Top Ten Questions the TRADS and the NEOS Have for Wilton Gregory and Company at the Sept 8 Meeting

[boromeo]

This is serious. The TRADS and the NEOS on Free Republic are full of good humor and grace, so I have a challenge. I would like to attempt to compile two top ten lists of discussion points, one from a TRAD and one from a NEO perspective with questions for the 'conservative' Catholic conference coming up with the Bishops (Gregory, etc.) set up by Deal Hudson. Sorry dissenters, you have to sit this one out. It would also be nice if we could arrive at a FREEREPUBLIC chat room top five list where TRADS and NEOS can prove that yes, dog-gone-it, sometimes, we can all just get along and agree. Or maybe not. Anyway, no fair crossing lines and mucking with each other's lists. Please limit your posts to 10 ideas, and send them to the group or to me privately. You have to mark clearly if you're suggestions are TRAD or NEO. All entries marked confidential will be kept confidential. Keep your suggestions compact TRADS. NEOS, points are deducted for using the word 'spirit.' Have fun!

[fatima]

Bump.

[Palladin]

I have no questions for the Bishops because the Bishops are full of $hit.

[Loyalist]

If Rome doesn't understand how things need to be done in America, why not cut Rome out of the picture and set up an independent American church?

[St.Chuck]

OK...since you don't know...ask the bishops. What's a Neo?

[Hermann the Cherusker]

1) Restoration of communion kneeling, at the communion rail, on the tongue, by a Priest or Deacon. Turn the altars back around, and put the Tabernacle back on the High Altar. We are tired of looking at Fr. Bob Smiley celebrate Mass, and wish him to start praying to God again, instead of to us.

2) Some Latin to be used again at Mass. The people to be taught enough Latin in Catechism and School to know and understand their ordinary prayers of the Mass sung in Latin (Creed, Gloria, Our Father, Sanctus, etc.).

3) Harp incessantly to the government of the city and state you reside in, and to the US government on the need for restoring the Sunday rest, closing stores all day Sunday, and recognizing Church feast days like All-Saints, Ascension, Assumption, and Immaculate Conception as civil holidays.

4) No more girl altar boys, lectorettes, and Eucharistic Ministers at Mass.

5) Take the money being spent educating inner city black Protestants in Catholic Schools and start spending it on educating inner city Hispanic (and white) Catholics currently denied a Catholic education because of financial issues. The Catholic Hispanics are apostasizing before our eyes as they migrate here.

6) Restore the Baltimore Catechism to use for children. Set up adult Catechism classes. Get people into them by requiring them for giving their children Baptism, First Communion, and Confirmation, as pre-cana is required for Church Marriages. Teach the people the meaning behind the liturgy, the treasures of the faith, and the glory of Catholic history.

7) Promote a restoration of practices like monthly confession, visits to the Blessed Sacrament, the family Rosary, pilgrimages, Corpus Christi processions (with YOU BISHOPS leading the way), and triennial visits by YOU BISHOPS to OUR PARISHES.

8) No more mixed marriages. Convert or no marriage. No Church marriage, no sacraments or Catholic education for the children until it is regularized.

9) Reform of the Annullment dispensation process. Set a goal of a tenfold reduction in ordinary process annullments in five years.

10) Excommunication of all dissenting Catholic politicians - pro-aborts, pro-divorce, pro-contraception, pro-homosexual, heretics, divorced and remarried, etc. Stand up for the Catholic faith. The laity is behind you.

Last but not least, one above the the number ten ...

11) COME OUT OF HIDING, YOU BISHOPS, HEAR CONFESSIONS AND CELEBRATE MASS EVERY DAY IN YOUR CATHEDRALS, AND GREET US ON THE WAY OUT AT THE DOOR. GET A LITTLE FLAVOR OF THE VOX POPULI. CATHOLICISM IS THE RELIGION OF "THE PEOPLE". COME AND MEET US AND GIVE US ABSOLUTION IN THE CONFESISONAL AND THE BLESSED SACRAMENT BY YOUR OWN HAND. YOU ARE OUR SHEPHERDS, BUT YOU ARE NOT BETTER THAN US.

[Romulus]

In no particular order:

1. Get serious about the mandatum in "Catholic" colleges and seminaries, and withdraw both material and moral support from dissenting orders and institutions.

2. Respond to the call of Ecclesia Dei for genuinely wide and generous access to the Traditional Latin Mass.

3. Proclaim for all to hear that no "Catholic" politician can be pro-abort, pro-euthanasia, pro-cloning, or pro [embryonic] stem cell research, whether in word or deed, without fundamentally breaking with the Church.

4. Get serious about enforcing the long-standing prohibitions against homosexuals in the priesthood. Start by cleaning out the seminaries, and let this take priority over the procedural, bureaucratic window-dressing about "child" abuse.

5. Call for an immediate moratorium on church "wreckovation", and a re-instill an appreciation for architectural practices that reflect the authentic, authentic Catholic tradition.

6. Call for a return to liturgical discipline and an immediate crackdown on unauthorised innovation.

7. Respond to the challenges of sexual disorder, marital abuses (including contraception), and ecclesial disharmony, via an integrated, prolonged, and challenging inquiry into and exposition of the Theology of the Body.

8. Take apologetics seriously, not as triumphalism or rote assertion of authority, but as evangelism -- a proclamation of authentic freedom in Christ.

9. Call for the hierarchy to devote their resources and authority to devotion to the Blessed Sacrament via eucharistic adoration.

10. Remember that ecumenism is only a dead end until Catholics understand and are fired with a zeal to proclaim the Church's unique role, identity, and mission.

[narses]

Applause! I agree.

[old and tired]

**Are you an axe murderer or something? (Kidding)**

LOL. You sound just like my kids. I'm just not comfortable confessing my sins to my priest.

[old and tired]

I also miss kneeling for communion. It seems the proper posture. At my grandson's first communion, the children all knelt at the altar rail to receive for the first time. It was so beautiful, I nearly wept.

[sinkspur]

I'm just not comfortable confessing my sins to my priest.

I usually run my sins past my wife, since most of them involve her, some way or another.

If I'm not bleeding after that, then I figure Fr. Johnson will be a piece of cake!

[tiki]

1. Do they realize the damage that has been done by changing the focus of the Mass to a psycho-social feel-good rock concert instead of what it should be ---the adoration and worship of our reason for being there-- Christ who died for us

I'll expand on your point

Do they realize that the people will feel more loved and included when they truly realize that God sent His own beloved Son and that He died for them and that He gives His Body and Blood to sustain us. This is the Truth that makes you feel special not shaking hands and saying "Peace" or holding hands through the Lord's Prayer. Jesus' Sacrifice is more than enough affirmation of how important we are.

[tiki]

I pick your list:-)

[Romulus]

Thanks. :-)

[Renatus]

Ask them to to ask Rome to establish a funeral liturgy for all. Set the music in stone much like the "Requiem" before
we got that goofy "Be not afraid" and "Amazing Grace" etc.
Bring back the "Dies Irae."

[k omalley]

"Bring back the 'Dies Irae'."

Oh no, can't do that . We will lose our reputation as the church of the warm fuzzy wuzzies.

[As you well know...]

After we vote, some pinheads try to make us wear "I voted" buttons. Seeing as how so many American Catholics desire their Church ape secular fashion, why not have the Priests hand out "I confessed" buttons and only those wearing those buttons will be allowed Communion?

When you are inside the multiple-use worship space, if you approach the sunken circle formally known as the Sanctuary to have a thrice-divorced, planned-parenthood-employed, Eucharistic Babe hand you Communion she will not be permitted to do so unless you have on your, for this month, August "I confessed button."

[ThomasMore]

** When will you remove the "gay" priests and bishops from active ministry? Research has indicated that the priesthood in the U.S.A. is anywhere from 20% to 50% gay.  In 1961 the Vatican sent out a mandate that stated "...Advancement to religious vows and ordination should be barred to those who are afflicted with evil tendencies to homosexuality or pederasty, since for them the common life and the priestly ministry would constitute serious dangers."  The implementation of this is long overdue.  When will we, the People of God, see action from our Shepherds?

** When will you enforce "Ex Corde Ecclesiae" and remove the heretics from Catholic Higher Education or remove their Catholic identity? The first essential element of Catholic identity that you state in "Ex Corde Ecclesiae, The Application to the United States" as a group of bishops, is a "commitment to be faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church". Yet the rest of the document is full of churchspeak and is SO ambiguous as to let all the heterodox off the hook in the name of being pastoral as seen under your section VI ..."Continuing Dialogue Among University Representatives and Church Authorities"  Dialog ended a long time ago.  When are you shepherds going to put some meaningful and result driven action into your declaration?

** When will the "Oath Against Modernism" be re-instituted? To be sworn to by all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries...and I would add Bishops.

** Politicians that call themselves Catholic yet denigrate the Church's perennial teachings on subjects such as abortion and homosexuality and contraception are a scandal to the faith and cause for many to lose their souls.  Their persistence in their errors is a mark of heresy.  When will the bishops get some intestinal fortitude to publicly excommunicate these men and women who are already, "latae sententiae", excommunicated? I've been taught that excommunication is the last ditch, charitable effort to bring a lost soul back into the fold. When a local Catholic politician DENIGRATES the Church, as in the recent case of Patrick Kennedy; when will the local ordinary take him to TASK: REALLY to TASK?!  Chastisements shouldn't be relegated only to the weak and unimportant (as in the five women who were invalidly ordained and excommunicated.  They deserved it, but they caused far less scandal and harm than the likes of the Kennedys, Jack Reed, Tom Daschle, and well, you get my drift) but moreso to the highly public figures who influence culture in many ways.

** Adult catechesis is one of the most neglected ministries in the Catholic Church in America.  And when it is available, often times it is heterodox teaching full of modernist errors.  We as a Church, abandoned sound moral teaching when our semninaries embraced William of Occam and casuistry as well as contemporary philosophy which underlies the errors of proportionalism and consequentialism. When are the bishops going to reign in the insanity that exists in both the formation of our deacons, priests and bishops as well as our adult lay population and bring back sound doctrine (Thomism) and theology to our seminaries and pulpits?

** When will the bishops end the liturgical non-sense in their diocese? Many Catholics are being lead astray by heterodox clergy who think they can re-invent the Liturgy every time they celebrate it. One bishop I know made unannounced visits to parishes to critique the liturgy being offered to the laity.  All too often we are hearing of liturgical abuses to the point of invalid Eucharists.  When will the Bishops enforce the very easy mandate of "DO THE RED AND READ THE BLACK. PERIOD!"

** Many parishes deny the faithful Eucharistic Adoration.  When will REAL CATHOLIC norms be brought back into parish life?

** When will heterodoxy in the clergy be dealt with SEVERELY? There are wolves amongst the sheep and many souls have been lead astray.

** When will the Bishops regulate liturgical music.  The OCP is out of control.  Theologically heretical music is interlaced into the music issues.  Why hasn't there been ANY control over SACRED MUSIC.

** SACRED ART has been abandoned to "pop" art.  To name the new LA monstrosity a most prominent Cathedral in the Church would be laughable if it wasn't so sad.  Wreck-o-vators have been slowly destroying Catholic Architecture and replacing it with "ugly as sin" theaters.  When will the Bishops put their foot down and say NO?!

** A REFORM to Orthodoxy in doctrine and liturgy is in dire need.  Clergy sexual abuse is bad enough; but it pales in light of the theological and liturgical abuse that has plagued the Church for many many decades.  When will our bishops start protecting us from these wolves?  When will our shepherds reign in the perpetrators of error for the safety of the flock and the SALVATION OF SOULS!

[NYer]

All of your excellent questions can probably be summed up in just one.

When will you enforce the GIRM and the documents issued by the USCCB?

What will it take and how can we help?

[It's me]

why do so many known gay priests remain in parishes all over this country;

why an internationally known conservative US Cardinal recently remarked that he knew several homosexual priests who were fine pastors;

According to Fr. Benedict Groeschel this is possible. They are just celibate as they should be.

[It's me]

So, it's because of insurance reasons that there can not be Perpetual Adoration!? Now, that's laughable.

There are many churches that have Perpetual Adoration.