Members: Login | Register | Member List
Previous: Light bloggingNext: Gibson breaks the Ten Commandments of Hollywood
Back to main
Latin! Not Latin!
I love it when Catholic laypeople without any obvious training or understanding of what the Church teaches nevertheless get up on a public soapbox to preach to the rest of us about what it really means to be Catholic. It’s especially interesting when they’re politicians. Case in point: The vice-mayor of Mesa, Arizona, writes an op-ed today complaining that the new bishop of Phoenix is going to allow Latin Masses.
Now you’d think that Bishop Thomas Olmsted had ordered that from now on all Masses will be Tridentine and we were being transported back in time 60 years, from Dennis Kavanaugh’s reaction. He says that even permitting Latin Masses is a misguided trend of trying to go back in time to the romanticized Church of the 1940s. He adds that the “Second Vatican Council called for services to be held in the vernacular.” Wrong! Article 36 of Sacrosanctum Concilium only permits the vernacular, but retains Latin as the normative language. Typically, here’s a baby boomer who claims to know the “spirit” of Vatican II, but never bothered to read the “letter” of Vatican II. Don’t blame him though; that’s probably what some pastor told him.
He says that people don’t speak Latin to one another, greeting people with “hello” and not “salve.” Okay, I’ll admit I’m too young to remember, but did people used to greet each other at Mass with “salve”? Didn’t think so.
Then Kavanaugh goes off into the stratosphere: “Greater understanding and participation by lay members led to a renaissance of the Catholic Church in the 60’s and 70’s.” Ah yes, does anyone else remember the springtime of the Church? The already full churches were packed ever more tightly. Lapsed Catholics returned to their pews on Sunday. An era of peace and harmony reigned and we swam in rivers of fruit punch and lemonade and picked lovelies from gumdrop trees ... Oh sorry, I wandered off there. Must be the medication. Actually, the 1970s I remember were a time of ever-declining practice of the faith. And what about the 80s and 90s, Dennis? You seem to have left out something. Could it be that you don’t wish to be reminded that the only people left in the pews at many churches on Sunday are aging hipsters like yourself, living in a dream world about how good things are now?
Next Dennis shows us that he’s been reading the DaVinci Code: “Conservative groups such as Opus Dei have infiltrated the clergy in many communities and are subtly wielding power to influence many of these changes.” Dunh-dunh-duuuhhh. The conspiracy theory rears its ugly head. Of course, I would bet that Dennis has never met anyone from Opus Dei, but is once again making pronouncements from a lack of knowledge.
Such groups would be much happier if all priests wore cassocks and birettas and all nuns returned to wearing habits and living in convents, instead of actively participating in community affairs and in encouraging social justice.
And thus Dennis reveals himself. Who accomplishes more? The cloistered nuns in Carmel or Sister Polly Esther in her pantsuit working at the local Pax Christi office? Bzzt! Time’s up. Prayer is the means by which all things are accomplished in the Lord, and to contrast them like this is to demean the value of prayer. What’s wrong with the habit, since it’s a sign of being set apart for the Lord? What’s so important about a nun working in social justice? I thought it was important for the roles of laypeople to be emphasized?
This past year, we have seen a de-emphasis in the role of the laity in Mass services, with lesser roles for lectors and Eucharistic ministers and an emphasis on the roles of priests and deacons. Where is this all leading? Will the next papal bull require women to again wear hats in church?
For one thing, the requirement for women to cover their heads was never formally abrogated. For another, Dennis suffers from a common and peculiar kind of clericalism in which laypeople are only actively participating in the Liturgy, only valuable, when they are doing what the priest and deacon are supposed to be doing.
Dennis, no one’s saying you have go to the Tridentine Mass or even the Novus Ordo Latin Mass. But where is the tolerance for others? Where is the vaunted richness of diversity? Why can’t others take advantage of valid options?
-->
COMMENTS
Yes ! YEs! Yes!
Where sin abounded…grace abounds even more.
Notice to aging hippies: hold on to your hats…as you fade away a new generation will make things right.
It’s time to get that altar right back where it belongs.
Posted by ThomasCoolberth on 03/18/04 at 03:39 PM “Next Dennis shows us that he’s been reading the DaVinci Code”
Dom:
For feeling a little ill today, your comments on this are priceless! Great commentary!
Thanks, Mel. for the e-mail address for this all too typical Catholic pol trolling for votes from the faithless by profaning the sacred and holy.
But “respectful” to whom: the holy nuns he mocks or to this second-rate bigot who defames them? And just where does Kavaugh stand on, say, the life issues, for starters, inquiring Catholics want to know. Respectful to God or to man? The question ever before us in our day.
Tenes traditiones!
I’ve actually been to Mass at St. Anne’s in Gilbert, ironically enough. The pastor at the time was a married priest who had converted from Episcopalian, I think. Is he still there? From what I could tell of my brief exposure, it was a lively vibrant and faithful parish, but then a change of pastors can change all that very quickly, so much could have changed in the decade since I was there.
Posted by OK, so I emailed our freind in Mesa with a very nice note (It is Lent after all so I’m tryin’, Lord). I told him about the Opus Dei run diocene church in Chicago (all NO mass, all the time), the OD website, and Welborn’s DeCoding the DVC link. I also attached Miesel’s Dismantling the DVC. My reply was quick:
“For your information I have not read the DaVinci code…...”
Well he’s no doubt getting more info and more grief than he thought he would when he wrote that essay, huh?
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 03/19/04 at 11:53 AM Catholics believe that Scripture AND Tradition are divinely inspired. We are not sola scriptura, so the Tradition of the Mass as handed on by the generations can be the embodiment of divine grace.
The point Todd so obviously misses from Ratzinger is that change in the Mass is okay. He’s not saying it should stay static forever. But any change must be an authentic development, an evolution, not wholesale demolition and reconstruction.
Oh, and since we also believe that the grace of the sacrament is not inherent in the faith of the worshippers but is enacted by the promise of God as long as we follow the form and intent of the Church. To say otherwise is the very old heresy known as Donatism. Strike Three.
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Comments are being moderated. After you submit your comment it could take up to a couple hours, but usually only a few minutes, before it will appear. Thank you for your patience. If you have any questions, you may contact Domenico Bettinelli.
