1--Communion in the hand vs on the tounge. It seems that some parishes are trying to ban reception of communio on the tounge, contrary to Church Law and usage. The idea is that the EEMs don't want your germs.
So--How many of these parishes are reverting to reception under single species, forgoing the common cup? I have seen none do so, although I have had the experience of an EEM not wanting to gove me communion on the tounge.
2--Anticatholicism. It seems that hate crimes against Catholics in the US are up 25%, according to the FBI.
I think it goes along with the storey in the local alternative "news" rag, Leo. They ran an article about how rowdy and evil the people who are pryaing in front of the local abortuary are. Having been there, all the yelling and insults came from the other way.
TRIUMPHALIST--YOU GOT A PROBLEM WITH THAT?
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Extraordinary Form of the Mass and Division
I have just invested in a shield, to protect myself from the outrage this post will provoke.
I do not see how the EF of the Roman Liturgy is divisive, in itself. To call it so would be to state that somehow, other forms of liturgical worship are divisive. Which would mean that those treasures of the church, like the Ruthenian Rite, the Maronites, the Chaldeans, are somehow divisive.
The essential aspect of the Mass is the Eucharist, which is the main source of unity throughout the Church, the touchstone for being in communion with your Bishop, and the main hope and source of reunification with our separated brethren in the Orthodox Communion.
But I have decided that the "Latin Mass Community" is a source of division. I decided this through observation of our local TLM people.
The majority of people in this community are not elderly folks who were just "too old" to adjust to the Pauline Missal. It's been forty years since the change, and most of those too old to adjust have long since passed. Most of the people who are attending the Mass celebrated with the Johannine Missal are my age or younger. Many of them ended up devoted to the EF because of the rampant liturgical abuses and heterodox preaching they experienced with the OF. But a significant minority are a problem.
This problem first came to my attention when the priest who celebrated the EF for us was hospitalized. People were calling the parish office wanting us to give them directions to, and the schedule of, a schismatic "Chapel" that celebrated the EF exclusively. They were not interested in the fact that this "Chapel" and it's priest, and it's adherents were in formal schism. More over, they were abusive and angry when I told them I didn't know, and wouldn't find out, anything about the schismatics and their schedule.
Our Pastor took the trouble to become idonus in the EF--despite being the Only priest in a parish with around 2500 souls, as well as being an active Canon Lawyer, and filling other duties besides. But not all the people in the TLM community are thrilled about his saying the EF of the Mass, as some of them doubt whether he is validly ordained.
They refuse to recite prayers that were not in general use in the 1950s. They despise music that they didn't hear as children. In effect, they consider themselves to be the only Catholics in town.
This group is a minority of the devotees of the EF. But they are a sizable minority. Some of the staffers who work with them have openly wondered if there aren't mental health issues among them.
To be honest, I have had to consign them to the same mental box I put advocates of women's ordination, transignification, etc in: people who think that they are Catholic, but who have left full communion in favor of their pet causes and prejudices.
There it is. Sorry, but I have to call what I see, not what I wish I see.
It's a real pity, because the EF could, without all the baggage these people generate, help revitalize and reform the Liturgy of the Roman Rite, which badly needs it.
I do not see how the EF of the Roman Liturgy is divisive, in itself. To call it so would be to state that somehow, other forms of liturgical worship are divisive. Which would mean that those treasures of the church, like the Ruthenian Rite, the Maronites, the Chaldeans, are somehow divisive.
The essential aspect of the Mass is the Eucharist, which is the main source of unity throughout the Church, the touchstone for being in communion with your Bishop, and the main hope and source of reunification with our separated brethren in the Orthodox Communion.
But I have decided that the "Latin Mass Community" is a source of division. I decided this through observation of our local TLM people.
The majority of people in this community are not elderly folks who were just "too old" to adjust to the Pauline Missal. It's been forty years since the change, and most of those too old to adjust have long since passed. Most of the people who are attending the Mass celebrated with the Johannine Missal are my age or younger. Many of them ended up devoted to the EF because of the rampant liturgical abuses and heterodox preaching they experienced with the OF. But a significant minority are a problem.
This problem first came to my attention when the priest who celebrated the EF for us was hospitalized. People were calling the parish office wanting us to give them directions to, and the schedule of, a schismatic "Chapel" that celebrated the EF exclusively. They were not interested in the fact that this "Chapel" and it's priest, and it's adherents were in formal schism. More over, they were abusive and angry when I told them I didn't know, and wouldn't find out, anything about the schismatics and their schedule.
Our Pastor took the trouble to become idonus in the EF--despite being the Only priest in a parish with around 2500 souls, as well as being an active Canon Lawyer, and filling other duties besides. But not all the people in the TLM community are thrilled about his saying the EF of the Mass, as some of them doubt whether he is validly ordained.
They refuse to recite prayers that were not in general use in the 1950s. They despise music that they didn't hear as children. In effect, they consider themselves to be the only Catholics in town.
This group is a minority of the devotees of the EF. But they are a sizable minority. Some of the staffers who work with them have openly wondered if there aren't mental health issues among them.
To be honest, I have had to consign them to the same mental box I put advocates of women's ordination, transignification, etc in: people who think that they are Catholic, but who have left full communion in favor of their pet causes and prejudices.
There it is. Sorry, but I have to call what I see, not what I wish I see.
It's a real pity, because the EF could, without all the baggage these people generate, help revitalize and reform the Liturgy of the Roman Rite, which badly needs it.
Bad News, Good News
The bad news is that, like all but four doceses in the US, the Archdiocese of Louisville collected for the CCHD last Sunday.
The good news is that our parish contributed $22 and change, in total, to the aformentioned organization.
The good news is that our parish contributed $22 and change, in total, to the aformentioned organization.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Bishop Tobin and the Press "Ultra Orthodox"?
By now everybody has heard that Bishop Tobin has barred Patrick Kennedy from receiving Holy Communion. This is in line with the Vatican's stance the subject.
There is a question of whether this ban is effective in other dioceses or just in his own, and I don't know enough Cannon Law to even have an opinion.
But what interested me was the response in the Main Stream Press, particularly CBS News's web sight. They used the term "Ultra Orthodox". I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. Although it is clear that is meant to discredit Bp. Tobin by painting him as some sort of freakishly loyal Catholic Prelate. I think the Term "Ultra Orthodox" is meaningless, in one sense.
Orthodoxy is not a term that allows for gradation. One orthodox in ones faith, or not. The word "ultra" means beyond. Like in ultraviolet. Being beyond orthodoxy simply would mean being heterodox.
But the term does reveal something about the mindset of the CBS staff--actually believing in something that they don't, and then acting according to that belief is "beyond". Perhaps they think it is beyond the pale. But in their choice of words they reveal something that would be comedic if it weren't so sad: By placing orthodoxy into the category of "beyond", because they feel that adherence to a standard of absolute truth, or absolute conceptions of morality is inadmissible, they reveal their own internal inconsistency. They seem to be "fundamentalist relativists". That is to say, they seem to feel that if you do not accept that everything is relative, and there are no absolutes, you are absolutely beyond the pale.
There is a question of whether this ban is effective in other dioceses or just in his own, and I don't know enough Cannon Law to even have an opinion.
But what interested me was the response in the Main Stream Press, particularly CBS News's web sight. They used the term "Ultra Orthodox". I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. Although it is clear that is meant to discredit Bp. Tobin by painting him as some sort of freakishly loyal Catholic Prelate. I think the Term "Ultra Orthodox" is meaningless, in one sense.
Orthodoxy is not a term that allows for gradation. One orthodox in ones faith, or not. The word "ultra" means beyond. Like in ultraviolet. Being beyond orthodoxy simply would mean being heterodox.
But the term does reveal something about the mindset of the CBS staff--actually believing in something that they don't, and then acting according to that belief is "beyond". Perhaps they think it is beyond the pale. But in their choice of words they reveal something that would be comedic if it weren't so sad: By placing orthodoxy into the category of "beyond", because they feel that adherence to a standard of absolute truth, or absolute conceptions of morality is inadmissible, they reveal their own internal inconsistency. They seem to be "fundamentalist relativists". That is to say, they seem to feel that if you do not accept that everything is relative, and there are no absolutes, you are absolutely beyond the pale.
Names on the 'Net=symptoms
Zoe Saldana--She played Uhura in the latest Star Trek Movie, and she will be in the upcoming Avatar. I can't really address her acting chops, as her role in ST doesn't really have much scope for her to display them. I have no idea what it will be like in the upcoming movie.
But one thing did come to my attention. The child of immigrants to the US from Dominica, she was interviewed there. The interviewer asked whether she thought of herself as American, or Dominican. She answered that she thought of herself as a black woman. That rather set the interviewer back. He said it was true that she had a dark skin tone, but didn't understand the category. And that's a symptom.
This woman made the choice not to identify with the nation she lives in, or the nation her ethnicity derives from. Instead, she chose to identify with a subgroup--"black", that isn't even a recognized category in her parents homeland. What she has done is simple--she has chosen to identify herself by a referent based solely on a personal characteristic. She uses herself as a starting point, to define who and what she is. Descartes has a lot to answer for.
This shows something else: race in America remains a point of dysfunction. And there are people who wish only to identify themselves by their racial 'assignment". This way of identifying ones self is racist--no matter what "race" you belong to.
It also points up a double standard in America: Can you imagine the outcry if, say, Anne Hathaway was interviewed in her ancestral land, and stated that she identified as white?
Racism is alive and well in America, and by accommodating the concept of "race", whether permissively or restrictively, we perpetuate the greatest weak spot in the Body Politic.
Erin Alexander--Her privacy was violated in an unlawful way, by a third party, for commercial reasons. She went to work for her employer at a college football game, and the crowd went wild.
What appalls me is the way this shows how we have become a people steeped in evil. Not only would there be a potential market for a peeping tom's tapes, but the response of the crowd was horrid. They wouldn't have reacted so had she chosen to appear in Playboy or Maxim. But since her tape was essentially forced upon her she became an object of sexually oriented ridicule.
Americans seem so much to enjoy making others seem small and flawed, especially when they don't cooperate with the growing cult of evil in our land.
We are a people steeped in evil.
But one thing did come to my attention. The child of immigrants to the US from Dominica, she was interviewed there. The interviewer asked whether she thought of herself as American, or Dominican. She answered that she thought of herself as a black woman. That rather set the interviewer back. He said it was true that she had a dark skin tone, but didn't understand the category. And that's a symptom.
This woman made the choice not to identify with the nation she lives in, or the nation her ethnicity derives from. Instead, she chose to identify with a subgroup--"black", that isn't even a recognized category in her parents homeland. What she has done is simple--she has chosen to identify herself by a referent based solely on a personal characteristic. She uses herself as a starting point, to define who and what she is. Descartes has a lot to answer for.
This shows something else: race in America remains a point of dysfunction. And there are people who wish only to identify themselves by their racial 'assignment". This way of identifying ones self is racist--no matter what "race" you belong to.
It also points up a double standard in America: Can you imagine the outcry if, say, Anne Hathaway was interviewed in her ancestral land, and stated that she identified as white?
Racism is alive and well in America, and by accommodating the concept of "race", whether permissively or restrictively, we perpetuate the greatest weak spot in the Body Politic.
Erin Alexander--Her privacy was violated in an unlawful way, by a third party, for commercial reasons. She went to work for her employer at a college football game, and the crowd went wild.
What appalls me is the way this shows how we have become a people steeped in evil. Not only would there be a potential market for a peeping tom's tapes, but the response of the crowd was horrid. They wouldn't have reacted so had she chosen to appear in Playboy or Maxim. But since her tape was essentially forced upon her she became an object of sexually oriented ridicule.
Americans seem so much to enjoy making others seem small and flawed, especially when they don't cooperate with the growing cult of evil in our land.
We are a people steeped in evil.
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