Why do so few Catholics believe in the real presence? A call to action.

Not an uncertain trumpet from Fr. Z.

Dominus Vobiscum: Notes from a massgoer's underground

Bishop Robert Barron explained, and Fr. Z. followed up with extended commentary, agreeing with a need for action, but issuing his own call.

[The] Bishop doesn’t seem to mean action to change the way we celebrate the Eucharist, the way we see the Eucharist, the way we sing to and about the Eucharist, the way we literally handle the Eucharist.  That is: liturgical worship, how we celebrate Holy Mass. [Emphasis added]

He wants a “call to action”? Here’s a call to action!

  • STOP COMMUNION IN THE HAND!
  • Foster kneeling for Communion put in Communion rails.
  • Get serious about music.
  • Phase out unnecessary lay ministers of Communion.
  • Clear the sanctuary of everything that distracts.
  • Celebrate ad orientem.
  • And the scariest of all … implement generously Summorum Pontificum!

Every one of those will require, yes, catechesis.  Lots of sound catechesis and patience.

Patience and more patience.

But…

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ASK FATHER: @BishopBarron on the Pew Research and lack of belief in the Eucharist

Author is very gentle in his criticism — and straightforward and almost biting about the Bishop’s podcast , agreeing with main points, then roaring into his declamation of what’s actually the obvious if apparently invisible in plain sight.

Yes, catechesis is important, but more important still is our liturgical worship, for decades hardly “sacred” liturgical worship. [here as throughout, emphasis added]

Lack of belief in the Eucharist is mostly a massive failure in the way we celebrate the Eucharist!  I mean, of course, Holy Mass.

Everything flows from worship and then back to worship.

More:

Not a word from Bp. Barron in the video about liturgy, about decades of the prevailing liturgical style (or the rite itself – the Novus Ordo).  This is so typical of bishops.

Not a word – in that video – about liturgy as either a cause of the problems we face or as a solution. I listened to it twice and didn’t hear it.  He talks about the danger of placing social justice, etc., before doctrine.  But, he doesn’t talk about liturgy.

The bishop speaks with fervor of “the Eucharist.”

However . . .  “Eucharist” is not just the Blessed Sacrament. It is also the way the Eucharist is celebrated.

There’s the Eucharist that is the Host and Precious Blood and there’s the Eucharist that is the very way by which we have the Host and Precious Blood, the ultimate “thanksgiving” which is Holy Mass.

Our sacred liturgical worship is our most important action in the fulfillment of Religion, that orders all other activities and gives them meaning.

The way that Holy Mass is celebrated IS DOCTRINE… it IS CATECHESIS.

More more more here, at: Fr. Z’s Blog.

Masterful Me … the objectionable “I” as used by people afraid of “me”

Do not be afraid of “me,” says this scrupulously correct speaker of and writer in the English language.

I have capriciously decided not to enable two additional categories of comment:
1. Comments including the grammatical error “We must respect he who is the King of Tonga”.

We do not, in English, say “we must respect he [nominative]”; we say “We must respect him [accusative]”.

A curious idea seems to be growing up that whenever the relative pronoun “who” is used, it has to be preceded by a nominative. It most certainly doesn’t.

This is the same sort of error as using the nominative for the second of two linked names: “He spoke to Theodore and I”. We do not in English say “He spoke to I”; we say “He spoke to me”. So: “He spoke to Theodore and me”.

Take that, you failing speaker and writer in English.

More more more at Fr Hunwicke’s Mutual Enrichment

Drive-By Media Hell-Bent on Talking Us Into a Recession

Yes, yes, and double-yes:

RUSH: The Drive-Bys, they’re incorrigible. Now they are literally trying to once again talk the people of this country into a recession. Now they’re doing it with the inverted yield curve. And the whole problem here is the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve is anti-Trump, is making a mess of the interest rate circumstance.

So many people in that town want rid of Trump that they’re going to stop at nothing. It doesn’t matter what damage they do to the economy or the country. And it’s not unprecedented, folks. This has been done before. What was it, back in 2006, the midterms, the Drive-Bys were doing everything they could to talk down the economy.

We had the so-called financial crisis of 2008. And, of course, they were doing everything they could in the second Bush term to talk down the economy while sabotaging the Iraq war and war on terror efforts.

When the elite meet to greet, it’s a problem.

via The Rush Limbaugh Show

From Catholic journalism’s Washington Post/NY Times, a papal exhortation . . .

It’s John Allen’s Crux, quoting the world’s holiest father offering “political” advice — can you imagine that? — but with a contradictory twist:

A political solution to this threat, he said, would be to “eliminate one’s own connivance and corruption,” and assume concrete responsibility for the people who live in the area.

Whoa. “One’s own connivance” etc.? Personal responsibility, apparently. Get political, apparently. “Concrete,” says the writer. Francis means you and you and you. Get off your couch and vote and vote and who knows what else?

He had priests in the barrio in Argentina when he was their Jesuit provincial, whose canonical faculties (official church approval) he revoked at an inopportune moment — just before they were arrested by that country’s freedom-crushing regime.

This getting off the couch did not work well for them.

Why do so few US Catholics believe in the Real Presence? Look at the liturgy

Casual does, belief follows, as sure as night the day.

A generation of pastors stripped the altars and passed out the Eucharist like a leaflet.

The latest Pew study shockingly states that only 31 per cent of Catholics in the United States believe that “during Catholic Mass, the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”

Out of the 69 per cent of Catholics surveyed who believe that the bread and wine are mere “symbols,” only 22 per cent of those understand that they are dissenting from the Church’s actual teaching. The rest are accidental Zwinglians.

More here: Catholic Herald

Guns And The New Class: Why The Gun Control Issue Is So Polarized

The big deciders and the masses.

MATTHEW CONTINETTI: Guns And The New Class: Why The Gun Control Issue Is So Polarized:

What was once an intra-new-class fight over the size and scope of government has become a struggle to define the American nation between the new class on one hand and Donald Trump, his national populists, and a few new-class fellow travelers on the other.

The new class has incredible resources at its disposal, from the expansive and appealing ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” to communications, tech, state and local governments, bureaucracies, and the courts.

Trump has a Twitter account, half of a cable network, Mitch McConnell, the Supreme Court, and 63 million voters.

One reason the battle is so pitched is  . . .

Read the rest of it here: Instapundit » Blog Archive » 

The Vatican Sends JPII Down the Memory Hole

Pope Francis speaks with forked tongue when he praises and aligns himself with the man whom he raised to sainthood.

If there was ever any doubt that Pope Francis’s Vatican regime is determined to subvert the doctrines of Pope John Paul II, the shameless conduct of the Pontifical John Paul II Institute’s new administration ought to stand as indisputable proof.

Followers of Saint John Paul II were apprehensive after the Institute fell into the hands of Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who was appointed Grand Chancellor by Pope Francis.  Paglia is notorious for his elastic interpretations of moral theology along with the homoerotic art that sullies the walls of his former cathedral.

In 2017, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio changing the status of the Institute into a theological institute responsible for studying marriage and family from both a theological and scientific perspective. At the time, Paglia proclaimed that the exhortation Amoris Laetitia would become the “magna carta” for this re-conceived institution.

He gets a go-ahead from the man who would remake the church on the image of his controverted pronouncements.

Source: Crisis Magazine