MOUNTAIN VIEWS: NEW POPE TO TURN BACK THE CLOCK ON REFORMS IN CATHOLIC CHURCH?

Niagara Falls Reporter ^ | July 26, 2005 | John Hanchette

[GF.Regis]

OLEAN -- Various columnists for this paper already covered the making of a new pope last spring to a fare-thee-well, driving the tormented editor to declare an informal moratorium on writing further copy about the pomp and circumstance surrounding Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's ascension to Benedict XVI.

We complied. So, in general, did the rest of the American print media, which these days, sadly, are trained by watching too much television to ignore anything that doesn't photograph well, or lend itself to colorful video, or where religion is concerned doesn't contain elements of movement and ceremony.

But in recent weeks, I've noticed a few short items creeping onto inside pages about the Holy Father's vision -- predicted here and elsewhere -- of a venerable Roman Catholic Church that more resembles the one of four decades ago instead of a global organization struggling to accept elements of modernity.

Starting the first week in October, a synod of Catholic bishops from around the world will meet in Rome to plot the future of the church under Ratzinger's leadership. A hefty working text has already been prepared for official consideration, and some sections have sporadically leaked to the Vatican press -- enough to suggest that Benedict XVI has no intention of mellowing from the hardrock conservative positions he held in his previous position as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office tracing its pedigree directly back to the Inquisition.

Bottom line: Pope John XXIII's liberal changes stemming from the Vatican II conclave to take into account this planet's social and cultural and scientific developments not previously sanctioned by Rome are in deep trouble.

There are some key words in the working text that constitute predictable indicators -- some superficial, some profound. The "translations" below are my predictions, not actual descriptions in the Vatican document of suggestions.

Parish priests will be urged to prevent "profane" types of music from being played during Mass. Translation: Lose the guitars, flutes and drums, boys. It's back to Gregorian chants (which are specifically mentioned in the aforesaid text as more appropriate).

The tabernacle, a large container -- usually bejeweled and gold-plated -- which holds the wheat wafer Host that devout Catholics believe is the actual (not representative) body of Christ after consecration, must be given a "prominent" position on the altar instead of the corner or side repository popular after Vatican II. Translation: Altars, with the tabernacle right in the center as unmistakable focal point, will be turned back around to allow the priest to celebrate Mass in relative solitude with his back to the congregation, instead of facing and speaking directly to the faithful as Vatican II decreed.

Lay persons will participate in the Mass only in a "minimal" fashion. Translation: No more reading of Scripture lessons by members of the congregation, or carrying of the wine and water up the aisle to facilitate Holy Communion, or letting the non-ordained help distribute the Eucharist during that sacrament. Priests only, please, just like in the old days.

During "liturgical gatherings," Latin will be relied upon as the universal tongue instead of English and other regional languages. Translation: A return during celebration of Mass to the Latin liturgy, viewed as confusing mumbo-jumbo by many Catholics before Vatican II, cannot be far behind.

Priests should not be "showmen." Translation: All those brave fathers in Central and South America and Africa and elsewhere who have the courage to question corrupt and dictatorial governments, or the temerity to suggest social and cultural reform, will be muzzled.

The working document, by the way, singles out Catholic politicians who support abortion and divorced persons who remarry for particular criticism and specific proscription against receiving the sacrament of Holy Communion without first making a true confession to a priest. This will also affect various areas of the planet where an acute shortage of priests has triggered the practice of taking Communion after making one's peace with God in one's mind because the preparatory sacrament of confession simply isn't available.

Some Catholics, particularly elderly ones, would welcome these changes, whether they actually occur or not. Many of them hate the Vatican II reforms. I was sitting next to my late beloved and curmudgeonly father in the early 1970s when a bearded guitar-wielder first strode to the altar to play some inspirational song of hope. My father actually stood up in the pew to leave before my mother dragged him back down to the kneeling bench.

I also secretly prized during those days the frequent look of repugnance on his face during the newly instituted "kiss of peace," which soon evolved into a hearty-handshake-with-those-nearby section of the Mass. My father was one of the friendliest gentlemen on earth; he just liked to reserve his handshakes for persons he knew, or trusted, or was happy to see.

Casting aside all the paternal nostalgia, I'm wary of Benedict XVI's plans. This is a man whose mind sees cultural development as conspiracy.

He still condemns the use of condoms to fight AIDS in Africa. He's already bounced, without adequate explanation, the respected editor of a liberal Jesuit magazine in this country.

Many Catholics are unaware that Ratzinger even criticized the immensely popular Harry Potter books as harmful to children.

In a letter of praise two years ago to a narrow-minded German critic of author J.K. Rowling, then-Cardinal Ratzinger described her astoundingly successful books as "subtle seductions" for youths and works that "act unnoticed and by this deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly."

Get real. I personally think J.K. Rowling deserves some Nobel-level award for becoming a one-woman assault squad on illiteracy. Do you know how hard it is to pry kids away from the TV or iPod or cell phone and get them to actually read a book? The numbers are there. Rowling actually has children reading again, using their TV-stunted imaginations anew to convert print into thought, to transform type into imagery. Her harmless books are stimulating and superbly written, and most children understand they are merely interesting works of fantasy about magic and good and evil and pretend sorcery -- stuff kids are intrigued by and will find anyway.

If the new pope really wants to do some good in this vein, he should take a gander at the hideously violent and often demonically promotional TV fare that is available to the majority of toddlers and youngsters in this country. Talk then about conditioning senses and warping vulnerable minds.

In his years as a promising priest and bishop, Ratzinger was viewed as somewhat of a liberal and reform-minded theologian. He once wrote a short book that viewed Vatican II with enthusiasm and promise. In his previous post as protector of the faith, however, the native of Germany became more and more conservative until he was known and routinely described as "God's Rottweiler" -- a ferocious defender of venerable Vatican views and practices.

In an excellent article in the July 25 edition of the "New Yorker" magazine, Anthony Grafton describes him in this role as "a snapping guard dog who threatens all dissidents with appropriate punishment." Ratzinger, writes Grafton, "was a censor, and he did his job well."

Since last April, Catholic writers around the world, particularly in Europe and North America, in article after article, have speculated that Ratzinger will realize he is now the spiritual head of the oldest and largest religious organization on the planet and -- as the "New Yorker" writer puts it -- will now "show a milder countenance in his new office." Not very likely. As Grafton writes, Ratzinger has repeatedly denounced "the intellectuals who confused social reform with Christianity" and is at heart himself fearful about intellectual conclusions.

"The intellect," he once told a gathering of about 800 priests, "does not always grant vision, but provides the conditions for intellectual games, and artfully conjures syntheses into existence where there is really nothing but contradiction." Only faith, believes the new pope, will abide.

I agree with author Grafton. A prelate who's fearful that Harry Potter books will block the spiritual growth of young Christians "may find it harder than he thinks to take on modernity in all its sprawling strangeness."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently named by Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years. He can be contacted via e-mail at Hanchette6@aol.com.

[bornacatholic]

I called you on your error. I cited Trent and the Catholic Encyclopedia. There as no "holier than thou" from me. That is your approach - a traditionalist tactic to be sure

[ninenot]

Neither of your "cites" stated that the Last Supper was the first Mass--both, rather, stated that the Last Supper was the institution of the Holy Eucharist.

Since you wish to persist...do it all by yourself.

[Graves]

"Is the Bible one of the issues over which there is a heresy charge by the Orthodox against the Catholics?"

I suggest you take all this up with one of the monks at the Holy Transfiguration Monasatery

[bornacatholic]

And, by the way--since your evidence of your righteousness consists largely of observations about a Rite which was NOT "Roman"--and which was NOT used by the Church from about 1575 through today's date--

*I wasn't commeting about my righteousness. This has to do with your pridefulness and refusal to shake hands at Mass. I guess traditionalists are required to obey only what they approve of - which makes them the authority. Try a little humility, brother. Put on the cincture of obedience; reign in your pride and private judgement.

shall we refer to you as a Worshiper of Antiquity?

* Dunno. Don't think so. I am just a Catholic. No special identifying modifer for me.

Certainly, the Tridentine Rite is more "modern" than the one which you seem to think is preferred--and the NO is even more "modern" than the Tridentine.

* What I prefer is immaterial. I don't have authority. My job is to pray, pay, obey.

Perhaps you'd best select a historically (and theologically) accurate position from which to throw your hissy-fits.

*LOL Y'all think yourselves competent to criticize Pope, Council, Mass; and you traditionalists do it daily in here; but, let a mere N.O. Catholic respond and point out your errors and ignorance and y'all get pickier than Doc and Merle Watson around a campfire. Sauce for the goose...in other words, grow-up and stop acting like the spoiled little girl who pitches a fit when she is first corrected by one outside her family.

[Vicomte13]

I wrote: "Is the Bible one of the issues over which there is a heresy charge by the Orthodox against the Catholics?"

You replied: "I suggest you take all this up with one of the monks at the Holy Transfiguration Monasatery"

Why?
Do they set the policies of the Orthodox Church?
I don't know any of them to be able to ask.
But I figured I could ask an Orthodox person like you and you'd know.
After all, you brought up the bit about "Eagles' Wings" being potentially heretical because it was based upon a Catholic Bible. I figured that meant that you were saying the Catholic Bible is heretical, according to the Orthodox.
And that surprised me greatly.
I found it a novel charge; first I'd heard anything like it.
I may just be badly informed, so I asked the only Orthodox person who ever said anything like that to me.

[bornacatholic]

Since the Church was not in existence until Pentecost, the Last Supper could not have been a Mass.

*Ping Trent. They taught the Mass was institued at the Last Supper.

The Council Of Trent

Session XXII: Doctrine on the Sacrifice of the Mass

Chapter I: On the Institution of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

Put up or shut up.

* LOL PERFECT. Again, I couldn't have drafted a more revealing sentence. You realy do imagine yourself as the one with authority.

Your posts illustrate perfectly the problem with the tradiitonalist approach to Catholicism. Prideful, arrogant, self-righteous, and nasty.

Well, I have had a belly-full of the trad-tactics for today. I am off this thread.

[Graves]

"You replied: 'I suggest you take all this up with one of the monks at the Holy Transfiguration Monasatery' Why?"

You deserve a good solid explanation of things, especially when we get into the area of translations and such. Some of the best translators around the globe are at this monastery. I did you a compliment by referring you to the best because I believe you deserve the best.

[Vicomte13]

Thank you again, I appreciate it.

Have they translated the entire bible into English?

[ninenot]

Ummmnhhh..the girlishness crack is purely projection on your part, as is the remarkable slur that I "criticize Pope, Council, and Mass."

In something over several thousand posts on FR, you'll find that my "criticisms" are directed ONLY at those who deliberately mal-interpret the documents of the Council, and--not at the Pope--nor at the Mass (except as mal-practiced by some.)

Further, as any poster on THIS forum knows, details count. The "-que" of Filioque certainly counts, although it's only three letters in the entire Creed. The word "and" counts in the formula of St Pius X: '...raise the minds AND the hearts of the faithful....'

But if details don't matter to you, perhaps you'd best pay attention to those who DO know and understand.

[ninenot]

He instituted a new Passover, namely, Himself, to be immolated under visible signs by the Church through the priests in memory of His own passage from this world to the Father, when by the shedding of His blood He redeemed and delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into his kingdom.

Bold ref's tell me it was completed on Good Friday, as the Jesuit citation of gbcdoj showed.

http://www.ewtn.com/library/COUNCILS/TRENT22.HTM

[nanetteclaret]

Thanks for the advice, but I'm not really concerned with a "patristic" or a "scholastic" interpretation of the verse. I just take Jesus at His word, literally. I also take Jesus literally when He prayed "that they all may be one." I would think the split in 1054, as well as the Reformation, grieves His Heart sorely.

[Graves]

"Have they translated the entire bible into English?"

That's being worked on now at the monastery's kellion in Maine.

[Graves]

Still the Protestant at heart I see.
"I just take Jesus at His word, literally. I also take Jesus literally when He prayed 'that they all may be one.'"

[bornacatholic]

Theology for the Laity

Transubstantiation

By Father Paul A. Duffner, O.P.

Our Blessed Lord celebrated the first Mass at the Last Supper the night before He died. By His divine power He changed bread and wine into His own Body and Blood, so that He might institute a sacred rite whereby the sacrifice that He was to offer to the Father on Calvary the following day could be renewed through the centuries in a sacramental way. In order that His sacrifice on Calvary be perpetuated, during that same meal He conferred on the apostles the power to effect that same miraculous change. "Do this in memory of Me" (Lk. 22:19 )

Catholic Encyclopedia

Sacrifice of the Mass

...As God's determination to do away with the sacrifices of the Levites is adhered to consistently throughout the denunciation, the essential thing is to specify correctly the sort of sacrifice that is promised in their stead. In regard to this, the following propositions have to be established:

* that the new sacrifice is to come about in the days of the Messiah;

* that it is to be a true and real sacrifice, and

* that it does not coincide formally with the Sacrifice of the Cross.

... * Matt., xxvi, 28: Touto gar estin to aima mou to tes [kaines] diathekes to peri pollon ekchynnomenon eis aphesin amartion. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.

* Mark, xiv, 24: Touto estin to aima mou tes kaines diathekes to yper pollon ekchynnomenon. This is my blood of the new testament which shall be shed for many.

* Luke, xxii, 20: Touto to poterion he kaine diatheke en to aimati mou, to yper ymon ekchynnomenon. This is the chalice, the new testament in my blood, which shall be shed for you.

* I Cor., xi, 25: Touto to poterion he kaine diatheke estin en to emo aimati. This chalice is the new testament in my blood.

The Divine institution of the sacrifice of the altar is proved by showing

* that the "shedding of blood" spoken of in the text took place there and then and not for the first time on the cross; * that it was a true and real sacrifice;

* that it was considered a permanent institution in the Church.

With the last remark our third statement, viz. as to the permanency of the institution in the Church, is also established. For the duration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice is indissolubly bound up with the duration of the sacrament. Christ's Last Supper thus takes on the significance of a Divine institution whereby the Mass is established in His Church. St. Paul (I Cor., xi, 25), in fact, puts into the mouth of the Savior the words: "This do ye, as often as you shall drink, for the commemoration of me".

.... Only the Last Supper, standing midway as it were between the figure and its fulfilment, still looked to the future, in so far as it was an anticipatory commemoration of the sacrifice of the Cross. In the discourse in which the Eucharist was instituted, the "giving of the body" and the "Shedding of the Blood" were of necessity related to the physical separation of the blood from the body on the Cross, without which the sacramental immolation of Christ at the Last Supper would be inconceivable. The Fathers of the Church, such as Cyprian (Ep., lxiii, 9), Ambrose (De offic., I, xlviii), Augustine (Contra Faust., XX, xviii) and Gregory the Great (Dial., IV, lviii), insist that the Mass in its essential nature must be that which Christ Himself characterized as a "commemoration" of Him (Luke, xxii, 19) and Paul as the "showing of the death of the Lord" (I Cor, xi, 26

* Now, I know you think yourself some expert about all of this - But if details don't matter to you, perhaps you'd best pay attention to those who DO know and understand. - but, really, a little humility is in order.

As to your other points, if I have confused you with other traditionalists, I apologize. If I have wrongly thought it was you, and not others, criticizing Pope, Council, and Mass, I apologize. Speaking just for myself, I am sick to death of trads and their arrogance, ignorance and self-righteousness. And if you want to ignore others at Mass and refuse their handshakes have at it, brother. To me, such actions illustrate the truth of Pelikan's obseration

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living"

[Graves]

Ah yes, winding up with the same tired and worn out old Latin insult as to Orthodox Christianity: "To me, such actions illustrate the truth of [the Lutheran historian] Pelikan's observation 'Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living'".

To which the Anglican G. K. Chesterton replied, before his conversion to Roman papism,
"Tradition is only democracy extended through time. . . . Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death" (Chesterton, Orthodoxy).

Orthodoxy or Death!

[nanetteclaret]

No, I'm not still a Protestant at heart. If you must insist on arguing, I view Holy Communion as St. Thomas Aquinas does - the Aristotelian view of reality rather than the Platonian. I also believe that the Filioque Clause is correct, and think the Orthodox were wrong to take it out. As you are well aware, there are many Eastern rite churches in the Roman flock. I could just as easily argue with you about why you insist on being separated, but I presume you have thought it out to your satisfaction. I would ask that you accord me the same courtesy. After all, I was baptized and brought up Presbyterian and have gone through the Anglican Church to the Roman Catholic Church, so I have given a lot of thought to and prayer about my journey, and it's taken me thirty years to get to this point.

[WOSG]

"I don't believe the Magisterium has been proclaiming heresies since 1054, precisely because of the Scripture verse that you quoted: that Our Lord established the Church on St. Peter and that He will prevent the gates of hell from prevailing against it."

Well said.

[Graves]

It is this statement that comes across as being typically Protestant in tone,
"I just take Jesus at His word, literally. I also take Jesus literally when He prayed 'that they all may be one.'"

You don't see that?

[Graves]

Come again?
"I...think the Orthodox were wrong to take [filioque ]out [of the Nicene Creed]."

When did we do that, pray tell?

To the others copied:
Yes. Nanette really said that, and in the year of our Lord 2005. And I thought nobody said this anymore in the West. I guess I was wrong. The damnable lie continues to be told. I wonder who the priest was who told her this.

[nanetteclaret]

The Protestant interpretation of those verses is that Jesus didn't really mean what He said and that when He said He would build His church on Peter, He didn't really mean Peter as a person, but in general on the apostles. That is what I learned in the Presbyterian church 40 years ago. That is why when I say when I take Him literally, that I mean I believe He did establish His church on Peter as a person, as the first bishop of Rome, which I certainly didn't learn about in the Presbyterian church. We were not taught about bishops, priests, and deacons, even though they are mentioned in the Bible. That part was just ignored. There is no way that you can say what I'm saying is Protestant, because in the Presbyterian church at least, the tendency is to pretend that Jesus didn't really mean what He said. That's why you will find grape juice instead of wine at communion, that communion is just a memorial service, and that it certainly isn't the Body and Blood of the Lord.