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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Apr 8, 2008 21:16:14 GMT
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Post by molagga on Apr 8, 2008 21:54:08 GMT
I do not believe that it is. Here we have two collages. Both could have been made 10 years ago. Either could be attached to last Holy Father or to the present Holy Father.
What is interesting is the editorial choice to attach one set to the last Pontiff and another to the present Pontiff. It is facile and highly contentious. Moreover, it reflects the rather sinister racist critique of the last Pope that was (and remains) current within certain sections of the American right and even more distasteful segments of the German left.
Remember, the restoration began with Vicesimus Quintus Annus and Ecclesia Dei Adflicta -both published by the late Pontiff.
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Post by Michael O'Donovan on Apr 9, 2008 23:17:08 GMT
Here we have two collages. Both could have been made 10 years ago. Either could be attached to last Holy Father or to the present Holy Father...Moreover, it reflects the rather sinister racist critique of the last Pope that was (and remains) current within certain sections of the American right and even more distasteful segments of the German left. I agree with those comments. Some of the criticisms of JPII from Traditionalist viewpoints are repulsive. I think JPII was a man of faith and a philosopher but did not have a strong aesthetic sensibility, whereas the present Pope is particularly gifted that way. Maybe JPII saw God so clearly that he had no need for or understanding of art, music and beauty as reflections of God, but most of us are not like that and I think our new Pope understands what humans need. |
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Post by guillaume on May 27, 2008 23:39:10 GMT
"Remember, the restoration began with Vicesimus Quintus Annus and Ecclesia Dei Adflicta -both published by the late Pontif"  ? According to you, The Restoration begun with JP2 ? The Restoration begun by excommunicating 4 bishops et Msg Lebvre, and, punishing the whole fraternity of Saint Pie X, who, in such minority at that time, were struggling to save the proper liturgy ! While the same Pope was greeting everyone in Assise, I mean all religions ! Telling them more or less "we pray the same God", "it is fine, not a bother..." Even At that time, Cardinal Razt, today Ben XVI, was not agree with this non sense. I know the act of Msg Lebvre were "illicit". But necessary. Why and how do you think the Motu Proprio exist today ? It is, because the faithful of SPPX prayed for it and asked for it. Why do you think the greatest desire of the Vatican today is to see SSPX back to the Church. However the SPPX doesn't follow this desire so far. Because SPPX want to keep its freedom, above all regarding the acceptance of the wrongness of some documents of VII, in particular the Liberty of Religion. Yes, SPPX is suffering another crisis at the moment. We saw the born of Institute of Good Shepherd. This institute is lead by Fr Laguerie, who baptized me at the age of 25 (me 25 !!!!). He was 100 % SPPX in 1995. Then, something happened, I still don't know what. And he had been rejected by SPPX and being "rescued" by the Pope Ben XVI. The Church, slowly but surely, because of Ben XVI, is going back to his real mission : to save souls, via a proper liturgy. To love Jesus, Mary, simply and properly. The excommunication of the SPPX didn't do nothing good about it ! If a Restoration happens, which I hope of course, it will be, in good part, because of the Struggle and Faith of the SPPX. Certainly not of the modernist, that JP2 used to praise so much. |
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on May 28, 2008 12:03:34 GMT
This is a matter for the debate - but I think there are more complex reasons for the motu proprio, as for the 1984 indult and 1988 motu proprio than just the existence of the SSPX.
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Post by hibernicus on May 5, 2009 16:55:48 GMT
Just noting that the TABLET (which I read in a library) has been particularly obnoxious lately. A month or so back they published an article denouncing an English parish priest who says one TLM every Sunday in his London suburban parish on the grounds that this alienates some parishioners and divides the parish community. (I need hardly say that the Ordinary form is said at other Sunday Masses in the same parish, the church is in the London suburbs with other parishes within easy reach, and the TABLET has never allowed the fact that some people dislike its pet liturgical and doctrinal innnovations to keep it from promoting them). More details at Damian Thompson's HOLY SMOKE blog, though you will have to go back some distance (and DT has some remarks about the female editor of the Tablet which might be construed as misogynist).
More recently, a week or two back, it published an article full of dark insinuations about a clique of cardinals in the 1980s Vatican (including the present Pope) who "conspired" to keep the TLM alive, despite the fact that a 1980 survey of the Church showed that ordinary Catholics were not interested in it. This articles fails to explain (a) that the survey took the form of asking the diocesan bureaucracies to say how much demand there was for the TLM, without obliging them to make any further inquiries. Since the bureaucrats in question had been appointed in many instances precisely because of their zeal for innovation and had spent the previous 10 years doing all they could to stamp out celebration of the TLM, their response was hardly surprising. Fr. Paul Crane compared this survey to measuring the demand for synagogues in Central Europe in 1940 by circularising the Nazi gauleiters - a bit over the top as a comparison, but you see his point. (b) The Tablet also fails to explain why, even if the majority are not interested, it should be denied to the minority who are. They never let this stop them when they are commending their own preferred nostrums.
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Post by hibernicus on Feb 18, 2010 13:10:52 GMT
An interesting article on this subject by the American palaeocon John Zmirak. {Note; the fact that I post this here does not mean that I agree with Mr. Zmirak's opinions on any subject] insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7688&Itemid=48EXTRACTS "Why do you people care so much about externals?" my non-Trad friends sometimes ask me. And they deserve an answer. A few weeks back, my delightfully contentious colleague here, Mark Shea, waded into the conflict between those who describe themselves simply as "orthodox" Catholics, and those who consider themselves "traditionalists." (Just to save space in the comments box, I mean by this term people who favor the traditional liturgy -- not those who associate with organizations under ecclesiastical suspension.)This line has begun to blur more and more in the wake of Pope Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum, which we Trads greeted as a kind of Emancipation Proclamation -- even as many of our bishops answered it with liturgical Jim Crow. Still, the division is palpable. It was lying right there on the table, for any who cared to palpate it, last week when I went to dinner with a Trad-minded colleague and a visiting author who'd come to speak at our college on G. K. Chesterton. (The presentation was riveting, and I highly recommend Dale Ahlquist's talks and books.) Like the good Mr. Shea, our speaker is a convert, and he shared with Mark a puzzlement at the apparent fixation traditionalists have on restoring former elements of the liturgy and other Catholic practices that are not essential, and resisting innovations that are not inherently evil. Having come from churches that didn't have the Eucharist, and remaining through God's grace flush with gratitude for the sacraments, many converts really don't understand what the rest of us are nattering on about. We who grew up privileged may seem like sulky, spoiled kids. We owe these good people an explanation. ... Some confrontation between the Church and late Western modernity was inevitable, and if it hadn't happened at the Council, it would have occurred some other way. The Eastern churches didn't vandalize their liturgy; have they been spared the ravages of secularization? Not according to my Greek Orthodox friends, who show up for the last ten minutes of liturgy each week to pick up blessed bread and join their friends for baklava and gossip. The liturgy is miraculous, but it doesn't work like magic: Rev. Teilhard de Chardin had said the Tridentine Mass for decades even as he invented Catholic Scientology; conversely, his sometime housemate at New York’s St. Ignatius Loyola, the holy Rev. John Hardon, obediently switched missals with every tinkering that came to him from the bishops. ... So what is the practical motivation that drives us Trads to schlep to distant or dangerous parishes, to irritate our spouses and incommode our pastors, to detach from local churches our grandparents scrimped to build? Why insist on external things, like kneeling for communion on the tongue, male altar servers, and the priest facing the altar? None of these, I'll admit for the 5,000th time, is essential for sacramental validity or credal orthodoxy; isn't being a stickler on such issues a wee bit pharisaical, even prissy? (I have encountered the odd Trad activist with an unnatural attachment to silk and lace -- pastors wearily call them "daughters of Trent" -- but they aren't the norm. Weary fathers of six or seven pack most Latin Mass pews.) Here's what we Trads have realized, that the merely orthodox haven’t: Inessential things have power, which is why we bother with them in the first place. In every revolution, the first thing you change is the flag. Once that has been replaced, in the public mind all bets are off -- which is why the Commies and Nazis filled every available space with their Satanic banners. Imagine, for a moment, that a newly elected president replaced the Stars and Stripes with the Confederate battle flag. Or that he replaced our 50 stars with the flag of Mexico. Let's say he got away with doing this, and wasn't carried off by the Secret Service to an "undisclosed location." What would that signify for his administration? If people accepted the change, what else would they be likely to accept? |
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Post by melancholicus on Feb 23, 2010 0:36:01 GMT
I think there is something to be said for Mr. Zmirak's analysis.
Externals do matter because we are creatures of both body and soul, and the manner in which we dispose our bodies during worship as well as during private prayer can have an important effect on our spiritual interior.
I think Aristotle's dictum of virtus stat in medias res applies here; we must avoid the opposing extremes of neglecting the external in favour of the internal, and vice versa.
Hence the need in religion for ritual. In terms of ritual, the new rite of Mass is more relaxed and less 'rubrical' than its predecessor. Speaking for myself, one of the things that never fails to bug me about the new rite is the casual and informal manner in which it is generally celebrated. It lacks the rubrical skeleton (so to speak) to prevent the celebrant from becoming overly sloppy or slap-dash. The language in which it is celebrated is less doctrinally precise than the language of the old rite, and the vernacular translation (at least in its English version) altogether lacks the solemn beauty of, say, the language of the Book of Common Prayer. The whole point behind the new rite, as well as behind the simultaneous reforms of the Anglican liturgy, was to create a liturgical form that would be 'accessible' to 'ordinary people'. Malcolm McLaren, former manager of the Sex Pistols, was not a particularly devout man, but he used to attend choral evensong on Sunday evenings, as it had an unearthly and beautiful quality which separated it from the ordinariness of everyday life. But when in church they started to speak the language of the street, he decided he may as well stay on the street. The combination of loose ritual and everyday language creates an ethos of casualness in which it becomes more difficult to discern a sense of the sacred, or the nearness of heaven. If the rite is not particularly elevated in its composition, or if the celebrant behaves in a sloppy manner, those in attendance at the liturgy will come to regard the religion it represents as not particularly important. This will have a profound effect on their faith and on their lives.
Not only must we have ritual, but we must have the right kind of ritual as well. The new rite is not devoid of ritual, but I must question some of the innovations that have now become 'ritualized' within it as tending to emphasize the human as against the divine. Here in the United States I have been confronted with one particularly obnoxious novelty I have not had to contend with when I lived in Ireland, namely hand-holding during the recitation of the Paternoster. This practice seems to have become universal, at least in the part of Washington state in which I live. Then there is the music; every Mass on Sundays and days of obligation has musical accompaniment (which is praiseworthy) but the musical pieces regularly selected for performance at each Mass are usually unsuitable for the liturgy owing to bland, childish or even heretical lyrics, or to a musical tonality and rhythm redolent more of this world than the next. This music was written specifically for the new rite, and I find it infuriating because it is so distracting when one is attempting to pray after having just received holy communion.
I shall not go on about the manner in which holy communion is received, and the difference between the discipline of the ancient rite and the new. Suffice it to say that here again we have an external discipline which has an effect on the interior disposition. It is easier to regard the Blessed Sacrament as merely a piece of bread if one receives in the hand standing than if one receives on the tongue while kneeling.
The difference between the two rites is twofold: first we have the difference between text and rubrics (comparing the two rites side by side on paper). Secondly, there is a difference of ethos, about which I have said some little hardly sufficient to the subject. Then there are also elements of the new rite which have become standard practice but are mandated by no liturgical law, such as the versus populum position of the celebrant. I hope to say more about this in further posts.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Feb 23, 2010 12:21:47 GMT
Hello Melancholicus,
I like your blog and I'll look forward to your future reflections.
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Post by guillaume on Feb 23, 2010 16:01:19 GMT
Hello Melancholicus, I like your blog and I'll look forward to your future reflections. Which blog ? |
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Post by melancholicus on Feb 24, 2010 6:23:16 GMT
Infelix Ego, which has now been re-named Lux Fulgebit, although I'm not sure where I'm going with it right at the minute. It takes up an unconscionable amount of time to maintain; I have no idea how someone like Fr. John Zuhlsdorf keeps his blog going, with up to a dozen fresh posts every single day. You can find it here: infelixego.blogspot.comalthough it wouldn't be everybody's favourite read; as a blogger I am very curmudgeonly and hard (perhaps too hard) on our fathers in God, for which I may have to answer at the Judgement. Posting is also intermittent at the present time. Looking over it back to October 2007 I can say I have written some fine stuff, but I've written an awful lot of nonsense too! Hello Alaisdir, I must drop you a line one of these days as it's been a while since we've been in touch. |
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Post by melancholicus on Feb 24, 2010 6:36:16 GMT
I hope to start tomorrow (time permitting) on a series of posts for this thread comparing the old and new liturgies of the Mass in as impartial a manner as I can, avoiding polemics and undue harshness; this is not intended to be another bitter Traditionalist rant.
The comparison shall be twofold:
1) A comparison of the liturgical text of the two rites side by side, isolated from any context of actual celebration (in other words, the texts considered as texts, compared in terms of verbal content);
2) A consideration of the liturgical ars celebrandi of the two rites, i.e. the approach commonly taken to each by their celebrants, and the manner of participation of both clergy and laity that one might expect to see at an average celebration of each.
I'm afraid I have not seen the video linked to above; at the time of this writing, the link is dead. In this comparison I shall refrain from comparing the liturgical style of Benedict XVI with that of his predecessor. Liturgical text and the style of celebration normally associated with each is what I intend to deal with.
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Post by melancholicus on Feb 24, 2010 6:40:49 GMT
One more remark: we must remember that there are two texts behind the new rite of Mass—the current vernacular translation, and the Latin editio typica which is the basis for all the vernacular translations of the Novus Ordo. For the purpose of this comparison I will restrict myself to the current (1973) vernacular version, as this is the version most commonly encountered at celebrations of the new liturgy in English-speaking countries, although it may be necessary to delve back into the Latin original from time to time.
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Post by guillaume on Feb 24, 2010 8:18:59 GMT
Infelix Ego, which has now been re-named Lux Fulgebit, although I'm not sure where I'm going with it right at the minute. It takes up an unconscionable amount of time to maintain; I have no idea how someone like Fr. John Zuhlsdorf keeps his blog going, with up to a dozen fresh posts every single day. You can find it here: infelixego.blogspot.comalthough it wouldn't be everybody's favourite read; as a blogger I am very curmudgeonly and hard (perhaps too hard) on our fathers in God, for which I may have to answer at the Judgement. Posting is also intermittent at the present time. Looking over it back to October 2007 I can say I have written some fine stuff, but I've written an awful lot of nonsense too! Hello Alaisdir, I must drop you a line one of these days as it's been a while since we've been in touch. Interesting blog indeed. Well, welcome aboard ! We are a very little Forum who suffered a lot. Tks God, Hibernicus took over. Many improvement though should be done in order to attract more members, in particular maybe the re-organisation of the threads. |
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Post by guillaume on Feb 24, 2010 8:21:35 GMT
In Order to do so may you start a NEW thread (not continuing on this one), some threads had became far too long.  |
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? According to you, The Restoration begun with JP2 ? The Restoration begun by excommunicating 4 bishops et Msg Lebvre, and, punishing the whole fraternity of Saint Pie X, who, in such minority at that time, were struggling to save the proper liturgy ! While the same Pope was greeting everyone in Assise, I mean all religions ! Telling them more or less "we pray the same God", "it is fine, not a bother..." Even At that time, Cardinal Razt, today Ben XVI, was not agree with this non sense. I know the act of Msg Lebvre were "illicit". But necessary. Why and how do you think the Motu Proprio exist today ? It is, because the faithful of SPPX prayed for it and asked for it. Why do you think the greatest desire of the Vatican today is to see SSPX back to the Church. However the SPPX doesn't follow this desire so far. Because SPPX want to keep its freedom, above all regarding the acceptance of the wrongness of some documents of VII, in particular the Liberty of Religion. Yes, SPPX is suffering another crisis at the moment. We saw the born of Institute of Good Shepherd. This institute is lead by Fr Laguerie, who baptized me at the age of 25 (me 25 !!!!). He was 100 % SPPX in 1995. Then, something happened, I still don't know what. And he had been rejected by SPPX and being "rescued" by the Pope Ben XVI. 
