Posted on 07/07/2002 8:22:53 PM PDT by Lady In Blue
That's a good analogy. The mystique was gone; in fact, as someone posted last week, it was replaced by a team of lay people. Vatican II cannot be undone; Vatican III must be held at bay for now.
We still recall the glory of the church at that time. Once our generation passes away, who will take up the gauntlet?
Tonight, our parish priests will "christen" the newly expanded parking lot with ... kickball! They want to commune with the parishioners. Back in my childhood, the growth of a community would have been celebrated with Mass and Benediction, followed by a Eucharistic Procession.
I never thought I would ever pine for the return of those days. Despite no air conditioning in the church, incense wafting skyward, bells ringing, and stomachs grumbling, large crowds always turned out for mass.
My heart aches for the priests who for half the Mass sit behind the altar with nothing to do. Two weeks ago, a priest on Long Island even sat down for the distribution of Communion, leaving the whole thing (illicitly, I might add) to the "extraordinary" ministers.
Its like these single women nowadays getting sperm donations--who don't want love, intimacy, committment, who just want the seed implanted and to handle the rest themselves.
Men are so devalued in our society. In an era where fathers are regarded almost as a necessary vice, is it any wonder that Fathers are suffering the same problem?
Give the priests back their Mass. That is their JOB, that is their VOCATION, and if you take that away from them, you have emasculated them beyond belief. Not that that wasn't the plan all along.
Small world, I lived in Douglaston for a while but don't recall the name of the church on Route 25A.
Prior to that, I attended Sacred Heart Academy in Hempstead. We lived in Oceanside then. Two of my former classmates "took the challenge" of post Vatican II and joined the Sisters of St. Joseph in Brentwood. One of them is now principal of our former alma mater!
That needs repeating ... from a woman! It began in the sixties and it simply hasn't stopped. Worse still, is the attitude in school towards boys. The schools are packed with ADHD and ADD labeled children. Since they can't sit "quietly" in the classroom, they are referred to the school psychologist for evaluation. Once diagnosed, the boys are placed on a drug called Ritalin. Ritalin decreases blood flow to the brain, and routinely causes other gross malfunctions in the developing brain of the child. If you check the numbers, you will discover that the majority of these children are boys. It's no longer okay for a boy to be "a boy". Boys must sit down in the class and not act up. Recess? A thing of the past.
And boys grow up to become men, who "are so devalued in our society". This cycle of events has happened before in history. If you have never seen the PBS series, "I, Claudius", go rent it. You will watch the evolution, right before your eyes. It has happened in Egypt (look at Cleopatra) and Greece (don't forget Helen of Troy). Now, where are those societies today? That is the fate that awaits this country if we continue to demean and devalue our men.
That's when priests didn't mind vesting in public. They were already halfway there because they wore their cassocks and birettas in public.
True. Let's not forget 19th-century materialism, the Enlightenment, etc. Long, gradual, incremental erosion of values.
Oh, please, let's not get melodramatic. OK? Many of the proponents of the Tridentine Latin Mass (including myself) never experienced it as a child. As Raymond Arroyo said, "How can we be nostalgic when we never experienced it to begin with?" Don't forget, too, that many of the dissenting agitators of the 60's and 70's are dying off and aren't being replaced.
Given that the orthodox, traditional seminaries are creating many more priests than the heterodox, dissenting seminaries, the balance will shift and Holy Mother Church will begin to recover. As a priest friend of a FReeper said, "The Lord loves His Church a lot more than you or I, and whatever He permits will be for our good. We must fight the good fight, but we must not argue with the Lord about what He permits and why."
That's true; most of the meetings of dissident organizations seem to feature snow white hair, and I doubt that they have many members under 50.
Still, don't write off our experience. There was a really great moment in the Church when you actually could trust the clergy, when people really considered their lives in the light of eternity, when people took vows seriously, and when there was, oddly enough, a really great sense of Catholic cohesion. When you were at a dinner on a Friday and saw someone choosing the fish instead of the steak, silly as it sounds, you suddenly knew you had somebody who was on the same wavelength and would understand things the way you did.
I think that's going to have to be rebuilt virtually from scratch in many places. It's not going to be the same (and it shouldn't be) because times change and there are different needs and conditions. But those of us who were Catholics before Vatican II lived through something very special.
I think it fell apart for two reasons: one was the presence of modernists, who had been quietly digging away at the foundations for decades; and the other was, paradoxically, that we were too obedient, too trusting. We laypeople should have stood up on our hind legs and refused to go along with many of the things that happened, but we didn't feel we it was our place to complain or resist.
I think that's changed. And I think the resolute attitude of young traditionalists is evidence of this.
Thanks! You phrased that so well.
I wasn't writing off your experience. I am still amazed that Archbishop Sheen had a prime time TV show let alone that it won an Emmy Award (and Protestants and Jews watched, too)! I was reacting to NYer's comment that when his/her generation is gone there will not be anyone "to pick up the gauntlet."
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