Category Archives: 2-Experienced

Glad-handing in the middle of Mass: Father John tries to put not-so-glad-handers at ease

A “Catholic New World” reader put it to Question Corner priest Rev. John Dietzen, in December of ought-five:

I’ve had my arthritic fingers crushed. I’ve had parishioners blow their nose and then offer their hand to me. . . . I’m tempted to isolate myself in back [of church]. . . . [T]his . . . scenario is unnecessary and superfluous.

Neither is it required, but more about that later.

Father John, calling up an an old liturgical reformer’s argument, says this scenario is not new. They did it this way in the middle ages and, yes, in New Testament times. Late middle ages, the “kiss of peace” was for priests only, but now (for, say, 40 years?) it’s “prescribed.” (Not clear about that, but more later.)

A “sign of peace” is currently called for. There are “deep roots” here, Fr. J. continued. Handshake, embrace, or kiss may not be “the perfect” sign of peace, but it can still carry a message we need to understand if we are to celebrate the Eucharist together as Christ intended.”

Which implies, of course, one worries, that before 40 years ago we were not celebrating the Eucharist as Christ intended? For 20 centuries? Say it isn’t so, Father.

“Arthritis got you down?” he asks. Just look at the mass-goer next to you and without extending your hand say, ‘Peace be with you.’ “No one will be offended,” he adds. But it’s not that easy.

Handshake declined, in the manner of the germ-phobic TV detective Adrian Monk — who often has some quick explaining to do, as to the black man who did take offense — “you will be sharing a moment of the Mass that can be most prayerful and precious.”

Ah. When had been the last time Father John attended a mass in a pew?

As for “prayerful and precious,” how about the codger, arthritic or not, who has found the peace of Christ all by himself — or thinks he has — including a resolve to be nicer to people, and has to shatter it with a forced smile and nod not just to those on either side of him but to many others, some of them reaching over several pews to get to him?

A problem to stump Question Corners throughout the land.

Glad-handing in the middle of Mass, first of a series

Reader: “I am most put off by glad-handing. The other day I shook hands with the same woman twice. The ushers even shake hands of those with aisle seats during the Agnus Dei.”

Sometimes feverishly. People wave all over the church, seeking waves back, like a Facebooker looking for likes.

Great for ball games and other sports, but possibly eliminating or weakening any spirit of devotion that one has even momentarily been blessed with.

Shake rattle and roll? Hardly.

Shake hands with all your neighbors, and kiss the colleens all, as in the Donegal song? No.

Shake with fear for the judgment to come, you unrepentant sinner? No.

SHAKE AND SAY, “THE PEACE OF CHRIST BE WITH YOU”? YES!

It happens at mass after the Our Father, during which you may have held hands in a show of solidarity against Satan or watched others do so.

It’s SHAKE TIME, a solidarity-gesturing to beat all — or maybe a violating of sacred silence by turning to another, hand out, extorting response or being extorted.

My friend Jake (not his real name) intends to bring his cell phone with him and threaten to call 9-1-1 the next time he is approached while trying in his clumsy, antedated way to commune with the Almighty.

I am working to dissuade him.

Why do so few US Catholics believe in the Real Presence? Look at the liturgy

Not an accident

Jim Bowman's avatarBlithe Spirit

Casual does, belief follows, as sure as night the day.

A generation of pastors stripped the altars and passed out the Eucharist like a leaflet.

The latest Pew study shockingly states that only 31 per cent of Catholics in the United States believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”

Out of the 69 per cent of Catholics surveyed who believe that the bread and wine are mere “symbols,” only 22 per cent of those understand that they are dissenting from the Church’s actual teaching. The rest are accidental Zwinglians.

More here: Catholic Herald

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Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith on the Liturgy and its Abuses

Marvelous extended commentary here on the new Mass and its discontents. Dip into this or use it as resource. So well done.

EPHESIANS-511.NET's avatarEPHESIANS-511.NET- A Roman Catholic Ministry Exposing Errors in the Indian Church


MARCH 2015

 

Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith on the Liturgy and its Abuses

 

Albert Malcolm Ranjith Patabendige Don is a Sri Lankan cardinal of the Catholic Church. He is the ninth and current Archbishop of Colombo, serving since 2009. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 2010. He previously served as Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (2001–2004), and Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments (2005–2009).

 

He has described the liturgical reforms inspired by the Second Vatican Council as “a mixed bag of results.” While praising the use of vernacular languages, he also criticized the “quasi total abandonment” of Latin and the “acceptance of all kinds of ‘novelties’ resulting from a secularizing and humanistic theological and liturgical mindset overtaking the West.” He has also lamented…

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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 . . . 

Has anyone beside me wondered why almost everyone goes to Communion at mass, no one holding back because he or she has not gone first to confession?

Yes. The last two previous popes have done so:

As John Paul II and Benedict XVI lamented, there is scant evidence in our communities of any awareness of the distinction between worthy and unworthy communions—one of the most basic lessons children used to be taught in their catechism class.

The way we were:

Children in those primitive “pre-Vatican II days” were taught to practice virtue and avoid mortal sin because they should desire to be able to receive the Lord and be ever more perfectly united to Him, until they reached the glory of heaven where they would possess Him forever. They were taught that if one received the Lord in a state of mortal sin, one committed a further and a worse sin.

Can you imagine Pope Francis talking this way?

They were taught that making a good confession, with sorrow for sin and an intention to avoid it in future, was enough to put this bad situation right and restore them to God’s friendship. Who could seriously assert that most Catholics believe any of this today, or that they would even recognize, much less understand, the concepts?

Not I.

Interesting footnote:

[3] Msgr. [Robert Hugh] Benson wrote this about his Anglican days: “I was an official in a church that did not seem to know her own mind, even in matters directly connected with the salvation of the soul.… Might I, or might I not, tell my penitents that they are bound to confess their mortal sins before Communion? … The smallest Roman Catholic child knew precisely how to be reconciled to God, and to receive His grace…” (A City Set on a Hill). Does not this Anglican’s description of the problem in his own communion sound frightfully close to what may be found today in the Roman Catholic Church?

Yes.

The Fifty-Year Descent to Footnote 351: Our Progressive Desensitization to the Most Holy Eucharist – OnePeterFive

Such a wake-up analysis:

The first major step was the allowance of communion in the hand while standing???a sharp break from the deeply-ingrained practice of many centuries of kneeling in adoration at the altar rail and receiving on the tongue, like a baby bird being fed by its parent (as we see in countless medieval depictions of the pelican that has wounded her breast in order to feed her chicks).

This change had the obvious effect of making people think the Holy Eucharist wasn???t so mysterious and holy after all. If you can just take it in your hand like ordinary food, it might as well be a potato chip distributed at a party.[1]

The feeling of awe and reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament was systematically diminished and undermined through this modernist reintroduction of an ancient practice that had long since been discontinued by the Church in her pastoral wisdom.

Nor, as has been well documented, did the faithful themselves request the abolition of the custom of receiving on the tongue while kneeling; it was imposed by the self-styled ???experts.???[2]

More more more in this piece by the excellent Peter Kwasniewski . . .

10/26/2004 THE MODERN CHURCH AT PRAYER . . .

. . . Warmup before a recent funeral mass which I attended included an organ-played rendition of “All the Things You Are” – lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II – from the loft. Only the music (by Jerome Kern) was played, however.

The words go this way and presumably would have been applicable to Jesus, though that would be a major surprise to both Hammerstein and Kern:

You are the promised kiss of springtime

That makes the lonely winter seem long.

You are the breathless hush of evening

That trembles on the brink of a lovely song.

You are the angel glow – that lights a star.

The dearest things I know – are what you are.

One day my happy arms will hold you

And someday I’ll know that moment divine

When all the things you are are mine.

 Ain’t liturgy grand?

7/18/2004: To illegal Latin mass today . . .

. . . where reverence was palpable, vs. happy-go-lucky mainstream Catholic service, starring priest as Jay Leno, full of smiles because we’re happy to be alive! This one was all business.

People came to pray not play, not to meet and greet except after mass, when there was lots of that.

Low mass, 7:30 Sunday, in small ex-Presbyterian church (converted by hammer and nail) 2/3 full, families and others. One server (a young man), priest with back to us, all of us looking towards God.

===========================

Weeks later, 10/10/2004: Parish bulletin warns people away from my illegal Latin mass church. It’s a “chapel,” says the bulletin, “that advertises itself as ‘Our Lady Immaculate Roman Catholic Church.'” But it’s actually not Roman Catholic but is run by the St. Pius X society founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, who was excommunicated, etc. etc.

 The bulletin quotes the Pope about the “grave offense” involved in adherence to the Society leading to excommunication. I’m at risk, therefore, by now and then attending the Latin masses at Our Lady Immaculate. Would my regular parish consider now and then having a Latin mass, so as to ween me away? For pastoral reasons?

A recent special mass for gays and lesbians at a neighboring parish (which I attended,  by the way) was a one-time thing, apparently. Maybe have a one-time thing for Latin mass enthusiasts who make no claims about being born that way but only that they were raised that way? (In due time, that happened, of course.)

6/20/2004. MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY

At church today, a young man ahead of me in line for Communion shuffled up in expensive white sneakers, baggy white pants, and abbreviated tank top, the better to show off his extremely inflated muscles. It was muscle beach at the old parish.

 Earlier, there had been quite a handshaking of peace, with free-lancers going up and down the aisle to press flesh with any reluctant worshipers. Among them was the deacon, vigorously working the crowd as if running for office, which he should, since he’s such a nice guy, very personable.

 Father’s Day sermon had been by a tall, dark-haired, white-suited layman who talked about what Mary would have told Jesus after he was found in the Temple at age 12 instructing some white-hairs: Don’t get a big head, etc.

He got a hand when he finished, which is more than the pastor and his helpers get, but then he had done it more crisply, reading from his text, which is of course a good idea for the reverend fathers too, a good discipline.