By a prodding of Providence, I walked into an old religious house some days ago in the French village where I live, where, as in the massive, once flourishing house of sisters across the road, the remnants of a formerly vibrant missionary order spend their waning years in retirement. The same saintly founder bequeathed both orders to this tiny French village and to Mother Church, who was reeling then from the shock of revolution, as she is reeling again.
An old priest shuffled slowly down to the door and gave me a warm smile. He was a kind and holy old man whose radiating goodness immediately captured my affection, whose untamed wispy beard and too close brown eyes gave him an irresistible, dispossessing charm. As he led me into an elegant reception room nearby, I was startled to find a veritable natural history museum of curious objects: an armadillo-skin purse, wooden figurines, a swordfish bill, strange guitar-like instruments that once belonged to a heathen bard, and a giant python skin stretched triumphantly over it all. It was a trove of treasures sent back by men whose blood and faith had won those tribes from barbarism and the devil.
We had a genial conversation for about an hour, in the course of which I discovered that he was the superior of the community there and that he had served his whole life in the missions – in the Antilles, Quebec, and Cameroon.
Questioning him about his formation, I learned that at the age of 20, he was studying at the Gregorian, right when the Second Vatican Council opened. There he met de Lubac, Congar, Chenu, and all the great French theologians who visited the French seminary, not to mention daily conferences about the Council with the thirty bishops who lodged there.
He was in every respect one of the better specimens – if I can speak this way in charity – of his generation’s psychology. For example:
1. He claimed that his Scholastic formation had been too intellectual, a mere exercise. His real spiritual work began when he started to work with lay people after the Council. His true joy had been forming these lay catechists. When I ventured a phrase in Latin to remind him of his education (Deus est primum movens), he waved it away impatiently and said, “No, I don’t even want to remember that!”
Contemplating the mixture of chance and bitter sacrifice it has taken for me, and for my generation, to learn what those precious words mean when there was no one to teach us has been a frequent temptation to wrath. This priest’s generation allowed a vast heritage of ecclesial and human culture, a whole way of life, to languish under the silence of interdict for so many decades, and with their death, it will pass away forever. A tremendous loss.
2. He said the Council defined his generation. During the Council, the bishops and their peritistayed at the seminary and every day recounted the day’s events.
It strikes me that this was one chief way that the liberal interpretation of the Council spread: through a sort of indoctrination of the cream of the crop from every country, who were studying at Rome during the Council and who more than anyone would have been caught up in the developing “spirit” of the thing.
3. He had a master’s degree in sociology from Montreal – another sign of a generation that joined the bandwagon of social scientists trying to reconstruct society without the sacramental priesthood, the means established by Christ for the consummation of the world.
4. Most striking was how completely baffled he was when I told him about the popularity of the old Mass in the USA. His eyebrows rose first in disbelief, then in scarcely concealed contempt.
“Of course, our generation considers that tradition entirely dépassée. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“You mean there are places where the people go to Mass…all in Latin?” he asked in a tone of innocent incredulity. “And the priest – he…I mean, he stands away from the people, with his…back to the people? Is that right? And there are priests…priests who can…do that? That is too bad, too bad. In France that is very rare, very rare, indeed.” Not so rare as he thinks.
His reaction was something like the Anglican priest in Benson’s The Dawn of All, as if he had woken up to an inconceivable future in which a rejected past had come inconceivably back to life, and I were giving a silent version of the professor’s lecture, rehearsing all the follies of his generation.
I choked bitterly on images of the book-burnings and defections, iconoclasm and the simple faithful betrayed, and the Carmelite who tore down his certificates of ordination to the minor orders in a fit of rage and despair from which he has never emerged. What is it that blinds them to what they have done? Here his order happily displays the primitive arts of barbaric civilizations. Why did they grind their own glories – our glories – into dust?
5. Within a five-minute span, he mentioned that, unfortunately, there were almost no Frenchmen left in his order, and also how happy he was to have enjoyed the “renewal” of his order that followed after the Council.
To accentuate the tragic irony of this last claim, consider that we were sitting in the middle of a region in which the total number of practicing Catholics who live in all five surrounding villages does not ordinarily fill one of the dozen small churches they all share in a large territorial parish. Perhaps the lay catechists aren’t working hard enough. Or maybe it’s just inevitable social change.
Whatever the case, when the remnants of this priest’s congregation soon go to their rest, and the house is converted into apartments, and the guitar and the python vanish into a museum, and the last of the religious are gone from this town, what will his generation have left us? Whether it is what they all desired or what a few bad men desired, it seems they will vanish into the autonomous lay world they helped construct.
None of this was terribly novel or interesting for anyone used to the opposition of that generation of the clergy. Just rather drab and disappointing. But I suppose that’s why it is remarkable. Here, as everywhere else, the story is exactly the same: the same excuses, the same mantra-like incantation of “conciliar renewal,” as if the mere words could chase away the stark realities of a bark run aground.
I left with the full intention of returning. I will go back to benefit from his gifts of grace, but also to marvel again at the irresolvable contradictions of that most tragic, inscrutable generation.
Lest anyone take away a note of arrogance or self-satisfaction from this anecdote, we should prayerfully take this priest’s life to heart as a warning against the folly that rules the spirit of every age. As Fr. Waldstein observed in a recent post on Sancrucensis with his usual wisdom and charity, to the limpid eyes of orthodoxy, every age is the worst of times, its darkness illuminated only by the light of a few saints who rise above the mediocre majority, the darkness of unbelief in which each one of us plays too great a part:
Man is fallen from Paradise so it is natural to look back to a pre-lapsarian age, but one is inclined not to look back far enough and to project pre-lapsarian perfection on very lapsarian times. …
The opposite error is equally natural: to look forward to a coming generation which will set everything right. This is all very well if one looks forward to the Second Coming, but I’m afraid even Catholics have the tendency not to look forward far enough. How many times have we heard so-called “conservatives” say that soon the present unfortunate generation of “liberals” will die off and their places be taken by the rising generation of “traditionalist” churchmen who will reverse the excesses of the past decades? But every generation of churchmen is full of heresy, pride, cowardice, envy, and folly; all we can hope for is a occasional saint to keep our hopes up till the eschatological solution to all problems.
What generation yet to be born will look into our happy aged faces and wonder at our ignorance, our blindness, our lassitude? And wonder why we could not see the beams in our eyes?
If that is not a serious concern to us, we should know ourselves better.
Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine quis sustinebit? Ab occultis meis munda me, Domine.
Some Priests who have spent most of their lives abroad as Missionaries appear to “go native”
to some degree. The finer points of Catholic (Tradition) teaching are not considered sufficiently relevant
to the daily grind and “absorption” within the local culture and surrounding poverty.
And this is easy to understand and appreciate and a very human error of perspective on the part of
some such Missionaries.
An attitude they carry home and abide with in retirement. Although it’s noted that in the case of the Priest
in this article his perspective was already absorbed by novelties as a young and impressionable Priest of his
generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfgBPzxOzME&feature=youtu.be
This future missionary says Genesis was just a myth or some fairy tale story.
I heard the same things fifty years ago.
“Whatever the case, when the remnants of this priest’s congregation soon go to their rest, and the house is converted into apartments, and the guitar and the python vanish into a museum, and the last of the religious are gone from this town, what will his generation have left us? Whether it is what they all desired or what a few bad men desired, it seems they will vanish into the autonomous lay world they helped construct.”…………
I doubt i’ll be coming back “next week” for “part two” as I have a prior engagement…with the Dog and a walk in the park for starters!
Having been a missionary {Protestant} and been in many missionary environments in Africa and elsewhere, as well as having grown up with a father who was a Methodist minister involved in ecumenical activity, I find what you say to be very true. In fact, there is much blending of doctrine {rather, better said, from a Catholic perspective, ignoring thereof} by many Christian groups in the effort to help what might be called the “general cause”.
The interesting thing to me is that in my experience, limited as it might be, I am not aware of any blending that has been to the advantage of the Catholic faith. Always seems to go the other way.
And hence we see the wisdom in such documents as Mortalium Animos…
These are criticical times in the church. Lately there’s criticism of Humanae Vitae here in Eire.
Glenstal Abbey’s Benedictine Father Mark Patrick Hederman provoked controversy when he said what he described as the church’s “stifling teachings on sex” need to be dramatically modernized.
He also said that the church needs to address its subjugation of women and to open a discussion on sex, celibacy and ethics.
“Now that we have legislated for gay marriage and accepted the fact that sexuality does happen for reasons other than procreation; now that we also recognize that some of the most heinous sexual crimes have been perpetrated within the ‘sanctity’ of marriage; it is surely time to take a more comprehensive approach to the ethics of sexual behavior,” he wrote in the book The Opal and the Pearl. Hederman’s book takes its title from a letter from James Joyce to Nora Barnacle in 1909.
Hederman said in the book that Catholics who wish to remain “conservative and old-fashioned,” should avoid being sectarian and supportive of values and lifestyles that have been rejected by the majority of 21st-century families.
“Otherwise we are categorized as out-of-date leftovers from a previous era,” he wrote.
The pope is visiting Ireland in August, 2018 after the abortion vote.
30,000 pro-lifers out of 5 million Catholics came out to pray the rosary this past weekend in Ireland. Let’s continue to pray that abortion wont be legalized.
Prelates like Hederman are no help to the Right to Life battle for the unborn. Hederman is another James Martin. Why the pope allows this open dissent among his priests is beyond me.
Call me ‘out-of-date leftover from a previous era’. I’m proud of it.
Yes, that statement is pretty telling, eh? Is that the worst of his fears – that he (and we) might not have the love and respect of the world because we believe and live, and teach Jesus, and Him Crucified? Poor wee soul!
Excellent point by the author that we are naive to wait for a new generation of ‘traditional’ priests and bishops…some saintly priests will come, some will remain faithless, and most will remain weak and faithful.
But really what difference should it make to you and me? Don’t we have ONE soul to save – our own? We must become holy (see previous OPF article) and shine before GOD, then we may become that light on the lamp stand Our Lord talks about. Let the rest go their way.
“Why the pope allows this open dissent among his priests is beyond me.” After all that has happened since 2013, I can only assume you write this last sentence with the greatest imaginable sarcasm.
And I wonder what he makes of that old fashioned thing called THE BIBLE.
“The pope is visiting Ireland in August, 2018 after the abortion vote.”
Naturally, not BEFORE when he might be able to influence it for the better.
No, after, which I assume will enable him to “dialogue” with the lead pro-abortionists.
Dang. This is a good one.
To study and ponder what we’re living in is good.
What.
The.
H…
There’s no fool like an old fool.
This article reminds me of an even greater man that I met recently. (no offense to this wonderful french priest). I’m referring to none other than Atila Guimaraes, who is a humble, elderly, layman (still alive). At a young age, he interviewed the so-called “great” Vatican II council fathers. He was instructed to publish the interviews during that time and has since written a sixteen-volume work which is a complete masterpiece. It took him decades to unfold the lies. His methodology was quite simple. He asked each council father what their contributions were, what their sources were that stood behind their contributions and he went right to their cited sources, and was able to study their doctrines and compare to the perennial teaching of the church. Atila did this after being instructed to do so by the great Plinio Correa de Oliveira. Now, after so many years of unfolding the lies and following the aftermath of the council, has seen the results of the insurmountable heresies behind the teachings of the council (which most catholics including clergy) are completely unaware of, or willfully ignore. Atila has since dedicated his life to fighting the revolution with a counter-revolution by closely following the growing apostasy which undoubedly resulted from the council. This man continues to publish articles through his website: http://www.traditioninaction.org. <— highly recommend reading aside from OnePeterFive.
I would very much like to meet him. I even tried calling the organization. I have read his book “In the Murky Waters”, his booklet on homosexuality and the Church and have read de Oliveira’s book on Revolution and Counter-revolution and of course many of the entries on his site.
I find it odd that Guimaraes is seemingly so little known among the Traditionalists I know. Possibly Americans do not know exactly what to make of him? He doesn’t fit into a cookie-cutter mold of “Traditionalist” as he is not afraid to both laud and critique the SSPX for example as well as other Traditionalist groups, he isn’t a sedevacantist, and he isn’t afraid to resist to the face the blatant attacks against the Church that have come from any quarter, especially and most importantly from within.
He is, to me, just a “Catholic”, but a very exceptional one at that. I cannot say that I always agree with him, but often on further evaluation I realize I cannot really present what I think is a valid argument against which I might find myself in disagreement.
I have always wondered where he worships?
Do you know?
Thank you for the article and the reference within, Very useful. God bless.
Well, at 75 yrs I am of two minds about all this, at least. As far as the jettisoning of the tradition goes, I’m with you. Lately I read the blog that the Trappists set up for their Chapter meeting in Assisi this past September wherein a nun who was born in 1967 reminded the chapter participants of their responsibility to pass on what they had received. This made very poignant reading, for she herself could hardly have received the Trappist tradition, which was largely jettisoned by the order in the late sixties, early seventies. At this point for the monasteries of the order to refer to themselves as Trappist amounts to stolen valor. She imagines that she and her fellow Cistercians received the Cistercian tradition, but that is not true either, but detailing that is not within the scope a blog comment. Suffice it to say that the blessing of God is very obviously off the order, and that its monasteries are one by one turning into hospices. They have very few vocations, and imagine that this is because young people are unwilling to make a committment. No, the monks now in their 80’s and 90’s did not keep their commitment to live as Trappists. Emblematic of this is the used copy of de Rance’s ( the founder of the Trappists) Treatise on the Sanctity and Duties of the Monastic State which I bought on Amazon,I believe, and which arrived with markings of Gethesemane Abbey. They had tossed it. Amazingly, it is now on line at Google Books and is well worth a read by anyone interested in monasticism. With the ineluctable principles he lays down in those two volumes, it is clear to me, at any rate, that albeit retaining the name and the habit, the order has vanished. As for present day Benedictines, they make no pretense of living anything more than a mitigated form of the Rule of St. Benedict. So, they are mitigated Benedictines. And while I am sure there are many holy men and women in both the Cistercians and the Benedictines, nevertheless the Cistercian and Benedictine tradition is hardly robust in either case. If it were, there would be saints such as these orders produced in their vigor. Yet, all is not lost, for the way forward is clear: repentance and a return to usages, customs, and spirituality of the founders.
Thank you for your comments – all of them. The voices of those with pre-conciliar experience are incredibly valuable to us young’uns.
There are a number of “start-up” religious orders whose founders and members are attempting to resurrect the original charism of their orders. Visit vultuschristi to see the sanctity and spiritual gifts attending these efforts. This is only one such order.
Benedictines? Not robust? I’ll have you know that the Benedictines of Ampleforth Abbey have survived well into the 21st century without even having en-suite facilities in their cells. Fortunately, that oversight about to be corrected.
What could more clearly indicate that the Benedictine monasteries of today follow a mitigated Rule of St. Benedict– a rule whose celebrated virtue already was that it moderated the monasticism found in the rules of St. Basil, St. Columban et al–than this avowal by the abbot primate in 1995? : “RB is still used today in many monasteries and convents around the world. The monastics of today do not follow it literally but still find in it much wisdom to live the common life. It still protects the individual and the community from arbitrariness on the part of the abbot or others; it still provides a way of living the Christian life. Monastic communities accept it as their basic inspiration even as they mitigate it, supplement it, or adapt it to the living conditions of today. +Abbot Primate Jerome Theisen, OSB, STD” in The Modern Catholic Encyclopedia,(Collegeville:Liturgical,1995),78-79. Online: http://www.osb.org/gen/rule.html.
if Benedictines world-wide are following a mitigated rule of St. Benedict, then how can it be said that they are robust examples of the Benedictine charism? if they follow a mitigated rule, they are mitigated Benedictines. From what I have read on Cistercian websites, and they purport to follow the Rule of St. Benedict, the concept of obedience has been turned on its head and the function of the abbot now is to implement the will of the community, but this is absurd in the light of the RB. Compared to Benedictine monasticism as lived by the Cistercians at their epitome, what we find now throughout the Benedictine world are monasteries which might more accurately be described as St. Benedict’s Home for Devout Catholic Gentleman.
A classical instance of an important, decisive mitigation is the universal non-implementation of this paragraph from Chapter 71 of the RB: “If a monk is reproved in any way by his abbot or by one of his seniors, even for some very small matter, or if he gets the impression that one of his seniors is angry or disturbed with him, however slightly, he must then and there without dely cast himself on the ground at the other’s feet to make satisfaction, and lie there until the disturbance is calmed by a blessing. Anyone who refuses to do this should be subjected to corporal punishment or, if he is stubborn, should be expelled from the monastery.” Perhaps after all, I am utterly mistaken and Benedictine monasteries typically follow this practice, which was obviously a very big deal to St Benedict, the abbot Benedictines proudly point to as their father and founder. The Cistercians, however, dropped it long ago, but they set out to follow the rule in all its rigor, so my supposition is that it is universally ignored, mitigated, with Benedictines everywhere all the while paying lip-service to the wisdom and balance of the Rule.
Of course, the Rule has several practical elements that are irrelevant today, such as the stipulation not sleep with their knives, but dropping that paragraph from Chapter 71 of the rule hits at the heart of spirituality St. Benedict was endeavoring to cultivate in his monks. Of course, the men of today would be very reluctant to cast themselves at the feet of anyone, senior or no, but it is hardly to be imagined that the men of St. Benedict’s time were less proud than we, and more agreeable to such demonstrations of repentance and humility. As the primate of the order indicated twenty years ago the Rule of St. Benedict has been mitigated away Nowhere is that more evident than among the Cistercians, or what is left of the Cistercians.
“St. Benedict’s Home for Devout Catholic Gentleman!”
I prefer to believe that the next generation will not be at least as wayward, or even more so, than the present one. Frankly, I believe that Vatican II was necessary for the ultimate good of the Universal Church, in that it permitted the modernists and heretics to emerge from the shadows and gain almost complete ascendancy. I suspect that Benedict XVI was prompted to stand aside to make way for the current pontificate, the purpose of which is to preside over the climax of this greatest ever crisis in the Church. I hope this will culminate in the collapse of the whole, rotten edifice they have constructed, so that from the ruins, a new, more enlightened and faithful generation can begin the re-building of the Church for which we all so fervently hope and pray. After all is said and done, Francis is there by means of the permissive Will of God. That goes without saying, since everything that happens in this world happens by the permissive Will of God; even things that seem, with our shortsightedness, to be bad, Because we also know that in all things, God will be glorified. Thus God will be glorified in the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio. How this will happen, we don’t know, but happen it must. It is not inconceivable, for example, that Francis may be called to lay down his life for the sake of Christ, the Church and humanity. And thereby, God will be glorified.
And yet . . . If you listen to Cardinal Cushing’s celebration of the funeral Mass for President John Kennedy in late November of 1963, a ceremony that was watched by virtually everyone in the United States, you will have a glimmer into clerical embarrassment before the world over our retention of Latin as a liturgical language. Here are some few seconds of Cdl Cushing reciting the canon of the Mass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1G4OnAvtR4. I found myself a few days later explaining the Cardinal’s rationale to a scandalized couple who were Protestant immigrants from Holland, namely that the words had their effect apart from how well or beautifully they were enunciated. This argument didn’t fly, and if we were interested in making converts it was necessary to take into account how our liturgy was striking people–including our own people. Admitttedly, efforts to adequately address the situation have been counter-productive for the most part, but that was the motive. Although Cardinal Cushing’s is a particularly bad example of how Mass was celebrated at the time, nevertheless it was often a very rushed business, for in post war US.churches were jammed and so was the Mass schedule. Many parishes had Sunday Masses at 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, which meant that Mass had to be over in 45 minutes so the parking lot could empty and re-fill. Figure in the sermon, the distribution of Communion and you have a glimmer why the canon was rushed, and often bordering on the irreverent. Something had to give, or so it seemed. It could very well be that people’s sense of propriety was offended, that if this was the Catholic way of worshipping the Almighty, then perhaps they should look elsewhere, or just skip it.
Also not helpful was a very marked tendency in the priesthood- at least in my parish- to ball out the congregation for this or that, but I saw this both in parish priests and in Maryknollers who helped out. No doubt priests were under a lot of pressure, but it was often over the top.
Also, very parenthetically, I think a good bit of the thinking about post-conciliar developments is based on a post hoc, propter hoc fallacy, where phenomena attributed to the council are the result of something else altogether, the culture of distraction.. It is hardly irrelevant that TV came into the Catholic home in the mid-fifties, and by 1968 the first generation raised on TV were rioting in the streets. Our family life, our devotions, our family rosary, our morality, our quiet Catholic homes were overwhelmed by the new “culture.” We were mesmerized in our own homes, much as kids today are mesmerized by their cellphones. No wonder there was a fall-off in vocations, in devotions. Who was going to go to the parish mission when “Gunsmoke” was on, or “Perry Mason”?
Too, the new culture- modernization-made the scholastic tradition seem ridiculous. Not irrelevant was the smugness that one often encountered in its fervent exponents. The actor Roberto Benigni ( Life is Beautiful) was asked to comment on his time at the seminary. “There are people who know everything . . . but that’s all they know.” My guess is that your priest friend had a bellyful of hylomorphism, which was probably served up to him in Latin. And when he got to he mission field, how was it relevant or useful? Of course, it WAS useful in understanding the sacramental system and much else besides. Yet a missioner is not a philosopher and the amount of time demanded for Metaphysics, etc, etc. was likely out of all proportion to his real needs and the needs of the people of God to whom he would minister.
My view . . .
You raise some legitimate points. However, you make philosophical and theological formation a rather utilitarian exercise. Metaphysics wasn’t for the pagans in the mission lands; it was for the integration of truth within the life of the mind of the priest and to offer the fullness of reality required for an authentic spirituality — especially since it had to be lived “in the bush.”
I also am surprised that the Canon was recited aloud in 1963.
I could be wrong, but I remember reading/hearing that Padre Pio’s funeral mass was a shamble and conglomerate of rubrics, maybe something like a sung Low Mass? I think I saw this on a youtube video?
But I do think things were not so pat, ordered, neat and…orthodox even in the pre-Conciliar age as we have a tendency to think today.
As I like to put it, Vatican 2 wasn’t the CAUSE of the modernist crisis in the Church, it was the RESULT. I THINK Pope St Pius X would agree.
Rod, amen. The revolution has always been about philosophy and theology. I love the aesthetics of the traditional Mass, but that is not why I am devoted to it.
“The revolution has always been about philosophy and theology. I love the aesthetics of the traditional Mass, but that is not why I am devoted to it.”
SPOT ON.
As a Protestant convert, I need to comment on what you say here. First, I want to say that I just got done arguing with a Catholic on another site. I was supporting the notion that Latin still is a valuable asset to the Church. So I am NOT “against Latin”. Having said that, you are ABSOLUTELY correct in addressing the monumental problems associated with Latin vis a vis the non-Catholic population. The language itself was a tremendous obstacle to evangelization of Protestants. Maybe the single biggest obstacle. One might argue if it was a necessary obstacle. I will not write here the common ridicule that flowed/flows from Protestants regarding the Latin Mass, but there is even a term for it. Your Cushing here caricatures it perfectly. AS IT EXISTED in the pre-Conciliar age, it was a HUGE problem.
My wife upon first experiencing the TLM said “Why in the world didn’t they just take the 1962 Missal and allow it to be said in the vernacular?” But alas, we know there was much more going on there… But her sentiments have validity in that Latin was important as a lingua franca in the age of the birth of the Church and in following such a model, we might say the Church should adopt English today as her official language, and in 20 years possibly…Chinese?
Let’s not forget the rank abuses that existed in the pre-Conciliar Church. I remember reading of a rule established by the Vatican requiring the Mass to be said no quicker than 15 minutes. If such a rule was established, it was…needed for a reason. Such a scandal equals the infamous “Clown Masses” and Beachballs On the Altar of the post-Conciliar age…
Right now, in fact, I am trying to lead my adult children to my FSSP parish. All are converts to the Catholic faith, but they have remained in the novus ordo world in spite of their disgust with the excesses of the current culture. Their problem with my FSSP parish is simple; Latin. It is totally foreign to them, they see no use for it, they don’t buy the notion of a “unique, heavenly virtue” of a Mass said in a language they do not understand.
There were MANY problems with the pre-Conciliar Church. There always have been ever since St Paul chastised the abusers of the mass in the New Testament! But Latin, at least in our current age, does seem to be a stumbling block to evangelization. an African priest friend of mine said the explosion of growth in the Catholic church in Africa in recent decades was largely attributed to the use of the vernacular in the Mass.
Makes me wonder what things would be like if the church did merely what my wife suggested…left the old mass alone, and merely allowed more use of the vernacular.
Can someone answer a question I have?
This “explosion of growth in the Catholic Church in Africa….” Is it an orthodox explosion? In other words, is it one that can last, and stand up to the pressures of modernism?
I know we can point to men like Cardinal Sarah as exponents of truth. But that is an anecdote. Does it prove a rule?
And, for what it’s worth, speaking of anecdotes, Latin was not a stumbling block to my conversion to the faith. Quite the contrary. It was an integral part of the experience.
My opinion is that it is mixed. African culture is not amenable to strict adherence to rubrics and the like. That comes from catechesis and as we all know, catechesis is not the strong point of the Church today.
We are speaking sweeping generalizations, here, but I lived and traveled extensively in Africa as a Protestant so I am no expert, but i would be very surprised to hear that African Catholics are concerned much about the details of Mass rubrics. As for the moral teachings, more so, but as for the Mass? Well, youtube some African Masses and judge for yourself…
And more; as you go up the ladder of wealth, you up the association with Western morality and culture. Something to ponder.
One thing I want to retract or qualify, was the following statement I made referring to the hurried celebration of Mass: “Something had to give, or so it seemed. It could very well be that people’s sense of propriety was offended, that if this was the Catholic way of worshipping the Almighty, then perhaps they should look elsewhere, or just skip it.”
This really is not correct. The setting was post-War U.S. in the late fifties and early sixties. The churches were jammed with a people that had lived through the Depression and WWII, a people that were on the whole very devout and holy. Many of them had seen death up close and personal, and i am sure many of them had a very close brush with it. They had all lived very frugal lives all their life long . . .until post war prosperity overwhelmed us all. How devout were we? Well, if you came the least bit late to the 8, 9, or 10 o’clock Mass, you could not get a seat. The ushers would go up and down the aisles to see if they could squeeze you in somewhere. If you went to the parish mission for men, it was jammed. It moves me to tears now to think of it, but at the “et incarnatus est” of the Creed all those men, many of them lately soldiers in Europe or the South Pacific went down on one knee to genuflect to the their King. it was thunderous. It was glorious, the thing I miss most about the old Mass.
We were a disciplined and holy people, and kept a Lent that is simply unimaginable now to the sensuous, delicate people that we have become. The Communion fast was from midnight on, no food or water, under pain of mortal sin. The Friday abstinence from meat was kept rigidly, by ALL, and again under pain of mortal sin. It was something that definitely set us apart as a people, as objects both of ridicule and admiration. Well do I remember the “Blue and Gold Dinner” held for cub scouts and their fathers on one Friday in the basement of the Presbyterian Church, where fish was made available for the Catholics and we ate it under the amused looks of our neighbors. We were truly a people set apart. This, of course, was a good thing, but as children of recently arrived immigrants ( our grandparents and great grandparents) we desperately wanted to fit in. And now, God help us, we do fit in.
Those Lents, and those abstinent Fridays brought down a great deal of grace on the Church, to a degree that was almost palpable. About two or three times a year the Lord would show up in a very big way at Sunday Mass. It is hard now to describe, but He made His presence felt and we all knew it. Yes, the glory of the Lord was present in our midst, unseen, unheard, except perhaps in the sermon.. Was this the result of the Latin Mass per se or our fervent lives of prayer and sacrifice as a people? Honestly, I think it was the latter.
So, if we were so holy, what happened? Again, post war prosperity, and especially television. The priest had forty-five minutes a week to sanctify us, but television had three and four hours a day to demonize us, and that is what happened. Similarly, I well remember leaving Mass sanctified, and we stopped by the local delicatessen to pick up the Chicago Sunday Tribune. We went home, had breakfast and sat around reading the Tribune for an hour or two and rose up secularized. Yes, that is what happened. In other words, it is very likely that even without post-Concilar confusion, we would would probably be in much the same boat we now are in, with ourselves and our children being carried away by secularism, hedonism and apostasy.
The Council and all its changes hit us at a psychologically vulnerable moment, when those who wanted to cast off the old restraints of a highly disciplined life now had a passably good excuse to do so. In many respects we were already in spiritual and psychological turmoil and rather than the Liturgy being the steadying influence it could have been, it too became a catalyst for more turmoil. Our lives dissolved into controversy.
So can the revived Latin Mass reverse all this? That is putting a very heavy burden on it. In my view, the far more apposite thing is to get the secular media out of the Catholic home. Once we do that, the Holy Spirit can get a word in edgewise and we will have more vocations than we know what to do with, full rectories, full convents, Catholic schools with teaching sisters, a well instructed people once again. Perhaps then we will even have the time and the interest to learn Latin, the language of the Church.
RodH, it’s important to stress to your relatives and friends that the Latin serves a profound
unifying duty. Tell family and friends plainly that there would be NO “One,
Holy, Roman Catholic Church” without Lingua Latina. The
problem is that language is far more than a mere communication tool. It can
easily be a weapon. And this is very true with the vernacular in the Churches.
Look at the Protestant Revolution: the first thing that happened that any average “pewsitter” would have noticed is that the priest suddenly turned around to face the
people. Second, the sacred hieratic language was ditched in favor of the
vernacular. Third was the de-stress (massively so) of the Holy Eucharist in
favor of the elevation of “The Word”: preaching. (Some Prot Churches were more
obvious that way – the Calvinists, for example – than others – the Anglicans
and the Lutherans.) The fourth thing that happened was iconoclasm. Probably
3/5s of Europe’s artistic heritage was destroyed in the 16th
century.
Now the shocking thing is that these four things are exactly what happened after the
Vatican II Council, during the “spirit” of Vat2. But as regards the language,
notice there that the Anglo-sphere got one Anglo version. “One size fits all”
whether American, English. Scottish, Irish, Aussie, Kiwi, or whatever. (And it
was a banal, lame version, too, a sort of basic grunt English.) That’s
also what happened in the Protestant Reformation. One version of the vernacular
ruled, and it was not “the language of the people” but of the elites. I mean of
the various dialects, one dialect was the one to stomp the others, and in
countries like France, where you had many languages, some not remotely related,
that was a cruel form of cultural imperialism. In Ireland, the Reformation just
gave the English yet another tool to beat down the Irish with. In Wales, the
joke is “Before the Reformation, the Welsh spoke Latin in church and Welsh
everywhere else; after the Reformation, they spoke Welsh in church and English
everywhere else.
Cont.
Most folks don’t think in these terms. They don’t notice how “weaponized” a language is.
But using a hieratic language is common to ALL religions (even if no more than
thee and thou, etc.). People have a sense that the holy, the sacred, is “Other”. Latin provided all that and the fact is that folks were converting to the Holy
Church before the changeover to the vernacular.
So, yes, it is an issue, but we can be creative about it. Many options are possible:
special local vernacular Masses might be authorized here and there in the TRUE
vernacular, for specific purposes. All that. But by far the most important
function of Latin was to keep the Western Church ONE. If we went the vernacular
root back in the Middle Ages, say, at any point therein, today we’d have a
plethora of national churches in Western Europe, just like the Orthodox do in
Eastern Europe. AND they’d be “in communion” with one another but of course
loathe each other just as much as the Orthodox do today. Those Churches can’t get
along five minutes with each other. It’s a horrific scandal. But there it is.
And that’s where we’re headed today unless the course of the Barque of Peter
begins to change. As we all know, a pope who tried even a simple, sane, humble “course
correction” got forcibly “retired”.
That’s our situation.
RC
One last point, if I may: many of you are probably thinking “we’ve gone a long way toward national Churches already!” And that is true. The German Church seems to be far down that road. And the Church in the various Latin American countries might well be largely unrecognizable to visiting Catholics from other lands. Any serious large-scale return to Latin today would no doubt see a large number of “national schisms” all over the place.
RC
The “German Church” appears not to be far down the road, but rather, to have already arrived at its destination, that being Wittenberg.
“As we all know, a pope who tried even a simple, sane, humble “course
correction” got forcibly “retired”.”
Can you expand on that Raghn? post maith!
I agree. In fact, in other words, I made exact the case in my recent debate. I am not anti-Latin. But I am not stupid. Many people do not give the Gregorian Mass a second look because of LATIN.
I tell everyone that they need to attend the TLM at least 4 times in a row before they make a decision about it. For some it might take 8, others 2, but so often, I think, the end result is the same. They are hooked.
But we cannot deny history.
All the talk about the devotion of Catholics in the ’50’s must be taken with a grain of salt.
By definition, true devotion can’t blame TV for its demise. A true relationship with God, a true relationship with Jesus {and yes, ultimately…eternally…THAT is the relationship that matters} is not so easily defeated.
No, CULTURE was what much of it was, and when a second option to the existing culture was presented…the old one was junked. No one is going to convince me otherwise. Pre-Concilar Catholic culture was ripe and ready for any enemy to come along and cave in its battlements. History proves me right.
Imagine a Hindu priest quacking and pushing out Bhagavad-Gita from his lips like this “Prince of the Church”? Oh dear….disgrace.
Extremely useful real-life comment… Thank you from Berlin, Germany!
As far as I’m aware, FSSP in Bordeaux is thriving due to the use of Latin at their traditional masses. Elsewhere is a spiritual desert.
Statistics do show that everywhere that the TLM is being promoted and ‘resurrected’ the Church is flourishing. A proven fact that these blind Churchmen refuse to acknowledge.
Practicing French Catholics for the most part are special i.m.o. For example, the Catechists here complain that there aren’t enough kids coming to Catechism in our parish, however when we asked them to start catechising our eldest at age four we were met with two things. 1.) Your daughter is too young 2.) It’s not possible because we do not have anyone to teach her. Both responses were blatant lies as they had 4 people doing catechism to 20 kids max and at the FSSP parish which is thriving they start children at age 4. Our parish priest seems to have the same attitude and as for having a whole mass in Latin celebrated with his back turned he has said to me that he cannot do this because some of the congregation will write to the Bishop which is a shame as his Latin skills are excellent.
Hallo Christopher,
Where in France do you live if I might ask? France is our
favourite Country to visit so we make two to three Camping trips there yearly. I
want to see how you find the situation so desolate outside of Bordeaux.
There is a link http://www.nd-chretiente.com from the FSSP which
gives all the Mass schedules and Location where the TLM is celebrated in all
the Departments of France. Before every trip, I planned the route and looked up
the Church where we can attend Sunday Mass. The result was a chain of wonderful
experience: in Troyes, at Èglise St. Remy we saw a Young father with three
small children, kneeling, sitting, praying as really an example for all the
world. In Lyon, at the Èglise St. Just, we saw a whole lot of Young families
with Young children… In Paray-le-Monial, we accidentally stumbled on a new
Chuch buildt by FSSPX, with a section for parents with babies. I was delighted
to see the Church filledl for the two Masses we have attended and the “Baby-Section”
as well…
For our next trip we would make a “Monastery-Route”. We
are looking forward to take part in the Liturgy (i.e. the Tridentine-Romen
Liturgy pre-VII) of the Abbaye Fontgombault, Abbaye St. Paul de Wisque, Abbaye
St. Madeleine du Barroux, among others. The route is still in formation.
Last year we spent three days at the Benediictine Abbaye
St. Pierre de Solesmes. Yes, they practice the Novus Ordo (but everything is in Latin except the Readings and the Sermon) whereas their
daughter Monasteries like Fontgombault tried that for one year from 1966-67 and
reverted back to the “Old Form”. But it is still amazing to see the groups of
young men taking part in the Divine Office at Solesmes. I was of course praying
that many of them would receive the “Call”. And after three days with the Monks
of Solesmes, the Gregorainic chants just get into your system: at every quite
moment in the following weeks, we are hearing them in our Spirits.
Is the Catholic Faith really dying in France? I see it
more dying in Germany (where I live) than in France. And I always wonder what
makes the spirituality of the French different than elsewhere? For example, why
is there only one Carthusian Monastery (for monks) in Germany whereby there are
numerous (for monks and nuns alike) in France? Likewise for Trappist: One in
Germany, numerous in France.
No, I really hope – and pray – that our Church will be
revived in France, and spread her beauty all over the world. It would be a
great loss of mankind if this heritage is irrevocably destroyed.
And for the reaction of this priest in Provance, I almost
have to pity him, if it were not presumptuous to say so.
Hallo Christopher,
I tried two days ago with a rather Long reply here and it disappeared. So here is just a test before I waste my time again…
Dear Legris,
I could write about many experiences. I cannot speak for what you have seen but here the masses are busy and so is the communion line, however the confessional is empty.
To give you one example of how things have been here. One day I was genuflecting with my two children in the centre of the church at the end of the mass. As I’m kneeling on the floor the son of the catechist steps over me and then the catechist steps over me both of them came from behind me. I shouted at them that they were disrespectful to us and Christ but they did not hear, It took two weeks to speak to the person face to face and they did not seem to see anything wrong with their behavior which shows how sad things are.
We live approx. 50 km each way of the FSSP parish in Bordeaux so with two small children and limited funds it is not viable to frequent their masses.
This so-called mild mannered priest is exactly the type that put through hell many priests of his generation who were oriented toward tradition and resistant to the Revolution. It’s just that he did it with a smile while the ecclesial executioners wielded the axes.
Sorry: this author’s assessment is far too benign.
I was wondering the same thing, as I read further of this priest’s reaction to the TLM still being done in the USA.
Perhaps this priest was seduced and was trying to seduce the author of this article?
As an old timer aged 75 I find this sort of comment naive in the extreme. Surely it could only have come from someone with little experience of life in general, or of life in the Church. For a better understanding of how things actually unfolded and the motivations of our generation, see my comment below, beginning “And yet . . .”
I respect certainly your life experience and have read in earnest your comment below.
Thank you.
Cardinal Cushing is a whole other matter, shall we say. I believe he would be in line with all this ecumenicalism today in theChurch?
So, why was it so seemingly easy for the heresy of modernity to sweep the Church?
Am I to believe that ” rushed Masses” contributed? Or that a publicly televised Requiem Mass by Cushing causing embarrassment helped fuel this diabolical disorientation?
Or perhaps the not so nice and sweet priest who may have ” balled out” a parishioner?
How could any priest abide by Communion on the tongue, standing, changing the Sacrifice to a mere table celebration? And how could so many millions of laity just go along with it all?
Could it be that mankind had become so disenchanted with life, as the 20th Century was filled with war after war after war? Communism, persecution and fear grew in the hearts of so many.
Perhaps priests, bishops and cardinals despaired. Laity grew restless, wanting more immediate gratification as the economy seemed to flourish a bit in the 60s. Restlessness took hold of a great many, and was sought
to be calmed by ” changes” and progressivism, and materialism, and no longer praying the Mass of Sacrifice, but the Mass of Celebration ONLY……….Many, many priests were on board with this as well, bishops and cardinals as well. Let’s be happy and make everyone happy – ‘that’ is the seduction I am was referring to.
And great wars can do that to any generation of people.
If only the warnings of Our Lady of Fatima had been heeded…..
It is easy to find this incredulity everywhere among Catholics and at the snap of the fingers on the internet. Sometimes the marvel comes from Americans, sometimes from foreigners, but the end result is the same; amazement that there is a setting of value on something so “old”, so “embarrassing”, so “outdated”, so “ridiculous”. Defending the new Mass because you can hear all the prayers {as if silence cannot be trusted…because…what if the priest is actually up there mumbling an Irish limerick instead of actually praying to God???} and suchlike. Of course, with some of the modern priests that last fear might have some validity…
But in the end, often, the love for the old Mass often becomes shoved off as an “Americanism” or an example of a malformed psychology, or aberrant personality trait.
That a discomfort with the clear re-presentation of SACRIFICE is at the core of these criticisms seems impossible for me to deny. And that brings to mind St Paul:
“For the word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God.” (1 Cor 1:18)
And where do we today find this re-presented sacrifice?
Everywhere the Church is.
“For from the rising of the sun even to the going down, my name is great among the Gentiles, and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered to my name a clean oblation: for my name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts.” (Mal 1:11)
So let me get this straight: this venerable old priest sits in a practically empty religious house, in the midst of a kind of Catholic wasteland where hardly anyone goes to Mass anymore, and he praises “conciliar renewal”?
It almost takes your breath away.
I don’t know if Mark Twain ever really made this remark attributed to him, but: “Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.”
He has somehow become ‘blinded by the darkness’. Darkness will do that you know. It makes one STUPID.
Yes and it goes something like this….. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/cbc77c442c9c28f5304db8be385696a8648ed92aecb68ec91b7cd571b9058e3a.jpg
It is pervasive.
In a grayhaired, virtually childless parish in the local burg, a donation of hymnbooks was made that included many old and well-known Traditional Catholic hymns. This was evidently a threat to World Peace as seen by the prevalent crowd of ex-Flower Children, and caused a WAR in the parish, devotees as they were to the OCP and the Cult Hero Marty Haugen.
One theme was caught up in a phrase, uttered by one of hymnbook-haters as she held up the despised, hardback copy: “Noooo!!! This is GOING BACK!! We can’t GO BACK!!! Noooo! We must GOOOO FOOOORWARD!!!”
You staunch and staid old Cradle Catholic Traditonalists have seen all this before, but for me as a convert, I was shocked and to this day it gives me chills, so representative of the Cosmic Collapse as it is.
A couple of years ago, a retired priest from another diocese, a friend of the family, came to celebrate a funeral Mass at the parish where I was pastor at the time. I was not present for this funeral but an employee of the parish who was my best altar server for both the TLM and the Novus Ordo filled me in.
Father inquired about the color of vestments. When told that I wear black, Father said, “What’s he trying to do, set the Church back 50 years?” When informed that in this church of extremely modern architecture we placed kneelers at the head of the Communion lines to give communicants the option to kneel, Father let out an exasperated sigh with the words, “Aaagh! Fifty years!” Of course, Father wore white. I share this to relay an episode of similar attitude to that of the the hymnals and also to show how deep the contempt is: this priest verbalized open disdain for the pastor in a conversation with a parishioner he had only just met, and in the sacristy at that.
Yup.
At this same parish I mentioned above, the local Permanent Deacon made a crack about the Rosary at a funeral and the same funeral, the visiting, retired, Maryknoll missionary priest…requested by the Deacon…PRAYED IN THE NAME OF TH DEAD GUY.
God Save The Catholic Church.
I have a similar story. While at my parish I normally attend our regularly
scheduled Traditional Latin Mass, I also help out by serving at the Novus
Ordo Masses, especially for the 8am Mass during summertime, when
reliable servers can be hard to come by. Neither of our priests were
available one morning, and they’d found a chaplain to come in and cover.
While we were in the sacristy, preparing for Mass, the priest leaned over
and asked me “at this parish, do you enter the sanctuary from the
sacristy, or do we process up the aisle?” I responded “Oh Father,
we’ll process from the back– we usually only enter from the sacristy for
the Traditional Latin Mass”.
The priest rolled his eyes and replied “Oh great! That’s just what
we need! The “Traditional Latin Mass”!”, and yes, he used air-quotes. I
was amazed at his naked hostility at the mere mention of the Traditional
mass — it was like a vampire reacting to sunlight. The sacristy was
shocked silent, but soon it was time to begin and as I recall, that priest
otherwise behaved with decorum. But I shall always remember how
his mask slipped and his reflexive, unthinking contempt for the Old Rite
leaked out. That was the only time I’ve ever met the man, but I’ve
often wondered how he arrived at such deep prejudice. I’d also wonder
if he would still harbor such animosity if he knew that both his lector and
his server that day were regular attendees at the Extraordinary Form
Mass, and that both of our parish’s latest vocations were also regulars
at the Old Rite… “That’s just what we need”? Why yes, I’d
say we EF Mass-goers are contributing to our parish, thank you very
much.
In 2009, at the funeral in our diocese of a priest who was incardinated in the neighboring archdiocese but was from the principal city of my diocese, the funeral home provided a limousine just for priests going to the cemetery. In the short ride over, the pontificate of Benedict XVI came up in conversation. One elderly priest said, “Overall, I like what he’s doing, except for that blasted Latin Mass he’s forcing on us.” Keep in mind this was several years before I started gravitating toward the TLM. Sitting next to him, I said, “He’s just opening it up, that’s all,” as a couple of others, including one who had started saying the Traditional Mass, further defended Benedict. “Oh is that what it is?” said the elderly priest as he rolled his eyes derisively.
Had I been quicker, I would have engaged Monsisgnor, and it would have gone something like this:
Me: “Monsignor, do you say the Latin Mass?”
Msgr.: “Of course not!”
Me: “Are any of your parishioners pestering you about incorporating the Latin Mass into parish life?”
Msgr.: “No, not at all, and it wouldn’t happened in any event.”
Me: “Then, Monsignor, it seems that Pope Benedict XVI isn’t forcing the Latin Mass on you.”
The sad thing is, i suspect that your Monsignor, my visiting chaplain,
and the French priest in the article above would all prefer to banish
the Extraordinary Form to the outer darkness, even though doing so
impoverishes the Church. If my visiting priest were to have his way,
our parish likely wouldn’t be sending those two men to seminary
because the EF Mass that nourished their vocations wouldn’t be there.
Myself and my fellow Latin Mass attendees aren’t living in some
sort of isolated ghetto within the parish– we’re helping out with
everything from Knights of Columbus to working at the food pantry.
We pull our weight.
But there are those who would prefer their ideological purity despite
what it might cost the Church. I’ve often wondered what the Church
would look like if it were less possible for prelates to push the latest
theological and liturgical fads without regard for their effects on
Catholic demographics. Would we still have a vocations crisis if
bishops who had the highest number of vocations per capita were
the ones first in line to be assigned archbishoprics or to be given
a red hat? As it is now, there are no consequences visited on
those who, in their quest for “Forward!” devastate the vineyard.
In my perfect world, the USCCB would deny its members voting
privileges and/ or committee chairs if those bishops didn’t meet
criteria for per capita numbers of conversions, ordinations, etc.
After all, if a bishop cannot produce results in his own diocese,
why on earth should he be able to set policy for the Church nation-
wide? It would be better if he were to stand back and see how
his more effective brothers get things done. And I believe there’s
little that’s more efficacious in bringing about healthy Catholic
demographics than a respect for Tradition and the hard-won
wisdom of our forbearers.
Rod, get your bongos and strummin’ geetars ready..rock that life teen mass 60’s style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7m7f6IFXsLU
What a cruel, cruel man…
“featuring ‘the second Mass for Young Americans with songs and refrains'”.
I wonder what the actual Mass is like in this thing, given that it is ’66 and the no wasn’t inaugurated yet.
I’ll be honest, as folk music, I LIKE it, all except for the blasphemous lyrics but a catchy little ditty. I just in no way associate it with worshiping God in the Holy Sacrifice of the mass.
Well if it makes you feel any better, now I’ve got that tune stuck in my head!!
Must go sing the Asperges me….
😉
Here’s his other mega NO hit, if you were around at any time in the 70’s or 80’s you heard this gem, again blasphemous, since I’m not the resurrection, nor are you but you know, sing with the words of Christ instead of singing songs of praise about Him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mcnJdm4SzM
You must have one whale of a video library!!!
And check out the byline…”CONTEMPORARY ECUMENICAL FOLK SONGS”!!!
heck yeah, one world church, ecumenical first, that was always their goal, lets sing songs and happy clappy with the Lutherans.
Reminds me of a horrible NO Cathedral in my diocese, I’m reading the plaque on the building that says the ground was broken in 62 or something and I’m thinking, this is a completely novus ordo building, that means the plans for this building were on some architect’s board before the council even ended, maybe before it started. That’s when it dawned on me, their revolution was in the planning stages long, long before the coucil.
I just told my wife about this article.
Her imitation of the mentality of the French priest {et. al.}:
“Ooohh! We haven’t gone forward ENOUGH. Not everybody’s gone yet!”
I see that all the time.
I am in touch with an old nuns convent quite regularly (the youngest is in her 40s, and is from Africa… the Canadians ones are on average over 80 years old). Some of them have shared to me how they got their vocation: basically, most of the time, the story is that they werebeing inspired by the nuns that they knew when they were young (before V2). And yet, they systematically almost all praise the wonderful change that happenned after V-2, even though they are not intently (and viciously) liberal. I cannot blame them… And I think that they are a kind of martyred generation of religious sisters. They got stuck in the ’70s, their identity got majorly messed up, and they got condemned to a lifelong pursuit of validation of some sort.
… ” the irresolvable contradictions of that most tragic, inscrutable generation” … this is it.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55141238e4b0b71a5147875a/t/59a41d96ccc5c5e77dff6ee8/1503927716658/louvain+community.JPG?format=2500w
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55141238e4b0b71a5147875a/t/59a41de0cf81e08534b5b0c4/1503927783082/foundresses.jpg?format=2500w
If nuns refuse to wear a habit, why can’t they at least wear a crucifix like these nuns?
Because, if we are honest, they — and all too many clerics and ecclesiastics do not believe in the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
A hard pill to swallow, but they don’t believe in Jesus Christ. They believe in something else and ascribe His name to their confection.
Whilst living in France I could not write anything positive about the mentality here, unless the objective is writing about FSSP.
A question: If I met an “average French Catholic” on the street, would he know what the FSSP is?
I don’t think most US Catholics do.
Hi Rod, I found FSSP because I found the local mass unfulfilling in the sense that the homilies are too long and so because of this the rest of the mass is rushed which I think is irreverent. I could write a great deal more to explain why I started seeking to go somewhere else but the gist of it came from the info above.
“What is it that blinds them to what they have done?”
It requires a tremendous amount of courage to acknowledge not only that you have been gravely mistaken, but persisted in adhering to the grossly erroneous while all the evidence on a daily basis — for over fifty years — proclaimed your error.
While not immune from this pathological state of denial himself by any means, at least Benedict XVI acknowledged that the entire generation “defined” by this hideous ruse termed a “council” will have to pass away before the corrective can be applied.
The Vatican II Church is dying before our eyes, although it is taking a while to go. The Vatican I Church died at the Vatican II Council, pretty much, or at least went into shock and never regained consciousness. That was better than the death of the Bourbon ‘Church, which the French Revolution accomplished in blood and horror. (So horrific was its doom that Napoleon found it, like a woman raped and despoiled, lying in a ditch. He picked her up, threw a cloak over her and took her to an inn, where he made her wait on him. The Vatican I Church wasn’t really born till Pio Nono was elected in 1848.)
Before the Bourbon Church, which was founded (at least securely so) at the Peace of Westphalia, the Counter Reformation Church (1540 to 1648) was one of the glories of Church history. But the “powers that were” shut it down and tried to do to it what the emperors did to the Orthodox Churches: make it their chaplain.
So it goes. Each avatar of Holy Church lasts about a century to a century and a half, and then becomes a new avatar, but still the same Church, still the ancient Holy Mass, still the same teaching – or so it was until the Vatican II Church ditched the Holy Mass for a successor Mass that, to put it politely, didn’t do the job the Old Mass had done since Gregory the Great (and before).
Once you see the pattern, the ebb and flow, you take to heart the wise observations that you find in an article like this one.
God rules. And thank Our Most Blessed Lord for that!
RC
“as if he had woken up to an inconceivable future in which a rejected past had come inconceivably back to life.”
That describes the incredulity of elderly Catholics who bought into the 1960s revolution and now discover that younger laity, younger priests and religious are embracing what they so triumphantly ditched.
Within a five-minute span, he mentioned that, unfortunately, there were almost no Frenchmen left in his order, and also how happy he was to have enjoyed the “renewal” of his order that followed after the Council.
A very curious definition of the word “renewal” is at work here.
In France that is very rare, very rare, indeed.” Not so rare as he thinks.
Common enough, in fact, that within 20 years, the majority of the Masses offered in France will be in the traditional rites – because the majority of priests will be traditional priests.
But that’s more because of the utter and complete collapse of the establishment Church in France.
Why *on earth* would you ever go back to someone like that? What “gifts of grace”? This is a man who joyfully abandoned his vocation, and now boasts of it while he squats in the ruins.
Weep for the Eldest Daughter.
Here is irony. If every generation has its slackers, here speaks proof of every generation’s shining stars. May the fear of God guide his every word, thought and deed.
Hallo 1P5,
why is my mail in answer to Christopher censored? This is the second time it happened to my Little 2 Cents. What do you have against me?
Thank you for a clairifacation.
As a Church musician, I experience this same attitude often with regard to music. That generation is firmly and immovably convinced that all the older hymns (I’m not even talking about chant, which they would regard as not even worth discussing) are archaic nonsense that none of the “young people” want to sing. If you suggest something traditional, they look at you with a mix of incredulity and scorn. They are convinced beyond a doubt that what “the kids” want is more Ricky Manolo, etc. In my experience (both as a former young person growing up in the ’70s and as an adult), kids don’t really like that kind of thing and the sheer sappiness of most of it makes a lot of them (esp. boys) uncomfortable.
Truly a fabulous and important anecdote. I find it balanced and charitable. Indeed the glorious times are ahead – in the Second Coming. Until then: Conform yourselves to Christ in the First Coming. Love your brethren, honestly pray for them – because we know that Christ THIRSTS for each one of us. Great quote from Father Waldstein. Thank you. God bless you and the Holy Catholic Church!