I've read all the documents from Vatican II, thank you, and the only way I would go to an ad orientem Mass is if there was absolutely no other option. A bishop is the shepherd of his flock and it isn't clericalism for him to guide his congregations' communal rituals, it's his job.
And it is certainly arrogance to claim that the Pope in un…
I've read all the documents from Vatican II, thank you, and the only way I would go to an ad orientem Mass is if there was absolutely no other option. A bishop is the shepherd of his flock and it isn't clericalism for him to guide his congregations' communal rituals, it's his job.
And it is certainly arrogance to claim that the Pope in union with the bishops have guided the Church into a worse liturgy than what was there before. The only one capable of properly making the decision as to whether worship is better or worse is God, not some human being.
I do not think it is "arrogance" to hold the opinion that the modern liturgy is "worse". I think it is arrogant to deny people an opinion. I think it is quite demonstrably worse, in terms of how good a job it does at reflecting Catholic belief.
The Pope in union with the Bishops did not create the Novus Ordo liturgy. Rather disobedient Bishops did as they pleased, despite efforts of Pope John Paul II to restrain them.
And so authority in the Church collapsed alongside the liturgy. And this is where we find ourselves.
You are right that Gods judgement is more important than ours. But in a majority of places - Europe, North America, Latin America - the mainstream Church is tanking, in terms of attendance and vocations. That suggests to me that God is not impressed with what he sees.
In contrast, the SSPX (that example again) most recently accepted a record 79 new vocations and, in Kansas, recently built their largest ever Church , which is undoubtedly the finest building completed in the USA in a generation or more. This suggests to me that God is pleased with their efforts.
I think the Church is big enough to have two forms of Mass, to cater for everyone. Why not? If we can use different languages, why should a traditional Mass be a problem?
The hierarchy seems to know that the novus ordo would not ultimately be most popular in such a scenario however, hence the crackdown. Their priority is to retain a protestant style liturgy, to permit continued shared services with heretics (which have done nothing over decades to advance unity).
Why do you dislike ad orientem Masses? I like them, as the focus of everyone present is God in the tabernacle. The priest addresses God directly, he does speak to the congregation in (in the words of B16) a closed circle, with God on the outside.
SSPX is schismatic. I personally have no problem with other people attending the traditional Mass provided that it is done in obedience to and in union with the hierarchy.
I prefer ad populum because it's not possible to see the tabernacle with the priest standing in front of it. It is possible to be more involved with the offertory and Consecration when one can actually see them rather than just hear someone saying the words. They have a much greater impact for me because I'm a visually oriented person. So that's what I prefer.
In fact the SSPX is not schismatic and so the authorities of the Church have never formally pronounced them to be so. We as lay people cannot declare things which the Church has not.
True, their consecration of Bishops without mandate was described as a "schismatic act" but they did that not to separate themselves from the Church, but because they consider the Church to be in a state of emergency - a contingency which Canon law allows for.
(I share the view that the Church is in a state of emergency.)
I respect your view on the traditional Mass - and of course your own liturgical preference. Your view makes sense to me.
However, when I attended the novus ordo liturgy, for the most part I did not even know what the consecration and offertory were. I only learned about these concepts from tradition.
Tradition is also what taught me what the Mass is, how to pray the rosary, about Fatima, and essentially everything I know about the Catholic faith.
Modern Catholicism taught me that everyone is nice and that the Jews and Protestants are brilliant. (seriously, that was it). I left school knowing more about Bar Mitzvahs than Catholic Sacraments. To this day, I know words and phrases in Hebrew - I cant think why!?! As a child, I thought the Mass was a kind of mediocre get-together for elderly ladies.
Ultimately, the only reason the SSPX exists is because many in the hierarchy are abusive authorities who bully and abuse Catholics who prefer a traditional approach.
My 3 small daughters and I (along with an entire healthy congregation) were recently expelled from our Parish Church because our Bishop does not like the traditional Mass and lacked the Christian charity to allow us to continue in peace.
He aims us to force us to attend modern liturgies. However, as a parent charged with passing on the faith to my children, I cannot do that in good conscience because - in my experience in my own diocese- the modern Mass retains very few people and those whom it does retain are often very superficial Catholics.
The situation might be different elsewhere, but that what we are dealing with here. I have to make decisions based on what I think will maximum the chance of my daughters practising the faith.
We - and many others - wanted to attend a Mass provided by the Diocese, but the Diocese itself prevents us from doing so. And so all of those people (and their donations) now go to the SSPX.
We obviously have extremely different experiences. The members of my parish are extremely faithfilled. We have a booming Catholic school with which our pastor is heavily involved, but of course this being Indiana most grade school and high school students are publicly funded wherever they go to school. A recent Crisis magazine article listed our diocese as one of the ten best for migrating to if one wants to move to protect one's faith, so there's that as well.
Sorry for the delay replying, but I am afraid that is a ridiculous thing to suggest.
Jorge Bergoglio, like every other Pope, is just a person like you or I, he is not a divine entity.
The modern phenomenon of "Papolatry" - that is, Pope Worship, is a serious challenge for the Church today. Catholics must realise that the Catholic Faith is a thing in and of itself. It stands alone, and would continue to do so even if we had no Pope, because the things it teaches are true.
The Catholic Faith is not "whatever Pope Francis has said on a whim now".
While Catholics must assent to the teaching of the Church, that does not mean our opinions on any matter are automatically subject to those of the Pope.
Catholics should also realise that the personal opinions of the Pope may differ from the formal teaching of the Church.
It is crazy to suggest that a Catholic is not entitled to form their own opinion on the liturgy based on their own experience, historical information, how well it reflects their Catholic beliefs and the trends it is responsible for. Or that an opinion is invalid, simply because Jorge Bergoglio does not happen to share it.
Look at the contrast between Benedict and Francis: the former said the Traditional Mass was a good thing and that is was justifiable for Catholics to desire it. The latter says the precise opposite.
Who on earth could take this seriously, this flip-flopping which is only politics and not faith?
At the end of the day, the liturgy does not belong to the Popes and they have no place attempting to dictate to Catholics which they should prefer. I could not think of a worse example of clericalism.
Neither I nor most other Catholics worship the Pope. We do believe that he in union with the bishops throughout the world is infallible in matters of faith and morals when he speaks, and that he should be respected due to his office.
One of the things the Church teaches is that Jesus said it was founded on Peter and therefore on the papacy.
Certainly the Pope says some things off the cuff which he shouldn't have said, but there has been much more twisting of his words to make them say what he didn't say, who am I to judge being the first I really noticed. He has by now a long history of not correcting those who misquote him or misinterpret what he has said, which is why I don't read most of what is said about him. I don't trust the sources to report accurately what he says so I don't waste my time on them.
Traditionally the Pope in union with the bishops has changed things for the good of the Church in specific circumstances. In the original Church everyone received, probably under both species. Eventually only the priests received under both. The laity went from receiving daily or weekly to receiving 3 times a year and then to receiving once a year. Now we are back to daily or weekly reception, with both species available at least on Sunday. These changes were decided by the hierarchy in every case.
Given that there are huge numbers of people who attend the Novus Ordo and there were very few who attended the Latin Mass, even when it was allowed, the idea that the old rite is going to do away with the Novus Ordo is foolish. My fairly small diocese had 7 priestly ordinations this year, and that's just one of over a hundred dioceses in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.
Finally, the priest speaks to God directly in a way that allows the people to more fully participate in the conversation. Since He is on the altar, He is most definitely on the inside of that circle, not just on the outside.
It is true that comparatively few people attended the traditional Mass, but also true that it was growing strongly all the time. Summorum Pontificum was an ongoing great success (like the SSPX).
I in no way thought the TLM would overthrow the modern Mass, nor that people should be forced to attend any particular liturgy. I do not seem them an opposing forces and im wary of tribalism in the Church.
What I think is that the TLM will continue to grow (even despite efforts to kill it) and the modern Mass will continue to waste away, like the protestant liturgies it seeks to copy. And that is how change will occur, though it could take decades or centuries.
Its great news you guys had 7 ordinations this year. Our diocese is not so lucky and is now reduced to ordaining pensioners and increasingly relying on Conservative African missionary priests.
I once met a man in his 60s, retired from his career, who was training to become a Priest. He became a priest but is now already dead. And so this desperate stop gap will not buy the Church much time.
The modern mass, a direct import of protestant worship, is built on sand and is unquestionably a failure by any metric. In contrast it is almost amusing to see Francis think he can succeed in killing the TLM, where any number of protestant reformers and tyrants failed.
The fact that a Pope should savagely attack his own flock, is a great sign of how disorientatedand dysfunctional the modern Church is.
Countless martyrs went to their deaths for the sake of the TLM. Saint John Ogilvie was martyred in my own City. Who would ever go to their death for the sake of the Novus Ordo?
The modern Mass was not designed to copy Protestant liturgies, it was designed to make the liturgy more intelligible to the people. The Protestant liturgies were designed to deny the sacrificial nature of the Mass and transsubstantiation. Those are two extremely different things.
Countless martyrs are now going to their deaths for the sake of the Novus Ordo. Our bishop went to Nigeria last summer and assisted with confirmations because there were so many there, and yet over 5000 Christians have been murdered for their faith there in the last 10 years.
Of course not - I did not suggest anything like that.
The novus ordo liturgy was authorised by the Church and so "works", even if in practice it will often be invalid due to the amount of invention, ad-libbing and clowning from the priests. The rubrics are meant to be followed closely.
What Benedict was getting at was the fact that the main focus at the Novus Ordo is the interaction between the priests (and supporting cast in the sanctuary) and the congregation.
I attended it for many years, I know what it is often like. Priests often resort to jokes and anecdotes to engage the congregation, as if painfully aware of the banality of the proceedings.
I am blessed to have priests who follow the rubrics for the NO. If I bump into a priest who doesn't, and it's never a diocesan priest but a very few others of a certain age from a religious order, I simply don't attend his Masses a second time. As far as I'm concerned, the main interaction at the NO is between the humans and the sacrificial elements on the altar. The rest is irrelevant.
Perhaps the differences we experience are due to national differences, as the Pope seems to have a certain disrespect for the American mentality and we keep on being who we are.
I've read all the documents from Vatican II, thank you, and the only way I would go to an ad orientem Mass is if there was absolutely no other option. A bishop is the shepherd of his flock and it isn't clericalism for him to guide his congregations' communal rituals, it's his job.
And it is certainly arrogance to claim that the Pope in union with the bishops have guided the Church into a worse liturgy than what was there before. The only one capable of properly making the decision as to whether worship is better or worse is God, not some human being.
Hi Sue
I do not think it is "arrogance" to hold the opinion that the modern liturgy is "worse". I think it is arrogant to deny people an opinion. I think it is quite demonstrably worse, in terms of how good a job it does at reflecting Catholic belief.
The Pope in union with the Bishops did not create the Novus Ordo liturgy. Rather disobedient Bishops did as they pleased, despite efforts of Pope John Paul II to restrain them.
And so authority in the Church collapsed alongside the liturgy. And this is where we find ourselves.
You are right that Gods judgement is more important than ours. But in a majority of places - Europe, North America, Latin America - the mainstream Church is tanking, in terms of attendance and vocations. That suggests to me that God is not impressed with what he sees.
In contrast, the SSPX (that example again) most recently accepted a record 79 new vocations and, in Kansas, recently built their largest ever Church , which is undoubtedly the finest building completed in the USA in a generation or more. This suggests to me that God is pleased with their efforts.
I think the Church is big enough to have two forms of Mass, to cater for everyone. Why not? If we can use different languages, why should a traditional Mass be a problem?
The hierarchy seems to know that the novus ordo would not ultimately be most popular in such a scenario however, hence the crackdown. Their priority is to retain a protestant style liturgy, to permit continued shared services with heretics (which have done nothing over decades to advance unity).
Why do you dislike ad orientem Masses? I like them, as the focus of everyone present is God in the tabernacle. The priest addresses God directly, he does speak to the congregation in (in the words of B16) a closed circle, with God on the outside.
SSPX is schismatic. I personally have no problem with other people attending the traditional Mass provided that it is done in obedience to and in union with the hierarchy.
I prefer ad populum because it's not possible to see the tabernacle with the priest standing in front of it. It is possible to be more involved with the offertory and Consecration when one can actually see them rather than just hear someone saying the words. They have a much greater impact for me because I'm a visually oriented person. So that's what I prefer.
Hi Sue,
In fact the SSPX is not schismatic and so the authorities of the Church have never formally pronounced them to be so. We as lay people cannot declare things which the Church has not.
True, their consecration of Bishops without mandate was described as a "schismatic act" but they did that not to separate themselves from the Church, but because they consider the Church to be in a state of emergency - a contingency which Canon law allows for.
(I share the view that the Church is in a state of emergency.)
I respect your view on the traditional Mass - and of course your own liturgical preference. Your view makes sense to me.
However, when I attended the novus ordo liturgy, for the most part I did not even know what the consecration and offertory were. I only learned about these concepts from tradition.
Tradition is also what taught me what the Mass is, how to pray the rosary, about Fatima, and essentially everything I know about the Catholic faith.
Modern Catholicism taught me that everyone is nice and that the Jews and Protestants are brilliant. (seriously, that was it). I left school knowing more about Bar Mitzvahs than Catholic Sacraments. To this day, I know words and phrases in Hebrew - I cant think why!?! As a child, I thought the Mass was a kind of mediocre get-together for elderly ladies.
Ultimately, the only reason the SSPX exists is because many in the hierarchy are abusive authorities who bully and abuse Catholics who prefer a traditional approach.
My 3 small daughters and I (along with an entire healthy congregation) were recently expelled from our Parish Church because our Bishop does not like the traditional Mass and lacked the Christian charity to allow us to continue in peace.
He aims us to force us to attend modern liturgies. However, as a parent charged with passing on the faith to my children, I cannot do that in good conscience because - in my experience in my own diocese- the modern Mass retains very few people and those whom it does retain are often very superficial Catholics.
The situation might be different elsewhere, but that what we are dealing with here. I have to make decisions based on what I think will maximum the chance of my daughters practising the faith.
We - and many others - wanted to attend a Mass provided by the Diocese, but the Diocese itself prevents us from doing so. And so all of those people (and their donations) now go to the SSPX.
Its all so sad and needless.
We obviously have extremely different experiences. The members of my parish are extremely faithfilled. We have a booming Catholic school with which our pastor is heavily involved, but of course this being Indiana most grade school and high school students are publicly funded wherever they go to school. A recent Crisis magazine article listed our diocese as one of the ten best for migrating to if one wants to move to protect one's faith, so there's that as well.
It is arrogant to decide that one's opinion on a matter is better than that of the Pope on whom the Church is built.
HI Sue,
Sorry for the delay replying, but I am afraid that is a ridiculous thing to suggest.
Jorge Bergoglio, like every other Pope, is just a person like you or I, he is not a divine entity.
The modern phenomenon of "Papolatry" - that is, Pope Worship, is a serious challenge for the Church today. Catholics must realise that the Catholic Faith is a thing in and of itself. It stands alone, and would continue to do so even if we had no Pope, because the things it teaches are true.
The Catholic Faith is not "whatever Pope Francis has said on a whim now".
While Catholics must assent to the teaching of the Church, that does not mean our opinions on any matter are automatically subject to those of the Pope.
Catholics should also realise that the personal opinions of the Pope may differ from the formal teaching of the Church.
It is crazy to suggest that a Catholic is not entitled to form their own opinion on the liturgy based on their own experience, historical information, how well it reflects their Catholic beliefs and the trends it is responsible for. Or that an opinion is invalid, simply because Jorge Bergoglio does not happen to share it.
Look at the contrast between Benedict and Francis: the former said the Traditional Mass was a good thing and that is was justifiable for Catholics to desire it. The latter says the precise opposite.
Who on earth could take this seriously, this flip-flopping which is only politics and not faith?
At the end of the day, the liturgy does not belong to the Popes and they have no place attempting to dictate to Catholics which they should prefer. I could not think of a worse example of clericalism.
Neither I nor most other Catholics worship the Pope. We do believe that he in union with the bishops throughout the world is infallible in matters of faith and morals when he speaks, and that he should be respected due to his office.
One of the things the Church teaches is that Jesus said it was founded on Peter and therefore on the papacy.
Certainly the Pope says some things off the cuff which he shouldn't have said, but there has been much more twisting of his words to make them say what he didn't say, who am I to judge being the first I really noticed. He has by now a long history of not correcting those who misquote him or misinterpret what he has said, which is why I don't read most of what is said about him. I don't trust the sources to report accurately what he says so I don't waste my time on them.
Traditionally the Pope in union with the bishops has changed things for the good of the Church in specific circumstances. In the original Church everyone received, probably under both species. Eventually only the priests received under both. The laity went from receiving daily or weekly to receiving 3 times a year and then to receiving once a year. Now we are back to daily or weekly reception, with both species available at least on Sunday. These changes were decided by the hierarchy in every case.
Given that there are huge numbers of people who attend the Novus Ordo and there were very few who attended the Latin Mass, even when it was allowed, the idea that the old rite is going to do away with the Novus Ordo is foolish. My fairly small diocese had 7 priestly ordinations this year, and that's just one of over a hundred dioceses in the Roman Catholic Church in the United States.
Finally, the priest speaks to God directly in a way that allows the people to more fully participate in the conversation. Since He is on the altar, He is most definitely on the inside of that circle, not just on the outside.
Hi Sue,
It is true that comparatively few people attended the traditional Mass, but also true that it was growing strongly all the time. Summorum Pontificum was an ongoing great success (like the SSPX).
I in no way thought the TLM would overthrow the modern Mass, nor that people should be forced to attend any particular liturgy. I do not seem them an opposing forces and im wary of tribalism in the Church.
What I think is that the TLM will continue to grow (even despite efforts to kill it) and the modern Mass will continue to waste away, like the protestant liturgies it seeks to copy. And that is how change will occur, though it could take decades or centuries.
Its great news you guys had 7 ordinations this year. Our diocese is not so lucky and is now reduced to ordaining pensioners and increasingly relying on Conservative African missionary priests.
I once met a man in his 60s, retired from his career, who was training to become a Priest. He became a priest but is now already dead. And so this desperate stop gap will not buy the Church much time.
The modern mass, a direct import of protestant worship, is built on sand and is unquestionably a failure by any metric. In contrast it is almost amusing to see Francis think he can succeed in killing the TLM, where any number of protestant reformers and tyrants failed.
The fact that a Pope should savagely attack his own flock, is a great sign of how disorientatedand dysfunctional the modern Church is.
Countless martyrs went to their deaths for the sake of the TLM. Saint John Ogilvie was martyred in my own City. Who would ever go to their death for the sake of the Novus Ordo?
The modern Mass was not designed to copy Protestant liturgies, it was designed to make the liturgy more intelligible to the people. The Protestant liturgies were designed to deny the sacrificial nature of the Mass and transsubstantiation. Those are two extremely different things.
Countless martyrs are now going to their deaths for the sake of the Novus Ordo. Our bishop went to Nigeria last summer and assisted with confirmations because there were so many there, and yet over 5000 Christians have been murdered for their faith there in the last 10 years.
Are you saying that Pope Benedict XVI denied that transsubstantiation occurs in ad populum Masses? Forgive me for not believing you.
Hi Sue,
Of course not - I did not suggest anything like that.
The novus ordo liturgy was authorised by the Church and so "works", even if in practice it will often be invalid due to the amount of invention, ad-libbing and clowning from the priests. The rubrics are meant to be followed closely.
What Benedict was getting at was the fact that the main focus at the Novus Ordo is the interaction between the priests (and supporting cast in the sanctuary) and the congregation.
I attended it for many years, I know what it is often like. Priests often resort to jokes and anecdotes to engage the congregation, as if painfully aware of the banality of the proceedings.
In contrast, the focus at the TLM is only God.
I am blessed to have priests who follow the rubrics for the NO. If I bump into a priest who doesn't, and it's never a diocesan priest but a very few others of a certain age from a religious order, I simply don't attend his Masses a second time. As far as I'm concerned, the main interaction at the NO is between the humans and the sacrificial elements on the altar. The rest is irrelevant.
Perhaps the differences we experience are due to national differences, as the Pope seems to have a certain disrespect for the American mentality and we keep on being who we are.