otr dashback: 3-25-04 -- can't we all just get along?
By Diogenes (articles ) | April 14, 2008 11:12 PM
What is it about "faithful orthodox Catholics" that makes so many of them talk as though despair and anger are the first and only characteristics of the Truly Christian life?
Several blogs have recently raised the question of why orthodox Catholics so often froth at the mouth when the subject of liturgical abuse is raised, why so many of us stumble out of Mass nearly sick with rage, so that we shock and repel those around us.
As a man who very often prays to be distracted during Mass so as not to take a machete to the celebrant, and as one who spreads alarm and despondency among nearly all he meets after leaving church, I feel I'm qualified to speak to the question.
What exasperates and maddens me about liturgical abuses is that the Mass given to us by the Church is so supremely, eminently DOABLE. Almost any priest not in a concentration camp or on a battlefield can do what the Church asks him to do with perfect compliance. It's all there: wear this; say that; bow here; now elevate the host
That means that the departures happen for a reason. The innovator wants to jack us around for motives of his own, which he does not "covenant" with us. We almost never hear complaints about inadvertent omissions by celebrants trying to do it right; it's the deliberate changes that infuriate.
I once read an article in a lefty newsletter called Miriam's Song that laid out the campaign very neatly. The author noted how, on the campus of Ohio State, students would not keep to the sidewalks but take the most direct route between buildings, thereby wearing out a footpath in the grass. Eventually the grounds crew would acknowledge the fait accompli and lay a concrete sidewalk over the course already marked out by pedestrians who didn't stick to the "approved" ways. The author used this as an analogy to encourage her readers to "make a path by walking on it" in the liturgy
It's not as if the Mass established by the Church
Hence the unfairness of it when the celebrant himself departs from the rubrics, even quite peripheral ones, to "make a path by walking on it." When Father suggests in the vestibule that I'm guilty of pushing a private agenda by asking for a kosher Mass I had no part in making; when he tells me the Mass of the missal is "not good liturgy" or "not the tradition of our local faith community"; when my only alternative is to keep silent and let him score out his path a little more securely
And that's not conducive to spiritual repose.
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Posted by: -
Apr. 17, 2008 8:35 PM ET USA
I hate to think what you're saying to yourself--and to others--after having seen that Mass in the D.C. baseball stadium. When such show biz is carried on and applauded at that level, what does one expect from the local priest?
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Posted by: -
Apr. 16, 2008 4:00 PM ET USA
Thank you for keeping your voice heard.Why is it that those of us who see the liturgical abuses seem to be scattered throughout the Church? It's hard to find others who see it, other than at a website. It would seem that if a group of people spoke to their parish priest or bishop on a regular basis, the message would get through??
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Posted by: -
Apr. 16, 2008 1:37 PM ET USA
I beat a path to the nearest Tridentine Mass I could find and have not had a second thought about it. I participate in the liturgy in Latin or English whichever I wish. I find spiritual and emotional gratification in the liturgy. Get back to basics. Talk to you priests about offering the Latin mass in your church. The problem is that most newly ordained priests do not know Latin.
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Posted by: -
Apr. 15, 2008 9:56 AM ET USA
But if Priests conformed to the rubrics you would deny them their individual creativity and thus you would deprive them of their much desired popularity. It's all about them you know...well not all of them but, unfortunately, way too many.
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Posted by: -
Apr. 15, 2008 5:14 AM ET USA
Does The Gather Hymnal depart from the rubrics?
