Where have all the people in the Pews Gone

A goodly number of pseudo-reformist movements these days consists of powerful elites telling the majority of people what to do. Elites grab control of an agency, an institution, a political body, then proceed to legislate without regard to majority opinion. Take the matter of the Latin Mass. A recent Gallup poll shows 64 percent of American Catholics prefer the return of the Latin Mass.

Sixty-four percent! That's a solid majority, for sure! Among Catholics with a college education, the figure jumps to 73 per-cent-nearly a two-thirds majority. Roughly 10 percent of the Catholics polled had no opinion. Only 26 percent were opposed. Splitting the difference of the no-opinion group, we come up with the fact that roughly 80 percent of American Catholics prefer the return of the oldstyle, Tridentine Latin Mass. After 15 years, in other words, of guitar music, pseudo-folksongs, banal translations, hand-clapping, the kissing of perfect strangers during the offertory in an orgy of dishonest sentiment, most Catholics yearn for the dignity and mystery of the Latin Mass. We've had circus masses with clowns on the altar, where they played "Send in the Clown" during the offertory. You were supposed to leave Church, I suppose, feeling glowy all over. We've had radical masses where the consecration was ushered in with a folksy protest song by Pete Seeger. We've witnessed with-it priests in psychedelic vestments (most of them on the verge of resigning the priesthood) consecrate loaves of sourdough French bread and Gallo Hearty Burgundy. Also used: Ry-Krisp, Wonder Bread (for that homey feeling), Syrian bread (for that archaeologically exact feeling), and Kasanoff's Jewish Rye (for that feeling of ethnic brotherhood). Of late an English-language liturgy of heroic banality has been forced on us, rivaling the Unitarian worship service for sheer avoidance of Catholicity of sentiment, reference or symbolism.

What is the result of all this tasteless disregard for the necessity of aesthetic transcendence in liturgy? What is the result of telling two-thirds of the Roman Catholics in America that they cannot, must not, worship in the manner of their youth: that the way the Church prayed for more than a thousand years was now forbidden? On Holy Thursday I stood in St. Ignatius Church with a sparse and pitiable crowd and tried as much as possible to attend to a liturgy stripped of its transcendence and grandeur. We were, say, a congregation of no more than 300-mainly older women. Twenty years ago the Church would have been filled to its 1,500 seat capacity. Now on Sunday mornings in the Catholic parishes of San Francisco, you could set up an indoor volleyball game in the center of the Church without bothering the sparse gathering of aged parishioners.

All knowledge of God, St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, is by analogy-with the exception of infused contemplation and certain rare forms of mystical prayer. What St. Thomas means is that God is unknowable in Himself. He is eternal and transcendent. We are finite. We try to bridge the gap between God's awful majesty and our own insecure finitude in a variety of ways-prayer, contemplation, good works, and above all else, through sacramental worship. According to Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and responsible Protestant Episcopalian belief, the celebration of the Eucharist is our most powerful link with the Godhead. It recreates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ and Christ's death on Calvary in a way that is at once profoundly symbolic and profoundly true. In reference, then, to St. Thomas' statement about knowing God through analogy, the Eucharist-called the Mass by Roman Catholics-constitutes our most daring flight towards the Godhead, and Almighty God's most generous intersection with us-through the imminent presence of His Son Jesus Christ in the eucharistic sacrifice. According to Catholic belief, the Mass recreates the grand drama of Calvary. It is not a hootenany. It is not a touchy-feely Esalen session designed to make you feel tingly and sincere all over your body.

It took the Latin Church 500 years to evolve a worship service equal to this awesome, compelling leap to the Godhead through die risen, eucharistic Christ. For a thousand years Catholics prayed this way at Mass. In the 16th century Council of Trent, this 1,000 year-old Mass was standardized, codified, made the norm of the Universal Church. Another 400 more years went by-400 years of dignified, compelling worship. In great cathedrals of Europe, the Latin Mass was celebrated by archbishops and cardinals in splendid robes, accompanied by orchestras and trained choirs; in jungle outposts, it was celebrated by sweat-stained missionaries, accompanied by prayers in a thousand different tongues. But wherever it was celebrated-in cathedrals in ancient abbeys, in frontier parishes, in jungle out-posts, it was the same Latin Mass. Every Catholic over 35 in America grew up to its rich cadences. We followed its intricacies in our missals. We bowed our heads in awful silence as the priest bent over the host and the chalice, intoning the ancient words of consecration.

The day the Latin Mass was outlawed by the elitists, the day 80 percent of the Catholics of America were told they could no longer worship in the manner their ancestors worshipped since time immemorial, I was having dinner in New York with another Catholic-novelist Anthony Burgess. "In 10 years time Catholic churches will be empty," Burgess said. "For when you destroy the Mass, you destroy the faith. We English Catholics know this. We literally went to the stake for the Latin Mass."

Anthony Burgess was right. The elite reformers destroyed the Latin Mass. Now the churches are empty. Now no one believes.

.

Good Work, db74.

I guess I have to change my postings to read that Pope BENEDICT the 15th was the Pope at the time of the Miracle of FATIMA.

Pope JOHN PAUL the Great attributed our Lady of FATIMA's deflection of an expert assasin's bullet awary from his heart during the attempt on his life in the 1980's.

MEL is already in the target hairs of the Catholic Church for his promoting the restoration of the Latin Liturgical Mass against Vatican II.

Why would MEL change now with a 3rd Secret of FATIMA, that was devinely instructed to be fully revealed in 1960 by a another Pope, still partially under wraps..?

Especially with a new Pope that himself feels the same as the just passed Pope about FATIMA, a story for our Time that some say foretell of fire from the sky that will take away both the faithful with the unfaithful.

.

Even though they say he's not doing such a work, don't forget he's a very sly marketing expert. He now has the financial backing to keep a production concealed, and to make a lot of the preliminary scenes, leaving final details up to the end, or whatever. IOW he might be in process while putting out rumors that he is not in process.

However, it comes back to the fact that the REAL 3rd Secret has not been made public. Mel would have to A) rely on the word of someone who is at least acting in defiance of Vatican authority (reminiscent of Lefebvre's consecrations!), or, B) commit some kind of covert break-in to forcibly take the Secret, photograph it, and put it back without anyone knowing about it. IOW, he needs irrefutable proof that what he's doing is true.

Another approach he could take is to merely exemplify the reasons that we KNOW the released version is not the REAL one. Any movie he makes would have to do just that, at least implicitly, because of the A.D.2000 released version. And now, in the present climate of the new Pope who was squarely behind that release, I really don't know how he could pull it off without the public impression that he is accusing the new Pontiff of deliberate deception. I doubt Mel would want to do that. After all, Benedict XVI is showing signs of making some rectifying moves on his own.

I have been trying to respond to what I think you were asking in this question: "Why would MEL change now with a 3rd Secret of FATIMA, that was devinely instructed to be fully revealed in 1960 by [another] Pope, still partially under wraps..?" What is it Mel would be changing? Remember it was supposed to be given to the world by 1960 (because it would be clearer then) or before Sister Lucy dies, "whichever comes first." Well, 1960 obviously came first, and she survived another 45 years. Most people don't even live that long. The Vatican had ample time to release it.

>>Pope BENEDICT the 15th was the Pope at the time of the Miracle of FATIMA.<<

This is correct. It's an easy mistake for us to make in this age of technology to say that Benedict XV also received the information about the visions. These days, it would be believable that he did. But in those days news traveled very slowly. Radio was a new thing. Most important messages were still being made in Morse Code! Even today, some underdeveloped areas still use it. Also remember that his primary concern was the "Great War" as they called WWI.

>>MEL is already in the target hairs of the Catholic Church for his promoting the restoration of the Latin Liturgical Mass against Vatican II.<<

Do not underestimate the lengths to which NewChurch men will go to punish those who oppose their program. Traditional priests who have gone "independent" have their personal stories, but since they are practitioners of charity, they are reticent in regards to specifics. One thing they all have in common is disdain for bishops who use the power of their office to discourage adherence to Tradition.

>>...a story for our Time that some say [foretells] fire from the sky that will take away both the faithful with the unfaithful.<<

I know people who have had visions of this fire from the sky you describe. And they are not people who have other visions. But I wonder if there might be a spiritual side to this warning, that the "fire" falling might be dangerous words being spoken from the Magisterium (a Latin word that means not a person, but a THING, a teaching office). This only goes so far, however, because such words cannot likely carry so much weight, especially when people do not pay much attention to what their religious leaders are saying. Don't forget that calling down fire from heaven is a part of Biblical prophesy, I think it's in Mt 24:30 thereabouts.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.