Our diocese is using our parish to pilot a new program called "Strong Catholic Faith, Strong Catholic Youth."
It really isn't a program per se but a way of being parish that strives to make the family unit the Church in miniature and to give the family the support they need to be strong Catholic families handing on the strong Catholic faith and thus forming strong Catholic youth. Sounds simple, well no.
Just one more example of what Vatican II's wrong implementation has done to us as a community of believers, as Catholic families and as the Church we can see the steady decline in families with Strong Catholic faith and strong Catholic youth as we compare the Catholic Church's ability to hand on a strong Catholic faith and to form a strong Catholic youth to other denominations and religions.
Today this is the ranking in order of success:
1. The Mormon Church--their institutional Church has a consistent way of helping their families stay engaged with the faith, form strong Mormon youth and teenage boys are expected to do two years of missionary service. They have one night dedicated to the family which is Monday with materials they use. They don't allow a gray world to mis-color their faith.
2. Conservative Protestant denominations
3. African American Protestant denominations
4. Mainline Protestant denominations
5. Catholics
6. Jews
7. non believers
So we as Catholics rank nearly at the bottom with secular Jews doing worse than us and non-believers doing almost as well.
But this was not always the case. Up until Vatican II, Catholics like the Mormons had a strong set of guidelines to live the Catholic faith at home. It entailed:
1. The obligation to attend Mass every Sunday with daily Mass highly encouraged and weekly confession
2. Strong Catholic parishes that were geographical with strong parish schools that Catholics were expected to use even under the penalty of sin if they didn't. Nuns in habits that staffed these schools and weren't paid hired hands, thus making the school an extension of the home and like homeschooling
3. Divorce forbidden except for the most extreme pastoral needs and everyone who divorced knew they were forbidden from receiving the sacraments if they remarried outside the Church or led a life of sin after divorce
4. Catholics were highly committed to their Church, seldom if ever denigrated it, sought to reform it or thought what they had wasn't good enough
5. Catholic parishes and Catholic schools, especially the sisters encouraged vocations to the priesthood and religious life and there was an abundance
6. The Liturgy and sacraments were universal and in the same language, Latin for the Latin Rite (how novel!) and not fragmented by the quirks of inculturation. However inculturation was important for popular devotions which were very rich but varied from culture to culture and appreciated by all the cultures
So, how did the wrong implementation of Vatican II harm our Catholic identity and thus our Strong Catholic faith and thus weaken our Catholic youth?
1. The loss of respect for the observance of religious law, such as the 10 Commandments but especially for the precepts of the Church, canon law and this was promoted by the hierarchy and theologians in the catechetical materials that were used and approved by them and by preaching from the pulpit and by the rebellion of priests and religious that went unchallenged by the hierarchy of the Church. Thus Mass as an obligation was denigrated, weekly confession mocked, popular devotions squelched and the formality of the Mass with strict Latin thrown out. Inculturalation infiltrated the Mass and its music and fragmented the Church into competing camps not only from parish to parish but within the same parish!
2. Catholics began to pick and choose their parishes not out of geographical location but out of how well parishes did church and celebrated the sacraments, which usually meant lively music regardless of the sacramental aspects. Cafeteria Catholicism began to develop and later extended even to doctrine and dogma.
3. The Church's pastoral care for divorced Catholics became very liberal and calls for relaxing the Church's teaching in this regard as well as for contraception and individual priests giving permission to Catholics to divorce and receive Holy Communion even after remarriage and giving permission for artificial birth control accelerated divorce in the Church as it became less and less taboo and sometimes promoted by the local parishes. The loss of the sense of sin and scandal in this regard accelerated the sexual revolution and its denigration of traditional Catholic sexual morality as it concerned contraception, fornication, adultery, masturbation, pedophilia, ephebophilia and all the other philias. Everyone's sexual orientation and desires were seen as God-given and to be celebrated out in the open or behind closed doors and with or without winks and nods.
4. Catholic renewal or reform became high individualistic as did personal morality thus fragmenting the Church even more and creating a culture of denigrating what had been the basis of a strong Catholic culture, strong Catholic faith and strong Catholic youth in pre-Vatican II times. Criticism of the Church became an art! The damage that Catholic public figures have done to the Church both in politics and entertainment cannot be underestimated, especially when it goes unchallenged by bishops that look the other way or wring their hands and fail to excommunicate or place censures against them
5. The collapse of religious life led to the closing of many Catholic schools and hospitals and this collapse can be traced to the wrongheaded type of reform these religious promoted and continue to promote. Catholic schools became totally lay operated with teachers' salaries needing to be on par with public school teachers which thus jacked up prices for Catholic education where the religious component was then watered down and Catholic education was seen as a commodity that is purchased by those who can afford it and for a good secular education with religious identity superficial.
6. The Mass became very horizontal and casual dependent on the cult of the personality of both the priest and the congregation and their warmth, caring attitudes and the sounds and gestures they make and it is fragmented by a multiplicity of languages that divides rather than unifies our Catholic communities both in spoken and sung formats.
All this and much more promoted as renewal by a generation of rebellious clergy and religious who are now in their late 50's and older accounts for the Catholic Church being at the bottom of the totem pole with the atheists rather than at the tops above the Mormons where we once proudly stood. What is the difference today with the Mormons and the Catholics? The Mormons did not promote in any active way a reform of the their faith that caused it to lose its strong Mormon identity, whereas the Catholic Church's misimplementation of Vatican II did precisely that, activate and steamroll the loss of Catholic identity through wrong-headed reform.
And as a sign that gross denial about the deleterious effects of the misapplication of Vatican II in the Church has caused, this same group continues to spout for the same thing which is the surest sign of a mental illness--doing the same thing over and over and thinking there will be a better outcome.
27 comments:
I suppose I am a cafeteria Catholic in that I go out of my way to attend decent liturgy. But who forced me to be so?
That's my point and you are a victim of it and is a good majority of Catholics. Prior to the Council in most parishes there were two ways to celebrate the Latin Mass, low or high, most parishes did not celebrate the Solemn Sung with deacon or sub deacon. The Low Mass is easy to do and if traditional Catholic hymns were sung, usually from our popular devotions, they were sung well in the four hymn sandwhich and these were considered thoroughly Catholic in devotional and theological quality.
The high mass if Missa Contatata was basic and most parishes attempted to do one such Mass each Sunday either with a very good choir as choirs were very strong then or with a good soloist or small schola and it was normally Gregorian Chant. More difficult Masses were sung just for special events and seldom.
Today what do we have? Parishes with different languages and styles of music within the same parish and major differences in style and ability from parish to parish to the point that one has to shop around to find that which they like and the criteria for what they like is highly individualistic unlike what it was like prior to Vatican II.
Now I would suspect in a major city like London, even in pre-Vatican II times you could find parishes that celebrated the Mass in Latin in splendid ways compared to other parishes, but I suspect the ethos was the same in all Catholic parishes.
. . . a way of being parish . . .
Hmm . . . syntax somehow symptomatic of the problem?
I just hope someday to not have to drive an hour or more each way to go to the Mass that the Holy Father wants offered in every parish...
Also, I wish instead of all these silly ministries, I could go to a parish with the Legion of Mary or some more traditional parish activities and catechesis.
Hah, Henry Edwards.
Anyway, something I'd like to point out is that the process of majorly changing something is often just as traumatic as, or is more traumatic than, the end result.
We see it in our parishes all the time: try to go from the banality of speaking the preface dialogue at Sunday Mass to chanting it, and no doubt, at least a few will totally freak out. It is a miniscule change, and I think even they would agree, but the very process of going through the change is quite difficult to many.
Multiply the magnitude of that by several hundred times and you end up with something approximating the trauma of the liturgical wreckovations of the 60s and 70s. The internal problems of the postconciliar Church are many, and I do earnestly believe the majority of them are artificial issues stemming from being embarrassed of our own identity.
There are many levels of this multifaceted issue:
Properly interpreting Vatican II in its own very limited historical lens
Determining whether the pastoral concerns of the 60s are even relevant anymore
Separating what Vatican II actually says from what was done in its name
Determining what in God's name the Council Fathers were actually trying to respond to (Trent is easy, Nicaea is easy, etc.; VII, not so much)
Determining whether what has so far been done in the name of Vatican II was really called for by Vatican II
The less we demand of our young people, the less we will get from them.
Maybe we need young Catholics to do a two year mission? Could we afford the bicycles?
The leaders of the Church in any generation are the custodians of tradition, both big and little T, and not owners of it. Thus they should be extremely cautious in monkeying with it, since in a crucial sense it isn't theirs to monkey with. One reason for this: the danger of unintended consequences. Case-in-point: did any of the people who foisted the NO off on us even stop to contemplate that this could have led to the parish balkanization that Fr. McD describes and that we most certainly have today? And does anyone (except for people who want to see the Church damaged and destroyed) think that that balkanization is a good thing? I, for one, don't. I want every parish to offer a reverent and orthodox Mass, and for all Catholics in attendance at every parish to believe and profess what the Church teaches.
Instead, dissenters, although they are in most parishes, are drawn to lousy liturgies that are seedbeds for heretical thought. The hierarchy permits and sometimes actively encourages this. I myself have been at Masses in which the congregation applauded when the celebrant castigated the pope for refusing to allow the ordination of women. In what meaningful way am I in communion with such people?
A5, is it a coincidence that Communion with the Church is reduced to being essentially meaningless at the same time the elements needed for a valid Mass are also reduced to being unrecognizable?
Yes, Anon, I find it absolutely disgusting and supremely sad that my parish is artificially broken into three groups:
The Whites and Blacks
The Filipinos
The Spanish speakers
If we're not going to have personal parishes anymore, at least let's not pretend that the various groups belong to the same parish when, effectively, they don't.
One group never sees the other two unless you're a child attending the parish schools.
:(
While it's true many Catholics today parish-shop (for a few reasons - liturgy being one) I'm not sure this is a bad thing. It's better to have people making their Sunday obligation than boycotting their geographical parish thus placing their souls in jeopardy.
In the decades prior to V2, city dwellers tended to walk or a quick bus ride to their church. In Germany for example, there wasn't an auto maker who made a car the average middle class person could afford until Volkswagon came around in the late 30's (translated: People's Car). Since the Mass and church architecture were basically universal back then there wouldn't have been much need to go across town to another parish.
Since most North Americans today drive to Mass does it matter which direction they depart from their homes to Mass? I do not attend my geographical parish for a few reasons (primarily the choirs) but the drive to my registered church is the same.
Five years after Summorum Pontificum many if not most attendees at any Extraordinary Form Mass have traveled - an hour isn't uncommon. This is often viewed as a sacrifice. However, consider back in the days before public transit and the automobile, it wasn't uncommon for farmers to travel over an hour to get to Mass.
As our Holy Father and Fr MacDonald point out, the documents of V2 were misinterpreted and wrongly implemented. In my opinion, the Novus Ordo went far beyond what the Council fathers intended. We are indeed in a modern crisis.
Yet, the pre-V2 Church couldn't have been a paradise otherwise why did our Lady make so many apparitions telling us to smarten up? Consider how many saints have warned about how many souls perish. That was all prior to the new Mass and apparently when there were line-ups for Confession.
Vatican II happened for a reason, perhaps we just don't know what it was right now. Jesus said the gates of Hell would never prevail, but He didn't say we wouldn't be without challenges. Maybe the Church didn't need a breath of fresh air, but a forest fire. Like in nature a fire destroys old dead wood in order for new growth to appear. Maybe Catholics were just going through the motions pre-V2. I seriously doubt those at an Extraordinary Form Mass in the middle of a Sunday afternoon are superficial in their faith.
Thank you, Fr Allan, you are a good and holy priest. What happened in the 1960s was without precedent in the entire history of the Church. Mulling over the documents of V2 is a waste of time. It will take centuries to put it right. In the meantime I shall have my obsequies carried out according to the Roman Rite before it was bastardized by Bugnini with the full support of Paul VI.
I'm with ya' Marc.
Why can't we have a Legion of Mary or a Sodality for the school girls, instead of the Girl Scouts???
Which helps build Catholic Identity more??
and which is more Eternally usefull for the girls and their future families?
~SqueekerLamb
I don't know if my (ordinary Catholic) parish has a boys or girls Scout chapter, but it certainly has a very active Legion of Mary chapter.
But some of these comments remind me that, in the "old days", church and school had something going on every day or night of the week, with three different functions:
-- (worship) At least a couple of well attended daily Masses
-- (education) Parish school and CCD classes, one or the other mandatory for all youth
-- (community) Everything from Holy Name Society (men) and Legion of Mary (women) to the obligatory Friday night fish fry and bingo, these collectively involving virtually the whole parish
But now a single Sunday morning hour is somehow supposed to serve all these purposes, none of them well.
In the previous thread I asked a very basic and naïve question but did not receive an answer. The comment was so short that it was likely overlooked, so let me ask it again if I may: What is the relevance, if any, of the Day of Pentecost to the discussion of variety in the liturgy, especially the use of the vernacular. As I said before, I am sure there must be a good answer to this question. I just don’t know what it is. Here, then, is the well-known passage from Acts 2:
When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem. At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, "Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans? Then how does each of us hear them in his own native language? We are Parthians, Medes, and Elamites, inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the districts of Libya near Cyrene, as well as travelers from Rome, both Jews and converts to Judaism, Cretans and Arabs, yet we hear them speaking in our own tongues of the mighty acts of God." They were all astounded and bewildered, and said to one another, "What does this mean?" But others said, scoffing, "They have had too much new wine."
The best I can do with it is this: On the one hand, one might argue that the passage endorses the use of the vernacular as a vehicle for the workings of the Holy Spirit within the Church, including the Mass. Certainly, the Apostles did not use Latin. On the other hand, one might argue that the Church was subsequently enabled to speak in the tongue of Latin thereby enabling those of many different nations to “hear” proclamation of the “mighty acts of God” in an even more unified manner. Alternatively, is this text even relevant to the question of the liturgical forms of the Mass, since it addresses a different sort of activity, i.e., proclamation? Or, if relevant, is it relevant to only part of the Mass, e.g., proclamation of the Word?
Thanks in advance for clarification.
"Alternatively, is this text even relevant to the question of the liturgical forms of the Mass"
No relevance that I can see. Pentecost was not a liturgical event.
Though, one could observe that the Apostles spoke one language--as the priest using Latin to celebrate Mass--while the people heard in their own languages, just as the people at a Latin Mass all follow and pray in their own individual languages, if some use a Latin-English missal, others use a Latin-Spanish missal, etc. However, this is is such a stretch as to be as irrelevant as any other liturgical inference I can think to draw from the babel at Pentecost.
Thanks for those thoughts, Henry. Actually, your use of the phrase “babel at Pentecost” raises another line of inquiry, albeit a related one. Presumably, the Pentecost event can in some way be juxtaposed to the story of the Tower of Babel but, presumably also, to mark a contrast – the overcoming of the divisions among peoples through the universalism of the Church. So, in that sense, the “babel at Pentecost” is something to be welcomed.
Anon2, Pentecost was the miraculous descent of the Holy Spirit to the disciples and apostles. It was one of many overflowings, or manifestations, of the mutual love of Father and Son embodying itself in a historical moment. It is not a paradigm to be appropriated for human speculation in an effort to justify the OF Mass as you seem to want to do. However, your reference to the Tower of Babel is interesting. If you remember, the people were all of one language. God did not find that to be pleasing to him. It is a story of man's presumption..."let us make a name for ourselves..." Man has always wanted to build a heaven of his own (see Social Justice). I think you are reaching.
Factus est repente de caelo sonus advenientis spiritus vehementis ... you can tell by the way the schola sings it whether or not they understand Latin!
Gene: I will confess that my starting position was, as I think you already know, that I welcome the re-introduction of the EF but also would like the Church to keep the OF. In this way, I have been thinking that the Church can reach, and save, more souls than through the EF alone. (Moreover, re-introduction of the EF rectifies the gross injustice, and error, of eliminating it completely in the first place). It occurred to me that the Pentecost event may be relevant to this issue. As I thought about it, I could see it providing Scriptural support for diversity in liturgical forms. So yes, you are correct to suggest that I “wanted” to use it in that way.
However, one cannot approach matters so one-sidedly and uncritically if one wants at least to try to be objective, so I then thought about countervailing arguments, which I identified in my first comment and requested help in sorting through the arguments pro and con. I appreciate your and Henry’s responses in that regard.
The Tower of Babel line of inquiry, prompted by Henry’s comments, is indeed interesting. The little research I have done on it after reading your comment suggests that there are two interpretations – that God was displeased at human hubris in constructing the Tower to reach the Heavens; alternatively that the story represents in some way a reservation about unified language and culture, as you suggest, and a preference for, or at last an explanation of, cultural diversity. I had always understood the story in the first sense. What are the implications if it is understood in the second sense?
Anon 2, What are the implications if understood in the second sense? I dunno...take a Muslim to lunch? Feel guilty for being white and Christian? Start listening to hip hop music? Eat curry? Put a dot in the middle of my forehead...yeah, cultural diversity...that's the ticket...
Gene,
I don’t understand your response. I thought I was trying to explore your own point because you said “your reference to the Tower of Babel is interesting. If you remember, the people were all of one language. God did not find that to be pleasing to him” (although you then connected that somehow to man’s presumption and efforts to create heaven on earth by pursuing social justice).
Perhaps the idea is a contrast between a faux unity (for example, one driven by a secular ideology such as Marxism) and a genuine one that submits to, and is effectuated by the Holy Spirit working through the Church because we are then all one in Christ. But I suppose that still leaves open the question regarding the diversity of liturgical forms, including use of the vernacular.
The effort to use the Tower story as a foil for your lliberal ideas such as so-called "cultural diversity" is ludicrous. Read Amos and Hosea to see what God thought of cultural diversity in the life of Israel.
Let's see, you have, at one time or another, used all the lib rallying points: you were going on about gun control, then you were whining about "corporate greed" (another lib myth), then "global warming" (an outlandish lib subterfuge), and now "cultural diversity." Did you feel really righteous when you pushed the button for Obama or merely self-satisfied that you would not have dreams about being a racist? You know, you really should run over to Holy Spirit and support Ignotus in his insipid neo-protestant modernist bungling. He'd probably let you preach. LOL!
Gene,
I will respond to your “liberal ideas” charge later today when I have more time.
For the moment, I have some questions that may help us to join issue rather than irrelevant and misconceived points: Are you in favor of allowing the OF Mass in addition to the EF (I am in favor of having both)? And do you support at least some use of the vernacular for the Mass (again, which I also support)? In other words, do you support Father MacDonald’s apparent position on these matters? Or would you, instead, prefer a complete reversion to the EF exclusively in Latin?
Anon2, Vat II tried to fix something that was not broken. The Mass should never have been tampered with. So, essentially I believe the EF should be THE Mass. Should there be vernacular readings? Well, I am no liturgist and am hardly qualified to even offer an opinion with the likes of Henry Edwards, John Nolan, Marc, Anon 5, and others on this blog. I do not see why there should be, although I suppose that would be fine if it were done properly and in the correct places.
Once again we, in our modern "post-Christian" arrogance forget that, since at least Gregory the Great, the Mass was offered to millions of peasants and princes, civilized and savage peoples across a broad spectrum of history and never was there seen a need for a vernacular version. The Graces contained and conferred in the Eucharist transcend historical and cultural accidents. Latin, rather than being arcane and divisive, is a unifier because it is a dead language and, therefore, precise and not subject to the whims and fads of any time period. The Mass was the one place where even the poorest peasant, the most heinous sinner, could experience the grandeur, richness, and Mystery of a love and grace truly beyond understanding. In the Mass and in the magnificent Churches built to God's glory, the wretched masses could experience a grandeur and wealth that went beyond even the courts of the mighty from which they were barred. And this we decided to de-mythologize" and bring down to the most plebian level imaginable. Do you not have any inkling of how preposterous, nay, stupid that is?
I know you by sight and observation. I believe you to be a kind and well-intentioned person. But, even kind and well-intentioned people, especially well-educated ones such as yourself, are subject to the arrogance of the presumptions of modernism/rationalism. We are not as smart or progressive as we like to think. Hubris has a price.
Gene,
Because you will dismiss anything I might say as just more “liberal ideas” (a convenient, if misconceived, labeling behind which one can hide so as not to have to engage those ideas), I will not respond myself. Instead I will let Russell Kirk respond. Perhaps you will not find it so easy to dismiss one of the major founders of modern American conservatism:
In his Prospects for Conservatives (1989) (at pages 260-61) Kirk states:
“Conservative people in politics need to steer clear of the Scylla of abstraction and the Charybdis of opportunism. So it is that folk of conservative inclination ought to decline the embraces of such categories of American political zealots and charlatans as I list below:
Those who demand that the National Parks be sold to private developers.
Those who declare that ‘the test of the market’ is the whole of political economy and of morals.
Those who fancy that foreign policy can be conducted with religious zeal on a basis of absolute rights and absolute wrongs. . . .
Those who assure the public that great corporations can do no wrong. . . .”
So much for the “liberal ideas” regarding “corporate greed” as well as a hubristic and simplistic foreign policy! Moreover, when speaking about our relation with other countries and cultures, in the same book Kirk states (at pages 173-74):
“We Americans ought to cease to foment ‘a revolution of rising expectations’ in countries where folk have not forgotten the wisdom of their ancestors; we ought not to demand that the Javanese villager or the Sudanese peasant somehow adapt themselves and their economy to the American standard of living and the American political pattern. We ought not to swagger among the nations, bribing or bullying them to a sterile conformity with our particular pleasures. And the worst manifestation of American hubris, I find, has been our determination that all peoples ought to_think_ as American do. . . . [Regarding the “re-education” of Germany and Japan after the War] What we were asserting, in effect, was our right to remake the world in our own image. ‘Surrender to us, and we will annihilate your personality, and mould you afresh upon our perfect model.’ The wants of other nations are not monopolized by American techniques.”
Kirk then goes on to talk about his “amazement at the presumption of those Americans who are intolerably smug in their creed of superiority to all other ages and peoples.”And in his book “The Politics of Prudence” (1993) Kirk states (at page 221):
“[A] soundly conservative foreign policy, in the age which is dawning, should be neither ‘interventionist’ nor ‘isolationist’: it should be prudent. Its object should not be to secure the triumph everywhere of America’s name and manners, under the slogan of ‘democratic capitalism’, but instead the preservation of the true national interest, and acceptance of a diversity of economic and political institutions throughout the world. Soviet hegemony ought not to be succeeded by American hegemony. Our prospects in the world of the twenty-first century are bright – supposing we American do not swagger about the globe, proclaiming our omniscience and our omnipotence.”
So much, then, for the “liberal ideas” regarding “cultural diversity”! Of course, like Kirk, I celebrate the achievements of Western Civilization (although I also try not to view them through rose colored glasses as if we were perfect and without fault).
(continued)
Now, as regards conservation of resources and protection and the environment, Kirk states in “Prospects for Conservatives” (at page 173):
“And, turning away from the furious depletion of natural resources, we ought to employ our techniques of efficiency in the interest of posterity, voluntarily conserving our land and our minerals and our forests and our water and our old towns and our countryside for the future partners in our contract of eternal society.”
So much, yet again, for the “liberal ideas” of “climate change” and “Creation care”!
I do not know what Kirk thought about the “liberal idea” of gun control but I cannot imagine that, as a true conservative, he would have supported the idea of limitless access to firearms and ammunition. I imagine that, as with everything else, he would have advocated prudence in gun policy.
Those who uncritically support the Republican Party today and yet want to call themselves conservatives would do well to remember Kirk’s admonition that “conservative views are not identical with the measures of the Republican party” (The Politics of Prudence at page 222). I fear that it is because you may have forgotten this that you can no longer understand that traditional conservatives (as opposed to today’s “radical” ersatz-conservatives) and liberals may sometimes agree on similar positions but based on different premises.
Gene,
I wish I had been able to read your 4:36 p.m. comment before I submitted my own at 5: p.m. (unfortunately, it was not posted yet). I appreciate the gracious tone of your comment and, had I been able to read it first, I would not have been so harsh in my own comment. I was reacting to what I perceived as yet another misconceived attack on my “liberal” ideas. It is not just you, though. For example, I was dismayed, and somewhat aggravated, that anyone who dared to oppose the Iraq War (such as myself) in 2003 was automatically labeled as a “liberal” by many, notwithstanding that there were extremely good “conservative” arguments, with which I agreed, for not embarking on that particular adventure, and notwithstanding that Pope John Paul II was also opposed to it (which also shaped my views of course).
But I stand by the merits, if not the tone, of my comment – all these positions (advocating recognition of corporate excesses, pursuit of a less reckless foreign policy, care of the God-given gifts of nature, and promotion of law and order through gun regulation) can be, and are for me, rooted in sound conservative principles, the foremost of which of course is the need to eschew ideologies and fanaticism of all stripes and to exercise prudence or practical wisdom in decision-making. Perhaps the fact that it has become so difficult to recognize that these positions can also be conservative ones has not a little to do with the gridlock in Washington and the apparent inability to find common ground and to reach compromise (although one remains hopeful that this might be about to change).
Thank you for explaining your thinking about the EF. Clearly I respect that position as a very principled one. I am not yet persuaded by it, however, for at least two main reasons. First, I want to be guided by the magisterium in this matter as in others and do not feel competent to second guess those who know so much more than I do, and who, moreover, are in a position of authority. Therefore, as long as the hierarchy permits the OF and the vernacular, or other liturgical variations, I will follow their lead. I will also follow their lead in a return to the true intention of Vatican II. If that means still permitting the vernacular, so be it. If that means still allowing folk masses, so be it (and yes, I have also attended Holy Spirit and met Pater Ignotus). If it means forbidding folk masses, so be it. (For similar reasons, I wanted to be guided by the USCCB in the recent election.) I understand that you may view the hierarchy with a more jaundiced eye. You doubtless have greater confidence in your divergent views than I would. I do not trust myself enough to diverge in that manner. Indeed, I would like to think that it is because of the constant temptation to arrogance, which you rightly observe is an occupational hazard for someone such as myself, that I take this position.
My second reason has to do with the power of language. I do not believe that either of us can know exactly when, how, or why God may choose to speak to a person’s soul through the power of language, perhaps even through just one word or phrase uttered in a particular way at a particular time. But I do believe that this can happen when the Mass is celebrated in the vernacular as well as when it is celebrated in Latin and, perhaps more importantly, that for some it may happen more when they hear the vernacular, and for others more when they hear the Latin. However, I do not disagree on the need for our active interior participation. Most of us need to do better in that regard. I know I do. I am trying, however.
You have the advantage of me because I do not yet know you by sight or observation. However, I will look forward to meeting you. Perhaps one day you could say hello (I generally attend the 5:00 p.m. Sunday Mass).
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