IS ROCHE VALID?
There has been much in the air about the necessity for certain categories of people to "admit" that the Novus Ordo is valid and licit. This had made me wonder whether the Maimed Rite is decent or appropriate. Only recently, on March 14, I raised in this blog the question of whether or not one can, now, in good conscience, use this Mass. I then regarded that question as open. Parrhesia, don'tyaknow.
Last Sunday, however, H E Arthur Cardinal Roche, solemnly pontificating on BBC Radio 4, announced that "The theology of the Church has changed".
I'm not convinced that Pope S Paul VI in his post-Conciliar pronouncements took this distinctly radical view ... on the contrary. Consider ... ... But Now is Now.
And if Roche, now, is right about the situation now, then I think the status of the proposition I examined a week or so ago has become clearer. The Novus Ordo will have been assigned a meaning which sets it beyond the possibility of orthodox use. Using it now would be rather like using a Semi-Arian Creed after Nicea. Or collecting signatures for the Henotikon.
So the proposition that the NO should, as a matter of principle, be avoided, has (I now tentatively suggest) graduated from probabilis status to probabilior.
No; I'm not pontificating. I'm wondering. Even under PF that, surely, must be permissible.
THE MAYAN MASS?
I have not commented on this, and I probably won't. I think one should not do so until one has carefully studied the text and any associated documents.
Additionally, there would be the question of whether 'Mayan' elements originally, or currently now, implied or imply meanings contrary to the Faith. Answering this would require a capacity to judge upon philological and cultural questions far beyond any competence I could ever claim.
If it were clear that any elements were expressive of departures from the Faith as defined, I suppose one would have to move on to questions like whether formal papal approval had constituted formal Apostasy, so that the Petrine See had now become vacant.
So I'm staying well to the windward side of this whole business. Bargepoles, and all that.
Here's a good Examination Question: How Mayan is the Ordinariate Rite?
Personally, I rather liked the 1950s/1960s Missa Luba, drums and all. Does the Congo at any point ever flow into the Amazon? Do the Congolese (benedicantur) still speak Latin?
The bit in the film where the progressive head master is shot in the quad is superb. Bang Bang!
Cathartic?? I couldn't possibly say.
I think it is wrong, not only not necessary but actually wrong, to give any expletive about an error of His Eminence Cdl. Roche, as long as there's one Catholic in the entire world who believes what the Church believes, and worships, or worships sometimes, using the Novus Ordo. "Oh, I have so many opportunities to go to the Old Mass, I just don't have time for anything else any-more" is obviously a different matter, but to dismiss such a Catholic from one's community as a matter of principle is wrong. Not only not necessary, and (admittedly) something really uncomfortable in terms of Mass opportunity and emotionally painful in terms of siblings-in-faith you wouldn't see any more - but wrong.
ReplyDeleteSome people do that in good conscience; it used to be the semi-official SSPX position (though not one really without exception adhered to by many SSPX "parishioners"). But it has been heard before that some people do, with good conscience, what is wrong.
In any case, the SSPX position, while wrong, was at least consistent: something that cannot be said, in my view, about the idea that who happens to be prefect of the CDW (or even Pope) and whatever right or wrong ideas they choose to advertise for makes any difference here.
It is obvious:
If it was all-right, not the top choice maybe but all-right, when Benedict was Pope and Canizares-Lovera prefect, then it is all-right, not the top choice maybe but all-right, now.
Cardinal Roche, with all due respect to his red hat, is not important enough for that. The Pope is not either.
While on the one hand the old Latin Mass is being suppressed, in the cause of there being only one legitimate form of the Latin rite, on the other hand a new Mayan form is under consideration - have I got this rite?
ReplyDeleteHow long till those who wish to hold firm to the unfolding tradition will have to form a rebellious clique not outside but within the One True Church?
I have two observations, one of which I will make now.
ReplyDeleteBoth Africa and Latin America are full of satanic worship. The people know this.
An African priest assigned to my parish recently gave a sermon about the importance of avoiding witchcraft, spells and the like. Father was trying very hard, and it was possible to make out what he was saying, which is not always the case. It was actually a very fine sermon, but it was being given in the wrong parish.
In St. Barnabas it was accepted as true, but had no application to the people at that mass. Had he given the same sermon in many of the parishes of The Bronx or upper Manhattan, it would have been apt indeed.
Satanic worship is alive and well in the Carribean, Mexico, and across large parts of the Americas.
In my twenties, I often heard bizarre stories of demonic possession, weird rituals, and potions. There have been grave robberies in the local cemeteries, and I have come across ritual sacrifices of animals, and offerings of fruit on deserted roads along cemeteries, or in nearby woods. There are stores called botanicas where the requisites are supplied.
A friend has recently taken up with a Dominican woman, who has been tearing certain pages out of his bibles. There are the same pages that he has been told to keep them open to, to negate the spells she is putting on him. I described to Puerto Rican friends the exact things that she does, and they not only confirmed my suspicions, they told me the name of the demons she serves. His Mexican barber warned him that if he does not get out of that relationship, that she will bring him to hell.
Strange to anyone from Europe, or the U.S., but very real to people from those countries, and existing wherever they go.
It is in that context, that a "mayan rite" and Pachymama (sic) must be viewed.
"The theology of the Church has changed"
ReplyDeleteYes, it has. Cardinal Ratzinger was the first one in over 500 years who was not a Thomist when PJII chose him as Prefect for The Holy Doctrine of the Faith
A small copy and paste form a Canadian Catholic blog
In his landmark 1998 encyclical, Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II titled his chapter on the great Doctor – called ‘Universal’ for the breadth and scope of his knowledge – The enduring originality of the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas, which gives at least some glimpse of an answer to why we still study his works in Latin, now eight centuries old.
The question is a legitimate one, for there have been countless theologians and philosophers in the Church’s two millennia, yet the 13th century Dominican friar Thomas d’Aquino is the one most recommended, most celebrated, the one who really consolidated the intellectual patrimony of the Church, bringing together faith and reason – like Odysseus bending the unbendable bow, to use Josef Pieper’s vivid analogy – into a harmony, by which the human intellect ascends to the height of truth.
Thomas’ whole life – from the age of five, when he was offered as an oblate to the nearby monastery of Monte Cassino – was wholly dedicated to truth, and the Truth. No compromising or dilly-dallying, no wandering off, just prayer, work, teaching and writing. In his later teenage years, he joined the recently-founded, and for its time radical, Dominicans, the Order of Preachers, whose main charism was study and preaching. Before his untimely death just shy of his fiftieth year – like most saints, he did a lot in a little – Thomas produced a prodigious corpus of theological and philosophical writings that are nearly miraculous in their breadth, clarity and scope, often keeping three scribes scribbling at once, which provide the basis of thought for all future students of theology and philosophy.
That is why the thought and methodology of Saint Thomas – what we generally mean by ‘Thomism’ – have been proclaimed and prescribed by the Church in the highest and most authoritative of terms. His Summa was placed on the altar at each session of the Council of Trent (1545 – 1563). Thomas is also put forward as the ‘master’ of studies in the documents on education and on the formation of priests in the Second Vatican Council, and is also prescribed as the primary teacher of theological studies in the 1983 Code of Canon Law. In both the Council and the Code, Thomas is the only person spoken of by name besides Christ and Our Lady.
And here is what the great Pope Saint John Paul II had to say:
Saint Thomas was impartial in his love of truth. He sought truth wherever it might be found and gave consummate demonstration of its universality. In him, the Church’s Magisterium has seen and recognized the passion for truth; and, precisely because it stays consistently within the horizon of universal, objective and transcendent truth, his thought scales “heights unthinkable to human intelligence”. (Fides et Ratio, #44)
High praise indeed, from one of Thomas’ disciples, for the great Pope’s writings are filled with references to the Angelic Doctor. As the Holy Father continues:
Rightly, then, he may be called an “apostle of the truth”. Looking unreservedly to truth, the realism of Thomas could recognize the objectivity of truth and produce not merely a philosophy of “what seems to be” but a philosophy of “what is” (ibid.)
+++++++++++++++++++++ end of quote++++++
But now no more. We have a new theology because we have a new church, thus, we require a new theology to explain away the clear rupture from that which came before Vatican Two, the N.O. (A worship hack), new sacraments, new Raccolta, new seminaries, new Calendar, new religious orders, women as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion, women as Altar Servers, New Ecumenism etc etc
I think I'm coming to a better understanding of S.E. Roche now. He merely self-identifies as a liturgical scholar.
ReplyDeleteIf I asked nicely, I wonder if the Holy Father would make me a professor of astrophysics somewhere. After all, I did do a few courses in basic physics in college many moons ago.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/podcast/the-war-over-the-latin-mass-escalates-as-the-vatican-slides-into-chaos/
ReplyDeleteRegarding my previous observation:
ReplyDeleteThe satanic worship typified by "Santaria" adopts the trappings of Catholicism. There are several saints whose images are used to represent various demons, and many of our sacramentals have often been put to uses that are very different from what we might think.
In light of this fact, any attempts at inculturation, or a "mayan rite" are dangerous and misguided. The cult of "santa muerte" is an example of demonic worship, originating in Mexico, adopting Catholic iconography, terminology and practices- all in service of the Devil.
As a practical matter, one should never bring home an apparently lost religious article found in some minority neighborhood. It is not lost, was probably left intentionally as part of a curse on someone, and has already been dedicated to Satan.
There is something very wrong when Catholic practices that were known in the time of SS Columbkille, Bede, Boniface, or Thomas of Canterbury are suppressed, while demonically tainted practices are being promoted.
Dear Father,
ReplyDeleteWe know that AB Bugnini intended to strip the mass of "all those (specifically CATHOLIC) elements that posed a stumbling block to our separated brethren". Perhaps - somehow - he had overlooked the thought that gave rise to those protestant services in the first place which was a desire to intentionally part with Catholicism, its truths, the expression of those truths in its rites - especially the Holy Mass. Why, on God's green earth, any Catholic liturgist then would restructure (destroy) the mass based on protestant services that, at the time they were fashioned, amounted to an intentional mockery of Catholicism in general and the Mass, in particular, is beyond jaw-dropping. Time has revealed that the NO mass has been an abject failure. By "accommodating" modern man and not chastising him where needed; especially as regards the first 3 commandments and commandments 6 and 9, it has simply failed him. What does a church do that won't sanctify the profane? It undergoes an identity crisis. There is no question that a church undergoing an identity crisis is actively "leading" the way into the labyrinth of the synod on Synodality. It has gone from "accompanying" man to "accommodating" man on his journey, essentially giving him little, if any, real and substantial spiritual formation along the way. Once one returns to the Truths of the faith, attends the TLM and has his or her eyes open, one quickly realizes there is no way one can, in good conscience, ever "participate" in that "mass" again. God bless you and your Holy Priesthood with all the grace and intimacy in Christ that your office rightly deserves!
When deciding to leave the Episcopal Church in 1998, whose theology changed when it changed its worship practices, I finally decided I would look for a Catholic parish that did the LatinMass. I knew nothing about it except that the Episcopalians who wanted to keep the 1928 prayer book did not want to change the theology of that church. Hence I hoped a Latin Mass site would be made up of people who believed the historic Christian faith.
ReplyDeleteThe schismatic abbot wanted me to understand he was schismatic. I settled on this abbot because he was recommended by Malachi Martin. Anyway my three children are still Catholics which is more than I can say for most NO Catholics I have met. Anyway the good abbot did reconcile with the church before he died in 2011, and the diocese promised us a Latin Mass, a promise that was approved by Rome which I doubt they will keep. But most importantly the abbot thought the new Mass was dangerous for the soul. Something I agree with. Cardinal Roche is illustrating my deepest fear, the new Mass will lead to a terrible change in the church’s theology and I don’t doubt for a moment this is what they wanted, maybe not all of them, but certainly many of them.