Monday, December 10, 2012

Utterly wrong-headed …

… Attempt to resurrect pre-Vatican II Mass leaves church at crossroads | National Catholic Reporter.

The attempt to resurrect and popularize the 1962 pre-Vatican II Mass has serious ramifications. Will we be a church that looks narrowly inward -- where God is found only in piety and private devotion, or will we be a church as Vatican II defined it -- a Spirit-filled people on fire with an urgent sense of mission? We are at a crossroads. The extraordinary form is incapable of activating us as the priestly people of God -- the vision of Vatican II.
One wonders where the good padre's head has been lo these many years. Exactly where are these "Spirit-filled people on fire with an urgent sense of mission"? The fact is, since Vatican II the Church has been in steady decline. Fewer attend Mass and a good many ore have simple abandoned the faith. Vocations are noticeably down.

The liturgy that came out of the Middle Ages and Trent placed a different emphasis on the eucharistic liturgy. Focus was not on preparing all the baptized for mission but on the power of the ordained to transform bread and wine.
Yes, that would be the miracle, the reason many of us attend.

The idea of the "unbloody reenactment of the sacrifice of the cross" pushed "thanksgiving for creation and consecrating the world" to the margins of eucharistic theology.



He has to be kidding. The sacrifice on the cross is what underpins such thanksgiving. I haven't noticed that Vatican II has produced the likes of Francis of Assisi or Thomas Aquinas — in fact, those Middle Ages were the high-point of Catholic Christianity, which was actually doing quite well, bringing in all sorts of converts, right up until … Vatican II.

The faith isn't about adapting to the times, whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. It's about conforming to eternity.
I attend an Extraordinary Rite Mass every Sunday, and I am a better Catholic — and dare I say a more charitable one — for it.

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