Replies

Ultima
I agree with everything that NYer said to you in #31. We are happy to have you here, but just objected to the manner in which you seemed to be attacking. Even yesterday I think I posted somehing like-----Have you been hurt by someone in the church?

I will put in some links to the threads about the Eucharist and our consequent discussions and bump them to the top (BTTT) so that you can read them. Will it be OK for me to Ping you to them (so that you can find the threads in the "My Comments" or "Self-Search categories?)

And I am one of the people here who like the contemporary music. Music is only and instrument in the hands of a music minister. Many are moved by the more somber and Latin songs, but I am moved by the spirit filled and poignant message songs of contemporary music -- for instance, on the Way of the Cross in Toronto they sang one of my Holy Week favorites, "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord."

God bless you and yours.
Salvation

Thanks for the welcome. Sure, you or anyone else can ping me. As for "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord," I like it probably as much as you do. But for a long time now the Church has been scuttling traditional Catholic music in favor of such hymns and one has to ask why. When you add to this the fact that the Novus Ordo Mass is already virtually indistinguishable from a Methodist or a Lutheran Worship Service, I think we may genuinely start to worry about motives. On top of all this the Church has been plagued with modernist theologies and seminary training, coupled with the suppression of traditional Catholic devotions. I don't think it can be argued that what is going on is nothing less than the wholesale and systematic rejection of our own Catholic tradition--in music, in architecture, in liturgy, in theology, even in doctrine. So this issue is far more profound than merely whether or not you happen to like a Protestant hymn. It is the slow destruction of the Catholic identity and even the Catholic faith itself.

Examine the recent capitulation to the Lutherans on the doctrine of Justification. The declaration was more than a friendly ecumenical achievment. It was a frontal assault on the Council of Trent--which, unlike Vatican II, was a dogmatic, not a pastoral, council and therefore should compel every Catholic's assent. Or study the recent attempt by Vatican theologians to finesse Judaic-Catholic relations by affirming Jewish expectations for a Messiah--as if the actual rejection of Jesus as Messiah had never happened. Look again at the sleight-of-hand use of the word "subsist" instead of "is" in Lumen Gentium. It is actually a radical departure from the Church's clear understanding of its own identity as the Church of Christ. There have been many such attacks on traditional doctrines. None of these, by themselves, are lethal. But all together they represent a calamity for Catholicism.

My contention is that those, like yourself, who side with the Pope in a willingness to protestantize the Catholic faith, seem not to understand the stakes. This is a crisis in the Church unlike any other since the early days of the Arian heresy. What is happening is actually fundamental and cataclysmic and good Catholics are being forced to take sides: do we stand with the old Faith of our forefathers and obey the megisteria of preceding popes, or do we go along with the modernistic tide and keep faith with this one? You sometimes hear Caholics talk about "the living magisterium" to get around this dilemma. But must we reject the magisteria of two thousand years, going back to the Apostles for the sake of Vatican II--a mere pastoral council? To my mind the answer is no.