Monday, October 03, 2011

"Face it, hippies!"

Over at Orwell’s Picnic there is a post entitled “Face it, Hippies”, with this graph:



Fr. Z comments: "I sense a trend" (October 3, 2011), and continues:
The growth is slow, some will say. But there is growth. There is growth in several important spheres of the Church’s life, including a growth in vocations to the priesthood answered by men who are faithful to the Church’s teachings, many of whom desire traditional liturgy. In the meantime, the acceleration of the “biological solution” is sweeping a certain vision out of positions of influence. As the Church in the wealthy West seems to in some ways growing in numbers, it doesn’t seem to be growing in numbers of people who know their faith well and practice it diligently. We seem to be moving toward what Pope Benedict referred to as a “creative minority”. Now look at the graph again.

We need a Marshall Plan for the renewal of our Catholic identity, and the New Evangelization. The key to any renewal of any aspect of our Catholic lives must be our liturgical worship.
Did you catch that? The last two sentences are freighted. One of my colleagues, in fact, was just commenting the other day on the need to re-think the New Evangelization in terms of traditional liturgy. Ad fontes!

5 comments:

Annalisa Tombelli said...

Hi! Love your re-post of Fr. Z's article. I'm the photographer for an Extraordinary Form Community in Lansing, MI - Blessed John XXIII (the one you blogged about!) - and just finished our first album. We recently had our first year anniversary. Things are going well! We have a steady congregation, a dedicated (and very inexperienced) choir which I am also a part of. We've learned the Missa de Angelis and are currently working on the Requiem Mass. If you'd like me to send you our album of photos, I'm more than happy to!

God bless,
Annalisa Tombelli

Anonymous said...

"We need a Marshall Plan for the renewal of our Catholic identity, and the New Evangelization. The key to any renewal of any aspect of our Catholic lives must be our liturgical worship." This is "Good News."

Pertinacious Papist said...

Dear Annalisa,

I would love to see a copy of your album. If you have it in electronic form, you may email it to me at "phblosser [at] gmail [dot] com." Otherwise, email me at that address, and I can send you my mailing address.

God bless you for your work.

Pertinaciously yours,
Philip Blosser

Pertinacious Papist said...

Annalisa,

By the way, I'm very impressed with all you folks are doing over in Lansing, and I hope very much to make it to your anniversary celebration on the 9th, if it's possible.

Kind regards,
Phil

Anonymous said...

PP
"Creative Minority" is a term constantly found in Arnold Toynbee's 12 volume "Study of History" (1961).