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Is It Back to Nuns with Rulers?
Crisis Magazine ^
| March 28, 2012
| Rev. Dwight Longenecker
Posted on 03/28/2012 1:59:36 PM PDT by NYer
One of the things I have always found most delightful about the Catholic Church is nuns. Protestants have fearsome and holy women, but they dont have nuns. There is something feisty and admirable about a nun. Especially a nun with a ruler. How the whining ex Catholics love to whimper about the hatchet faced nuns who rapped their knuckles with a ruler, or how they like to mock the nuns who patrolled the school dance, thrusting a ruler between the pelvises of a close dancing boy and girl while crying in an Irish accent, Come now, you two– leave room for the Holy Spirit!
For the graying revolutionaries who lament the turn away from the all encompassing Spirit of Vatican 2, it turns out that the new translation of the Mass has become a symbol of a new spirit within the Catholic Church. That is to say, a new-old spirit, for Father Folkmass and Sister Sandals and all the felt banner brigade are squealing because they think a wave of traditionalism is sweeping the church, and it is all summed up by the horrid new translation which has no time for inclusive language and uses difficult words like begotten and consubstantial. Theyre wringing their hands and expressing concern and even deep concern that the new translation tell us that Jesus died for many and so everyone wont be automatically saved after all. Never mind that this is a direct quote from Jesus himself in the gospels, and never mind that the limited atonement (if thats what it means) is balanced by the words the priest pronounces, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
So a reader of my blog commented that the new translation made her angry because it was clearly an insult to gay people and women. Of course she didnt make any specific reference to the lines in the new translation that insult women and gay people. It was just the way she felt. For her it is clear that the church is shifting to the dark old ways of nuns with rulers, and that the new translation was a symptom of the harsh, reactionary, hierarchical, patriarchal, heterosexual, misogynistic old fashioned, pre-Vatican II church. You know the one headed up by Pope Pius XII who was Hitlers pope right?
I thought one disgruntled blog reader could easily be dismissed as a sad and angry revolutionary disappointed that the younger generation had rejected her ideals as much as she had rejected her parents. Then I discovered that her mood was a movement. A group of graying radicals have put together a website attacking the new translation, and using their dislike as a tool to dissent from just about everything in the Catholic Church that is on its way up. Their website has an admittedly clever name. Its called A Misguided Missal.
When you visit the site youll see that the protesters are part of the definite artically-challenged We are Church. They say they are protesting out of love for the church and pretend that they are concerned that the new mass is not easily pronounced or understood. In fact, their real agenda is that kind of politically correct feminism that continues to be all the rage in academia. Their real agenda is revealed because they are championing the ill fated 1998 translation of the missal.
When we take a look at the 1998 missal it becomes obvious that much of it was driven by the feminist agenda that dominated the mainstream Protestant churches throughout the 1990s. Those promoting this agenda wanted inclusive human language and expansive/inclusive God language. For those who are innocent of such newspeak, inclusive human language means we mustnt refer to the whole human race as men. Instead we must use words like Humankind or People. Expansive/inclusive God language means that whenever possible we must weed out all those offensive references to God as being masculine.
A quick look comparison of the 1973, 1998 and 2011 translations illustrates the point. So in the Invitation to Prayer in 1973 the people reply, May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of his name
The 1998 translation, on the other hand says, May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of Gods name. See? Remove the masculine pronoun for God whenever you can. When I was witnessing this in the Anglican Church in the 1990s part of the plan was also to cut out references to God as Father whenever possible. So prayers that used to begin by addressing the Heavenly Father were routinely sanitized to refer to God or Creator. The most famous of these travesties was a faux Trinitarian blessing and baptismal formula, in the name of the Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer.
So what happened and why have we been spared the triumph of the trendy feminists? Throughout the 1990s the Catholic liturgists had been working ecumenically with the Protestants to use agreed texts. In 2001 Catholics pulled out. We walked. The Vatican decided that the agreed ecumenical texts were driven by a modernist, politically correct agenda and decided to go it alone. The Misguided Missal website reports that, Presbyterian liturgist Horace Allen said that after he read the 2001 Roman document, he slumped in his chair and wept. I realized that something terrible had happened which in my own worst imaginings I had never anticipated. A trusted and beloved ecumenical partner had suddenly and effectively walked away from the table. Boo hoo.
So is it back to nuns with rulers? Is the Catholic Church turning back the clock? Are we reversing all the gains of the second Vatican Council? No. Church historian and Newman scholar, Fr Ian Ker observes that it has usually taken about fifty years for any council to really get into the bloodstream of the church. I reckon were just finding our balance and the real fruit of Vatican II is only now beginning to ripen. The new translation is a particularly sweet and juicy fruit.
Happily, we have been spared the politically correct nightmare that would have been foisted on us by our ecumenical partners with a combination of bogus scholarship, political manipulation and emotional blackmail. I, for one, am delighted that we walked away from a partnership that was disastrous. Im only sorry that when I first sampled the new translation I commented that some of the prayers seemed clunky, and the editors at Misguided Missal quoted me.
If theres any doubt, let it be on the record that I think the new translation is fantastic, and what slight problems there may be are far outweighed by its strengths. As a parish priest I have had not one complaint from the people. Indeed, their participation in the Mass is more robust and unified than it ever was with the 1973 missal. The new words are not only beautiful, but they have a rugged solidity to them which the 70s mass lacked.
I am a thorough going fan of the new translation, and I wouldnt mind a few nuns with rulers either.
TOPICS: Catholic; Religion & Culture; Worship
KEYWORDS:
1
posted on
03/28/2012 1:59:37 PM PDT
by
NYer
To: netmilsmom; thefrankbaum; Tax-chick; GregB; saradippity; Berlin_Freeper; Litany; SumProVita; ...
Ping!
2
posted on
03/28/2012 2:01:09 PM PDT
by
NYer
(He who hides in his heart the remembrance of wrongs is like a man who feeds a snake on his chest. St)
To: NYer
I remember “the Penguin” from the Blues Brothers. She totally epitomized the nuns I had in the 1950s. There was one nun I had in 5th grade who looked just like the “Penguin”. She was a Benedictine nun and she used the yardstick mostly on the boys. There was one boy in our class who wouldn’t do something he was supposed to do, so she told him to go to the principal’s office. He just sad there and wouldn’t move, so she kept smacking him on the thigh with the yardstick. He wouldn’t budge. Finally, she took his books and piled them on his desk and told him to leave the classroom. He swatted the books down all over the floor. She was furious! I don’t remember what happened after that, only I don’t remember seeing him in our class any more after that.
3
posted on
03/28/2012 2:14:44 PM PDT
by
murron
(Proud Mom of a Marine Vet)
To: NYer
I was raised with the old nuns....rulers and all. I even boarded at a military school that was run by nuns. I love them to death. Yes they were tough, but so were my parents. As kids, we learned to get around our parents, as we did with the nuns. Not much but we got away with quite a bit. At least we thought we did.
I think today we would do well to have them back.
4
posted on
03/28/2012 2:16:57 PM PDT
by
RC2
To: NYer
Many of the nuns started teaching right out of the novitiate. They were about 20 years old and were put in a classroom with 50 kids. At night they went to school earn their college degrees and learn how to be a teacher. Many years later, at a high school reunion, I discovered that one of my high school classmates was the brother of the nun who taught me in the fifth grade. He told me how old she was. She was 21 years old when she taught me and she was in her second year of teaching. She taught us how to diagram sentences.
5
posted on
03/28/2012 2:42:51 PM PDT
by
forgotten man
(forgotten man)
To: murron; RC2
Like both of you, I too was educated by the nuns back in the 50's. As RC2 notes, "they were tough". My schools were in Queens, NY during the swelling "baby boom" years. Our classes were large. IIRC, there were five 8th grade classes at graduation and each class had 50+ students. As adults, we can
now look back with 'adult eyes' and only imagine the situation these nuns had to cope with each and every day. They were given a curriculum to be completed within the span of 9 months. Among their students, there was usually the class clown, the angry and insolent student and others on the fringe who used the classroom setting to draw attention to themselves. The good sisters were there to educate the children, while also forming them in the faith.
It wasn't until my own daughter brought home a Social Studies paper "worthy of review" that I truly grasped the gift I had received by those sisters of yesteryear. While my daughter received a fabulous grade on her report, I was startled to see the teacher had not corrected her poor grammar. I still have some of my workbooks from catholic elementary school. Not only did Sister correct the content material for accuracy in History (or Social Studies), she also corrected and graded me on grammar! And, she did this for each of the 50+ students on ALL topics, not just History ... each and every night.
If anything, we were spoiled into learning by a team of well oiled educators who sacrificed what little personal time they had to ensure we learned AND mastered the material provided. How blessed are we! We learned mental math, the times tables, algebra, calculus ... all without the benefit of an electronic calculator, much less a computer. Today's youth immediately flounder when confronted with a malfunctioning computer or the absence of a color coded chart of vegetables. Yet we, as American citizens, pay far more in taxes today to educate our youth, than anyone else in the history of this nation.
I have added all those nuns to my daily prayers. May God richly reward and bless them for enduring the battle to serve Him ... with or without a ruler.
6
posted on
03/28/2012 2:45:31 PM PDT
by
NYer
(He who hides in his heart the remembrance of wrongs is like a man who feeds a snake on his chest. St)
To: forgotten man
Thank you for the post and ping. It crossed my post #6 that I think you will appreciate. When you get the chance, please read it.
7
posted on
03/28/2012 2:50:21 PM PDT
by
NYer
(He who hides in his heart the remembrance of wrongs is like a man who feeds a snake on his chest. St)
To: NYer
I’ll tell ya what... when I was a kid, going to a Lootrin school, those teachers were right on up there with the nuns.
Whoooo boy. And we’re all better off for it!
8
posted on
03/28/2012 3:02:49 PM PDT
by
Brad’s Gramma
(PRAY for this country like your life depends on it......because it DOES!)
To: NYer
I went to St. Catherines Military Academy from the 4th grade through the 6th grade. The school was divided up into 5 companies. 80 kids in each company. The dorms were controlled by one nun in each. Trust me, sister had total and complete control over 80 kids. I’m not saying we didn’t get into some mischief, but we regretted it later. In school, the nuns ran the classes. If you ever saw the old movie “The trials of Major Benson”.....that was our school. The school still exists as far as I know. I need to stop by some time. I took my kids there when they were young. The nun in the lobby wanted to know who I was and I told sister that I went to school there. She pulled these huge books out and looked up my name. Then sister looked at me and said “You did get into a little trouble didn’t you.” They still had all the records.
9
posted on
03/28/2012 3:09:35 PM PDT
by
RC2
To: forgotten man
She taught us how to diagram sentences.
yikes...nightmares.
I'll tell my kids ( 31 & 36) about diagramming a sentence and they look at me like I have 2 heads.
To: stylin19a
I’m 32, and I was awesome at diagramming sentences.
11
posted on
03/28/2012 3:47:53 PM PDT
by
Future Snake Eater
(If we had a President, he'd look like Newt.)
To: NYer
12
posted on
03/28/2012 3:57:34 PM PDT
by
TexasRepublic
(Socialism is the gospel of envy and the religion of thieves)
To: NYer
How the whining ex Catholics love to whimper about the hatchet faced nuns who rapped their knuckles with a ruler.. Being hit on the hands with a ruler was my experience years ago in parochial school. When the nun told you not to turn around or look sideways, you knew the consequences if you were caught disobeying. For what it's worth, grades 1-5 were straight "A" years for my report cards.
I recall disobedient boys being told to bend over and hold their ankles while swatted on the rear with a BOLO (piece of wood with attached rubber band and ball removed). There were, however, few disruptions in any of those classes. Children learned and teachers (nuns) taught.
My aunt was a nun and during the summertime we drove to visit her and she gave my siblings and myself toys she had confiscated during the prior school year (a form of redistribution - from my adult standpoint).
To: RC2
I was 16 and talking to a non-catholic friend before i realized that there was anything wierd at all about having been taught by nuns named “Sister Karl Joseph” or “Sister Edward” gotta love those Sisters of St. Joe
Ironically it was Sister Maria who was the real bruiser, she could lift a 6th grade boy off his feet with one hand wrapped around his shirt front
To: Lex Gabba
"I was 16 and talking to a non-catholic friend before i realized that there was anything wierd at all about having been taught by nuns named Sister Karl Joseph or Sister Edward gotta love those Sisters of St. Joe" I know a Dominican priest, Fr. Jude Eli, whose mother joined a religious order after his father died. The funny thing was that you had a family where the mother called her son father and the son called his mother sister.
15
posted on
03/28/2012 4:50:27 PM PDT
by
Natural Law
(If you love the Catholic Church raise your hands, if not raise your standards.)
To: NYer
Rev. Mother Superior never got rid of hers.
16
posted on
03/28/2012 7:01:52 PM PDT
by
Morgana
(I only come here to see what happens next. It normally does.)
To: All; NYer
17
posted on
03/28/2012 10:03:54 PM PDT
by
johngrace
(I am a 1 John 4! Christian- declared at every Sunday Mass , Divine Mercy and Rosary prayers!)
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