Bishop: "Let chaos storm! When will it stop, change after change in liturgy? Never!"

Catholic Diocese of Dodge City ^ | Most Rev. Ronald M. Gilmore, Bishop of the Diocese of Dodge City

[Polycarp]

Most Rev. Ronald Gilmore, DD

Ordained & Installed

Bishop of Dodge City

July 16, 1998

Learn More About Bishop Gilmore

The bishop's column for May 4, 2003:
 

My Dear People, When will it stop, this change after change after change in our liturgy? Will it never end? In a word, No. When the Spirit came, a new time began. It was the time of the dispensation of the Mystery, of its communication. It was the time of what the Fathers called the Sacramental Economy. So long as time lasts, this dispensing, this communicating, this deepening, this changing will go on. The Fathers saw the liturgy as Christ’s own Paschal Mystery made present through words and through signs. It was a unique event. It happened once for all. It occurred in time, but it draws all time up into itself, as the massive circling winds draw the things of the earth up into themselves. Time is not time unless it flows on. Slowly, gradually, haltingly, stop and start, by guess and by gosh: it can do no other except to flow on. It cannot be rushed. It cannot be slowed. Time is ... Time. Mystery is not mystery unless it unfolds. Here, there, one small group, one whole parish, this one woman, that one man: it can do no other except to unfold in its own slow and secret way. It cannot be forced. It cannot be foreseen. Mystery is ... Mystery. And that Mystery, again, is like unto a whirlwind. It is a large and powerful storm that is beyond us. As Frost said: Let chaos storm! Let cloud shapes swarm! I wait for form. In the liturgy, the Church gives place to this once and still powerful storm. Not only does she give it place, she also gives it form. She tells us how she wants to express and to communicate this Mystery in our brief string of time. It is her Mystery, after all, and she knows best how to enter it and how to let it unfold. The New General Instruction of the Roman Missal gathers up the best of the horizontal development of the last forty years, the full and active and conscious participation the Council sought. It gathers up too the vertical development of all our two thousand years: the notion of the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ, the sheer grace of it all, the wild power of it all, the slow unfolding of it all. The liturgy is the Mystery clothed in Time, in our time. I trust we shall soon feel at ease with the drape and the feel and the fit. -- Most Rev. Ronald M. Gilmore Bishop of the Diocese of Dodge City

[drstevej]

Time is not time unless it flows on. Slowly, gradually, haltingly, stop and start, by guess and by gosh: it can do no other except to flow on. It cannot be rushed. It cannot be slowed. Time is ... Time.

A Pope Piel I, I will not only laicize this dude, he will be forced to live the rest of his life repeating this ridiculous paragraph.

[Domestic Church]

"When the Spirit came, a new time began."

Perhaps he's not meaning the Holy Ghost?

"It was the time of the dispensation of the Mystery"

There is a second definition for dispensation...to exempt from a law or vow.

[sinkspur]

What about me?

What is this, American Idol?

[Domestic Church]

"This call to the "spirit" is chilling"

My reaction too...found this article smoking of sulfur.

[Maximilian]

Apparently Happy Gilmore and his obsequieous poofter-litwonks have REALLY been grasping.

LOL. Talk about hitting the nail on the head!

[iconoclast]

The puffed up poet-Bishop aside, what do you have to say of the NGIRM?

[ninenot]

I don't care what denomination you are in, currently. Consider yourself elected Pope. Write him a very nice note, telling him he's FIRED.

[churchillbuff]

Dodge City

Is this where Matt and Kitty go to church?

[iconoclast]

The worst distortion of the liturgy, which simply will have to go sometime in the next few years, is turning the priest to face the people. We will have to wait until the sixties generation are dead.

Yes, you are absolutely right. I hope you're wrong with your "forecast" but, alas, you probably are correct.

May the best hope to shorten the time be the influx of young, orthodox priests.

[WriteOn]

happy gilmore! that's killing me:-0

[George W. Bush]

Yeeeeoooowwwww!!

Scary bishop person.

[JohnnyZ]

I like the "by gosh" stuck in the middle!

Re the handholding, supposedly we do that in my diocese. I don't. No need for it.

[Polycarp]

A Pope Piel I, I will not only laicize this dude,

As Fr. Groeschel is wont to say, "There will be special room in prugatory (I think he was feeling charitable when he said this) where all these mealy mouthed types will spend eons eating only cotton candy...just like what they offered the faithful during all their time on earth when they should have fed their flock the meat and potatoes of the Gospel."

[Conservative til I die]

Is the bishop wearing makeup?

[american colleen]

What about me?

I think you look maaahhhvelous in your birks, totus.

[saradippity]

What a great line to put on a post card and send to bishop Happy Gilmore. Just think of ole happy's post office being inundated with cryptic one-liners to the goof-ball bishop of Dodge. Does anyone know the zip code of the chancery office.

On a more somber note,can there be much doubt that the Papal Nuncio,Montalvo,is a bad guy?We have had some cwrrespondence with him out here,a report intended to alert him to some problems,signed,sealed and delivered was sent immediately back to our bish. Additionally,he sent a snitty letter back to someone requesting the letter from the Vatican asking that homosexuals not be ordained. He said it was for bishops only.That person who requested it was from an orthodox catholic organization.

[B-Chan]

Let chaos storm!
Let cloud shapes swarm!
I wait for pizza.
(If it's not here in 30 minutes, it's free.)

[Loyalist]

Compare and contrast with the beginning of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake:

riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. Sir Tristram, violer d'amores, fr'over the short sea, had passencore rearrived from North Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick: not yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland old isaac: not yet, though all's fair in vanessy, were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot a peck of pa's malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be seen ringsome on the aquaface. The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since devlinsfirst loved livvy.

[Polycarp]

Can I steal your tagline?

[Tantumergo]

"he will be forced to live the rest of his life repeating this ridiculous paragraph."

Send him one of those inflatable churches you found - he probably has enough hot air to blow it up by himself.