Posted on 10/13/2006 4:59:56 PM PDT by NYer
"If you give them a Catholic Holy Mass, all the smells and bells. May Crownings, devotions, a sprinkling of Latin, they will come."
You know, I think at least in part, you are right. I well remember the High Masses at our local Catholic parish as a kid; long lines of altarboys and choir members, magnificent chanting and clouds of incense. There was no question but that the congregation had joined with the Cherubim and Seraphim, six winged and many eyed, in worshipping Almighty God! Those Liturgies were wonderful and so much like our Divine Liturgy of +John Chrysostomos.
Just a word to the wise, however; don't get too big.
Many Years, Rod. Welcome!
Well that explains it. That and the diet. I think it's the Loukemades, plus Retsina and Ouzo.
The problem was the lack of catechesis or, rather, liberal Christianity in the place of Catholicism. It was not until My children got into college that I woke to the fact that they knew NOTHING about the teachings of the Church. In my inattention I failed to notice they were being turned into Episcopalians.
"That and the diet. I think it's the Loukemades, plus Retsina and Ouzo."
Just the Ouzo. God, what vile stuff!
I used to really like it. Now I can't have licorice...
"The problem was the lack of catechesis or, rather, liberal Christianity in the place of Catholicism. It was not until My children got into college that I woke to the fact that they knew NOTHING about the teachings of the Church. In my inattention I failed to notice they were being turned into Episcopalians."
No doubt that's part of it, but I do believe there is more to it. Even well catechised Roman Catholics, say of my advanced years, know little or nothing of Church history or of the theology behind the teachings of the Roman Church. Even with them when I mention the Fathers, I get a blank stare. Just my opinion, but I suspect this may have to do with an old "pay, pray and obey" mentality which prevailed in the Western Church. The laity was never taught that it was their job to keep an eye on the hierarchy and to ferret out and expose heresy and heterodoxy among the priests and their superiors. Now of course that wasn't the way things worked in the Latin Church so to expect such behavior is unfair, I'll admit. I hate to use this term, but it seems to me that the Latin system prevented and prevents the People of God from "taking ownership" of the Faith and that much of the trouble the Latin Church now may be experiencing stems from this mentality. Isn't it interesting that the same problems haven't cropped up in the other particular churches in communion with Rome!
Both. But part of the problem was the POSITIVE content of what they did learn in religious education, and I must admit I was confued myself. I did not realize that so many priests and religious had lost the faith. I attribute the scandals to the number of pretenders in the Church.
I should have read my comments more carefully. Most of her hostility about RCC is that "you guys aren't the first anyway.... you left us.... you twisted tradition." That sort of thing.
As a reader of history, and a "fan" of John Henry Newman and of the historian Christopher Dawson , I have always taken a long view of the Church. However, it has taken me a long to sort out what has happened to the Church since VII, to separate the sheep from the goats. I now understand the Reformation better, since what has happened since 1965 is another reformation, which like the first was characterized by a rebellion of the lower clergy. I don't know if you have read Jacques Maritain's Peasant of the Garonne, Which was published just at the end of the Council and which forecast all the bad things that have happened since. Maritain had been an idol of the liberals, but this they wrote off as the confusion of a garrolous old man, when what they hated was that he was spot on. It is a prophesy. I bought it, skimmed through it, and more or less discounted what he said. The most striking phase is "geneflection to the world." This is what so many priests did. They abandoned their mission; the ones who stayed too often were like Hans Kueng or , worst, Father Drinan. Eventually I got to see what Dostroyevski so mistrusted the Jesuits. They want a worldly kingdom of heaven, like the Muslims.
"The most striking phase is "geneflection to the world.""
I have often argued this very point with a much loved cousin who is a Jesuit (and, I fear, something of a heretic). The Church is in the world, not of the world. Its role is to conform the world to the Holy Spirit, to a path towards theosis, not make itself relevant to whatever the Zeitgeist, surely a demon, says the world is today. From my vantage point, it appears that this drive to conform The Church to the world is precisely the result of Vatican II.
That isn't the "Latin system," so much as it is a peculiar mentality that has grown up in the West, and is especially bad in this country.
There were/are plenty of priests and religious who nurtured that "religion is something best left to the priests and sisters" mentality, because it made their jobs easier. (If nobody asks tough questions, they don't have to answer tough questions, and can then move on to important things, like golf.)
The absolute antithesis to that is some of the lay movements, like Opus Dei and others, which preach a objective, real lay vocation to holiness and orthodoxy.
As far as there being a lack of community in large parishes, I think the lack of authentic community is not the cause of the problems, but the symptom of them. The problems arise from the utter banality of the liturgy in some of those parishes, and from the extreme clericalism of some of the priests in those parishes. (See above.)
And it's also true that catechesis absolutely stank in the years between 1965 and 1985. The people who were the victims of that bad catechesis are now the young and middle-aged adults who should be the heart of the community in those parishes. Many of them are gone; they're either inactive Catholics or have left the Church completely.
But even those who have stayed often don't have the understanding of their faith necessarily to become the kind of lay defenders of orthodoxy you have in mind.
Poor Dreher, I fear, didn't have the gumption to stand up to the clerics. My model is Father Neuhaus who in another time and place would have become a bishop. I am too old to be overawed by bishops or politicians.
"That isn't the "Latin system," so much as it is a peculiar mentality that has grown up in the West, and is especially bad in this country."
Do you suppose this is a result of the immigrant history of the Catholic Church in America? Just yesterday a priest observed to me that even within the past 100 years the parish priest was sort of the connection between the immigrants in the parish and the protestant authorities around them. Often he was the best educated and likely spoke English. On the other hand, this is the same experience of Orthodoxy here and the mentality about which we are speaking didn't develop there and of course it wouldn;t explain the problems of Catholicism in the rest of the First World.
Besides it was good to find out that K is not man enough to chug Ouzo. Now I have something to hold over his head.
To see some real men, check out the link on my FR page called Georgian Legend. You just know these men would not let a bit of Ouzo stop them.
I don't know for sure, but the Catholic Church in this country was very strongly influenced by the Irish, so it may be partly an Irish thing. Of course, the Irish had to keep their faith alive under intense persecution for a couple of centuries, and that may have led to an over-deferential tendency to "trust Father to do/know it".
"Besides it was good to find out that K is not man enough to chug Ouzo. Now I have something to hold over his head."
In my village we give the Ouzo to babies and grandmothers. Real men drink Tsipuro!
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