We did.
Like Mark Shea is always saying, we have the shepherds we want.
Let me paint a picture for you. We’ll keep it in the attic and the image will age and decay over time while the actual subject of the painting never seems to age. Sound familiar? I’m not talking about Oscar Wild’s Dorian Gray or Ted Kennedy’s liver, I’m talking about sacred liturgy in this country post-Vatican II.
Dress the Mass up in the faux-glitz of OCP toonz and the sacred becomes mundane. Instead of being comported for communion with Our Lord we are prepared for an encounter with subjective sentimentality, shlock, and shmaltz. It’s one thing when people experience the Mass this way because they don’t know any better. It’s another entirely when the priest approaches the Mass in this way.
I went to Mass yesterday at a parish I don’t normally attend. The church was jammed – standing room only with people packed into the narthex. When we got the homily the priest began, “I was a little worried about getting a seat in here the place is so crowded, but I have this nice green chair up here on the altar. I thought it had a slot I could put a quarter in to make a vibrator.”
I’m not making this up. I wish I were.
Sal
You must be under 50. In the late 60’s, the shepherds of the Church – official and unofficial – bishops, priests and religious led a largely obedient and trusting flock into the wilderness.
So the next generation, catechised into confusion, is incapable of distinguishing wolves from faithful shepherds. How can they be considered responsible? Are protestants raised in schism culpable as schismatics?
Who then is responsible for leading the scattered sheep out of the desert? Our faith tells us it is the pope and bishops in communion with him.
JP2 seems to have a plan and there is a substantial fraction of the bishops who appear to be on board. It will take another 40 years to gather the flock and lead what’s left of it back into the fold. Many will be lost on the way.
There are a small but growing number of sheep who have figured out what is going on. It is not our place to moralize with the lost about their plight but to goad faithful shepherds into action and support them in difficult decisions like disciplining this obnoxious priest.
Amen, Charles. I have long ago tired of all the whining and complaining and have come to consider this endless droning even more destructive to the Church than “bad liturgy”. I always tell these folks to stop complaining and start following JP’s lead. It’s all mapped out for us, there is much for all of us to do and there is, above all, hope for the future. Really, there is.
JPII has a plan? I love this Pope but wonder at times about some of his appointments – many perhaps based on bad advice. He has appointed a good percentage of the bishops in the U.S., many of whom have come to embody “the bad shephard”.
Bill,
There is a plan evident in the Pope’s consistent actions. There are four elements:
1) teach tirelessly and persuasively.
2) lead by example
3) work through existing established channels
4) use disciplinary actions only as a last resort
5) appoint bishops who work in the same way
6) allow diseased parts of the Church (e.g., the Jesuits) to die off and encourage emerging renewal movements.
Now, my personal opinion, for what it’s worth, is that the Vatican could take a much more aggressive disciplinary stance without risking schism. Also, the pope should step outside official channels and appoint more aggressive bishops.
SP2 is not St. Pius X – for better or for worse.