Posted on 01/03/2002 3:41:25 AM PST by dtom
Since when do claims of antiquity help one determine who is right?
If that is the case, the Jews of 2000 years ago had every right to point at the new followers of Jesus and tell them they were a bunch of upstarts.
Since when do claims of antiquity help one determine who is right?
If that is the case, the Jews of 2000 years ago had every right to point at the new followers of Jesus and tell them they were a bunch of upstarts.
The traditional Mass is the property of the Church. You have no right to it. While I lament the changes to the Mass as well, I recognize that any reform in the Church must come from within. We do not take our disputes outside the family of the Church- to do so is to cease to be a part of the Church.
You are taking encyclicals and interpreting them on your own- when each and every document of the Church can only be interpreted within the Body which gave birth to it. Has the Church ceased to be your mother? Will you deign to tell Her what she is, when She can still answer for herself?
On the other side someone that's never been in a committed relationship can't relate to the everyday troubles of those who are. And there are very few things in life that have any real similarity to marriage, some form of equivalency a person can use to relate. And none of them are on the standard path to becoming a priest.
On the other side someone that's never been in a committed relationship can't relate to the everyday troubles of those who are. And there are very few things in life that have any real similarity to marriage, some form of equivalency a person can use to relate. And none of them are on the standard path to becoming a priest.
Traditions are those practices which made the Roman Catholic Church immutable and unchangeable and unequivocal. No dancing in the aisles, no Communion in the hand, no guitars, no English Masses, no tables facing the congregation, no ripping out of kneelers, but instead, absolute quiet at Mass, real Confessionals, and the graceful ambience of stained glass windows, Holy Water fonts, the Blessed Sacrament displayed prominently - not hidden off in some corner of the Church, High and Low Mass accompanied by the Schola singing beautifully in Latin. And real sermons and homilies, no social-work clap-trap.You contend these things are all immutable and unchangeable? What a strange version of theology. Which Pope or Council issued a de fide declaration on no guitars, pray tell?
As you know, Popes in the past have forbid any changes to the Latin liturgy.Yes, and then the next Pope invariably changes it. And the Pope after that, and the one after that, etc., on down through the ages. It is more of a tradition to change the Mass then it is to leave it alone.
What passes for a "mass" (lower case on purpose) in the Novus Ordo churches is a travesty.What do you contend invalidates a Mass such that a lower case is justified? You are fully aware of the form and matter teachings regarding Sacraments. What is the form and what is the matter on the Mass? Check Aquinas Summa if you need help. You will see that even an illicit Mass that doesnt follow the Rite is usually valid, and thus is a Mass. While it happens, it is rare that a priest is so wacky that he entirely invalidates the Mass, making it a mass (lower case on purpose).
patent +AMDG
You tend to oversimplification. It is not merely a "claim of antiquity." It is a claim of tradition built from the time that Christ named Peter as the first head of His Church: St. Peter, the first Pope.
The Jews were God's chosen people. We hold the Old Testament in great reverence and much of our Liturgy is drawn from it. That the Jews chose not to accept Christ as the Messiah is understandable. There have been many religions that have since broken away from the Catholic Church. You make your choice and you stand by it.
I will grant you that priests will not have as much experience with the practical aspects of marriage that someone like a marriage counselor would. However, do they need to?
I would argue that a sufficient knowledge of the practical aspects of marriage combined with superior knowledge of the structure of marriage (the ideal of marriage), is more than enough to give excellent advice. If specialized advice is needed one can see a specialist. However, I still hold that it is not the experience of being married that makes one a specialist in counseling, it is experience in counseling married people- whether one is married or not.
When they extend back to a Founder who was Divine and rose from the dead to prove it.
(Sure beats a founder who was an occultist and Freemason from upstate New York, with a poor grasp of archaeology, a poorer grasp of theology, and an inability to keep his lecherous paws off the servant girls, doesn't it? Hey, you started this ...)
If that is the case, the Jews of 2000 years ago had every right to point at the new followers of Jesus and tell them they were a bunch of upstarts.
They did a lot worse than that. (St. Stephen the Protomartyr, pray for us.) Again, the only excuse for changing a Divinely-received covenant is when you receive a new Divinely-ordained covenant.
(Gold plates that nobody can produce, written in a language that nobody has ever heard of, relating events that never took place, do not qualify.)
You have not lost someone close to you, but you have experienced suffering- you know what it is like. Furthermore, you know from other sources (or could know if you wanted to) what it is like for people to lose a loved one. Take for example C.S. Lewis's book A Grief Observed. It provides unique insight in the experience of losing a loved one. Lewis allows you to have a look at what he has experienced subjectively. We can get similar insight from other, books, movies, plays etc. We can also get insight from those who we know. When your friend loses a loved one you are in some ways party to it. You grieve with them. All this points to the fact that we can have genuine insight into that which we have not experienced directly.
Well, tortured, illogical reasoning has seen a comeback. What do we do with the traditional Mass? Put it in a box and display it at the Vatican, as an artifact of the past? It certainly does belong to me and to every Catholic in this world. The Church is the people. If you don't understand this, then it is useless to even try to break through your convoluted thinking processes.
As to intrepretations of the Popes' Encyclicals - what is there about "it is forbidden to change the Liturgy of the Mass and if you do you will be considered a heretic" - that requires interpretation?
"Furthermore, by these presents [this law], in virtue of Our Apostolic authority, We grant and concede in perpetuity that, for the chanting or reading of the Mass in any church whatsoever, this Missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment, or censure, and may freely and lawfully be used. Nor are superiors, administrators, canons, chaplains, and other secular priests, or religious, of whatever title designated, obliged to celebrate the Mass otherwise than as enjoined by Us. We likewise declare and ordain that no one whosoever is forced or coerced to alter this Missal, and that this present document cannot be revoked or modified, but remain always valid and retain its full force - notwithstanding the previous constitutions and decrees of the Holy See, as well as any general or special constitutions or edicts of provincial or synodal councils, and notwithstanding the practice and custom of the aforesaid churches, established by long and immemorial prescription - except, however, if more than two hundred years' standing."
"Accordingly, since it would be difficult for this present pronouncement to be sent to all parts of the Christian world and simultaneously come to light everywhere, We direct that it be, as usual, posted and published at the doors of the Basilica of the Prince of the Apostles, also at the Apostolic Chancery, and on the street at Campo Flora; furthermore, We direct that printed copies of this same edict signed by a notary public and made official by an ecclesiastical dignitary possess the same indubitable validity everywhere and in every nation, as if Our manuscript were shown there. Therefore, no one whosoever is permitted to alter this notice of Our permission, statute, ordinance, command, precept, grant, indult, declaration, will, decree, and prohibition. Should know that he will incur the wrath of Almighty God and of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul."
Given at St. Peter's in the year of the Lord's Incarnation, 1570, on the 14th of July of the Fifth year of Our Pontificate.
See, no way to misinterpret this.
But my real point is that I get great advice on family and marital matters from my two pastors -- both of whom are FSSP priests and neither of whom has ever been married. What they have been is members of large families and brothers to siblings who are married. No disrespect to you or your mother, but I disagree that it takes a married person to counsel another married person.
Pax.
EXACTLY right.
It is a claim of tradition built from the time that Christ named Peter as the first head of His Church: St. Peter, the first Pope.Really? What part of the tradition youve referred to was passed from Christ to Peter? The de fide prohibition against guitars? Perhaps you think Christ wrote the entire Tridentine? Silly.
The Church is the people.Now you sound not just like a Protestant but a liberal one. The Church is not a mass of people gathering in community, it is the Bride of Christ.
As to intrepretations of the Popes' Encyclicals - what is there about "it is forbidden to change the Liturgy of the Mass and if you do you will be considered a heretic" - that requires interpretation?First, your quote is horribly wrong. Can you point out where one of the Popes Encyclicals said this? Of course not.
Second, if changes to the Liturgy of the Mass made one a heretic, the majority of Popes after Pope St. Pius V were heretics. Is this your contention?
See, no way to misinterpret this.But you have done so, it seems. Again, do you contend that any changes to the Mass makes one a heretic? If so do you claim that all the Popes that so changed it were heretics?
patent +AMDG
Take a look at this thread -- Marriage and "De Facto" Unions (Cohabitation and Homosexual Marriage).
It's a perfectly objective discourse on the essential differences between marriage and de facto unions. It defends marriage absolutely, recognizes precisely the differences which set marriage apart and excoriates de facto unions without damning to hell the participants in same.
If you can improve somehow on the argument (or prove even one point objectively wrong) by virtue of your having been a homosexual, shacked up or married ... please let me know. I'm very interested.
The true beauty -- for me, anyway -- of the priest's counsel is that he is limited, or should by all rights limit himself, to what is Enduring and Universally true about marriage, sex, love, commitment, children, family, etc.
It is EXACTLY when some participant colored by experience or pycholo-psychiatrist colored by their Method seek to impose always Their Own Views that one runs aground. Lessons learned or imparted in the strictly personal or particular do not end up of much enduring value.
I guess you think the Mass and the Church belong to some hierarchal group of men, sitting around a table, making solemn gestures and aheming to each other. The statement I made about being labeled a "heretic" was just a bit of hyperbole and you know that very well. I posted the Encyclical for all to read. Silly man.
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