John Senior: "We have lost"

Rorate posts a brief review of John Senior's book, The Remnants: The Final Essays of John Senior (Rorate Caeli, August 30, 2013), which carries the following quote:

"The crisis is over; we have lost. This is no longer just a prediction, it is a simple observation: Rome has been desecrated. We are in the age of darkness. Triumphalist reactions are in vain. The modern world and the Church deserve the punishment that God is raining down on us." -- John Senior.

The Rorate review goes on to comment:

We found this short book has something for everyone, regardless of how long they've been traditional, or if they're even traditional at all. Any serious Catholic would benefit from the wisdom and history it contains.

Senior takes readers through the minds of thinkers like Newman, Virgil and Aristotle. He gives a blueprint on how to recapture Catholic life in the home and how to form young minds. And, because he lived it along with other traditional Catholic warriors like his friend Michael Davies and the late Walter Matt, readers get a glimpse into the dark days following the Council, and decisions many traditional Catholics faced with the Écône consecrations, the early days of Ecclesia Dei and the perhaps presumed choice between love of tradition and "obedience" to the current actions of those at the top of the Church.

What I find notable is his energy invested, not in merely cursing the darkness, but in offering a blueprint on how to rebuild Catholic life in the home and young minds. That I find very positive.

20 German police, agents, storm home, remove homeschooled children by force

"Police storm homeschool class, take children by force" (WND, August 30, 2013): "Officers brought a battering ram and were about to break door in." Clearly someone believes home schoolers qualify as something about as alarming as terrorists:

“The children were taken to unknown locations,” HSLDA said. “Officials ominously promised the parents that they would not be seeing their children anytime soon.”

The raid, which took place Thursday at 8 a.m. as the children were beginning their day’s classes, has been described by observers as “brutal and vicious.”

A team of 20 social workers, police and special agents stormed the family’s home. HSLDA reported a Judge Koenig, who is assigned to the Darmstadt family court, signed an order authorizing the immediate seizure of the children by force.

“Citing the parents’ failure to cooperate ‘with the authorities to send the children to school,’ the judge also authorized the use of force ‘against the children’ … reasoning that such force might be required because the children had ‘adopted the parents’ opinions’ regarding homeschooling and that ‘no cooperation could be expected’ from either the parents or the children,” HSLDA said.

Cathedral Mass This Friday

"I will go in unto the Altar of God
To God, Who giveth joy to my youth"
Tridentine Community News (August 25, 2013):

One of the most significant events in regional Tridentine Mass history will take place this Friday, August 30 at 7:00 PM, as Detroit’s Blessed Sacrament Cathedral will host its first Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form in over 40 years. The celebrant will be Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Donald Hanchon, and the music will be led by Archdiocese of Detroit Music Director Joe Balistreri. Special thanks to Archbishop Allen Vigneron and Cathedral Rector Msgr. Michael LeFevre for their assistance in making this Mass possible.

Young adults age 18-35 are invited to a dinner sponsored by Juventútem Michigan after the Mass; further information is available on the Facebook event page.

Tridentine Mass and Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation, Carey, Ohio

For the second year in a row, there will be a bus pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Consolation in Carey, Ohio. This year’s trip will take place on Wednesday, September 4. A Tridentine High Mass will be offered at the high altar of the historic Upper Basilica at 12:00 Noon. For more information or to register for the tour, call (248) 250-6005. [Photo left by Christopher Din]

Abbé Edward Gardner, ICRSS Subdeacons at Assumption Church for the First Time

Thanks to the last-minute organizing efforts of Paul Schultz, Ann Arbor native and recently-ordained Subdeacon and seminarian for the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest Edward Gardner served as Subdeacon for the first time at a Solemn High Mass last Sunday at Windsor’s Assumption Church. [The Institute has a custom of referring to its seminarians with the title Abbé.]

Assumption has become a gathering place for seminarians from a variety of places. The previous week, five seminarians served at Holy Mass, representing London’s St. Peter Seminary, Detroit’s Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Boston’s Blessed John XXIII Seminary, and the Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem. We are honored that these young men are choosing to assist at the Extraordinary Form and learn more about the Classic Form of the Mass in our community.

Kickstarter Project Announced for Gregorian Chant CD by Wassim Sarweh

For years, requests have come in from far and wide for our regional Gregorian Chant guru Wassim Sarweh and his choir to record a CD. Efforts had been made to make recordings, but the venues and circumstances were all found lacking. To make a professional-quality recording, everything must be as perfect as possible. Recognizing the need for such a project to be done right, former Ann Arbor and current Los Angeles resident and media expert Aaron Harburg has offered to helm the project. He has prepared a detailed Kickstarter project description, complete with an introductory video and audio samples.

Donors are needed to make the project viable. Read more and sign up to contribute at:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aharburg/gregorian-chant-modes-album

Diocese of London Showcases Historic Liturgical Objects on Facebook


Over the past several weeks, the Diocese of London, Ontario has put up a fascinating set of photographs on their Facebook page. Relics, holy cards, medals, chalices, historic missals, and the like have been displayed. The items are from the diocesan archives, an impressive collection rarely seen by the public. Visit the Diocese of London Facebook page for a visual feast.

Relics of St. André Bessette to Visit Assumption Church

On Wednesday, September 11, the relics of St. André Bessette, CSC, Montreal’s famed ambassador of St. Joseph, will visit Windsor’s Assumption Church. At 1:00 PM, there will be a Solemn Reception of the Relics. Silent veneration will be available from 1:30 – 6:30 PM. At 7:00 PM, Archbishop James MacDonald, CSC will celebrate a Solemn Mass in the Ordinary Form.

Tridentine Masses This Coming Week

• Mon. 08/26 7:00 PM: Low Mass at St. Josaphat (St. Zephyrinus, Pope & Martyr)
• Tue. 08/27 7:00 PM: Low Mass at Assumption-Windsor (St. Joseph Calasance, Confessor)

[Comments? Please e-mail tridnews@detroitlatinmass.org. Previous columns are available at http://www.detroitlatinmass.org. This edition of Tridentine Community News, with minor editions, is from the St. Josaphat (Detroit) and Assumption (Windsor) bulletin inserts for August 25, 2013. Hat tip to A.B., author of the column.]

“Why I’m Not a Traditionalist (But We’re Going to Latin Mass Anyways…)”

From The Back of the World, via Fr. Z, comes this interesting piece (excerpts only):

Hi, my name is Ryan. I’m 27-years-old, and I’m new to this diocese. And for the love of all that is holy, can someone please do something about all of the $@#!&* tambourine playing going on around here?! ...

I apologize in advance if this post comes off as too much of a rant. And I should say this from the start: I’m not a Traditionalist Catholic. I’ve never found the criticisms of Vatican II to be very convincing, I’m a big fan of some theologians that Trads usually aren’t fond of (e.g., von Balthasar), I think that Pope Francis’ simpler style is (for the most part) pretty awesome, etc. I guess you can say I’m a “JP2 conservative”…faithful to the Magisterium, adherent to the hermeneutic of continuity, etc. All that to say, I was never interested in picking on the Novus Ordo liturgy…

But we’ve made a decision as a family to start attending the Traditional Latin Mass regularly. And here’s why: (emphasis Fr. Z's)

Here Ryan comments on how he and his family used to attend a beautiful, reverent Novus Ordo Mass in Boston; how he read Pope Benedict's Spirit of the Liturgy, which convinced him of the importance of kneeling to receive Communion and having the priest celebrate ad orientem, etc. But then he comes to the kicker:

Now, though, we’ve moved to the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida. And, if I may be blunt, the state of the liturgy around here is utterly atrocious. ...

It’s enough to make me want to scream: “People! We are attending the re-presentation of the once-for-all-sacrifice made for us on Calvary, and simultaneously realizing the eschatological Wedding Supper of the Lamb made present in the Eucharist! PUT DOWN THE TAMBOURINES!

And so we attended the Latin Mass this past Sunday. And it was breathtakingly beautiful. And you know, it wasn’t that hard to follow along in the missal. [Never has been... never will be.] And, in what is no doubt a bitter irony to the kind of people that like contemporary Christian music, at a Latin Mass of about 100 people, there were probably triple the number of young people than at any other Mass I’ve been to since we moved here ...

And maybe this will sound extreme to some of my readers, but I don’t really want my kids exposed to what’s going on in the Novus Ordo in this diocese. I think liturgy has a huge pedagogical component to it, and I don’t like what those liturgies teach my children. I think they take away from the utter seriousness of what the Mass is, I think it says “this is just a Sunday get-together” rather than “this is a Holy Sacrifice”, I think it teaches that liturgy is about your musical preferences rather than worshiping God ... Besides which, my two-year-old was way better-behaved than he has been at the Novus Ordo, and I’m sure that’s because he picked up on the reverent and serious silence, rather than looking at a guy his grandfather’s age rocking out on a guitar and thinking “aw man, it’s party time up in here!”

If this is where we are at, if this is what the Novus Ordo has become in some dioceses, then maybe the best thing to do is to hit the reset button and start from the beginning. [That is about reason #2 for Summorum Pontificum.] Maybe we need to all go home, re-learn the 1962 missal, then calmly re-read Sacrosanctum Concilium in about 5 years to learn what the Council actually said, and we can have this discussion again.

Until then, you can find me and mine down the street at the TLM on Sundays, reclaiming my heritage and birth-right as a Roman Catholic -- i.e., good liturgy.(emphasis Fr. Z's)

[Hat tip to JM]

Nothing so unhip as AmChurch trying to be hip

From a reader of Fr. Z's blog:

I was traveling with my daughter last week and, walking out of a parish where we fulfilled our Sunday obligation, she looked at me and said

"I've never hated the tambourine more than I do now.”

Tambourines are for the Byrds.

MLK would have loathed most of Obama's ideas

Beyond their common human nature and racial identity as African Americans (partial in Obama's case), the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and President Barack Hussein Obama share little in common ideologically.

Obama is a Democrat of the contemporary revisionist stripe, and champions same-sex "marriage," abortion "rights" (and even infanticide, which was more than even Hillary Clinton could stomach -- and that's saying something), and the values of moral subjectivism and relativism, which pervade his revisionist views of family values, Democratic Party principles, and even Christianity.

Martin Luther King was a Republican, condemned abortion, championed the principles of traditional Christianity and natural law, never questioned the existence of objective moral absolutes, and would have found the contemporary liberal euphemisms of "health care" and "reproductive rights" (for contraception and abortion) and "gay-friendly" disposition of most contemporary Democrats utterly loathsome.

Just how out-of-sync with contemporary Democrats Martin Luther King would have been, can be seen from his writings and speeches. His Letter from a Birmingham Jail is an excellent concise defence, among other things, of traditional Catholic natural law theory. It is striking that he appeals directly to the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine in defence of the idea that there is a higher court of appeal than human law, which may be unjust. He openly appeals to the idea of natural law and, beyond it, the eternal law of God, by which the human laws of men are ultimately judged as to whether or not they are just or unjust.

It would be amusing to remember here, if it were not so lamentable, Mr. Joe Biden's flip-flop over this issue while serving in the US Senate. When Robert Bork was nominated for the Supreme Court, Senator Biden opposed his appointment in the Senate hearings because Bork did not subscribe to a belief in natural law. Then, during the Senate hearings following Clarence Thomas's nomination for the Court, Mr. Biden opposed Thomas's appointment because he did subscribe to a belief in natural law. One thing I will say for Mr. Biden: he knows which way the wind is blowing. He would make a good weathervane.

The other work by Martin Luther King worth noting here is his famed "I Have a Dream" speech on August 28, 1963, in our nation's capital. It is in every way a milestone speech. It is eloquent. It is full of Biblical allusions and cadences. It sounds like the most eloquent of Baptist homilies, in keeping with the character of the well-educated Baptist minister that he was. The following is representative of those brilliantly allusive Biblical cadences:

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be engulfed, every hill shall be exalted and every mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

Among the most memorable lines of the speech, however, are these:

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by their character.

Note the appeal here to "character" rather than to "color." There is nothing in King of entitlement based on race or color or ethnicity. His appeal, rather, is to something objective, "character," presupposing the existence of objective measures by which moral virtue may be judged. In short, he is appealing to the principle of "justice," which he expects everyone -- his enemies as well as his friends -- to be well aware of as a matter of natural law.

This appeal to justice is patently clear in another part of King's speech, which was egregiously mis-appropriated recently by the Rev. Al Sharpton. King said, in his speech:

In a sense we have come to our Nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our great republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed to the inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given its colored people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and security of justice.

King's appeal is to "justice," that is, equal justice before the law; but the Rev. Al Sharpton, in his speech, after citing King's words (starting at 5:25), immediately re-interprets King's words (starting at 5:56) in terms of economic entitlement, accusing the government of withholding owed money from African Americans, along with all those enlisted in the Democratic agenda of economic redistribution in the name of entitlement and victimization.

This turns King's ideas on their head. King wants blacks to have equality before the law based on their common humanity and for them to be judged not by the color of their skin but by their character. Sharpton, like many Democrats today, is closer to wanting blacks to be treated as entitled to government tax dollars based on the color of their skin in the name of "affirmative action" -- which is certainly promoted by Obama, but would not have been by King.

Contemporary revisionist Democrats and cultural liberals and relativists like Obama cannot lay just claim to King's legacy. Their attempt to do so is as perverse as the attempt of contemporary feminists and members of the National Organization for Women and National Abortion Rights Action League to suggest that they can lay claim to the legacy of Susan B. Anthony (whose face adorns our now rare dollar coins), while in fact Susan Anthony was a staunch opponent of abortion and supported the right to life of the unborn.

How can contemporary cultural and political leftists be so morally self-righteous and yet so stupid?

Related:

• "'I Have a Dream' - 50 years on" (Cranmer, August 25, 2013) -- a good supplemental analysis.
• Time Magazine cover for its August 26/September2, 2013 issue, the "I have a dream anniversary issue," sports a headline declaring King "Founding Father," and an article entitled "Martin Luther King Jr, Architect of the 21st Century."

[Hat tip to JM]

Is Weigel throwing in the towel, admitting failure?

Just received the following email from a reader:

If you read Weigel's latest piece in First Things it sounds like an admission of failure about the magazine's mission.

Which is good because I cancelled my subscription the day after reading it.

Here's the piece he is referring to: George Weigel, "Fighting on New Terrain" (First Things, August/September, 2013). The entire article is well-worth reading and quite telling; but here are a few excerpts setting the stage:

The American Founders built “better than they knew” (as the U.S. bishops once put it in the late nineteenth century). That is, they created an admirable structure of democratic self-government, but the theoretical or philosophical foundation on which they built that structure was inadequate, being cannibalized from fragments of Christian patrimony tarted up in (Scottish and English) Enlightenment fancy dress.

That foundation “held” for a long time, thanks to the culture-forming capacities of a mainline Protestantism that, whatever its other faults, nevertheless inculcated a public ethic capable of sustaining American democracy. The last great moment of appeal to that mainline-informed public ethic was the civil-rights movement in its classic phase. But even then the mainline had become the oldline and was on its way to being the sideline. Murray had seen this coming in the 1950s and suggested that the Catholic community, still in possession of those religiously informed natural law truths that were the distillate at the foundation of the American experiment, might move into the vacuum created by the mainline meltdown and become the “lead” community (as RJN [Richard John Neuhaus] put it in The Catholic Moment) in both proclaiming the Gospel and securing the moral-cultural foundations of American democracy.

Thus RJN, and many of the rest of us, implicitly accepted Francis Canavan’s defense of Murray and his criticism of the David Schindler/Communio/“Ill-Founded Republic” critique of the American experiment. The Founders were doing politics, not theology, and in any event the job of formulating and sustaining a public philosophy (which, given American religiosity, had to be “religiously informed”) was the job of a robust civil society, not of government. (This was also, and obviously, a critique of functionalist approaches to the theory of democracy, but that need not detain us here.)

The RJN variant, if you will, on the Murray ­Proposal was that this new shoring up, this new delineation of a “religiously informed public philosophy for the American experiment in ordered liberty,” would be ecumenical and interreligious in ­character: thus the unique fellowship of the First Things com­munity and the distinctive style and range of the magazine.... Read more >>

[Hat tip to G.M.]

Syria: pray for our Christian brethren

"Let us pray for those who will lose most in any intervention, the weakest link in the Middle East: Christians."


"[A]s in the Balkan interventions of the early 20th century, it is clear that there is an interest of some Powers to pursue an armed intervention in an area where multiple, complex and deeply historical interests are at stake, it is absolutely clear that it cannot end well, and it will almost certainly end with results that are opposed to the core interests of those same Powers. It is like witnessing a car crash and not being able to do anything."

Source: New Catholic (Rorate Caeli, August 27, 2013).

Middle East update - for the record

Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack, "Evidence: Syrian Rebels used Chemical Weapons (not Assad)" (Walid Shoebat, August 27, 2013). How does our rush to military action in Syria make any sense?

Background: Raymond Ibrahim, "The Muslim Brotherhood: Origins, Efficacy, and Reach" (Raymond Ibrahim). How does our administration's erstwhile cooperation and support of the Muslim Brotherhood make any sense?

[Hat tip to LS]

More ironies: what do Obama and Ratzinger have in common?

They have both opposed devoted adherents to tradition:

Obama and his administration regard traditional Americans -- Tea Party zealots -- as a threat and have listed them among potential terrorist threats.

Cardinal Ratzinger, at least at one time, regarded Catholic traditionalists as a threat to be resisted.

In The Principles of Catholic Theology (Ger. 1982, Eng. 1987), Cardinal Ratzinger wrote:

Was the Council a wrong road that we must now retrace if we are to save the Church? The voices of those who say that it is are becoming louder and their followers more numerous. Among the more obvious phenomena of the last years must be counted the increasing number of integralist [traditionalist] groups in which the desire for piety, for the sense of the mystery, is finding satisfaction. We must be on our guard against minimizing these movements. Without a doubt, they represent a sectarian zealotry that is the antithesis of Catholicity. We can not resist them too firmly.

[Hat tip to LS]

American Anti-Americanism, Catholic Anti-Catholicism?

I recently read a bit of an online article by Maureen Scott. One sentence -- a question she asked -- made me think: "Have we ever heard Obama speak lovingly of the U.S. or its people, with deep appreciation and genuine respect for our history, our customs, our sufferings and our blessings?" she asked.

This question may deserve some pondering in its own right -- particularly the increasing anti-Americanism of Americans, and the wholesale disdain for America and its traditions that we see throughout the country, from the highest political offices down to popular culture. But it also got me thinking about something else.

One could just as well ask: "How often have we head our pope, bishops, and priests, or rank-and-file Catholics, speak lovingly of Mother Church, with deep appreciation and genuine respect for our history, our traditions, our customs, our sufferings and our blessings?"

Now here is an irony every bit as deep as that of American anti-Americanism, namely, Catholic anti-Catholicism.

One of the first puzzles I faced upon being received into the Church on that blessed Holy Week exactly twenty years ago, was the bizarre spectacle of Catholics who despised their own traditions. What was more, they often seemed to despise these traditions in direct proportion to their ignorance of them. It was the Church's historical credentials that first commended themselves to my mind, just as it was her traditional devotions that first commended themselves to my heart. How then could Catholics despise their own historical credentials and religious traditions? I was intrigued and perplexed by the perverse irony of it.

While it may have been a long time coming, there is something deeply twisted about the turn our society took some half-century ago in the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. Even in the most superficial terms of popular culture there is something of this to be found, I think, in the euphemisms, memes, and metaphors we hear used in common speech these days.

When a pianist is exceptionally good, someone may remark, "He plays a WICKED piano." When someone wants to describe himself as very good at something, he may say, with a grin, "Hey, I'm BAD, man!" When some vulgar philistine sees an attractive woman, he may say "She's the SH__!" What's up with this? Since when did it become uncool to describe anything as "good," "true," or "beautiful"?

But back to the Americans and Catholics. It may be easy enough to dismiss American anti-Americanism by observing that this set of Americans has broken faith with the principles of the American founding fathers, that it represents a post-modern and post-Christian people.

But what about Catholic anti-Catholics? What can we say of them?

Sedia occupata: Throne of St. Peter vacated by Pope Francis occupied subsequently by Argentine soccer star

Ezequiel Iván Lavezzi, known as el Pocho or the Chubby One, seated in the Papal Chair in the photo above, is surrounded by his jubilant team mates.

Two accounts: one by David Werling, "El Poncho, The Pope's Chair, and the Church as 'Servant to the World'" (Ars Orandi, August 24, 2013); and New Catholic, "Sedia occupata" (Rorate Caeli, August 23, 2013).

[Hat tip to L.S.]

Sacred Heart Major Seminary to offer workshop on the Extraordinary Form liturgy in October

Fr. Dan Jones, Professor of Patristics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, announced on August 23, 2013 that the Seminary has invited the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius of Chicago (pictured above with Cardinal George) to offer a workshop on celebrating the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

Fr. Jones said that the Canons Regular have been invited because they have a particular charism for the restoration of the sacred in the Latin rite and "an expertise both in celebration of the EF and in the training of others to celebrate it." (See their Sancta Missa Workshops site for details; and as Fr. Jones suggests, note that a certain Archbishop of Seattle -- and former bishop of Marquette, Michigan, is featured on their home page!)

The workshop will be held at the Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Thursday Oct. 10th - Sunday Oct. 13th, and that seminarians in their third and fourth years of Theology at the Seminary (T3 and T4), as well as the priest faculty from the Seminary and priests serving in the Archdiocese of Detroit are invited to participate.

Exact figures on the cost are not yet available, and may depend on the number of participants, but Fr. Jones offers an estimate of $250, which will cover a package of books and DVD's to be provided in advance of the workshop (advance study of the materials is recommended in preparation as a great help for benefiting maximally from the workshop).

The workshop reportedly will include both plenary sessions addressing all participants together, as well as breakout sessions in which the Canons will work with smaller groups at the chapel's side altars practicing the celebration of the Mass.

Further information will be forthcoming. Once plans have solidified, those interested will be given definite figures on the cost.

For further inquiries please contact Mrs. Sandra Aceval at the Office of Clergy by Email or by calling (313) 596-7151. Seminarians will be informed whom to contact internally.

[Hat tip to the enthusiastic seminarians of SHMS]

"The Elite Project of Gay Marriage"

R.R. Reno writes, in "On the Square" (First Things, August 26, 2013), that same-sex marriage is eminently a bourgeois project that aims to enshrine libertinism as a national way of life.

[Hat tip to JM]

Priest as "bartender"?

The eminent sociologist, Peter Berger, in "Cardinal Newman and the Progressive View of the World" (The American Interest, August 21, 2013), after discussing the conservatism of Newman both before and after he swam the Tiber, turns his attention to the Church so passionately embraced by him, and then what happened to it after the Council:

But I cannot help recalling a conversation I had some years after the Council with a very Catholic Italian whom I knew at this time. He was terribly shocked, to the point where he didn’t want to go to church any more. He didn’t like the linguistic change, from the majestic Latin to the colloquial language he uses for the ordinary business of life. After all, he thought, the miracle of the Mass is supposed to take us out of the concerns and troubles of this life to an anticipation of the glory of the life to come. But he was most shocked by the way the officiating priest was now positioned—no longer facing the altar with his back to the congregation—but now standing behind the altar, facing the congregation. His first (very unfortunate) association was with a bartender standing behind the bar, preparing the drinks and cleaning the glasses. He admitted that this association was unfair. But then he added that turning the priest around had a much more profound symbolic meaning: The old position made it very clear that the priest was standing before God, who was believed to be present in the elements of wine and bread on the altar, but who was definitely not standing in the congregation. The new position suggested that what was worshipped did not transcend the gathered assembly, but was identical with the latter. In other words, what was happening now was a group of people worshipping themselves. Did the liturgical reformers intend this? Of course not. How many Catholics reacted as my Italian friend did? I don’t know. If I were Catholic, I would worry about it.

[Hat tip to JM]