When will they learn to take the secular out of the sacred? Vaudeville has its place, and I suppose I enjoy musicals as much as anyone. But the divine liturgy is not vaudeville, and a cathedral is not a public music hall. The modern church is dying of this confusion.
The first step toward retrieving a proper distinction between the two lies in understanding the meaning of the word "sacred" -- an undertaking that has become nearly impossible for the majority of men and women in our day.
This is why we are dying of the deception that the "sacred" is something boring that must be "gussied up" with secular baubles and bling, which only succeeds in making it look like a total bore.
A shame. Particularly since the Real Article, when stripped of its secular "makeover" and encountered in its simple aboriginal purity, is utterly ravishing and enthralling. Try a traditional Latin High Mass.
[Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]
I'm so grateful I never saw this sort of debauchery before converting or I may have remained a Protestant minister. After a fashion these folks (rainbow bearing cleric included) seem to have adopted the spirit of Protestantism themselves.
ReplyDeleteTitus 3:10 A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid
ReplyDeleteBut such warnings began to be ignored when our council fathers read the signs of the times and embraced the principles of the French Revolution and jettisoned the Syllabus and created the new pentecost in the new springtime of the new civilisation of love and which, most definitely, is not, no sir, a rupture with the past.
There were six Protestant Ministers who helped create the Lil' Licit Liturgy, Messrs George, Jasper, Shepherd, Kunneth, Smith, Thurian and they, along with the Bug Man from Masonry Inc , applied the enlightenment poison to the Gregorian Rite that killed what they considered the pestilence of a sacrifice of propitiation that had infested the ideology of universalism, with its attendant indifferentism and humanism, to such an extent that it prevented the cult of man from ever being born; that is, they intended a Lil' Liturgy that removed the putative stumbling blocks and so our new liturgy would be like a "calvinist mass."
And so, when we see silly men doing things like this in the brand spanking new modern rite the apt response is - well, crap like this is to be expected in the anthropological-centered man-made-progressive revolutionary rite.
And in his Christmas speech to the Roman Curia, Our Holy Father spoke at length about the need for dialogue; a dialogue with the other which intentionally forswears conversion of the other as an object of dialogue.
Yep, more continuity with the past; remember Eve dialogued with the other in the garden; so, we've got that going for us, which is nice.
I know the Brick By Brick Bund finds great Hope in these days but it can not be the theological virtue of Hope for that exists only when Hope is impossible; that is, it is only the soi disant Catholic Traditionalist who is capable of Hope; and so, we must confess that such silly shenanigans by the silly priest in the Cathedral is helping us to keep Hope alive.
Not Spartacus,
ReplyDeleteThank you for taking the time to write your comment above. It is substantial, full of insight, and provokes deep reflection on the questions at issue here. I consistently learn something from your comments.
I do have a question, though. By your reference to the "Brick By Brick Bund" I'm led to think you must be referring to Fr. Z. If that's so, I'm wondering how you regard his perspective generally. How would you classify it? Is it Neo-Conservative? Traditionalist? Something between? Where do you think he is right and/or wrong? The reason I ask is that I am a frequent visitor to his blog and admire a great deal of what he has to say.
Dear George. It was a delight to read your first paragraph; thank you.
ReplyDeleteThe second paragraph? Well, that is nettlesome to this loud-mouth because I now have to explain why I wrote what I did and I much prefer to post and run.
Fr. Z is, like most men, more intelligent and holier than I am but I think he is fundamentally disoriented vis a vis the situation of the Catholic Church in the world; he appears to me to be a conservative and, as such, he is not anchored in Tradition as I think all Catholics ought be, but especially ordained Priests (and Prelates) must exist firmly rooted in Catholic Tradition.
Now, for me to criticise such a faithful Priest is prolly rash but every time I read him promoting Fr Sirico and The Acton Institute (funded by Dutch Calvinists) I want to declare a cocktail hour because Fr Z's audience is huge and his influence is formidable and The Acton Institute is a fifth column within Catholicism that seeks to corrupt Catholic Social Doctrine by "teaching" how Usury is not ony acceptable but that it is a boon to mankind.
The simple truth about Capitalism (which began in England with the theft of Church Property under King Henry 8th) is that it is state-sponosred usury and which economic enterprise is specifically a heresy in that Pope Benedict XIV, in Vix pervenit taught that it is sin to charge interest on a loan and that teaching has never been (nor can it ever be) supplanted.
And so, the highly intelligent and faithful priest, Fr. Z. is, unbeknownst to him I am sure, promoting a malign and mephitic system that ends-up screwing Pat and Pam Pewdweller and his praise of Fr Sirico is driving me to drink (and as C. W. Fields once said about someone who was driving him to drink; I thank him for that)
making a joyful noise unto the Lord
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteYou call THIS "a joyful noise unto the Lord"??? I have no doubt as to the "noise." In certain contexts it might even be considered "joyful." But in a Church as part of Mass, it's more likely to bring joy to the infernal Father of Lies than to anyone cognisant of the disposition fitting to Holy Mass.
To the degree that anyone could consider this performance a properly "joyful" part of Mass (leaving aside the same-sex-happy rainbow stole), it highlights how far his or her sensibilities are adrift from those of authentic Catholics. It highlights, instead, a secularized version of a basically protestant attitude toward the Mass. Liturgy is what people "make" it to be (hence "entertainment"), rather than an inherited ritual into which we are subsumed.