A priest (not the pastor) in my suburban ___ parish changed the words in Eucharistic Prayer IV to reflect inclusive language. ‘You formed man’ became ‘You formed us.’ And he prayed, [You] ‘entrusted the world to our care, so that … we might have dominion over all creatures,’ instead of ‘his care’ and ‘he might have,’ etc. In doing so, did Father really say Mass? I know the usual advice is tell the pastor and if he doesn’t address it, tell the bishop, but I wonder how serious a problem this is as far as the legitimacy or validity of the Mass.
Here’s the bottom line.
Priests may not on their own authority change the words of the liturgical texts when there is not rubric which says they can use other words.
So, NO, that priest is committing a liturgical abuse.
6. Complaints Regarding Abuses in Liturgical Matters
[183.] In an altogether particular manner, let everyone do all that is in their power to ensure that the Most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist will be protected from any and every irreverence or distortion and that all abuses be thoroughly corrected. This is a most serious duty incumbent upon each and every one, and all are bound to carry it out without any favouritism.
[184.] Any Catholic, whether Priest or Deacon or lay member of Christ’s faithful, has the right to lodge a complaint regarding a liturgical abuse to the diocesan Bishop or the competent Ordinary equivalent to him in law, or to the Apostolic See on account of the primacy of the Roman Pontiff. It is fitting, however, insofar as possible, that the report or complaint be submitted first to the diocesan Bishop. This is naturally to be done in truth and charity.
So, I would start by contacting the pastor. First, in a brief chat. Then, if that doesn’t work, with a letter. Keep copies of everything. If that doesn’t work, write to the local bishop. If that doesn’t work, then send the whole thing to the Congregation for Divine Worship.
The McClatchy newspaper group has not been, to my knowledge, very friendly toward the Catholic Church. At McClatchyDC we find this:
Bishop orders priests to read anti-Obama letter at Sunday sermons
The Episcopal Backbone Award
CHICAGO — Joining the chorus of Roman Catholic clergy in Illinois criticizing President Barack Obama before next week’s election, Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky ordered priests to read a letter to parishioners on Sunday before the presidential election, explaining that politicians who support abortion rights also reject Jesus.
“By virtue of your vow of obedience to me as your Bishop, I require that this letter be personally read by each celebrating priest at each Weekend Mass,” Jenky wrote in a letter circulated to clergy in the Catholic Diocese of Peoria.
In the letter, Jenky cautions parishioners that Obama and a majority of U.S. senators will not reconsider the mandate that would require employers, including religious groups, to provide free birth control coverage in their health care plans. “This assault upon our religious freedom is simply without precedent in the American political and legal system,” Jenky wrote.
“Today, Catholic politicians, bureaucrats, and their electoral supporters who callously enable the destruction of innocent human life in the womb also thereby reject Jesus as their Lord,” Jenky added. “They are objectively guilty of grave sin.”
Earlier this year, Jenky delivered a controversial homily criticizing the contraception mandate. The bishop included Obama’s policies in a list of historic challenges the Catholic Church has overcome in previous centuries, including Hitler and Stalin’s campaigns. [And the left went bananas.]
Jenky is the third Illinois Catholic leader to offer pointed guidance for Catholic voters in recent weeks. Last month, Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki offered a commentary on the Democratic and Republican parties’ platforms that he said wasn’t intended as instruction, but guidance.
“There are many positive and beneficial planks in the Democratic Party Platform, but I am pointing out those that explicitly endorse intrinsic evils,” Paprocki explained in the Springfield Diocese newspaper.
“Again, I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against,” he said. “But I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.”
Furthermore, in the Rockford Diocese, Vicar General Eric Barr compared Obama’s support of religious freedom in Muslim countries to his lack of support for Catholic liberty.
“Meanwhile, Obamacare marches on, steamrolling Catholic morality and the First Amendment under its weight. How can that be tolerated by citizens?” Barr wrote.
“Nothing justifies this peculiar and unreal stance of the president,” he said.
Spokeswoman Colleen Dolan said she doesn’t expect Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George to issue any statements before the election.
It would be interesting to have reports of how many priests – and their names – who refused to carry out the bishop’s instructions.
From Commonweal in their latest number, comes this editorial against Rep. Paul Ryan (Gov. Romney’s VP pick).
I can only assume that, given the timing of this, Commonweal is attacking Ryan because they want Obama to win. I am sure you are shocked.
Here is a little bit of the editorial. Read the rest there:
Rep. Paul Ryan has long enjoyed a reputation as a wonk’s wonk. Here was a Republican politician happy to engage in substantive conversation about tax policy, debt, and the future of entitlement programs. The press, accustomed to elected officials far less interested in the nitty-gritty of policy-making, believed it had discovered a serious man on Capitol Hill. Others were impressed that Ryan, a practicing Catholic, didn’t shy away from discussing how his faith has helped shape his policies.
Yet, as Ryan’s national stature has increased, so has scrutiny of his record. He has been well served by media coverage contrasting his allegedly [?] Catholic-infused policies with Vice President Joe Biden’s strained attempts to reconcile his prochoice politics with church teaching. But before long, the same press corps that had portrayed Ryan as a no-nonsense deficit hawk began reporting his long-standing avowal of the works of Ayn Rand as the touchstone for his political life. In 2005, Ryan told a crowd of Rand devotees that he looks to Rand’s writing to make sure his policies “square with the key principles of individualism.” And in a 2009 video he praised her for upholding “the morality of individualism” as “what matters most.” One might detect the influence of Rand’s individualism in Ryan’s 2011 description of the social safety net as a “hammock” that fosters “dependency.” [Here’s the problem. Hasn’t Ryan explained the Rand thing?]
Rand, an atheist, considered charity a sign of weakness. Ryan’s Randian views—notably his budget plan’s drastic cuts to food stamps, which now aid 46 million—did not sit well with many Catholics. That includes the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which repeatedly criticized Ryan’s budget last spring, days after Ryan claimed that it is informed by Catholic social teaching. “The preferential option for the poor,” Ryan said, “means…don’t make people dependent on government.” [A good thing, right?]
[…]
Don’t we want fewer people to be dependent on government?
We can have differing opinions about how to help the jobless and the poor.
Here are a couple books which have a view that probably diverges sharply from what Commonweal wants.
First, I don’t remember as I write exactly who asked me to pray at a site in Rome associated with St. Gregory, but yesterday at the tomb of St. Gregory in St. Peter’s Basilica, I asked St. Gregory to ask God – who knows perfectly well who you are, to give abundant graces and help for whatever the needs are.
Second, I decided today that, with the exception of one Mass, all the Masses I will say while I am in Rome these few more says will be for benefactors (three, always in the list). I am especially grateful to those of you who sent donations before – and now during the trip – so that I could come.
I am getting internet well on my iPhone but not my laptop. So, if you send a note with a prayer intention I try to remember you as I get around and do things. Put PRAYER IN ROME in the subject line, so I can weed them out. When I got online today I had 867 unread emails waiting for me. Okay? I delete any mail with a title in the subject line and I never look at unexplained links. Ehv-vur.
For lunch I was at the college refectory of a friend. We spent the afternoon talking about today’s heretics.
Tonight I am out alone at a great pizza place. I’ll graze and read on my Kindle.
For a starter:
Tonight’s water is brought to you by …
… Acqua di Nepi!
I like the older labels like Claudia and other standards. Nihil innovetur.
As you get into these waters for a while you might find they have diuretic effects, which is good – for the food is salty.
On the Nepi label – Sulla was I think from Nepi… or was it Pontius Pilate? … there is a nice Latin motto, which endeared it to me lo those many years, nay rather, decades ago.
Work it out.
In the meantime:
The wine was a nice surprise. Instead of the usual Lazio stuff, this is from Emilia Romagna and is a touch effervescent. Refreshing!
My fun waiter. Good sport in a hot room on a busy humid night.
Say hi to him.
ALESSANDRO!
Alessandro just brought me (after the photo and a chat about what it was for) a bowl of hot chestnuts!
Chestnut follow up:
We just had a discussion about the merits of chestnuts from Segni (in my diocese) versus those from Amatrice (where Alessandro’s brother cultivates them). I must say, these are small but really flavorful, far better than most insipid interloper nuts.
I think that when you are in Rome you should stop at Isola della Pizza off the Via Ottaviano on the Via degli Scipioni, and have a pizza and say ‘hi’ to Alessandro! The place is close to the Vatican, and pretty big but it can get busy (because it’s good). They do a lot more than pizza. Their beef is great.
They are open Sunday evening, which is a strong point!
Drop in, say Hi to Alessandro from Fr Z (or don John). Roman residents…make him famous.
Get a group of people together and ask, plead, beg, pester the pastor of your parish to open the church or chapel so you can have all day and all night Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed.
Priests and bishops? Please do something? Get the word out?
At the Pontifical Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica in thanksgiving for what the Holy Father has done for the Church by Summorum Pontificum it was made knows that the Holy Father sent a message:
Secretary of State, Cardinal Bertone, in the name of the Holy Father, to the participants, has also been made public:
On the occasion of the international pilgrimage assembled in Rome for the 5th anniversary of the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI sends his cordial greeting to all participants, assuring them of his fervent prayer.
By this Motu Proprio, the Holy Father desired to respond to the expectations of the faithful attached to the ancient liturgical forms. Truly, as he wrote in his Letter to the bishops to present the Motu Proprio, it is good to preserve the riches that grew within the faith and prayer of the Church and to give them their just place, while recognizing fully the value and holiness of the ordinary form of the Roman rite. In this Year of Faith, promulgated as the Church celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the II Vatican Council, the Holy Father invites all the faithful to display in a particular fashion their unity in the faith; they will thus be efficacious agents of the new evangelization.
Entrusting all the participants of the pilgrimage to Rome to the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Father grants them his heartfelt Apostolic Blessing.
+Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone
Secretary of State of His Holiness
Because I am still having some internet problems and composition of posts is a little hard, I have pulled a couple things from the archives in which St. Charles Borromeo is mentioned. (His heart, by the way, in the great church on the Via del Corso not far from where I am sitting).
This is also appropriate because, Pius XII, whom I am quoting, is buried even closer and the North American College is also nearby: trifecta.
In looking for a quote by Pius XII, a reader directed me, us, to a speech of Ven. Pius XII delivered on 14 October 1953 (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 45 (1953) pp 679 ff.) at the opening of the North American College in Rome.
Here is the main part of the speech, after the intro and before the usual conclusions.
Pretty inspiring stuff.
My emphases.
[…]
[The completion of the North American College] lights a stronger flame of hope for the Church in the United States of America and in the world. All this, it seemed to Us, adds up to a grave and sacred responsibility that rests on you, Our dear young seminarians, and on those who are to follow you. Will the sacrifices cheerfully offered for your sake be repaid in kind and with interest? Will the hopes and plans cherished by your Bishops, cherished by Us, be fulfilled? Your eager hearts are quick to answer: yes. But reflect a moment. That will be true only under one condition, that you become priests worthy of the name.
In the priesthood man is elevated to an almost staggering height, a mediator between a world in travail and the celestial kingdom of peace. Christ’s ambassador, steward of God’s mysteries, he exercises a divine power. Heir to the priestly and kingly offices of the divine Redeemer, he is commissioned to carry on the task of salvation, bringing souls to God and giving God to souls. Never, then, unmindful of the supreme importance of such a vocation, the priest will not busy himself with useless things. Modeling his life on that of Him he represents he will gladly spend and be spent on behalf of souls. Souls he seeks everywhere and always, not what the world can offer him. «To be a priest and to be a man dedicated to work is one and the same thing», wrote Bl. Pius X; and he liked to quote the words of the synod presided over by St. Charles Borromeo: «let every cleric repeat again and again: he has been called not to a life of ease and leisure, but to hard work in the spiritual army of the Church».
Those words, beloved sons, recall another fact one dare not forget. We belong to the Church militant ; and she is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights. No rank of the clergy is spared ; and the faithful—their number is legion—inspired by the valiant endurance of their shepherds and fathers in Christ, stand firm, ready to suffer and die, as the martyrs of old, for the one true Faith taught by Jesus Christ. Into that militia you seek to be admitted as leaders.
Imprisonment and martyrdom, We know, do not loom on the horizon that spreads before your eyes. In an atmosphere of untrammeled freedom, where «the word of God is not bound», the Church in your country has grown in numbers, in influence, in strength of leadership in all that makes for the good of the commonwealth. The college on the via dell’Umiltà has seen your priests increase from twenty-fìve hundred to forty-fìve thousand and more-proud and glorious tribute to the unselfìsh, clear-visioned Catholic family life that prevails among you; a mission country become a seminary of apostles for foreign fìelds. But the Church militant is «one body, with one Spirit … with the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism».(Eph 4, 4 ff.) And that Spirit calls for more than a dash of heroism in every priest who would be worthy of the name, whatever the external circumstances of time and place.
The spirit of the martyrs breathes in every priestly soul, who in the daily round of pastoral duties and in his cheerful, unrelenting efforts to increase in wisdom and in grace, gives witness to the Prince of shepherds, who endured the cross, despised the shame «when He gave Himself up on our behalf, a sacrifice breathing out fragrance as He offered it to God». (Eph 5, 2.)
We raise a fervent prayer to Mary Immaculate, under whose patronage you have placed your country, to Mary gloriously assumed into heaven, whom you have wished to honour in your chapel here, that she would always show a mother’s loving care of the clergy of America, and guide you, beloved seminarians, bearers of such high hopes, along the way that leads to that holiness which will bring her to recognize in you a greater and greater resemblance to her own divine Son.
[…]
Pius XII describing the Church in the USA in 1953. My my how times have changed.
When I was in my gawdawful American seminary in 1980’s I was accused on more than one occasion of wanting the 1950’s back. Though I was born in 1959 and was a convert and never knew the Church of the 1950’s, what Pope Pius is talking about was the sort of vision I wanted for my Church and from my seminary and in my country.
And, animi caussa, some footage of Pius XII at the NAC. No sound, alas.
I sense that there is something of this spirit stirring in seminarians and young priests and new bishops in the United States.
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“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
St. John Eudes
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“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”
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A Daily Prayer for Priests
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Don’t rely on popes, bishops and priests.
“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
- C.S. Lewis
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As for Latin…
"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
