Eucharistic Sabotage and You

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Mar 08, 2005

I have determined that there is no need to make any significant changes in our liturgical practice at this time. ... Most of the abuses mentioned in Redemptionis Sacramentum do not pertain to the celebration of the Eucharist in our Archdiocese.

That's Cardinal Mahony writing last September. Here's an illustration (thanks to Catholic L.A.) of the in-yo'-face defiance of the Norms that has been institutionalized in the Archdiocese.

Fragging the rubrics is a win-win game for saboteurs -- not only the deviant liturgists, but anyone with a doctrinal grudge who wants a fractured, enfeebled Church at the end of the day. No matter how trivial a stunt you pull, you put the orthodox Catholics in a bind. If, out of a desire not to offend, they go along with the innovation -- great, you've nudged them a little farther away from the Roman Rite and from Catholic discipline. If they object -- great, you spin it so that they appear the aggressors -- rubricists -- whose obsession with formalist conformity to detail eclipses the central spiritual significance and majesty of the liturgy, etc., etc.

The Roman Rite is universally, eminently, easily doable. That means -- apart from inadvertence -- deviations occur for the sake of deviance. When the faithful pretend to believe your motives are innocent, they know at some level they're party to a lie. It adds hugely to the fun of this cruelest of all liberal blood sports. If old Aunt Florence doesn't protest your pouring the Precious Blood from a Bloomingdale's carafe into goblets, she's ever-so-slightly complicit in the act. If she does protest, she either wants to spread dissension and division, or she must be operating under the delusion, poor thing, that it's the most important part of the Eucharistic Action.

Game. Set. Mass.