.
My thoughtful knowing readers surely have picked out the parish where they expect this latest indication of Catholic Church dissatisfaction to have occurred. How many of you guessed that it was St. Augustine's in South St. Paul?
Father J.P.Echert, pastor at St. Augustine's and Holy Trinity in that city, the only parishes to offer the Extraordinary Form (Tridentine Latin) Masses in the Archdiocese, has shocked at least two of his parishioners who object strenuously to the innovations Father has brought to his Latin Masses.
Liturgical Dancers? Nope. There would be much bloodshed before Father would be seen in the same building as liturgical dancers? Guitars? No, again. Father is one of the most orthodox priests in the country, and says it to everybody. His only concession to modernism is riding a motorcycle, occasionally while wearing his cassock, to be sure. And his guardian angel isn't too happy about that. He allowed him to have a minor scrape on loose gravel last Fall as a warning that the Powers that be in Heaven didn't envision their representatives on earth as bikers.
No, the St. Augustine parishioners objected because Father has decided to read the Epistle and the Gospel from the high altar in English at Low Masses. This is not only allowed, but encouraged, by the Holy Father. At High Masses, the Epistle and Gospels are read in English only at the pulpit ("ambo" for you Novus Ordo Catholics) after they have been read in Latin on the high altar.
To traditionalists ("traddies", they are called), this is worse than liturgical dancers with tamborines and jingly wrist bells at a Polka Mass.
And they muster their forces to call for help and explain their positions on the AngelQueen Forum, an internet site where they meet to complain about most things Catholic that aren't Latin, on the knees, on the tongue and ad orientem.
They have a scholars division, also. One came up with a brief history of all the things that have gone wrong with the Church, dating back to the Garden of Eden:
It has been going on since the Fall. The dark Asiatic influence of the Jews was what caused Arianism as the dark pagan influence caused Byzantine Caesaro-papism. The former matured into the gnosticism of the gypsies, Kabbalists, Rabbinic Talmudists (falsely called Jews), and the repugnant Albigensians, whereas the latter was refreshed materially by Henry IV, formally by Frederick Barbarossa and Frederick II, then in the Gallicanism of Phillip the Fair who martyred Pope Boniface VIII, which of course was refreshed again by François I with the Concordat of Bologna. Meanwhile the Jewish influence in the neo-Arianism and gnosticism sprang about the movements of the Spirituals and the Brethren of the Free Spirit, as well as the neo-Manichaeanism of Jan Hus and the neo-Pelagianism of Calvin and the Puritans. These forces found confluence in the Knights Templar, corollaries of which formed the Renaissance, which sowed the seeds for the Protestant Revolt among the people more commonly, and which flowered amongst the Medicis, Lutherans, and in the Act of Supremacy of 1534. This was all permitted by law through the notorious and overly generous concession to the Protestants known as the Peace of Westphalia, of 1648, which invented the concept of national sovereignty as opposed to the former Catholic understanding of personal sovereignty which flowered in the Age of Faith.
Fast forward a bit to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which was merely a manifestation of long-standing Protestant levelling sentiment in England, the basis for Locke's post facto philosophical justification of this treason. On the continent, Protestants and Masons nurtured the gnosticism handed down from the Synagogue of Satan, especially Frederick II and his comrade Voltaire. Rousseau brought Locke to the Continent, the Protestants and a weak Louis XV tolerated these anti-Christian forces -- the former being agents of it and the latter, himself a notorious philanderer, being too weak in the face of fashions to exercise the royal authority in glorious, heavy-handed censorship.
Eventually Adam Weishaupt Illuminized these divers subversive forces, harnessing them all under the central control of the Illuminati, and they took down France before spreading Revolutionary influence to the world via Napoleone Buonaparte. Afterwards came the fall of the Bourbon Restoration, the Industrial Revolution, the usurpation of the Portuguese, Spanish, and French thrones, the 1848 Revolution, Communism, the 'Risorgimento' that stole the Papal States, the Paris Commune, the constitutionalism that destroyed the old sovereignty further, the abolition of all the Catholic influence in German States, the Federal Reserve, the Bolshevik Revolution, then the fall of the Austrian Empire, the Masonic League of Nations, World War II and the Yalta Betrayal, the United Nations, and then the Second Vatican Council.
Thereafter we have seen the global fermentation of a society freed from the fatherly hand of the Roman Pontiff. All of the mortal sins one can imagine have been legitimised as universal human rights, as the Devil himself has caused the entire world to accept his principle of rebellion as dogma, even to the hatred of Christ the King. Contra Terrentum EQR Jul 09, 2008 1:07 pm
Another Traddie Scholar concentrated on the more modern flaws in the Church: It started with Luther, then 1789, then the Marquis de Sade, then Voltaire, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Lenin, Communism, Capitalism, socialism, V2 (which failed to condemn Communism, gee, what a surprise), "The Pill", feminism, the Sexual Revolution, The Dialectic of Convergence (Berlin Wall, anyone?), political correctness, and finally "The War on Terror," The Police State, Fascism, and One World Government. En depit de tout Jul 09, 2008 10:48 am
So pity those working in the Schism Division of our Archdiocese. They don't only have to worry about the 20 or 30 parishes (out of 220) in the archdiocese who do like liturgical modifications originally drafted on bar napkins. They also have to worry about a nation of traddies with electronic umbilical cords who are ready to take up keyboards on a moment's notice against any real or imagined modification to the the Mass of Pope John XXIII (1962). Of course some of them say it should be the Mass of Pope Pius V (1570). But I'll save further comments on traddie sub-groups for another day.
Father John Zuhlsdorf, Father Z, dealt with the traddie issue yesterday in not so jocular a fashion.
Biters of the consecrated hand that feeds them Christ’s Body and forgives their sins
3 comments:
I'm pretty sure the Epistle and the Gospel were already being read in the vernacular before the Council - I seem to remember that - I may be wrong, but I think for Low Masses, the priest was dispensed from doing the readings in Latin.
I can't quite remember. I was an altar boy and I don't recall more than one Missal on the altar. Although maybe there were English language translations for the Epistles and Gospels in the standard Mass book. They didn't have three year cycles as we do now.
I'm pretty sure that the priest stayed on the altar for the Low Mass Epistles and Gospels. And there was no "sermon" at Low Masses.
Most of the grade school kids had Marian Missals or St. Joseph Missals.
There may have been dispensations.
Some of the web pages that have altar boy instructions have the Priest and the altar boys each saying the Confiteor at the prayers at the foot of the altar at the beginning of Mass.
Then, after the "Domine non sum dignus" ("Lord I am not worthy") prayer right before Communion, they show the altar boy saying the confiteor again.
That prayer was so long that I think that I would have remembered that. I checked with my brother in California and he didn't think we said it a second time. He's the kind of guy who would have vociferously objected if we had to.
So maybe each Bishop gave dispensation to their diocese.
Which means that the Tridentine Mass was not as rigidly celebrated as most traddies think.
I know for certain that each bishop issued fast and abstinence rules for Lent and Advent. So those probably differed slightly from diocese to diocese.
And the bishops today give the list of Church holy days and celebrations that is read at Masses each January. Some dioceses still celebrate "Ascension Thursday."
The "Universal Church" is not quite as universal as once thought.
The bottom line question is: "Is it permissable to read the Epistle and the Gospel in the vernacular during the Mass in the EF?"
Frankly, I don't know. Furthermore, since Father Echert knows more about Church teaching in the end of his little finger than I know in my whole body, if he says Rome said it was fine then I'm good with that.
I've said it before and I'll say it again, there is no difference between trads and progs. Both of them think THEY are right, neither of them have any respect for our clergy or religious unless they do exactly what THEY want. Not what Rome wants, not what Christ wants, what THEY want.
Post a Comment