Posted on 07/19/2002 4:57:55 PM PDT by Polycarp
What is it with you tonight? Catholics do not attend Mass with some kind of antennae up about rubrics. They attend Mass to worship the Lord or, crassly, to fulfill an obligation.
In either case, they could care less about rubrics, licitness, or reverence.
You're definitely out of sorts, Poly. You've lapsed into incoherence.
Well, liturgy wasn't the problem then, was it?
I did not say that. I related to you what many Catholic couples do regarding contraception.
I say its the voice of common apostacy, the root of the culture of death. As such, it again is the perfect illustration of Liberal.
Maybe. But, I say that the Church has simply not come up with a convincing argument against contraception.
Controlling conception is not the issue; the method is the issue, and there's work to do on a persuasive argument on the method.
In your humble opinion.
You're definitely out of sorts, Poly.
Yep. I see lots of pain and suffering. And I see its source in the failed liberalism of the last 40 years.
You've lapsed into incoherence.
Unfortunately, you may be right. I'm having a harder time than usual communicating why this article makes sense, and I'm having a harder time than usual being patient and charitable.
You frequently argue from the standpoint of one who dissents on contraception, sink.
Can you answer simply, do you believe all forms of contraception to be inherently sinful, regardless of circumstances, regardless of a couple's decision?
I could show you my old Methodist Hymnal and you would see the Norvus Ordo although the Methodist preachers in my church never followed it in my 36 years as a Methodist.
I'm not willing to accept your premise that priests who fail to preach about the evils of contraception are necessarily sinning by omission.
Once upon a time, a priest could give confrontational homilies week after week, and folks would come back week after week for more. Because they lived in communities where leaving the Church wasn't a realistic option.
Since mid-century, that changed, and attendance at Mass has been falling since that time (please note: this started in the US prior to Vatican II, and prior to the new Mass - so I will studiously ignore all further false assertions that the new Mass caused this - all those wishing to make such an assertion must accompany the assertion with documented statistical evidence at least correlating the beginning of the decline with the beginning of the new Mass).
A priest who consistently preaches in this manner today will likely drive folks further away, and in larger numbers. If most priests were to adopt this method, we could drive attendance at Mass from around 40% to under 20% in no time.
I'm sure that there are many here who might think that would be a good thing.
I don't share that sentiment. It's difficult for me to attribute it to an attitude of charity towards sinners.
I think that most priests recognize that people are more free to attend or not attend Mass than they were 50 or 100 years ago. I think that most priests try to balance the challenges that they present, and the ways that they present them, to try to do the best they know how to transmit the truth of the Gospel, without driving more people off unnecessarily.
I think that most priests, recognizing the moral collapse in our society over the past 40 years, believe that the care of souls requires a less confrontational approach than would have been appropriate 50 years ago. I think that many of them believe that it is better to have these people inside the church than outside, that there is more chance that people will amend their lives should they be in the church than if they are outside.
Perhaps these priests are wrong. But imputing sin to them is unjust.
Polycarp, the course of events over the past half-century has been difficult and heartbreaking. But there is no easy or simple explanation for what happened. And there is no easy or simple cure for what happened. I believe, along with many priests, bishops, and I suspect the Holy Father, as well, that if we were to adopt your strategy, we would drive out many souls who are in need of care. We might feel a flush of pride at having, in this fashion, "cleansed" the Church.
But this is the opposite course of action from what Jesus taught as the actions of the good shepherd, who seeks out far and wide even the one lost sheep.
Consider that those who do things differently from how you would have them done may not be motivated out of self-interested or otherwise base motives. Consider that they do what they do out of the belief that it is the best path, the best way for them to respond to their own vocation.
That is the requirement of charity.
sitetest
That is the requirement of charity.
We are taught that "charity" is primarily the love of God and, secondarily, the love of neighbor for the sake of God. Ought not the love of neighbor be subordinated to the love which is due to the Lord? To "offend" our neighbor for the love of God is, in fact, a true act of charity. Charity is practiced in relation to our neighbor when, in his OWN INTEREST, he is crossed and chastised. Charity is practiced in relation to God when, for His glory and in His service, it becomes necessary to silence human considerations to attain the highest of all ends.
Liberal charity, on the other hand, is tender in appearance, but at bottom it is an essential contempt for the true good of men, or the supreme interests of truth and [ultimately] of God. It is human self-love, usurping the throne of the Lord and demanding that worship which belongs to God alone.
The above thoughts and the following quote is from Fr. Salvany's book Liberalism is a Sin.
When the Jews entered the Promised Land under Joshua, they found a multicultural paradise, a beautiful values mosaic. A liberal's dream. They proceeded to destroy it.They could have been "tolerant." They could have said, "These Canaanites, sure they sacrifice their children to idols, engage in ritual prostitution, sodomize little boys -but, hey, that's their lifestyle, their choice. We may not understand them, but we must respect them. We don't want to hurt their feelings."
Guess what? The Jews smashed their temples, stopped their sacrifices, overturned their idols, and established their own values directly from the Torah.
St. John the Baptist calls the Pharisees a "race of vipers"; Jesus Christ, Our Divine Savior, hurls at them the epithets "hypocrites, whitened sepulchres, a perverse and adulterous generation." St. Paul criticizes the schismatic Cretians as "always liars, evil beasts, slothful bellies." The same Apostle calls Elymas the magician a "seducer, full of guile and deceit, a child of the devil, and enemy of all justice."
The Fathers of the Church exercised the same vigorous castigation of heresy and heretics. The gentle St. Bernard did not honey his words when he attacked the enemies of the Faith. Addressing Arnold of Brescia, the great Liberal agitator of his times, he calls him in his letters, "seducer, vase of injuries, scorpion, cruel wolf."
The Angelic Doctor, Saint Thomas Aquinas, forgets the calm of his cold syllogisms when he hurls his violent attacks against William of St. Amour, and his disciples; "Enemies of God, ministers of the devil, members of antichrist, ignorami, perverts, reprobates!"
Did St. Francis de Sales, purr softly over the heretics of his age and country? With the enemies of the Faith he preserved neither moderation nor consideration. Asked by a Catholic, who desired to know if it were permissible to speak evil of a heretic who propagated false doctrines, he replied: "Yes, you can, on the condition that you adhere to the exact truth, to what you know of his bad conduct, presenting that which is doubtful as doubtful, according to the degree of doubt which you may have in this regard." In his _Introduction to the Devout Life_, he expresses himself again: 'If the declared enemies of God and of the Church, ought to be blamed and censured with all possible vigor, charity obliges us to cry 'wolf' when the wolf slips into the midst of the flock and in every way and place we may meet him."
We all know (in Acts 5) the story of Ananias and Saphira, but I would like to close with a relevant quote from that passage.
11. And there came great fear upon the whole church, and upon all that heard these things. 12. And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people. And they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch.
I know, that was then and this is now. If he were here today, I'm afraid St. Peter would have to learn to be more tolerant and less 'offensive' toward sinners.
What have we become?
p. s. I have not been able to locate a scientific study on the percentage of Catholics who do/do not believe in the Real Presence, however, I've found an interesting statement from June 1998 made by James Cardinal Hickey of Washington.
Saddest of all are the many people who don't understand or accept the truth that the Eucharist is not bread and wine, but truly the Body and Blood of Christ. Recent polls have shown that only about 33 percent of Catholics say they believe in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. No matter what explanation is given for that figure -- it's appalling!
Pax tecum.
WOW! Well said. Dittos!
Interesting. I always considered the new Mass in Latin the worst of both worlds. I love everything about the traditional Latin Mass except the Latin. The prayers are wonderful. The rubrics are awesome. The Old Mass is a mini-chatechism.
I also recognize that there are benefits to saying the Mass in a dead language. The most obvious being the ability to avoid nonsensical modernist fashions such as inclusive language.
Yes. I don't believe a lot of the people in the pews actually know what the Church teaches. There has been a kind of a breakdown of some of the "middle cogs" - the priests, I don't know if it is that some of them don't themselves believe what comes out of Rome, or that they, "in charity" don't like to offend the parishioners.
Once in a while the priest in my parish will state, during a homily, that the Eucharist is the Body of Christ... but that is about all the "authentic" Catholic teaching that I have heard. Nothing ever about Confession, Birth Control, etc. Most homilies are about loving your neighbor and/or living in the faith, and how much God loves us. Last week there was a visiting priest who gave a homily on how important it is to pass down the faith to your children and how that is our most important job. It was a great homily, but certainly begged the question "where are we to really learn the faith?"
In recent years, a lot of parishes have started Bible classes, and that is a great thing, but I could attend a Bible class in a Protestant Church and match the content found in the class at my parish.
I agree with you here. My views in that post were simply my subjective opinion.
I've attended the Indult Latin Mass in Cleveland, Erie diocese, and Pittsburgh. Cleveland and Erir diocese were done in newer churches, not traditional architecture. Cleveland had an awesome choir. Neither Erie not Pittsburgh had good musical accompaniment. Pittsburgh's church is wonderful old traditional architecture.
Only Mother Angelica's mass has 1)superb architecture/beauty, 2)awe inspiring and reverent mass, as well as 3) incredible (!!!) music.
I'm sure if I saw the Indult offered at Mother Angelica's I would say it was the greatest.
But subjectively speaking, the best masses I've seen overall were the Latin version of the Novus Ordo there.
That's fine. We're allowed to have simple differences of opinion.
However, I truly believe that the embrace of contraception is the bullwark and cornerstone of the culture of death. This is an opinion shared by leading orthodox Catholic thinkers.
As such, silence on the issue of contraception = silence on the roots of the culture of death.
In my book, that quilifies as necessarily sinning by omission.
Truly, THIS is the first question we must ask the American Church. The American bishops have taken for themselves complete autonomy from Rome. No matter what pronouncement comes down from Rome, it is modified, adjusted, edited, and truncated to suit the whims of these autonomous bishops, who think they know better than the Vatican what Roman Catholics in America WANT. But for the life of me, I don't recall being polled even once in the last 30 years on how I thought the Church in America should conduct the salvation of souls.
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