Category: Worship

Mass-goer has close call . . .

He gives it to us straight.

Aggressively sought today by a fellow worshiper two pews ahead of me for what was sure to be an aggressive handclasp, I held back.

It didn’t matter. My fellow worshiper was not to be denied. I knew I had to act and act fast, or all was lost. Come up with something or be crushed by this enthusiast. In a flash it came to me, and I said it, holding up the threatened limb: “Bad hand.”

Without a blink, wink, or nod, like a quarterback deciding to run, he reached across the aisle to make the flesh-pressing contact he desperately needed.

A friend once suggested that a person might claim leprosy and thus fend off such a handshaker. Never tried that, but now I have a better way. Keep it simple. Say “bad hand.”

See also What’s the Deal with the Sign of Peace? for more on same topic.

As illustrated:

This ancient tradition dates back to the 2nd century writings of Justin Martyr, which was then symbolized with a kiss. However, it fell into disuse until Vatican II when it was revived as an optional practice.

Key word here: optional. It should not become a free-for-all meet-and-greet, and no one should feel pressured to participate.

Word to the wise . . .

Sung Latin Mass Saturday March 16, St. Ita’s Chicago

From Veritas, Bonitas, Pulchritas — the True, the Good, the Beautiful:

Discover the Latin mass.  You’re invited to a SUNG LATIN MASS, 1962 Roman Missal. Antonio Lotti’s Mass for Three Voices. Saturday March 16, 2 PM

Site also has list of events, mostly sung masses as above, in or centering on churches throughout the archdiocese since October, 2017.

Quite an operation, bearing unmistakable organizational and doctrinal-fidelity mark of Opus Dei, which operates almost always under media radar, relying on focused communication.

Go here for Facebook and here for Twitter elaborations.

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Later: I have it on reliable information that my above speculation maybe was a good try, but no cigar. Info has it that a different group has organized and I am pleased about this. Opus D. is in a lot of places but not here, I am now convinced.

Yet later: The only group that organized is made up of three young individuals, with one of whom I chatted after the mass — which was marvelous, to be followed by a similar mass on June 15th at Marytown in Libertyville, 1:30 p.m.

Francis in Rome to Worship staffers, using code for “douse the traditional”

Using VaticanSpeak to rather crudely discredit opponents in the liturgy wars:

. . . we can not forget, first of all, that the liturgy is life that forms, not an idea to be learned. [say what?] It is useful in this regard to remember that reality is more important than the idea [again ?] (see Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii gaudium, 231-233).

And it is good therefore, in the liturgy as in other areas of ecclesial life, not to end up favouring sterile ideological polarizations, [oh no, give me a sterile polarization any
day] which often arise when, considering our own ideas valid for all contexts, we tend to adopt an attitude of perennial dialectic [“we”? when he means those other benighted souls] towards [him] who does not share them.

Remarkable cut and thrust when you get down to it.

More:

Thus, starting perhaps from the desire to react to some insecurities in the current context, we risk then falling back into a past that no longer exists [vs. the past that still exists?] or of escaping into a presumed future.

The starting point is instead to recognize the reality of the sacred liturgy, a living treasure that can not be reduced to tastes, recipes and currents, but which should be welcomed with docility and promoted with love, as irreplaceable nourishment for the organic growth of the People of God.

And stop it with your support of perfectly church-legal Tridentine mass.

Pretty turgid stuff, I’ll grant you, sounding as if translated by a Google program, but all in all a case of stern condescension and dismissal. Mercy, anyone?

The liturgy is not “the field of do-it-yourself”, but the epiphany of ecclesial communion. Therefore, “we”, and not “I”, resounds in prayers and gestures; the real community, not the ideal subject.

When we look back to nostalgic past tendencies or wish to impose them again, there is the risk of placing the part before the whole, the “I” before the People of God, the abstract before the concrete, ideology before communion and, fundamentally, the worldly before the spiritual.

It’s how they talk in some quarters, but even allowing for that, it’s more scolding from the man who never responds directly to various criticisms, such as that of “the four cardinals'” asking about Amoris Laetitia, now 879 days ago.

Francis’ least favorite cardinal takes it to the new paradigm in a very sensitive location

He’s Robert Sarah from Guinea, going after communion in the hand.

 The head of the Vatican department overseeing liturgy is summoning the Catholic faithful to return to receiving Holy Communion on the tongue and kneeling.

In the preface to a new book on the subject, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship, writes: “The most insidious diabolical attack consists in trying to extinguish faith in the Eucharist, by sowing errors and fostering an unsuitable way of receiving it. Truly the war between Michael and his Angels on one side, and Lucifer on the other, continues in the hearts of the faithful.”

Apocalyptic ballistics!

more more here: Cardinal Sarah: Widespread Communion in the hand is part of Satan’s attack on the Eucharist | News | LifeSite

The mass today: sales pitch not soul food

Why Whittaker Chambers chose communism:

There is a deep yearning in many people in modern society for something greater than their atomized and alienated selves. Whittaker Chambers, in explaining his embrace of communism to his children, reflected that it was not Marx’s dialectic or philosophy of history that made him join up with the communists. It was that communism offered something to people deeply searching for meaning.

Catholic mass is not competing:

The kitsch-like commercialization and consumerization of the Mass, and the loss of deep reverence and mystery, has led to a deep metaphysical and ontological poverty in Catholics and the broader culture at large. But in darkness the light shines brightest. In a dark room people cannot help but be drawn to the lone candle.

Catholics come seeking bread, are given a stone. Not how it’s supposed to be.

Let us not, let not Pope Francis et al. demonstrate contempt for the mass of old.

Etc. Rest of it at God and Mass at Yale – Crisis Magazine

Mass complainer finds relief, somehow . . .

Looonnnggg song and organ recital between readings Sunday, 8:30 mass, we spectators caught in a web of musicality for a good ten minutes! Participation? Or obedient listening, waiting for the spirit to move us. Blah.

Followed by 2nd reading, slow and moony by soft-voiced woman. Then 8:50 the gospel, at long last. Followed by sermon, at-first slightly bookish but logically progressing — with, lo and behold (they say there is no grace), a sense for the listener that this was the dawning of a time of peace and good will towards his fellow-worshipers.

Look, you never know what’s going to work or when or quite how. But the elderly male worshiper found something new in mass this day. Along with his incurable woolgathering, of course, but that’s another story . . .