Day: December 11, 2018

Ecumenism a third rail for liturgical movement, but remains part and parcel of its mystique. Church politics at its finest . . .

The intriguing Beauduin led anti-German underground, mystified his superior, got banished for his trouble . . .

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Ecumenism is the third rail of traditionalist criticism. The universal church prays for Christian unity, that all may be one, Father, etc. So what kind of Catholic would choose such a wary, un-Christian approach? A fool or a charlatan or an all-round mean person. That kind.

And yet traditionalists have been wary, boldly claiming to see a problem in the business of uniting somehow, some way, with the separated brethren, suspecting a watering-down of the true Church, its values and in the case of liturgical change, its everyday ways of praying and worshiping.

Be that as it may, as the liturgical movement flourished in the 1920s, it began to absorb this presumed given of contemporary Christian life that in the view of many seemed to undermine and contradict true Catholicism.

At the heart of this movement within a movement was a man whose penchant for activism led him during the…

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Mass priest facing people, communion in hand were not of ancient practice

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, 2/5/15, Wash DC:

In the early church, the altar and other sacred items were veiled out of respect for the sacred mystery in which they played a role. There was not, contrary to popular belief in our present time, a versus populum celebration of Mass or even a widespread practice of communion in the hand. The priest and the people faced together towards God in the liturgical East.

But those are good ideas, are they not? Not:

When we celebrate liturgy, it is God who must be at the center. The incarnate God. Christ. Nobody else. Not even the priest who acts in His place.

Bring Christ back to the mass:

It impoverishes the liturgy when we reduce the signs and gestures of adoration. Any liturgical renewal must therefore restore these and bring about a more Christocentric and transcendent character of the earthly liturgy which is more reminiscent of the angelic liturgy.

It’s there, for us to recognize and not play down.

Trump on Israel etc.

Four stars.

“A little over a year ago, President Donald Trump promised he would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and, six months later, he delivered on that promise by officially moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem,” Alex Titus writes in The Hill.

“Standing up for Israel at the United Nations, confronting Iran, and empowering the Jewish state to defend its interests have been successful outcomes of [the Trump Administration’s] policy agenda.”

Even Dems have to credit him for that.