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To: ultima ratio
And I will ask the Father: and He shall give you another Paraclete, that he may abide with you for ever: The Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, nor knoweth Him. But you shall know Him; because He shall abide with you and shall be in you. ... the Paraclete, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring all things to your mind, whatsoever I shall have said to you. ... when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will teach you all truth.
--John 14:16-17,26; 16:13
We have it on the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit will be present in the Church forever and will guide it to all truth. This is why we accept the official teachings of the Church and abide by the decisions of its Councils. You refuse to do that. You place your private opinion and the opinions of individual liturgists above the authority of the Church to modify the liturgy. You lead others into your misguided ways. For the sake of those who might actually take you seriously I offer the following thoughts:

The Church had already converted the known world before the official transition of the liturgy from Latin to Greek under the reign of Pope Damasus (366 to 384 A.D.). So you see, the Tridentine Mass is certainly not essential to the Catholic faith. Here are some excerpts from descriptions of the Mass by St. Justin, who was martyred around 165 A.D.

On the day which is dedicated to the sun, all those who live in the cities or who dwell in the countryside gather in a common meeting, and for as long as there is time the Memoirs of the Apostles or the writings of the prophets are read. Then, when the reader has finished, the president verbally gives a warning and appeal for the imitation of these good examples.

Then we all rise together and offer prayers, and, as we said before, when our prayer is ended, bread is brought forward along with wine and water, and the president likewise gives thanks to the best of his ability, and the people call out their assent, saying the Amen. Then there is the distribution to each and the participation in the Eucharistic elements, which also are sent with the deacons to those who are absent. Those who are wealthy and who wish to do so, contribute whatever they themselves care to give; and the collection is placed with the president, who aids the orphans and widows, and those who through sickness or any other cause are in need, and those who are imprisoned, and the strangers who are sojourning with us - and in short, he takes care of all who are in need.
--First Apology of Justin

Now that certainly doesn't sound exactly like a Tridentine Mass, but it is obvious it is the Mass and there were many who attended Masses like the one described above who were martyred for the faith. So it appears heroic holiness can be achieved without the Tridentine Mass.

Here is an excerpt from the catechetical instructions given to the newly baptized by St. Cyril of Jerusalem around 350 A.D. St. Cyril is teaching them how to receive communion:

In approaching therefore, come not with thy wrists extended, or thy fingers spread; but make thy left hand a throne for the right, as for that which is to receive a King. And having hollowed thy palm, receive the Body of Christ, saying over it, Amen. So then after having carefully hallowed thine eyes by the touch of the Holy Body, partake of it; giving heed lest thou lose any portion thereof; for whatever thou losest, is evidently a loss to thee as it were from one of thine own members. For tell me, if any one gave thee grains of gold, wouldest thou not hold them with all carefulness, being on thy guard against losing any of them, and suffering loss? Wilt thou not then much more carefully keep watch, that not a crumb fall from thee of what is more precious than gold and precious stones?

Then after thou hast partaken of the Body of Christ, draw near also to the Cup of His Blood; not stretching forth thine hands, but bending, and saying with an air of worship and reverence, Amen, hallow thyself by partaking also of the Blood of Christ. And while the moisture is still upon thy lips, touch it with thine hands, and hallow thine eyes and brow and the other organs of sense. Then wait for the prayer, and give thanks unto God, who hath accounted thee worthy of so great mysteries.
--Lecture XXIII, On the Sacred Liturgy and Communion

So, things change. The church went from communion in the hand to receiving on the tongue and back to receiving communion in the hand in our own time. We no longer touch the Eucharist to our eyes or touch our lips while they are still moist with the precious blood and then touch our eys and ears. What would seem irreverent in our time was seen as showing great reverence in another. Things change.

The church has the right to change them. It has done so for centuries. And there have always been those misguided souls like ultima ratio who think the liturgical practices can't ever change from what they are used to. It is dead things that don't move or change. That is because they are not animated by a spirit. The church is alive. It is animated by the Holy Spirit. Those who possess the Spirit change with it. No, we don't change in essentials. But we leave it up to the Holy Spirit in the Church to guide it in making necessary changes to non-essentials. Don't entrust your immortal soul to the silly, amateur opinions of ultima ratio or individual liturgists like Klaus Gamber. Entrust your immortal soul to the Holy Spirit in the Church.

101 posted on 04/06/2004 12:35:22 AM PDT by nika
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To: nika; All
1. "We have it on the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit will be present in the Church forever and will guide it to all truth. This is why we accept the official teachings of the Church and abide by the decisions of its Councils."

But this didn't mean the Holy Spirit would spare the Church the damage caused by fools. And while He would protect the Church from dogmatic error, this doesn't mean that every utterance of a body of bishops is infallible. Vatican II, after all, was a failed council. It was not the springtime of renewal anticipated by Catholics. Instead it was the opportunity long awaited by Modernists to impose a revolution. It has achieved not a single one of its purported goals. It made some pastoral suggestions. But it said nothing binding on our intellects and wills. If it did--suppose you tell us what it is. In fact, you can't, because nothing was stated as infallible truth beyond what had always been stated.

2. "This is why we accept the official teachings of the Church and abide by the decisions of its Councils. You refuse to do that. You place your private opinion and the opinions of individual liturgists above the authority of the Church to modify the liturgy. You lead others into your misguided ways."

What pompous, arrogant, self-serving nonsense. If you imagine I refuse to accept the teachings of the Church and refuse to abide by the decisions of the Councils, suppose you tell me which of these I don't accept. You can't possibly do this since I don't deny any such truths or decisions. If you mean the truths and decisions of Vatican II--tell me what are they? If I have called the Council a failure, that is simply a fact. But as a pastoral council, it taught no new truth that I am bound to follow. If it did, tell me what it is. Instead of hurling invective, explain how I am being disobedient. Be specific!

The truth is, if you've followed my posts at all, you'd know they are all about the disobedience to the Church of the people you support. It is they, not I, who have failed to abide by the Church's truths and decisions. Your claim that I place my private opinions above the authority of liturgists and above the right of the "authority of the Church" to modify the liturgy IS EXACTLY WHAT I DON'T DO. I cited one of the greatest liturgists of the twentieth century to underscore my points. How is this placing my opinion above authority? Do you suppose it is I alone who am critical of the Novus Ordo Mass? Some of the greatest scholars in the Catholic Church, including Cardinal Ratzinger, have been just as critical.

3. "The Church had already converted the known world before the official transition of the liturgy from Latin to Greek under the reign of Pope Damasus (366 to 384 A.D.). So you see, the Tridentine Mass is certainly not essential to the Catholic faith."

A straw man. Who ever said the Tridentine Mass was essential to the Catholic faith? Do you think I do not know that there are, and were, other great rites in the Church which express its faith? But having said this, you should also know the Novus Ordo is not one of them. It is a concoction designed to attract Protestants, based on a Protestant theological perspective, hostile to the Council of Trent which condemned making the Mass a memorial meal at the expense of a re-presentation of Christ's Sacrifice at Calvary.

As for the citation by St. Justin--that is all fine and dandy, but if you will reread Mediator Dei, Pius XII makes warns that the present age needs what has accrued over the centuries. The more we retreat from that ancient time, the more we need to bolster the faith transmitted by the past. The ancients did not need what we need, buffeted as we are by unprecedented distractions. We need constant reminders that the sacred is a reality. We NEED to genuflect, to kneel for Communion, to affirm our adoration physically.

But Catholic modernists have been fixed foolishly on a single presumption--that Luther was right. Not only must they imitate his search for a pie-in-the-sky primitivism, they must also brutally impose their fictitious recreation of it. The result has been a nosier Mass, a busier, fussier Mass without a modicum of reflective silence or true contemplation allowed, a superficial recitation of words without interiority, devoid of beauty, without even the saving virtue of being expressive of the Catholic faith.

This was to be expected. It is pretty much what modernists usually produce--buldings which chill the spirit, paintings without meaning, literary verbal trickeries--expressions of big egos rather than of meaning or faith.

4. "The church has the right to change them. It has done so for centuries. And there have always been those misguided souls like ultima ratio who think the liturgical practices can't ever change from what they are used to. It is dead things that don't move or change. That is because they are not animated by a spirit. The church is alive. It is animated by the Holy Spirit. Those who possess the Spirit change with it."

The Church has indeed the right to change the liturgy. But this is not what happened. A single pope assigned a committee to fabricate a Mass that would resemble a Protestant worship service. So it was not "the Church" making the change, not the Mystical Body of Christ allowing the Liturgy to evolve organically as it always had, but the steward of that Church interrupting that evolution and attempting to destroy what the Church had evolved through two millenia. There is a difference. The question is open as to whether he had the right to do what he did. The Pope, after all, has his limits. He is not an absolute monarch. His powers are limited by Sacred Tradition itself--as Cardinal Ratzinger has reminded us.

As for the Holy Spirit in all this--He is certainly not evident in the twin fruits of this liturgical innovation--a precipitous decline in church attendance and a failure of belief in the Real Presence. The fruits of the Novus Ordo have been rotten from the start. So I wouldn't go around bragging about the inspired Presence of the Holy Spirit if I were you.

As for things being dead which don't move--the Tridentine Mass was alive for a thousand years--and it managed to stay alive without clowns and liturgical dancers. It will go on for another thousand years, long after the Novus Ordo is assigned to the dustbin of Church history, another failed idea by intellectual smart alecks who imagined that despite a dearth of faith or even poetic inspiration, they might nevertheless concoct a Mass to replace the one guided through the centuries by God Himself.

Finally, if you were a little more humble, you might have the wits to distinguish between change and revolution. It was Cardinal Newman, remember, who warned that a certain sign of corruption in the Church is revolutionary change. The sign of the Holy Spirit is change that is always gradual and gentle, the very subtlest of shifts in emphasis and understanding.

102 posted on 04/06/2004 2:57:56 AM PDT by ultima ratio
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