The Anglicans got their liturgical English in Shakespeare's day. We got ours in the Beatles'. Lucky old us went from "In ipso vita erat, et vita erat lux hominem" to "He loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah."
She stops short at saying outright that the NO sucks.
So I will. It sucks. An absurd, politically motivated mishmash of Proddy theology and Judaic ritual, scrubbed clean of all specifically Catholic content, cobbled together by a committee of Lutherans, Anglicans, freemasons and traitors and deliberately foisted onto the world with the malicious intention of destroying the faith and threatening the souls of millions.
I do wish people would stop telling me to go to it. I realise they're trying to help by saying, "Well, the Mass is the Mass..."
No. The Holy Eucharist is the Holy Eucharist and the proper reception of it is indeed THE source of sanctifying grace...if I were blind and deaf. Grace can only be received by a person with correct dispositions, which in me are utterly destroyed by the horrific anti-liturgy of the Novusordoist world. As they are with everyone who is ever exposed to it.
The wonder of the modern Church is that there are still people in it who believe, a testament not to the new liturgies, but to the incomprehensible power of the Holy Spirit.
~
When I read stuff like this, which I totally agree with, by the way, I have to wonder: "If you think The Church produced something that isn't Catholic, how can it be The Church?"
ReplyDeleteYou say The Novus Ordo Mass isn't the Mass. It would logically follow that those who introduced it, committed heresy.
It then follows that heretics cannot be part of the One True Church. And non-Catholics cannot be clergy members, let alone the pope.
So why still follow the Pope? I've been reading your blog for long enough to know about your no-nonsense approach to life, and am asking in all snark-free seriousness how you can, using logic, say that the church can keep a "non-Mass" around and still be THE CHURCH.
I think one way Romish folk can clean house is by no longer allowing laymen to serve Communion.
ReplyDeleteThink about it. In any holy house there is usually no more than two clergy (I include Deacons as clergy) with about a few hundred communicants. Receiving the Eucharist would take as long as the rest of the Mass itself. Coupled with disallowing people who enter after the Gospel, and the majority of those who consider Mass as drive-thru "God talk and a snack" would fall off the radar.
I am informed that pre-Vat2, Communion was rare, or those who partook frequently just as frequently went to Confession. I am surprised how careless the Church is about her communicants. It's almost as if those who look "ethnic" enough automatically get to partake, regardless of whether or not they are in a state of mortal sin, or even if they are Catholic at all!
What is ironic is that in my previous church milieu (Protestant), they didn't believe that the bread and (ugh) juice was the True Body and Blood, yet they take Communion more seriously than Catholics do.
Dan,
ReplyDeleteYour first point is certainly the biggest temptation attached to this sort of thinking, and it leads one to very dark places indeed. But it is only a temptation, and should be ignored and shunned as such. The thing to remember is that the Church is not what the secularists (and the wicked people who concocted the NO Mass) assume it is, that is, it is not a human invention, but the eternal spotless Bride of Christ.
Your second point, in which I assume by "heresy" you probably mean "blasphemy," is perfectly true. But with your third point you are just starting to confuse and frighten yourself. We laymen are not in a postition to make such judgements.
I've come to the conclusions I have by observation of cause and effect and the application of logic, not by a deep or traditionally trained knowledge of theology. I have no idea, given the extent (and height) of the corruption in the Church, whether there is now anyone qualified to make the call, and it is not my business. I know what the Church teaches, that the Church of Christ is the Catholic Church and that it will not fail until the end of the world, and (at the risk of sounding like a chipper neocon) ubi petrus ibi ecclesiam.
Things are bad enough without adding imaginary catastrophes. I will never be a sedevacantist for the same reason I will never be a novusordoist. I have seen whither they are headed, to schism and ultimately a kind of half-mad paranoia...very unpleasant.
Things are bad, and much much worse than any "conservative" will allow, but the Church is the Church because Christ is Lord.
Ingemar,
ReplyDeleteyour information about the preconciliar habits of reception of Holy Communion is incomplete. I have been told by people who lived in it that the ordinary life of parish-based Catholics was perfectly healthy, people received every week, and sometimes daily, and did not drive themselves into harried scruples over it. They understood that you have to be in a state of grace, and they knew perfectly concretely what that meant and Confession was available to them more or less any time they needed it.
Other than that, you are correct on every point. The Church would indeed be better off, will be better off, with the revival among the clergy (the laity, those who are left, have it pretty well now after JPII's reign) of Eucharistic piety. Too many parishes have "Confession by appointment" on the panel by the door.
And no, who is allowed to receive has nothing to do with anything. Anyone who presents himself is given the Sacred Species and no one is ever informed otherwise. It is a horror.
What is a horror?
ReplyDeleteThere have been a few times I was denied Communion because the priest could tell I wasn't Catholic (I didn't know I was baptized, but I DEFINITELY wasn't confirmed).
Does not Rome teach her priests that each priest is (eternally) responsible for his communicants?
I don't think The Church will fail, either. I just don't believe there's a Head of it right now.
ReplyDeleteParanoia perhaps exists among sedevacantists, but that doesn't make the entire movement wrong or invalid.
Yes, evil men created the Novus Ordo. But the following popes kept it around; does that not make them an accomplice to such evil?
Horror is desecration of the Holy Eucharist.
ReplyDeleteDon't bore me by playing dumb.
Darling Hilary, glad to see you up and punching! My boss says we have no money this month, but we might have some to send me Romeward in Feb or March if you can stand to have me around.
ReplyDeleteI just thought you were being sarcastic.
ReplyDeleteThat would be lovely. I think I'm full up here for most of January and February. March is when the weather starts turning nice again.
ReplyDeleteWell, continue to enjoy your compelling writing. Glad to see you back on form.
ReplyDeleteI continue to stay in the Episcopal church because of the beauty of the liturgy. Just ignore the rest. That is the traditional Anglican solution. I might join my wife in the Roman church, but in our parts there is only the guitar-strumming mass available.
I did have occasion to see the Novus Ordo done well at the Catholic cathedral in Charleston, S.C. Of course, the anglo-catholic church there is spectacular there too. Rambling too much.
God bless.
Good grief! are you insane?
ReplyDeleteYou are aware, aren't you, that you are going to die some day, right? And that you don't know when that will be. Is there some reason you are fooling about worrying about aesthetics?
The "choice" of Church has nothing to do with aesthetic preferences and everything to do with the salvation of your immortal soul. Find out which is the Church founded by Christ for the salvation of the world, and which was founded by a greedy, bloodthirsty king who wanted to discard his legitimate wife.
I'd suggest that you haven't got an ounce of religious belief if you really think that nice singing and pretty pictures are a reason to stick with that increasingly absurdist farce.
ReplyDelete7 Reasons Why You Should NOT Go to the TLM
Not insane, just confident in God's grace and mercy, freely available inside and outside of the Catholic church. Just a bit of self-depricating humor on my part. Sincerely, best wishes on your recovery.
ReplyDeleteHilary: I like the way you think!
ReplyDelete"Grace can only be received by a person with correct dispositions, which in me are utterly destroyed by the horrific anti-liturgy of the Novusordoist world."
ReplyDeleteIf you attend the NO liturgy they offer at the Toronto Oratory, I think it'll survive. ;-) But yeah, I agree with your over-all feeling towards the NO (with the exception, perhaps, that I don't think it contains anything explicitly heretical. IMHO, the problem with the liturgy is not outright heresy, but plain old stupidity and tackiness with regard to some of the changes and structure).
I've been to the Novus Ordo at Charleston's cathedral. Indeed it is almost as good as any you'll see anywhere. I like to think of it when I see the Spanish drum and guitar horror going on upstairs while I go down into the basement of my own cathedral for the TLM.
ReplyDeleteI've also been to the Charleston Anglo-Catholic parish you mention. Very nice liturgy indeed, though it was strange to see a couple of priestesses from the diocese there, and it seemed a waste to put on all this lovely Catholicism in a church presided over by the likes of Katharine Jefferts-Schori.
I suppose it's a comfort that they are in a relatively "conservative" diocese that uneasily remains in communion with the Episcopagans. Where I am, the lesbian priestesses are getting "married" in the ECUSA cathedral.
Always give me a thrill to read such no-nonsense posts about the NO, which I abandoned thirty years ago. Reminds me of the time Alice Thomas Ellis wrote in the Spectator about the phrase "spiritual drink": that it leaves one suspecting its contents in the same way one suspects the contents of fake orange juice labeled "orange drink" in the grocery store.
ReplyDeleteThe NO in Latin just makes it so most attendees can't understand the watered-down, Protestantized
ReplyDeleteMaybe they get the aesthetic aspect about right, but theologically it's still the same old 'Lord's Supper' that Paul VI foisted on us.
The problem is the text, not the language. Latin and facing the altar aren't the main issues.
Wow, bad editing on my part. 'Protestantized theology.'
ReplyDeleteGuess it was pretty obvious what I was trying to say, but still don't want to look like a goofball.