Posted on 05/27/2005 7:23:13 AM PDT by sionnsar
Then take a gander over at Trinity Episcopal Church in New York.
They are claiming that they are doing the first ever Clown Eucharist.
However my describing it doesn’t do it justice. If you are able to stomach it, and actually make it to the fractioning rite, just be very afraid.
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They have an audio only link, but for a service that is going to be done in Mime and Sign… well you get the picture. Audio of a service that is going to be done in almost silence… you will hear a lot of noisemakers.
For those of you who simply don’t want to click on it (and I do understand your reasons) here are some pictures from the service to make your day.
The height of the silliness comes at the fractioning rite, and the Eucharist. Thank God that the Episcopal orders are invalid. That along with the fact that there were no spoken words means that even if the orders had somehow been valid (some Anglicans have been re-ordained by the Old Catholic Church that split off from Rome after Vatican I) there was no concentration.
So here you go.. I hope you haven’t eaten yet.
At which time the guy in back with the horns hits the symbols three times
At which point the natives start becoming restless
No doubt they will go out to their coffee shops, and book clubs the next day and talk about how much of a spiritual event it was.
Bingo!
Thank you for that post!
You are so correct. It's all about me, me, meeeee! One of my favorite drawings that I've seen is the one of the priest consecrating the Host (facing towards the alter instead of towards the people) with Christ on the cross. Just beautiful, and so NOT "me, me, me"!
Now I can't stop laughing! If I laugh at Mass this Sunday, well, you're going to hear about it! Oh, that's tooo funny! And also sad. I wonder what that Altar boy with the glasses is thinking? Check out his expression!
LOL! That's the money shot. Nicely done as the Grecian Urn dance by these school kids, but totally out of place at Mass by dancers who can't dance.
Oh, so true! I remember the squabbling of our Liturgical Troup, that actually broke their group in two. No one could keep time to the music or stay with each other on the movements.
My mom has been a professional dancer and teacher for 50 plus years . . . I'm not built for the job but I do serious folk dancing (ex-competitive Highland Dancer and Scottish Country Dance exhibition team) and I know good dance when I see it.
Wow, that's impressive! And fun to watch! It must be even more painful to watch, as a dancer! I haven't either. Generally just those who think someone from American Idol is there to 'discover' them. LOL. I play the flute and have played with a lot of different things, and watching them not even keep the beat, well, ... I've watched our folk group, not welcome and long disbanded, be decimated by 2 women who wanted all the changes that the schismatic priest wanted. We didn't go along. We weren't welcome at Mass, but the Liturgical dance team was. And the music that "B", who couldn't even read music, wanted sounded like a very bad, out of tune, nasal lounge act, with non religious, new agey music. She found willing teens to fill in for us, teens whose moms wanted to promote them even when the Mass was being trounced and turned into a sideshow. Some of our former members left the Church for good under such odd treatment. I guess the horrors have spread all across the US.
A good priest and deacon, though, would have put a stop to that sort of thing right away. (The fish rots from the head down.)
Scottish Country Dancing is fine in the church basement, but not in the church! (A surprising number of Highlanders are Catholic, especially in the Islands.)
Can you imagine? Teach the clergy? They suddenly have amnesia or what because here in PA precious metals were used almost exclusively, as required, until just 10 or 15 yrs ago. Now, they need re-educated? I, too, have seen ceramic, but it did have a thin gold-metal lining. Sometimes our priests don't clean the vessels. At my son's school, recently, the girl altar server stacked up the small glass plates used to distribute Holy Communion and stacked the small glasses used for the wine, chatting all the while, as though she were clearing dishes after dinner. Sigh. We joke that they've added the word 'Catholic' to the school's name because it is the only truly Catholic part of the whole place. In some of our local churches, glass is used almost exclusively. People who ask about the beautiful chalices and other vessels are told the church no longer has them - or has need to use them, glass is fine - but someone I know who works at the church admitted that those not given away as gifts were locked up in a cabinet in the back. A few are brought out for 'special' occasions.
So true. Some try to be 'fair' and stay in the middle, but it's just as bad imho. After the ver schismatic Fr. J left our parish, our new pastor tried to heal the wounds by seeking 'compromise' between the over the top schismatic followers (who are still in places of influence and working hard to implement Fr J's stuff) and the 'old-fashioned' (always said derisively) faithful. He ended up creating a strange patois of new age and traditional, with most of the truly traditional devotions tossed out. This was not lost on some of us and even more parishioners left. Our current pastor does a little better, but many expected him to right the wrongs, as directed by Rome before he arrived, and he didn't really do anything major. Just little appeasements.
Scottish Country Dancing is fine in the church basement, but not in the church! (A surprising number of Highlanders are Catholic, especially in the Islands.)
It's a beautiful country with lovely traditions. Gorgeous, haunting scenery. I remember fondly how my mother loved the bagpipes and tried to pass that on to her kids. I took after her in that way. I never realized Scotland had so many Catholics as they do.
Yes it it beautiful, and just like the mass I assist at now. All of my life I had always heard that the mass was supposed to be the nearest thing to heaven on earth, it wasn't until I attended a traditional rite Solemn High Mass that I finally understood what that meant. It is not of this world, it is heavenly.
so what.
People should be able to do what they want. If some guy wants to dress up as a clown and give a service, and people want to watch, big deal. Life gets a lot worse.
Nothing here. Move on
However I think Cardinal Mahony takes the prize for his choice of sacred vessels:
Yep, that's a wicker basket, almost exactly like the one I keep old newspapers in by the fireplace.
I use mine for skeins of yarn. I still amazed, he actually consecrated hosts and distributed Holy Communion with the wicker? OMG, time to go for sure.
Clowns are an ancient archetype representing the shadow of death in life. The split black and white face of the harlequin is an image which is sometimes reported in dreams by people facing terminal illness and is found to be a symbol for approaching death.
Stephen King has made good use of this trope and it is no dis to him to note that he has borrowed it from antiquity, and made good use of it.
There is good reason to feel "the creeps" when clowns appear, incongruously, in the wrong venue.
Very interesting. The harlequin face is certainly something that inspires - in me, at least - a definite sense of unease; I didn't realize that this was more than a personal aversion.
It always seems to me when the ignorant (i.e., most "liturgists") take on the arts, they lose.
This is truly an apostate church. I am shocked to see so many in the church "audience" participate in a blasphemy like this.
The music they played was just as irreverent and disturbing.
If I were Episcopalian, I think I would just quit and join the Roman Catholic Church.
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