1. Simply living Catholic lives has been one of the worst casualties of the post-Vatican II revolution. Of course this is what we should all be doing. Do our jobs, raise our families, create souls to populate heaven. No need for every layman to be an amateur theologian. But I'm sure you're aware that raising Catholic children today is like walking through a minefield. And if you only listen to official church sources, it's like walking through that minefield blindfolded.
2. It is simply false to claim that there are MANY communities like yours. Out of the tens of thousands of parishes in the US, there are perhaps half a dozen. Even among the FSSP parishes, only a few are canonically established, meaning the indult could be withdrawn from the others at a moment's notice. Your parish sounds like heaven. But only a tiny fraction of US Catholics have access to a comparable situation. You seem remarkably unfeeling towards the rest.
3. Not only is your community practically unique in the United States, half the dioceses in the US have never implemented the indult at all. A woman who works for The Latin Mass magazine cannot herself attend the Latin Mass because in the well-populated part of California where she lives, the closest Latin Mass is 3 hours away. Are you telling these people to "quit your bellyaching"? Is every Catholic in the US required to move to Rockford, IL?
<>We ought to listen to those with no Teaching authority? Is the POpe blind? In what way does this hysteria lead to normalcy?<>
2. It is simply false to claim that there are MANY communities like yours. Out of the tens of thousands of parishes in the US, there are perhaps half a dozen. Even among the FSSP parishes, only a few are canonically established, meaning the indult could be withdrawn from the others at a moment's notice. Your parish sounds like heaven. But only a tiny fraction of US Catholics have access to a comparable situation. You seem remarkably unfeeling towards the rest.
<> He invited you to join him. That is very "feeling" tpwards you<>
3. Not only is your community practically unique in the United States, half the dioceses in the US have never implemented the indult at all. A woman who works for The Latin Mass magazine cannot herself attend the Latin Mass because in the well-populated part of California where she lives, the closest Latin Mass is 3 hours away. Are you telling these people to "quit your bellyaching"? Is every Catholic in the US required to move to Rockford, IL?
<>No. Too cold. They can move to my Parish in sunnny Palm Beach County. I think sitetest's Parish is pretty good also. Desdemona's also; sandyeggo's also, patent's also (getting to half a dozen pretty rapidly, huh?<>
We have raised our children Catholic by homeschooling them for years and then working with other Catholic homeschoolers in the development of our own schools. This is also not unique. They don't watch network TV or sitcoms. They don't hang out at malls. They don't have unaccounted for free time to do what they please or what others please. We take a very serious interest in their friends and associates. They have plenty of "socialization," plenty of classical education, languages ancient and modern, good literature, Saxon Math. It costs us luxuries that others may take for granted but our kids are more important than material goods. We moved from the Northeast to the Rockford area specifically because of the then St. Mary's Shrine and because of Bishop Doran. Our bishop grew up in Rockford, attended the cathedral church of that time at which he served Mass, was ordained for Rockford, succeeded a quite liberal bishop Arthur O'Neill who is still alive and active but seems supportive of Bishop Doran. If we rearrange our lives for the appropriate exercise of our responsibilities as parents, we have much less to fear.
Why would we not move? Under a relative liberal archbishop John Whealon, we were treated quite well in the Hartford Archdiocese. He did not drag his feet on the Tridentine Mass. We had to locate our Mass at a very old and not well-maintained large church in a shooting gallery neighborhood. Murders occurred in the adjacent street during Mass, once when Archbishop Whealon was in attendance at a Tridentine Mass. No one of the Tridentine Mass community was assaulted or injured in that neighborhood. The non-Catholic neighbors were, if anything, protective of the largely white, middle class attendees at that Sunday afternoon Mass. We were married in a Tridentine wedding, partly because we asked politely and expressed our understanding that it might not be possible or politic for him to allow it and that we would understand if the answer was no. Sometimes our folks forget the little things like common courtesy and not just toward the pope.
People can move to Rockford. The housing is quite reasonably priced. People do not have to move to Rockford. This Church of ours was surviving barely in the catacombs not long after it was founded and for most of 300 years, with an astonishing amount of martyrdom. We are in a lot of trouble if our future rests on people who throw up their hands and wonder how can ANYONE bring their kids up Catholic in our day and age. Government offers us divorce on demand. For the most part, we say no thanks. Government offers us "schools" to pervert our children. Again we say no. Corrupt people within the Church offer us bad Catholic schools that ape the worst of the government indoctrination centers. We tried that for a year and a half in a parish with a wonderfully orthodox pastor who was handling a parish with minor assistance from an aged and half-crippled priest in an affluent parish (we are not affluent) which used to have five priests. We then joined the ranks of those who say no when we had to deal with our eldest daughter being taught five times in one year that Jesus Christ did not really know He was God, even on the Cross. We turned to homeschooling. In addition to our own respective salvations, what have we as a more important priority than our kids and their salvations?
Bellyaching is no substitute for acting on what we believe. Catholics in Red China have it worse than we do. Catholic students at Notre Dame have it worse than we do. Catholics living in grinding poverty in Latin America and Africa, inter alia, have it worse than we do. Before we go around telling the pope how we demand that he run the Church, it would behoove us to "light one little candle" in our own homes and then in our neighborhoods and among our friends and then in organizations like the Knights of Columbus and rebuiold our lost and beloved 1950s Catholic culture step by step, institution by institution, create schools of OUR OWN, credit unions of our own, tutoring activity of our own, etc. The much derided Vatican II told us that we, not the priests, had the responsibility to bring Catholic Witness to the secular world of politics and government. We can do that. We should, as someone claimed Mother Teresa said, smile at our wives and children and we ought to be able to do so free of claims that, unless we grab lapels, we are nothing more than hapless grinning idiots.
To those who do not want to be actively involved with the Church because they think they are just too, too pure to sully themselves by contact with all those "Modernists" who attend Novus Ordo churches, fine, do it your way. Do not tell us. Show us the results of your concrete work (not the postings on the internet but the actual hard work) and how superior those results are and you'll get a real hearing. Meanwhile, as the old saying goes, talk is cheap action speaks louder than words.
Pope-bashing is verbal. Building orthodox Catholic schools is not verbal. Restoring an old Church to be suitable for Tridentine Masses once again (we have had to restore all of the stained-glass windows in our 1885 Church and the roof, ceiling and water damaged walls are next. We already did the furnace.)
Latin Mass magazine used to have a sister magazine called Sursum Corda, devoted not to moaning and groaning but to all of the wonderful things that are still being done by Catholics whether Tridentine or Novus Ordo. Facilities in New York for serving the terminally ill cancer patients, prison ministries such as that of a lifer who converts fellow prisoners to the Faith, the stories of converts to our faith who used to be Protestant clergy, and many, many other wonderful things leading the Missouri Synod Lutheran photographer of the New York cancer facility (founded by Nathaniel Hawthorne's daughter) story to say that he hoped eventually to die of cancer and to be so fortunate as to die there.
To those who are not Catholic on this non-sectarian site, we must often look like a pack of whining, squabbling infant malcontents, especially with the craven river of criticisms aimed at Pope John Paul II. If the woman who works for Latin Mass magazine is no closer than three hours from the nearest Tridentine Mass, she ought to consider moving. There are pages of Latin Mass listings from Una Voce listed in her magazine. That list was our starting point.
Sitetest claims that ultima ratio was going to a Tridentine Mass recognized by the Church but found something to justify not attending any more in favor, apparently, of a Mass not recognized. A lot of this stuff is offended taste. The Faith is intact. Many hate it and its pope from all sides. Were that not true, we should have to recheck our premises.