Good one, BlackElk! I second the motion! Make sure the tickets are one-way!
Posted on 09/23/2005 7:06:45 AM PDT by ninenot
Just got the jump for this week's America. It's a special edition for the Synod on the Eucharist, which begins next Sunday, 2 October.
The top piece comes from Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, chairman of the BCL -- the USCCB's Committee on the Liturgy. And, guess what, he makes some good and solvent points.
[The Instrumentum Laboris for the Synod] fails to recognize real issues facing the church in the contemporary world.
The document speaks, for example, of “shadows in the celebration of the Eucharist,” citing “a neglect by the celebrant and the ministers to use proper liturgical vestments and participants’ lack of befitting dress for Mass,” “an inadequate catechesis for communion in the hand,” “the scant architectural and artistic quality of sacred buildings and sacred vessels” (No. 33) and “the use of the communion plate...the keeping of the tabernacle key in a secure place” (No. 39). The list goes on.
These are hardly the burning issues of the day. While they are supposedly examples of “a weakened sense of the sacred in the Sacrament,” they could all be addressed by enforcing the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the authoritative document on the correct celebration of the Eucharist. There is no need for 250 bishops from all parts of the world to incur great financial cost and loss of time from their local churches to ponder these insufficiencies.
Trautman does NOT like the Vatican telling him that his BCL is insufficient.
*But, it was fine for the AmBishops to hold a gab-fest at The Breakers on Palm Beach, FL
Ping
Just out of curiosity, what does Trautman consider "real issues facing the church in the contemporary world"? The phrase "contemporary world" makes me ask this with some trepidation.
The expenditure of money is not important. If all 250 bishops who are going to meet could include Trautman, Imesch, Mahony, Law, Flores, McCarrick, Wilton Gregory, Skylstad, Weakland, Adamec, Daneels, Kaspar and only others of their ilk (heavy emphasis on AmChurch types), it would be worth arranging transportation to the planet Pluto for the conference regardless of available accommodations there. Fr. McBrien could be sent along as an advisor whether he likes it or not. If the Episcopalians wish, we could also make room for Vicki Gene Robinson and his significant other as advisors on futuretrends (in their collective imagination).
*chuckle* - [growth to hysterical laugh]
Okay, seriously....
If all it took was the enforcement of the present GIRM then what have the American bishops been doing for the last 40 years? It precisely because they have deliberately not enforced the instruction, and indeed have at times encouraged disobedience to it, that this upcoming synod is so important. It is also important that we finally acknowledge that the present Novus Ordo went beyond the mandate of Vatican II and make the correctionsthat are so badly needed.
I completely disagree. The Eucharist is the source and summit of the Catholic faith and it is imperative to restore correct belief and reverential liturgical practice with regard to it. Lex orandi, lex credendi, as they say...
I really don't care what Bishop Trautman thinks. Considering he would never enforce the GIRM, better a synod led by Benedict to determine and enforce a reverent liturgy.
Also my first thought.
My second thought: Is he related to Joe Biden?
"These are hardly the burning issues of the day."
Now for a contrary opinion:
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, which at times has even come to be conceived of etsi Deus non daretur: in that it is a matter of indifference whether or not God exists and whether or not He speaks to us and hears us. But when the community of faith, the world-wide unity of the Church and her history, and the mystery of the living Christ are no longer visible in the liturgy, where else, then, is the Church to become visible in her spiritual essence? Then the community is celebrating only itself, an activity that is utterly fruitless. And, because the ecclesial community cannot have its origin from itself but emerges as a unity only from the Lord, through faith, such circumstances will inexorably result in a disintegration into sectarian parties of all kinds - partisan opposition within a Church tearing herself apart.
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger
Milestones: Memoirs 1927-1977 (SF, CA: Ignatius), p. 149.
Pretty much sums all that is most deeply wrong with the liturgy "as she is spoke" -- so to speak!
How disingenuous! If these are not the burning issues of the day then why has he and his friends spent so much time on them? If these are not important issues then he should resign his position as chairman of the Bishops' Committee on the Liturgy. If these are not important issues then lift all the restrictions on the old Mass and let each priest celebrate it as he sees fit. Do not tell me that these issues are not important then insist that I must celebrate the Mass only as you wish it be celebrated.
From the little I found on google about Trautmann, the issues he finds most worthy of attention are inclusive language and advancing the careers of friends involved in the scandal.
Maybe his comment is a kind of verbal sleight of hand, classic misdirection: "No, no, I'm not doing anything -- but look over there!"
Trautman will stamp his little feet and hiss, prissily, while mincing to the airplane.
Then he'll come back here, jump into his hot tub, and find a million ways to ignore the documents coming from Rome.
That's the MO of the TwitterBoyzzz--has been for a long, long time. Joey B. raised it to an art form with his glamorification of USCC and the attendant bureaucracy.
What does this blogger mean by not burning issues? Some of those are instructive of the state of Catechesis. And obedience.
Ohh, you nailed it!!!
This concept occurs at all levels, including the parish level, of the Church. Many a Pastor or liturgista has made the same type of statements throughout the 80's and 90's as they proceeded to implement their heterodox agendae.
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