochie mamas? Respect and responsibility has long flown out the window. Rules are meant to be broken. In hussein’s reign, it’s all about MEEEEE! and doing what I want when I want. There’s your hope and change.
Did you expect any different?
you sound awfully naive.
Right you are. I’m surprised he lasted there as long as he did.
I’m from southern california, that parish sounds like my own parish. Gay or effeminate priests, everything during the mass is just an opportunity to tell a joke and make the congregation laugh, especially Vatican directives.The latest Vatican directive was that the Sign of Peace should be short and no one should leave their pew, etc. Well that was turned into a big laugh. No part of the mass is off limits for a joke every so often. There is a Catholic school here, but very few altar boys and girls are trained. The ranks are stuffed with the elderly retired.
I dont know the situation behind that, but obviously the pastor would be the one to point a finger at. My parish is run by the Santa Barbara order of Franciscans who were ground zero in child molestations one and two decades and more ago. Seems like a majority of their priests lack an orthodox foundation, they do what they want to do.
Effeminate or gay priests are the result of the seminaries being taken over by gay clergy in the 70s, 80s and their screening out of orthodox heterosexual males and more nonsense. I say effeminate because you dont know which ones were active homosexuals decades ago in the priesthoood or whether they still are. Around here we’ve heard and read the stories of many active gay priests. Traveling around Southern Calif. , we have alot of these.
In fact, when I was in High School 70’s, a friend/coworker student at Loyola Marymount Univeristy he was soon to graduate, I should say a new friend,a friend/coworker through work, tried hitting on me , he was gay and said he was soon going to enter the seminary. He was actively gay.
Obviously in the 70’s he saw that as no hindrance. Further there are books on the decrepit state of many seminaries in the 70’s/80’s and beyond infested with homosexuals: “Goodbye Good Men” by Michael Rose.
I might say that I had a problem with one of these “gay” priests in the confessional. He was my confessor, he had a bald head and wore eye makeup, Egyptian style, effeminate also, but he was very orthodox in the confessional. Years ago,I had sexual sins...pornography, which was a problem(Im strictly heterosexual, but this was not explicitly confessed), so this effeminate priest after I had been in there alot for the same problem...pornography, tried to hand me some reading material/pamphlet, but he handed it to me in a way so he could get a look see at me. After that, he would make veiled comments to me around the parish when we’d intersect a few times, indicating he knew me and/or my problem. Obviously this priest was still in the game. Stopped using him as my confessor, and over time noticed other people stopped using him also, preferring to line up with the other priests.
Additionally, whether a priest is orthodox or not,no matter the parish, homilies are terrible, they are just baby food and never rise above that level. Most of the time I just tune the homilies out, read the bulletin, start or finish a rosary.
Sound like you should call the parish Saint Dismal.
It seems you are being very P.C., objecting to “queen” written by an anonymous author about an anonymous parish and anonymous priest.
and how orthodox are you?
I go back into your postings and you are advocating sterilization(a mortal sin), while opposing abortion.
If I wrote something like that promoting in writing a mortal sin, sterilization( or even divorce), I would search my conscious as to how to seperate myself from the thinking of the culture and go to confession.
Them and their parents are the sexless generation.
I am not supposed to judge either but the Bible does not tell me that I can not vomit when I see a man or boy with their bare legs sticking out all over the place.
More than once in a café I have had to change seats because a man facing me at another table had short loose shorts.
Women look lop sided or something in mini skirts, some look good in shorts and some don`t, but there are places where they should not be worn.
You are misunderstanding me on every point. I have no objection — on “p.c.” or any other ground — to the term “queen”. Rather, I am positing that any priest flamboyant enough to be called a “queen” is almost certainly also breaking his vow of celibacy. (The article asserts that the pastor is a “queen” who probably is faithful to his vows.)
As for your suggestion that I separate myself from the thinking of the culture: the thinking of our culture, including the institutional Catholic Church in the USA, is that taxpayers should not complain as they are forced to subsidize indolent (mostly) fornicators as they bear child after child, all supported for (for life) by the taxpayer. (I assure you the people I am referring to are not eschewing sterilization for moral reasons; they simply know which side their bread is buttered on.) I long ago separated myself from that thinking.
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3239468/posts#9
“One of these two people should be (voluntarily) sterilized.”
Frankly speaking, you should confess this.
Adios
At my local church, some Eucharist ministers will step forward to serve communion in t-shirts, short and sandals, frequently the t-shirt will have an innocuous logo on the back, sometimes its a logo that is highly inappropriate for church.
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