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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 9, 2015 8:45:33 GMT
I was at a Corpus Christi procession - there are some orthodox younger clergy trying to revive them and we will support the effort. But the absence of a couple of decades in places has brought in forgetfulness. The Procession is a form of prayer and not a place for casual conversation about the weather or how the hurling or football championships are progressing. And the EF is not very much better.
I suggest, partly as devil's advocate, that we need to build from the ground up.
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Post by Ranger on Jun 9, 2015 10:26:02 GMT
I wonder whether or not processions in the streets would still be permitted, as they are in places like Malta and Spain? Such is the level of our trendy secularism here that I have my doubts but it would be good to attempt it.
Not to distract from the topic at hand, but the Catholic Voice has an article this week about how things are going back to the status quo in Maynooth re: orthodox seminarians having their lives made difficult for them. I wonder if there's any way to confirm this, but it's frustrating if it's the case. The Church in Ireland has shot itself in the foot with such nonsense, and it hasn't been shy about using both barrels.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 9, 2015 10:59:22 GMT
The story needs to be confirmed, and we need some background - for example there could be other reasons behind the move (unfortunately, it is possible to have an orthodox, but pastorally ineffective priest). But you're right - the hierarchy have been repeatedly blasting themselves in the foot with Howitzers since 1965, if not before.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 9, 2015 11:00:50 GMT
To return to the point, we are working from a liturgical ground zero as much as from a catechetical ground zero. The two go hand in hand. And neither have been going anywhere in the past several decades.
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Post by Askel McThurkill on Jun 11, 2015 8:33:08 GMT
A huge step away from Corpus Christi processions being immensely popular affairs. What went wrong?
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Post by Ranger on Jun 11, 2015 8:47:12 GMT
Perhaps because the Church withdrew from the streets. The annual Dublin Archdiocesan Corpus Christi procession is held within the grounds of Clonliffe itself.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 13, 2015 19:46:21 GMT
I know people who claim that various groups/media made a point of setting up children's events/festivals at the same time with the deliberate aim of competing with local Corpus Christi processions in the 70s and 80s - sounds quite plausible. The procession at St Kevin's goes round the block, which is in the street (though of course off the main routes). The point about religious processions being forced off the public sphere is part of a wider phenomenon. I remember there was a "gay rights" festival around the same time as the Eucharistic Congress in 2012, and while the advertising banners for the "gay" event were all over the city centre, the ones for the Eucharistic Congress were only visible near to the venues. It was quite clear which of these events was seen as something everyone should promote and celebrate, and which was seen as a somewhat disreputable private indulgence which could only be tolerated if it was kept private and inconspicuous.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 15, 2015 12:05:40 GMT
The case can be made, then for reviving the liturgical procession to assert religious freedom.
Hibernicus' point is plausible and well taken and I will answer it with another observation. A lot of parishes find it more convenient to recruit altar girls than altar boys. The reason for this is that the scheduled times for meetings, and even Sunday Mass times, tend to coincide with Gaelic games and other sporting events (Rugby also tends to take place on Sundays). Girls are more available. The connexion between serving Mass as a boy and vocations to the priesthood is once again relegated from the discussions, but you can see the overall pattern here if you combine many of the observations across the threads.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 15, 2015 20:24:41 GMT
Another reason for the decay of processions is simply the increased amount of road traffic (though if the same importance was attached to the processions by society at large as in the 1930s, the traffic would be stopped as for St Patrick's Day parades - BTW I saw an organiser of the Dublin St Patrick's Day parade interviewed last March and going out of their way to say that they didn't see the procession as having any religious significance at all. If that is so we might do better to drop St Patrick altogether and move it to 12 July, when at least the weather is better - or for the more republican-inclined to 9 August, the anniversary of internment in 1971, whose commemoration by republicans was to some extent deliberately aimed at overshadowing the old Lady Day processions on 15 August.) There has been a similar falling-off in Catholic public processions in Britain in recent years (for example, the Archdiocese of Glasgow has dropped the annual procession on the anniversary of the martyrdom of St John Ogilvie) though I believe some have been revived in recent years as a deliberate act of public witness.
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 16, 2015 8:49:07 GMT
To what extent does clerical apathy play a role in the decline of processions?
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 16, 2015 21:22:44 GMT
I imagine it plays quite a significant role - given the active hostility of many clergy to extra-liturgical devotions. BTW there will be a brief pilgrimage after 9 a.m. Mass on Saturday morning (the 20th June, anniversary of his execution) from St Kevin's to the burial ground just a few streets away in Camden Row where the martyr Bl. Dermot O'Hurley is buried: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dermot_O%27Hurley
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 17, 2015 9:27:55 GMT
The next question is to which extent this is expressive of a heavy workload and to which it reflects a campaign against devotions in the seminaries. Benediction has become very rare too.
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Post by hibernicus on Jun 17, 2015 20:49:47 GMT
Benediction was one of the devotions I had in mind as attracting clerical hostility. I know of at least one instance some years ago in a chapel serviced by a religious order where Benediction was abandoned because some of the younger clerics actively refused to celebrate it and complained about its being celebrated at all - the views of those laity who liked to attend Benediction were not of course given the least attention by these self-styled reformers. It isn't just a workload issue - there has been active hostility to such devotions, and I think it has been promoted by official liturgists. (BTW I recently picked up a 1999 book by Fr Tony Flannery and may write something about it whenever I get round to reading through it. Two points that catch my eye are that (i) he complains about an incident where some men were missing at sea during a mission and the people were praying for their safety; when they were found one of the missioners announced "Our prayers have been answered". Fr Flannery apparently considers this superstitious. (ii) He describes a visit to the moving statue of Ballinspittle, which he concludes quite rightly had nothing supernatural about it, and goes on to complain that the church promotes this sort of thing by encouraging alleged Marian apparitions such as Lourdes, Knock, Fatima, etc. Of course no-one is obliged to believe in such apparitions, but one gets the distinct impression that he thinks they should be actively suppressed.)
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Post by Young Ireland on Jun 17, 2015 21:01:27 GMT
Benediction was one of the devotions I had in mind as attracting clerical hostility. I know of at least one instance some years ago in a chapel serviced by a religious order where Benediction was abandoned because some of the younger clerics actively refused to celebrate it and complained about its being celebrated at all - the views of those laity who liked to attend Benediction were not of course given the least attention by these self-styled reformers. It isn't just a workload issue - there has been active hostility to such devotions, and I think it has been promoted by official liturgists. (BTW I recently picked up a 1999 book by Fr Tony Flannery and may write something about it whenever I get round to reading through it. Two points that catch my eye are that (i) he complains about an incident where some men were missing at sea during a mission and the people were praying for their safety; when they were found one of the missioners announced "Our prayers have been answered". Fr Flannery apparently considers this superstitious. (ii) He describes a visit to the moving statue of Ballinspittle, which he concludes quite rightly had nothing supernatural about it, and goes on to complain that the church promotes this sort of thing by encouraging alleged Marian apparitions such as Lourdes, Knock, Fatima, etc. Of course no-one is obliged to believe in such apparitions, but one gets the distinct impression that he thinks they should be actively suppressed.) Sadly, the likes of the House of Prayer and MDM make it very tempting to dismiss all Marian apparitions as hoaxes intended to dupe credulous believers (not that Ballinspittle was anywhere near as cynical as the former two.)
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Post by Alaisdir Ua Séaghdha on Jun 18, 2015 9:43:23 GMT
I remember hearing both Des Hanafin and Dick Burke, to take figures from each of the two major political parties, decry the illiberalism of liberals.
That's what I think of when I hear of Fr Flannery. He can be an intellectual snob as in the case of the man lost at see, but he can be an anti-intellectual when it suits him, as his personal, pathetic rebellion against Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI will show. Using the Ballinspittle case to lunge against the legitimate Marian shrines he really has a problem with is an example of this.
Benediction is intimately connected with processions, but can go ahead in its own right. I took rosary and benediction for granted in my home parish on Saturdays in October. It is a short and moving ceremony, but it runs counter to the type of ideology about liturgy which has been fashionable for years. And priests of a certain generation, including those trained in Rome, are indifferent to it. I thought I might approach the more orthodox clergy in my area to see if I could encourage Benediction on a more regular basis. I will raise this with the people who organise Eucharistic Adoration at some stage. In my diocese (Meath), the bishop is totally behind this and wants it in every parish. Most parishes I know have it, but the clergy are not necessarily so enthusiastic in their own right.
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