Remember that piece in which Adam Shaw, a writer for Fox blasted Pope Francis in Evangelii gaudier? HERE It seems he also wrote a bit for the Catholic News Service, bankrolled by the USCCB.
It seems that CNS let him go. HERE
Criticize the Pope and you are gone?
Criticize the Pope – in that way – and you are gone?
From a priest reader:
I recently spoke with the permanent deacon in our parish after he saw me hanging up my cassock after hearing confessions. He asked me, is the cassock again being proposed as normal attire for priests in the seminary? Of course, not having been in the seminary in 14 years, I don’t know the answer to that, but it seems many younger priests choose to wear it. He then proceeded to lecture me [?!?] about how wearing a cassock is not pastoral, and scares the people, who see it as a throwback to the “old” Church with its “doom and gloom” and “long list of rules.” Again, its the Church of Nice against the Church of Christ…Hermenutic of Rupture against the Hermenutic of Continuity. While the wearing of cassocks is becoming more widespread among younger priests, the older “generation” still tries to shame the younger out of wearing it, and it seems that the people also do not understand what the wearing of the cassock is about, and what it means, since many leave parishes where the pastor wears one, at least around here. I wish I could find a way to explain to people, including our deacon, in a way that they can relate and understand that the “new” church isn’t new at all, and that the “long list of rules” still exists, and that they protect the deeper values and principles of the Gospel that Jesus preached for us all, in every time and place, and that the wearing of a cassock in no way means that the priest is any less pastoral or caring for his flock than a priest who chooses not to wear one. It does make me wonder what the deacon and the people think “pastoral” really means…rightly shepherding, or anything goes.
Soooo many thoughts and responses.
What flashes through my head is:
The generation to which I presume your deacon belongs has been long accustomed to scare techniques – and largely successful at using them.
Does this sound familiar?
It’s time to call their bluff. They were demonstrably wrong in the past. They are demonstrably wrong now.
Perhaps the best explanation to the people and to the deacon is simply to wear the cassock whenever and whenever it pleaseth you to wear it.
Also, I remind you of what I wrote here: Who are these ‘c’atholic liberals? Young Catholics don’t know and don’t care.
Aging-hippie liberals interpret everything within the Church still through the lens they formed during the anti-authoritarian civil-rights and anti-war protest movements.
When we try to uphold hierarchy and authority or rubrics or the older form of Mass or obedience to the Magisterium or decorum in liturgy and sacred music, or in the clerical life, an involuntary subconscious switch clicks in their heads. They take your faithful Catholic position of continuity to be an attack themselves and on Vatican II, on … niceness… on bunnies … on the poor… on the Democrat Party….
Vatican II cannot, in their minds, be separated from the protest movements they have idolized until they are actually paradigmatic, iconic, even mythic.
A myth that is now itself dying, and they don’t like it one little bit.
I am pretty tired of this B as in B, S as in S. I have been tired of it for decades. Yes, the Biological Solution is working on these aging hippies, but… sheesh! Patience is called for with most lay people, but with a cleric… and from your deacon… and in your sacristy…?
No.
Every young priest who has toyed with the idea of wearing a cassock, but has been intimidated by the nattering nabobs of negativism (or blustering Boomers of bellicosity?), should make a New Years’ resolution in 2014 to wear his cassock in public one day a week – or every day! Or maybe band together. Steal a liberal hippy Boomer technique and stage a sit-in, a “cassock-in”, somewhere really public and visible.
Furthermore, former-Father Greg Reynolds is still excommunicated.
In the older, traditional form of the Roman Rite, today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, with a commemoration of the 2nd Sunday of Advent.
In the newer, Novus Ordo, today is the 2nd Sunday of Advent. Immaculate Conception is displaced.
Were there any good points in the sermon you heard for your Sunday Mass of obligation?
Let us know.
You could add your good points from sermons for the Immaculate Conception, if you went to Mass on Monday.
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From a reader:
I’ve often been left feeling confused about the second confiteor, and have trawled through a few posts on the WDTPRS site regarding this issue.
However, I find it that much more difficult a position to be in being a server at Mass, when our Priest expects me to say it.
I believe in holy obedience, but which way do I go? Obedience to Pope John XXIII’s Rubricarum Instructum (where it is omitted), or obedience to my Priest, who expects me to recite it again?
… Or would you suggest I not serve any more (which won’t necessarily stop the 2nd Confiteor from being recited again at these Masses)?
Your thoughts please?
I will not suggest that you do not serve. I am sure it is helpful for the priest and, spiritually, for you.
If there is an expectation that you start the Second Confiteor, then do it.
The provisions of Ecclesia Dei adflicta and Summorum Pontificum are for the use of the 1962 Missale Romanum. By the time of the 1962MR the Second Confiteor had disappeared from the rubrics (except for Good Friday, before Communion – that section had been plugged in from an earlier edition – but I digress). So, in a technical sense, there is no call for the Second Confiteor and it should not be done. As I have been known to write, we have permission for the 1962MR, not an earlier edition.
On the other hand, one hears there are indications received from the Pontifical Commission “Ecclesia Dei” that, in some communities, it is okay to use it. Furthermore, there is a long custom of saying the Second Confiteor. There is a strong expectation from many in the congregation that there should be one. There is often strong puzzlement when there isn’t one.
This is one of those situations in which I think we have to have a little flexibility and allowances for local usage. Also, this is a practice which as a really long pedigree. It isn’t as if the Second Confiteor is an importation from the Novus Ordo. It isn’t as if it is something profane. It isn’t as it isn’t in the 1962 Roman Missal at all.
When I travel and I say the older Mass in some parish, I do not ask about the Second Confiteor before Mass begins. If the server or the deacon begins it, I simply go along and do my part, turning to give the absolution. If the server or the deacon doesn’t begin it, I simply go ahead with my part, preparing for the Ecce Agnus Dei.
When I have been asked about it before Mass, I make the point that the rubrics no longer call for it, but I will do what they are used to doing. This is important especially when the servers/deacons are used to doing it. You don’t throw hard curves immediately before Mass unless there is a matter of serious liturgical abuse. Saying the Second Confiteor is, technically, a bit offshore, but isn’t anywhere near the Island of Liturgical Abuses.
I warmly urge that this not become a point of contention. If you have discussions about the Second Confiteor, let them be amicable and brief. In the end, serve as the priest desires. This is not in the category of violation of some rubric or principle which constitutes a liturgical abuse.
You can unclench about this one, I think. If you can’t, well… you are free to serve or not to serve.
Do you remember the fable by Aesop about the Fox and the Stork? Sometimes it is the Fox and the Crane.
The fox invited the stork to supper. Fox serves a bowl of soup. Fox can lap from the bowl, but our stork, with its long bill can’t get at it. So, Stork then invited Fox to lunch. This time the soup is in a long necked vase. Stork can eat, but our fox can’t. MORAL: If you are deceitful, expect deceit in return. Reversed: Do unto others….
Here is a fun piece from English soft-paste porcelain set from about 1770 depicting Aesop’s fables, yes, in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
And here is another version of the same tale, but from a larger, more complete service. Again, English soft-paste but from about 1815 (think about something that Mrs. Aubrey might have in her cupboard).
And if you don’t like soft-paste porcelain, here is an 18th c. Italian hard-paste which I post in honor of self-absorbed promethean neopelagians everywhere.
And just because it is sweet and such a contract, we have Merrymakers, French from 1870 by Carolus-Duran (+1917).
In any event, I was met by a priest friend for lunch at the museum. He reminded me of a few other posts I have made when in Detroit.
Remember my investigative report of Michael Voris’ studio?
Then there was the time I went into the belly of the beat, the Call to Action convention when I took the photo of what looked like a gathering of Willy Nelson impersonators.
And then there was the time we went to the hat store and had an adventure with complete strangers and a tire iron.
Ah Detroit!
I have written before that the ordination of women is the flagship issue for liberals.
So long as Pope Francis won’t change Church “policy”, he will remain in their dog house.
Some conservatives frown when the Pope gets out over his skiis in matters of economics, but liberals attack Francis when he upholds defined faith and morals.
Jamie Manson at the Fishwrap, lesbian activist, tutored at Yale by Margaret Farley (of the CDF Notification), favored speaker of the LCWR, attacks Francis for editors this time.
The good thing about Miss Mansons’ piece is that she totalizes her analysis of Pope Francis: Francis can’t be wrong about gender and right about anything else. Obviously NSR disagrees with that judgment!
On lack of vocations, Francis’ diagnosis comes up short
Like many who care passionately about a fully inclusive priesthood in the Catholic church, I read paragraph 104 of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium with deep sadness, though not surprise. [Remember when I wrote that Francis had created a split on the left? Remember also that Sr. Maureen Fiedler already attacked Francis on this point … as the surrogate for the NSR. The editors work thought surrogates.]
“The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion,” Francis wrote, “but it can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified with power in general.” [For true liberals, priesthood is about power, nothing less. That is one reason why the ordination of women is a liberal flagship issue.]
“It must be remembered that when we speak of sacramental power ‘we are in the realm of function, not that of dignity or holiness,’ ” the document continues. “The ministerial priesthood is one means employed by Jesus for the service of his people, yet our great dignity derives from baptism, which is accessible to all.
“The configuration of the priest to Christ the head — namely, as the principal source of grace — does not imply an exaltation which would set him above others.”
[And now the Popette speaketh…] Much as Francis would like to erase the dynamic of domination from the priesthood, his teaching will remain unrealistic if he continues to reinforce an unjust power structure [DING! Say da magic woid, win a hundred dahlahs!] in which only celibate males are permitted to consecrate the Eucharist.
[…]
Even as Francis perpetuates the same rigid restrictions on who may and may not answer God’s calling to the priesthood, just three paragraphs later, in section 107, he goes on to blame the “dearth of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life” on “a lack of contagious apostolic fervour in communities which results in a cooling of enthusiasm and attractiveness.” []
Apparently for the pope, “vocations” are limited to the number of people in Roman Catholic seminaries or novitiate programs. He seems unaware that if he were to look into divinity schools and graduate programs in theology and ministerial formation, he would find no lack of Catholic young adults with a fervent desire to devote themselves fully to serving the church. [They can’t do so as priests. Too bad, Jamie.]
[…]
Read the rest there, if you can stand it. You’ll find a lot of whining about unfairness and an exaltation of lesbianism.
Watch for her points that “real” men don’t join seminaries as long as “real women” aren’t allowed in priesthood. No, really.
I’ll leave you with this:
IF… IF Jamie were right about His Holiness’ blindness concerning women, then it must also be that he can’t be trusted when it comes to any other aspects of “justice”.
Therefore, how can NSR agree with Miss Manson?
But will our Jamie succeed in convincing others that she’s right?
Sometimes when I am given a book of a certain length to read I’ll quip, “That ought to keep my lips moving for a while!”
Today’s first entry in the Martyrologium Romanum says:
1. Memoria sancti Ambrosii, episcopi Mediolanensis et Ecclesiae doctoris, qui pridie Nonas aprilis in Domino obdormivit, sed hac die potissimum colitur, qua celebrem sedem adhuc catechumenus gubernandam suscepit, cum civitatis praefecturae officio fungebatur. Verus pastor et doctor fidelium, maxime in omnes caritatem exercuit, libertatem Ecclesiae ac rectae fidei doctrinam adversus arianos strenue defendit et commentariis hymnisque concinendis populum pie catechizavit.
St. Ambrose of Milan (+4 April 397), a titanic figure of the late 4th century who changed the shape of Church and State relations for a thousand years, who brought much of the wisdom of Greek writings to the West, and who helped to bring St. Augustine of Hippo into the fold.
Would that we might see his like again in the great capitals of the world.
There are too many interesting things about Ambrose for them all to be shared here, but we have space for a couple.
There is a famous moment recounted by St. Augustine in his Confessions (Bk VI) about visiting St. Ambrose.
Augustine walked into the room where Ambrose was sitting and saw him staring at a book! Ambrose was reading and not even moving his lips!
Augustine was so impressed by this that slipped silently out of the room without saying anything to Ambrose, lest he disturb him.
Augustine was very impressed by Ambrose and had wanted to talk to him about various problems and doubts. Because of all the people pressing around Ambrose, who was tremendously important and sought after, Augustine was never able to get near him in public.
Let’s read the text and hear about it from Augustine himself!
Remember, at this point Augustine is a hot property in Milan and not yet Christian, though interiorly twisting on the spikes of difficult doubts and problems.
Augustine wasn’t really praying yet and he he still was considering things in very worldly terms.
6,3. Nor had I come yet to groan in my prayers that thou wouldst help me. My mind was wholly intent on knowledge and eager for disputation. Ambrose himself I esteemed a happy man, as the world counted happiness, because great personages held him in honor. Only his celibacy appeared to me a painful burden. [Augustine was not chaste at the time and he was angling for a politically favorable marriage.] But what hope he cherished, what struggles he had against the temptations that beset his high station, what solace in adversity, and what savory joys thy bread possessed for the hidden mouth of his heart when feeding on it, I could neither conjecture nor experience.
Nor did [Ambrose] know my own frustrations, nor the pit of my danger. For I could not request of him what I wanted as I wanted it, because I was debarred from hearing and speaking to him by crowds of busy people to whose infirmities he devoted himself. And when he was not engaged with them—which was never for long at a time—he was either refreshing his body with necessary food or his mind with reading.
Now, as he read, his eyes glanced over the pages and his heart searched out the sense, but his voice and tongue were silent. Often when we came to his room—for no one was forbidden to enter, nor was it his custom that the arrival of visitors should be announced to him—we would see him thus reading to himself. After we had sat for a long time in silence—for who would dare interrupt one so intent?—we would then depart, realizing that he was unwilling to be distracted in the little time he could gain for the recruiting of his mind, free from the clamor of other men’s business. Perhaps he was fearful lest, if the author he was studying should express himself vaguely, some doubtful and attentive hearer would ask him to expound it or discuss some of the more abstruse questions, so that he could not get over as much material as he wished, if his time was occupied with others. And even a truer reason for his reading to himself might have been the care for preserving his voice, which was very easily weakened. Whatever his motive was in so doing, it was doubtless, in such a man, a good one.
Amazing stuff there.
Keep in mind that, in the ancient world, books were rare. If you had a book, you were probably wealthy. If you got your hands on a book, you had to remember what you read because you might not ever see that particular book again. There would be public readings of books so that more people could hear them. People had to read aloud, actually, to help their memory. The more senses you could involve, the easier it was to remember the material. This holds true today! But, in the ancient world, people who read, generally read aloud.
Notice that Augustine, writing many years after the scene he recounts, and now a bishops himself, understands what it is to be entirely lacking in free time. He wonders if Ambrose read quietly so that the intellectually hungry people around him wouldn’t ask him to explain what he was reading, thus cutting short his own time for study. Also, Augustine himself later in life suffered from having a very weakened voice. In his sermons we actually hear him saying once in a while to the crowd that they had to stop making so much noise in their reactions to him, because his voice to too weak to shout over them! At any rate, Augustine puts a positive spin on what Ambrose did.
Busy tired clergymen understand each other.
I am at the Detroit Institute of Art for the day. After the court decision, some of the art here will surely be sold off. Ah the fruit of the decades long efforts of liberal democrats!
In any event…
This is a pretty Madonna and Child by Sano di Pietro. I’ve seen a few of his Madonnas in NYC at the Met and one of those is presently serving as my phone’s wallpaper.
And there is our old friend the XPFinch!
I am splitting my time at the DIA by also doing research in their library. NICE people! A helpful cheerful librarian is a gift!
I am close to being done with Pope Francis Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium. Let’s remember that it is not an encyclical. It is not even an Apostolic Letter. It’s only an Exhortation.
It is, however, an Exhortation which has some puzzling stuff in it and not all reactions have been accompanied by applause. It is good to attend also to the less than positive reactions as well as to the warmly enthusiastic.
Here is one from the Washington Times, an op-ed piece by Andrew Napolitano, a former judge in NY, writer, broadcaster, who has strongly libertarian leanings. He is also a hard-identity Catholic, from what I can tell.
NAPOLITANO: Pope Francis should be saving souls, not pocketbooks
Church teaching on personal freedom includes a moral imperative to work and shareBy Andrew P. Napolitano Wednesday, December 4, 2013
What is the worst problem in the world today? Might it be war, starvation, genocide, sectarian violence, murder, slaughter of babies in the womb? Any of these would be a rational answer. When Pope Francis was asked this question recently, he replied, “Youth unemployment.”
To be sure, youth unemployment is a serious problem. In some parts of the United States, the richest country in the world, it has reached 25 percent. These are people who are no longer in school full time and are not yet 30 years of age. It is a problem for them and their families, for their communities and for the welfare states that are supporting them. Is it the worst problem in the world, though? Is it a problem for the Roman Catholic Church? Is it something the pope is competent to comment upon or to resolve?
The pope’s youth-unemployment comments recently were removed from the Vatican’s website. No sooner had that been done than the Holy Father issued his first encyclical — a formal papal teaching, as opposed to his now-famous, impromptu back-of-the-plane yet on-the-record comments.
His encyclical is about economics, [No. It is neither an encyclical nor is it – primarily- about economics. These errors of fact, however, don’t change the argument too much.] and it reveals a disturbing ignorance. [At least about economics.] I say this with deference and respect. I also say this as a traditionalist Roman Catholic who laments the post-Vatican II watering down of sacred traditions, lessening of moral teaching and trivialization of liturgical practices. [OORAH!] I also say this, though, as a firm believer that Pope Francis is the Vicar of Christ on Earth and, as such, personifies the teaching authority of the church. He is morally and juridically capable of speaking ex cathedra — that is, infallibly — but only after surveying and distilling traditional Church teachings and only on matters affecting faith and morals.
Thank God, so to speak, that his teaching authority is limited to faith and morals, because in matters of economics, he is wide of the mark.
His encyclical, [See above.] titled “Joy of the Gospel,” attacks free-market capitalism because it takes too long for the poor to get rich. [That may be the money quote.] “They are still waiting,” the pope wrote. Without capitalism, which rewards hard work and sacrifice, they will wait forever. No economic system in history has alleviated more poverty, generated more opportunity and helped more formerly poor people become rich than capitalism. The essence of capitalism goes to the core of Catholic teaching: the personal freedom of every person. Capitalism is freedom to risk, freedom to work, freedom to save, freedom to retain the fruits of one’s labors, freedom to own property and freedom to give to charity.
The problem with modern capitalism — a problem that escaped the scrutiny of His Holiness — is not too much freedom, but too little. The regulation of free markets by governments, the control of the private means of production by government bureaucrats, and the unholy alliances between governments, banks and industry have raised production costs, stifled competition, established barriers to entry into markets, raised taxes, devalued savings and priced many poor out of the labor force. The pope would do well to pray for those who have used government to steal freedom so as to satisfy their lust for power, and for those who have bowed to government so as to become rich from governmental benefits and not by the fruits of their own labors.
Traditional Catholic social teaching imposes on all of us a moral obligation to become our brothers’ keepers. [This isn’t just an imperative from Catholic social teaching, by the way.] But this is a personal moral obligation, enforced by conscience and church teaching and the fires of hell [When is the last time you saw that in a secular paper? When is the last time you heard that from a pulpit?] — not by the coercive powers of the government. Charity comes from the heart. It consists of freely giving away one’s wealth. It is impossible to be charitable with someone else’s money. That’s theft, not charity.
[…]
The pope seems to prefer common ownership of the means of production, which is Marxist, or private ownership and government control, which is fascist, or government ownership and government control, which is socialist. All of those failed systems lead to ashes, not wealth. [Sometimes those ashes are human.] Pope Francis must know this. He must also know that when Europe was in turmoil in 1931, his predecessor Pius XI wrote in one of his encyclicals: “[N]o one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist.” [Which has been on the masthead of The Wanderer for decades.]
The church does not teach just for today, but for the life of man on Earth. That’s why the essence of the papacy is not contemporary problem-solving, but preservation of truth and continuity of tradition. For this reason, popes do not lightly contradict their predecessors. If it was sacred then, it is sacred now. [Sacred then… sacred now… which is a phrase associated with preservation of traditional sacred liturgy. The judge is tapped into traditional sacred worship.]
[…]
You can read the rest there.
From a reader.
I’ve visited Dresden in Germany yesterday and my first steps led to the Catholic cathedral. To my greatest horror and shock, I’ve discovered this monstrous “thing” in the side chapel. I have asked the lady working in the cathedral shop what it is and she said: “It’s Mary with Jesus”. I asked one more time (I couldn’t believe that): “.THIS is the Virgin Mary with Jesus?”. She replied with mischievous grin: “Of course”. I left quite sad, not spiritually strengthened, but rather doubtful about the Catholic Church.
The chapel was orignally dedicated to St. Ioannes Nepomucen, a Czech saint – a perfect example for the post-war reconciliation. Instead, the orignal altar was taken away and the horrible blasphemy erected. The author of this mockery of the most holy Mother of God and her Divine Son is Friedrich Press. Wikipedia entry in German language does not reveal too much about him. I wonder if you have readers who could perhaps provide more info about his life. The man must have been mad or evil.
Unfortunately, it’s not the first time when I see doubtful “art” in Catholic Churches. I wonder, is it perhaps intentional? Do they try to push away people from churches? If you decide to share this story with other readers, then don’t publish my name please.
P.S. Apologies for the quality of the image, picture taken by a mobile phone in a dark environment.
Now for the really bad news:
Just so you can have a closer look. Click for a larger shot:
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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