Wherein Father chuckles

Over a Fr. Hunwicke’s place I read a line that made me chuckle:

Now, look here, Father, if you can’t be more pastorally sensitive and inclusive, I shall have to forbid you to say the Novus Ordo … so you’d better get your act together … or else start brushing up your Latin …

To my mind, it is supremely pastoral to remind people that Hell exists, to say “No” about a range of things, and to make sure they know the Extraordinary Form.

 

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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8 Comments

  1. benedetta says:

    Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    Your labeled Not Pastorally Sensitive,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

  2. Magpie says:

    Withholding the Holy Mass as a punishment? Who’d have thunk it?

  3. SimonDodd says:

    There’s no word in the English vocabulary that has suffered as much at the hands of Catholics (real and soi-disant) as “pastoral.” Pastoral means “in the character of a pastor or shepherd.” A shepherd, naturally, doesn’t simply follow his flock wherever it goes and bless its discretion in walking off a cliff to its doom below, and yet the word “pastoral” has been used in the last fifty years, to the detriment of both the language and the faith, to mean “don’t tell anyone something they don’t want to hear, and don’t use a tone of voice that suggests that they’re doing something wrong, no matter how justified.”

  4. jeanne says:

    Our Priest is a convert, he grew up Lutheran. He has never been shy about telling us that there is a devil, that there is evil in the world. A few have left the parish because he told them he would not allow them to receive communion unless they got married. Parents have pulled children from CCD because he told them there is a devil and he is actively working here on earth. But he is an awesome Priest and I would say he is pastoral. Just this week he is defending his Doctoral Thesis in Theology at the Seminary in Chicago. We are very proud of him.

  5. James C says:

    Love love Fr Hunwicke.

    On the feast of the Annunciation the new bishop of our diocese on the other side of England visited our parish to celebrate Mass. He spent an hour before Mass hearing confessions. When I confessed to him, he mentioned the wiles of the devil and how to avoid them (regular prayer before the exposed Blessed Sacrament was one). Then he went on to celebrate a beautiful solemn Mass. At the end of his homily, he gestured to the group of Dominican friars sitting on one side of the sanctuary and said he felt a bit of trepidation preaching in front of them, and that he invited correction from them after Mass for anything he said that might have been heretical! ;-)

    Thank God we have an actually *pastoral* bishop.

  6. Sonshine135 says:

    People forget that when Jesus flipped over the money tables in the Temple, he was being pastoral there too. My wife and I were discussing last night just how much we wished that some of our Priests had been a little more pastoral in this manner. I have serious doubts that either of us would have been welcomed at the pearly gates.

  7. acricketchirps says:

    Simon D: No, no. The active definition of pastoral when it comes to, say, bishops is: (adj) marked by a preference for vacationing in bucolic settings.

    Sonshine: I hadn’t actually ever heard of scattering money and overturning tables being a sheep herding technique before. Whips either.

  8. Vecchio di Londra says:

    I hope and trust they’ll be playing Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony at the Synod.
    There’s a nice noisy storm near before the peaceful ending.

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