Monthly Archives: May 2019

Advice to the priest in favor of mass-time reverence as opposed to helter-skelter celebration . . .

From the always helpful Fr. Hunwicke:

26 May 2019

How to move on within the Novus Ordo [post-Vatican 2
mass]

An admirable priest called Fr Harrison has recently asked orthodox Catholics [Romans wanting the best for themselves and the world] to revisit the Novus Ordo.

I offer some thoughts about what those who share Father’s instincts might do so as to go just a little way to meet Traddy [tradition-leaning] worshipers.

Some ‘stages’.

(1) Use only the First Eucharistic Prayer. Always. Even with the kiddies. Do this as your first matter of first principle. Even if you’re trinating [celebrating, saying mass three times in a day]. The provision of alternatives [take your pick of canons, central
part of the mass] was the main error of … NOT Vatican II, where no such move was even hinted at, but of the corrupt use of their influence by those who subsequently got their grubby hands on the levers of power. Without this gross mistake, other changes might, just possibly, have been just about tolerable. (After all, the Dominicans … and others … used a shorter Confiteor … had shorter and different Offertory prayers … ) [emphasis added]

Etc.

Such advice is inside baseball to the hoi polloi — pew-sitters, great unwashed, rabble — but money in the bank for celebrants looking to meet the pastoral needs of these poor little lambs and little black sheep who otherwise may lose their way and go astray, finding themselves, not doomed from here to eternity, but having a hard time getting there in one piece.

Those in the field hospital, we might say, to quote the more or less duly elected leader of their and the world’s church.

Father Dick told mass-goers it was over, Jake wondered what was over

Fr. Dick gave Jake and his wife a start at 5 o’clock mass on Saturday the 20th, Inauguration Day, year of the Florida Recount.

“It’s over,” he said at the start of his sermon, begun after detaching the microphone from the lectern and whipping the cord free so he could leave the sanctuary and come toward us in the half-empty or half-full church depending on your rate of metabolism.

The Christmas season, thought Jake. So did his wife, she told him later. So would their twenty-something eldest child, if she had been there, he later learned.

No. Something else was over. Perhaps the Clinton presidency, which Jake had already celebrated in his usual quiet fashion — right fist shaken once, about eye level, silently. He did not expect to celebrate it again here, at holy mass.

Not a problem. Something was over that Fr. Dick never quite spelled out. His sombre tone said it. His guy had lost . . . 

Forest Murmurs: So simple

Should have been posted first here . . .

Blithe Spirit

A picture, in this case a cartoon, being worth lots of words, let this simple message sink in if you will.

Ad+orientem.jpg

From an English pastor of a Novus Ordo parish. He tried to introduce the top one but had near-“riots” on his hand. Did so with school children, who did not complain. On to a new parish assignment, where he will be “treading carefully” in the matter.

Personally, I keep the head down. Even top-notch pastors look out at us worshipers. I think, here’s to you, everybody! Said genially. of course, but not always. I know I caught a bona fide glare from one fellow with whom I had tangled . . .

Later: Oh, I didn’t notice. He’s had a fervently appreciated EF (Latin) mass monthly, on a Sunday at 5 p.m. So he has found some market for it.

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Love Thyself | New and Used Books From Thriftbooks

Have to endorse this message, has a lot to do with keeping one spiritually fit. Think about it.

Spiritually? This but also but specifically the devotion aspect. Seems to me you have to feed the good you, keeping the bad you at bay. Hence prayer and attention in general to your interior life.

An Argument For Latin Liturgy

Short, to the point, “not bound to a particular time and place.”

An argument for Latin liturgy is that it brings a sense of the transcendent.

By transcendent, I do not necessarily mean “supernatural,” but rather that which is not bound to a particular time and place.

For example, 2 + 2 = 4 transcends time and place. It is as true in the US as it is in Switzerland. The same is true for moral principles or for Revelation.

Vernacular means local, and Catholic means universal.

John Paul II’s neo-conservative Church consisted in universal morals and local liturgies.

Such a structure is doomed to fail. Therefore, Amoris Laetitia was not a surprise.

Good stuff.

Pope Paul VI vs. Bugnini

Bugnini story in nutshell . . .

Catholicism Pure & Simple

By David Martin

If the engineers of the Neo-Reformation were able to advance their plans and bring forth a new Mass for the Church in defiance of centuries of divine guidance, it means they weren’t being watched too carefully. While John XXIII and his men were busy at work preparing for the Second Vatican Council in the years preceding the Council, there lay hidden in the Vatican a secret cabal of liturgical planners whose work would bring discredit to the Church and to the one appointed to lead it, Pope Paul VI.

At the helm was the infamous Msgr. Annibale Bugnini who had long been suspected of conspiracy. He and his clique formed the eye of this ecclesial hurricane that would later uproot the Faith and blow the Barque of Peter off its course.

Bugnini’s work as a liturgist goes back to 1947 when he began a twenty year period…

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A cry from the heart from a Jesuit brother: Priests celebrating mass, don’t improvise!

In America Magazine, words to the wise:

O priests, who improv prayers at Mass! Who give opening monologues to start the show! Who deliver closing arguments before the dismissal! Who make meaningful statements in between the “Lord have mercy’s”! (Lord, when we are not our best selves, when others do not receive the totality of all that we could be…. Lord have mercy.)

O priests who feel the need to make Mass personal or interesting or more spiritual than it appears on the surface to be. Who suddenly put the sign of peace at a different part of the Mass or change up in some fashion the standing and kneeling and sitting. Who do not want to appear as cold, officious church functionaries just rattling off words handed to them by a hyper-literal worship committee in some cold cellar of the Vatican. O priests, trust yourselves!

Trust that you are interesting and personal and spiritual as you are. Trust that the energy you exude, your presence, your physicality, your posture, your voice is spiritual enough. Trust that, and just say the words! Do the gestures! They are enough! It is like the old actor’s maxim: “Don’t just do something, stand there!”

Brother Joe Hoover, SJ, America’s poetry editor, goes on and on, analyzing the dramatic and gently skewing the offenders. Read the whole thing.