Fr Z Comments On Liturgical Directive In Diocese of Covington

D. Covington: Bp. Foys issues liturgical decrees – No joy for “hand holders”

Posted on 30 November 2011 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

There can be no renewal of any aspect of our Catholic lives and identity without first a revitalization of our liturgical worship.

A reader sent me a link to a letter of 18 November 2011 and accompanying decrees concerning the sacred liturgy issued by His Excellency Most Rev. Roger J. Foys, Bishop of Covington.  You can find it HERE.

In the letter and in the decrees, Bp. Foys stresses in particular Sacrosanctum Concilium 22 which states that no on even if he be a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.

Among the decrees we find this interesting point:

1. The text of the Roman Missal be used exactly as it is written. As stated in the citation from the Second Vatican Council none of us has the authority to change the text for any reason.

[...]

4. The gestures for the priests, deacons, religious and lay faithful be strictly carried out in accord with the rubrics of the Roman Missal, for “the gestures and bodily posture of both the Priest, the Deacon, and the ministers, and also of the people, must be conducive to making the entire celebration resplendent with beauty and noble simplicity, to making clear the true and full meaning of its different parts, and to fostering the participation of all.

Can you say “Say The Black – Do The Red”?

That last point included this:

b. Special note should be made concerning the proper posture during the Eucharistic Prayer. In the United States the lay faithful are instructed to kneel from the end of the Sanctus through the end of the Great Amen (see GIRM 43). Deacons kneel from the epiclesis through the showing of the chalice. Priests remain standing. In addition, “the faithful kneel after the Agnus Dei unless the diocesan Bishop determines otherwise” (GIRM 43).

i. Please note: Within the Diocese of Covington the Bishop has not determined otherwise so as to remain in accord with the norms set by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

c. Special note should also be made concerning the gesture for the Our Father. Only the priest is given the instruction to “extend” his hands. Neither the deacon nor the lay faithful are instructed to do this. No gesture is prescribed for the lay faithful in the Roman Missal; nor the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, therefore the extending or holding of hands by the faithful should not be performed.

Interesting, no?  People are not to raise the arms, extend their hands or hold hands during the Our Father.  And if that is the case, they should never be directed or encouraged to do so.  In fact, if they are doing so, they must be instructed and encouraged about the proper posture and improper posture.

Am I reading that right?

I also like this:

5. That choirs and other musicians use choir lofts in churches that are structured as such. While this is not mandated, we strongly recommend it.

[...]

b. The sanctuary is reserved for the Priest Celebrant, concelebrants, the Deacon and the other ministers who serve at the Altar. (see GIRM 294)

And this is very good:

6. Sacred Silence be observed in our churches prior to the celebration of the Sacred Liturgy to allow the clergy and the faithful to properly prepare and dispose themselves for the Sacred Mysteries to which they are about to participate. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal reminds us: “Sacred silence also, as part of the celebration, is to be observed at the designated times…. Even before the celebration itself, it is commendable that silence is observed in the church, in the sacristy, in the vesting room, and in adjacent areas, so that all may dispose themselves to carry out the sacred action in a devout and fitting manner.” (GIRM 45) Silence following the Mass is also encouraged for those who might want to remain in the church to pray.

WDTPRS kudos to the Bishop of Covington, to whom I shall send a New Translation SUPER Special ELITE Edition “Say The Black – Do The Red” coffee mug.

There can be no renewal of any aspect of our Catholic lives and identity without first a revitalization of our liturgical worship.

Cardinal Burke Talks About Rome, the Mass, Canon Law and U.S. Culture

Midwestern cleric speaks candidly as he celebrates his first anniversary of elevation to the College of Cardinals.

by DAVID KERR (EWTN NEWS/CNA)11/28/2011

– Cardinal Burke Facebook

ROME (EWTN News/CNA) — Cardinal Raymond Burke, one of the Catholic Church’s top U.S.-born clerics, is marking the first anniversary of his November 2010 elevation to the College of Cardinals.

“Well, it’s been a very fast-moving year,” Cardinal Burke told EWTN News in his Roman apartment just yards from the Vatican, where he serves as head of the Church’s highest court.

“But it’s been a very good year, I’d have to say, and I’ve certainly come to understand more fully what it is to give this service to the Holy Father and hope that I am doing it better.”

The College of Cardinals consists of the men considered the Pope’s closest aides, giving counsel and assistance to the Holy Father when needed. It currently has under 200 members, with only 115, those under age 80, eligible to elect a future Pope.

Cardinal Burke, 63, has had a remarkable journey from America’s rural Midwest, where he grew up as the youngest of six children, to his current post as prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.

“I never dreamed of it, to be honest with you,” he said, reflecting on God’s guidance of his path to the Vatican.

“I grew up, thanks be to God, in a very good Catholic home,” he recalled. “We were small dairy farmers in Wisconsin, which was a very common situation in that part of the world. But I see how God has been at work all along, and I marvel at it.”

While much has changed since those days, his life as a cardinal is “not unrelated to what my parents were trying to teach me from the time I was little.”

“And the truth of the matter is that the older I get, the more I appreciate those first lessons that were taught to me, that early formation in the faith.”

After 14 years leading dioceses in Wisconsin and Missouri, Cardinal Burke was chosen in 2008 to head the so-called the Supreme Court of the Catholic Church.

“Whenever I’ve done whatever’s been asked of me,” he said, “I’ve always found a happiness in my work as a priest, and I continue to find that today.”

A patriot with an obvious love for the United States, the Rome-based cardinal remains invested in the struggle for his country’s culture.

“It is a war,” he stated, describing the battle lines between “a culture of secularization, which is quite strong in our nation,” and “the Christian culture, which has marked the life of the United States strongly during the first 200 years of its history.”

He says it is “critical at this time that Christians stand up for the natural moral law,” especially in defense of life and the family.

“If Christians do not stand strong, give a strong witness and insist on what is right and good for us both as individuals and society,” he warned, “this secularization will in fact predominate, and it will destroy us.”

Cardinal Burke favors realism over pessimism and believes “things are getting better” in America, particularly among the young.

“I think that sometime the young people understand much better the bankruptcy of a totally secularized culture because they’ve grown up with it,” he observed.

Many youth “have seen their families broken” and “have been exposed to all the evils of pornography,” leading them to conclude that the secularization project “is going nowhere and that it will destroy them” if left unchecked.

But the cardinal also thinks persecution may be looming for the U.S. Church.

“Yes, I think we’re well on the way to it,” he said, pointing to areas of social outreach , such as adoption and foster care, where the Church has had to withdraw rather than compromise its principles.
This trend could reach a point where the Church, “even by announcing her own teaching,” is accused of “engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality.”

Asked if he could envision U.S. Catholics ever being arrested for preaching their faith, he replied: “I can see it happening, yes.”

The Vatican’s top judge takes a dim view of self-professed Catholic politicians who oppose the Church on key moral issues.

Among them is Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who is currently seeking to force most of the country’s employers, including Catholic institutions, to cover contraception and sterilization in employee health plans.

“To the degree to which (Sebelius) proclaims herself to be a practicing Catholic, she is very wrong,” said Cardinal Burke. He sees it as “simply incomprehensible” for a Catholic to “support the kind of measures that she is supporting.”

The cardinal says his native country’s 2012 election will be “very significant.”

Catholics, he said, “have a serious duty to vote and to try and find the best candidate to elect.” And some “good and solid, right-thinking individuals” may even be called to run for public office themselves.

Above all, the cardinal hopes for a New Evangelization” of the United States, starting with faithful families, strong religious education, and reverent liturgical worship.

The family, he noted, is where a child “first learns the truths of the faith: first prayers, first practices his or her life in Christ.” But the Mass itself is the “source of our solid teaching, of our solid witness” and also “the most beautiful and fullest expression we give to that teaching.”

The tribunal prefect also exercises care for the Church’s liturgy as a member of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship.

He is grateful to Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI for giving the Church “a font of solid direction” regarding worship, based on the Second Vatican Council’s vision of a “God-centered liturgy and not a man-centered liturgy.”

That intention was not always realized, he said, since the Council’s call for liturgical reform coincided with a “cultural revolution.”

Many congregations lost their “fundamental sense that the liturgy is Jesus Christ himself acting, God himself acting in our midst to sanctify us.”

Cardinal Burke said greater access to the traditional Latin Mass, now known as the “extraordinary form” of the Roman rite, has helped to correct the problem.

“The celebration of the Mass in the extraordinary form is now less and less contested,” he noted, “and people are seeing the great beauty of the rite as it was celebrated practically since the time of Pope Gregory the Great” in the sixth century.

Many Catholics now see that the Church’s “ordinary form” of Mass, celebrated in modern languages, “could be enriched by elements of that long tradition.”

In time, Cardinal Burke expects the Western Church’s ancient and modern forms of Mass to be combined in one normative rite, a move he suggests the Pope also favors.

“It seems, to me, that what he has in mind is that this mutual enrichment would seem to naturally produce a new form of the Roman rite — the ‘reform of the reform,’ if we may — all of which I would welcome and look forward to its advent.”

Cardinal Burke’s main role, however, is to uphold the Church’s legal system. He describes canon law as “the fundamental discipline which makes possible our life in the Church,” since it is “not a society of angels” but a communion of men and women who require norms for living.

He acknowledges that canon law fell out of fashion beginning in the late 1960s, during a period where many Catholics bristled at the notion of such rules.

“The whole euphoria that set in within society, and in the Church itself, was that this was the age of freedom, the age of love, and so, in those years, nobody talked anymore about ‘sin.’ This was considered to be negative talk.”

But since “human nature didn’t actually change,” the “lack of attention to discipline and to law” produced a great deal of “bad fruit.”

One consequence, the cardinal believes, was the mishandling of clerical abuse accusations.

“Absolutely, there’s no question in my mind about that,” said Cardinal Burke. He pointed out that both the 1917 and 1983 Codes of Canon Law put “a discipline in place” to confront an “evil” the Church had faced before.

“All of that was in place,” the Vatican judge reflected, “but, first of all, it wasn’t known in the sense that people were not studying the law, were not paying attention to it, and so, if it wasn’t known or studied, then it wasn’t being applied.”

Historically, he believes, it was an “unfortunate coincidence” that a cultural upheaval accompanied

Blessed Pope John XXIII’s call for a reform of canon law.

“This added to the notion that we didn’t really have a law anymore; then the attitude developed that we don’t need it.”

Blessed John Paul II resolved the situation after his election in 1978, implementing a new code of law by 1983. Cardinal Burke remains “deeply grateful” for the late Pope’s action.

Having been raised to the rank of cardinal, the head of the Apostolic Signatura could someday cast his vote for a future Pope.

But could divine Providence ever call the son of a Midwestern farming family to the papacy himself?

“Oh, I don’t believe so,” Cardinal Burke laughed.

“I hope that the present Holy Father lives a long time. He’s a tremendous gift to the Church, and that’s my great prayer: that the Lord gives him many more years.”

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/cardinal-burke-talks-about-rome-the-mass-canon-law-and-u.s.-culture#ixzz1f7TM3Vav

The Next Step for Reformers

by Jeffrey A. Tucker

We’ve sailed through the most substantial changed in the Catholic Mass in 40 years, and finally corrected a very flawed problem at the core of the experience of Mass goers, one that destabilized several generations of the faithful and created a massive disconnect between our practice and our tradition. At last we have a translation that is faithful to the Latin original, theologically serious, and aesthetically liturgical.

To those who have despaired that nothing will ever improve, those who have believed decline is somehow written into the fabric of our times, take notice: a dramatic improvement has in fact happened, seemingly against all odds. Authentic progress is possible with work and prayer!

With the basic structure in place - what can you do so long as the language of the liturgy is not right? - the question arises concerning the next step. What is stage two of the reform? The music issue is most certainly next on the list. Aside from the text, this is the issue that deals most substantially with the core of what we experience at liturgy. The core question is whether the music at liturgy is there to provide popular entertainment and inspiration or whether it is there to honor God by giving a beautiful and solemn voice to the liturgical texts themselves.

The Vatican seems to be alert to this issue. Early in the fall of 2011, Pope Benedict issued a motu proprio that reorganized the Congregation for Divine Worship. To what end, no one knew for sure. Now it has been reported that the Congregation will establish a new "Liturgical Art and Sacred Music Commission” that will begin to take up the music question. Adam Bartlett has linked the two events and speculated that this was the reason for the shakeup, to finally do something about the problem that everyone knows exists but few have the willingness to confront in any kind of legislative way.

We can hope for much more than the usual generalized declarations that Gregorian chant should have first place at Mass, that not all music is appropriate at Mass, and that the style of music should be an extension and development of the chant genre. Those points are excellent ones, to be sure, but they have been made again and again for decades, even centuries, but nothing really changes. They are on the verge of becoming platitudes, slogans without real operative meaning. There are several reasons for this: they are too vague and subject to interpretation, people do not really know what it means to give chant pride of place, and it is impossible to develop and extend something you do not know anything about in the first place.

What the commission really needs to take on is the issue of the Mass texts themselves. Can we freely dispense with them and replace them with texts of our own composition and choosing? Or must we defer to the liturgy as we have received it and ennoble that liturgy with music appropriate to the task? This is the real question. To put the matter plainly, the Vatican needs to rewrite its own legislation as regards music. It must make the propers of the Mass the mandatory sung text. Mandatory. No exceptions. It must absolutely forbid them to be replaced by something else. This change in the legislation alone would do far more than yet another cautious statement about the lasting value of the Church’s treasury of sacred music.

To review the history here, the idea that the propers of the Mass can be displaced has absolutely no precedent in the history of our faith. I can hear the critic now attempting to correct me on the point: “before the Second Vatican Council, we never sang the propers; at Mass, we sang various hymns at the entrance, offertory, and communion, and it is no different today.”

That’s true enough but here is the major difference. When the people were singing hymns in preconciliar times, the celebrant was saying the propers of the Mass. He said the entrance antiphon, the communion proper, and so on. They were not neglected completely; they were part of the Mass but at low Mass, they were restricted to the priest alone.

There can be no question that a major ambition of the liturgical reform was to do something about the problem that the low Mass had become the primary form of the Mass that nearly all Catholics experienced week to week. The goal - and this comes through in the writings of the liturgical movement dating back to the early part of the 20th century - was to raise the bar and make every Mass a sung Mass. The Mass was no longer to be the private preserve of the celebrant but rather those prayers and those propers were to be publicly shared and made part of the audible experience of the Mass for everyone..

For this reason, it really was a catastrophic concession that the propers of the Mass can be replaced by the other songs that we alone decide are appropriate substitutes. The concession was made as an afterthought, the option four that was thrown in to deal with the unusual contingency, but it proved to be a moral hazard of the worst sort. It quickly became the norm, and suddenly we found ourselves in an even worse position than we were before the Council convened. Not only were the propers not sung, they were not said either. They completely dropped out of the picture.

Many people have pointed out that the new edition of the flagship hymnal of the GIA, called Worship, contains for the first time an index item that draws attention to the entrance antiphon for Mass. People have sent this to me and said it represents progress. I suppose it does. But consider the irony. A mainstream book of some 1000 pages that purports to offer music for the Mass has a few inches in the way back that actually addresses the sung proper of the Mass - and this is cause for celebration? It’s incredible to think that this is what it has come down to.

If you want to see a vision of the future, take a look at Jeffrey Ostrowski’s Vatican II Hymnal. Here we have one book that is all about music and all about the liturgy, a book in which the two are not separate but a united whole. The propers of the Mass are there in English and Latin, along with the readings and plenty of music for the whole of Mass. It also provides some traditional hymnody but clearly as supplemental material designed to enhance our experience at a Catholic people and give us additional music with which to praise God. The balance is correct here. The title itself sums up the point: this is much closer to what the Council fathers envisioned.

I’ve not previously mentioned another visionary project by Adam Bartlett, the Lumen Christi Missal. What I appreciate most about this book is the clarity of vision, which comes through in the stunningly beautiful typesetting. As I looked at the first draft, I thought: this is so advanced, so effervescent, so solid. I stammered a bit at realizing what I was seeing here. It offers a serious challenge to the way we think of the sung liturgical structure. It gives us readings, the text of the antiphons of the Graduale Romanum and Roman Missal, musical settings of the Mass ordinary, Psalms (including weekday Psalms), plus weekly antiphons from the Missal and seasonal antiphons (primarily from the Graduale Romanum, but also from the Missal and Graduale Simplex) for entrance, offertory, and communion. These antiphons are through-composed with the idea that the assembly can participate in singing them if the propers are not sung in their fullness by the schola. There are no occasional hymns; 100% of this book is drawn from the liturgical text.

In some way, I would say that Adam’s book is really the first music book that takes seriously the ordinary form of Mass in English as a ritual of the Catholic faith with a voice all its own, and it is a voice that it is serious, substantial, and special. There is not a hint of nostalgia in this work (not that nostalgia is always bad); rather, we see here a settling down of a uniquely conciliar vision for how the liturgy is to be conducted in light of both tradition and the need for development. How many parishes will be bold and (dare I say) progressive enough to embrace this project? Already, there are many people who have signed up to receive notification when the project is complete. Perhaps it will end up in 2% or 5% of the best parishes. Fine. That’s a great beginning. I predict that this could be the beginning of something wonderful in our future.

In any case, these are two of many such projects underway. They are in in their infancy, and it will be some time before we begin to see them used more broadly. They all point the way forward. Gregorian chant, yes, but with a practical and realizable strategy going forward. These books move us beyond slogans toward real practice. As the Vatican commission fires up its work toward a musical reform, these books need to be widely circulated as models for how to tackle stage two of the reform of the reform.

http://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2011/11/next-step-for-reformers.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheNewLiturgicalMovement+%28The+New+Liturgical+Movement%29

Thou Shalt Not Kneel

A Metropolitan See and its Wayward London Child

 

Thank you and a prayer for God's abundant blessings on Archbishop Thomas Collins of Toronto for having the grace, faith and pastoral sensitivity to recognise the "laudable practice" in the GIRM that the kneeling custom in Toronto is to be maintained. That is, from the end of the Sanctus to the end of the Doxology and from the beginning of the Ecce Agnus Dei. After Communion, the faithful may kneel or sit. as they are inclinded, as is their personal choice.

Our grown up American brothers and sisters are much more fortunate that the Holy See has already ruled on ths ludicrous behaviour by episcopal dictators. Gee, they seem to find something in the GIRM to enforce that isn't there but they can't enforce the minimal use of Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion or Gregorian chant?

Meanwhile, the poor people of the See of Toronto's wayward child have had gestapo like "ministers of uniformity" going around telling them to get off of their knees. The Diocese of London under Bishop Ronald Fabbro of the Congregation of St. Basil as High Priest of liturgy has ordered under the rubric of "obedience" that people must all stand after Holy Communion until all have received and returned to their pews as a sign of "unity" and "community."

Woe too, to those in Calgary who suffer from a bishop who states, "The GIRM says this...In Calgary, we do this..."

Reports are reaching us today from Calgary, Antigonish, Halifax, Winnipeg and other places of this rudeness and intrusion on the part of some of Canada's high priests of liturgy.

God bless Archbishop Michael Miller of Vancouver for recognising "laudable practice.'

As referred to in the link above, this little matter has been dealt with by Rome previously and quite effectively at that same link by Francis Cardinal Arinze, whlilst he was Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Letters will be written. Rome will be called in to intervene.

Look at this from a Facebook feed about the situation in London today:

Sadly, in my diocese last evening, some left Holy Mass in tears and angry after being forced to stand after receiving Our precious Lord in the Eucharist and were prohibited from kneeling. Shame on the priest and our bishop!

I just knelt anyway, the liturgy belongs to all of us, and the Holy See said we can kneel if we wish. I have never like bullies. The priest and I had a good discussion afterward and he at least seemed interested in finding out what Rome has said about this "no kneeling" after Communion liturgical fad. I'll be emailing the documents to him today.

One parishioner, in his 70's, was so upset at Holy Mass after being told the bishop said we can't kneel after Communion anymore, he yelled out during the priest's homily, "Father, why can't we keep kneeling together as a sign of unity?" The priest just responded, "This is what the bishop said we have to do for unity." Unity? Give me a break. Ripping away a centuries old custom from people, which takes place during a most miraculous moment in their lives, does not create unity. It creates harm through division, anger, and deep hurt. God save us!

Gentle Reader, this is not what the GIRM requires. This is not in the new Roman Missal. The bishops who do this are being insensitive and cruel. They are not doing what the Church wants. It is an ugly power-play.

It is my view that many, many bishops, priests and professional Catholics and liturgists resent in every way the Third Edition of the Roman Missal and the translation mandated by Liturgicam Authenticum. They were forced to implement it when as recently as last February they denied any sense of urgency when the Recognitio was still not granted. Some will stop at nothing to ensure that that which is to surround the Missal to increase reverence and holiness does not happen.

If they are so eager to interpret what is not in the GIRM when will they actually interpret correctly what is in there such as Gregorian chant?

Dear Reader, you have a responsibility to stand up get in the battle in a way that our parents and grandparents were not out of blind obedience and ignorance.

Here is one way.

CANADIAN CATHOLICS PRESERVING THE CUSTOM OF

KNEELING AFTER HOLY COMMUNION

 

 

http://voxcantor.blogspot.com/

Inevitable Result of Dissenters

Austrian dissidents escalate conflict, challenge hierarchy

November 07, 2011

Dissident Catholics in Austria have announced their intention to conduct liturgical ceremonies in which lay people act as priests, preaching and simulating the celebration of Mass.

"Church law bans this," acknowledged Hans Peter Hurka, the leader of the We Are Church movement. His group issued a challenging manifesto just before the Austrian bishops gathered for their annual meeting.

The lay-led ceremonies would violate not only canonical rules but also fundamental theological principles, ignoring central doctrinal teachings about the nature of the Eucharist and of Holy Orders. Nevertheless Hurka made the claim that his group's stance is in accordance with the teachings of Vatican II.

The Austrian hierarchy already faces a challenge from the Priests' Initiative, another radical group that has called for defiance of Church law. The nation's leading prelate, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, has warned repeatedly that the dissident priests are creating a danger of "serious conflict" within the Church. However the cardinal has declined to take disciplinary action, saying that he is "counting on dialogue and cooperation."

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=12279

CFOTAE Annual Dissent in Diocese of Hamilton

Welcome to The Canadian Forum on Theology and Education 2012

Speaker Profile

Dr. Michael W. Higgins

Dr. Michael W. Higgins is an author, broadcaster, Vatican affairs specialist, columnist and long time Catholic educator, scholar and administrator.

Sheridan College, 1430 Trafalgar Road, Oakville, Ontario, Canada. L6H6W4
Thursday May 3rd 2012 at 7-30pm to Saturday May 5th 2012 at 12 noon.

http://www.cfotae.ca/AboutCFOTAE.html

Power and Peril: The Catholic Church at the Crossroads

Author(s): Michael W. Higgins and Douglas R. Letson

Vast in its coverage and thorough in its analysis, Power and Peril is an encyclopedic journey through a church unwilling to change in the face of great social upheaval. Michael W. Higgins, president of St. Jerome's University at the University of Waterloo, and Douglas R. Letson, past president of the same institution, bring us this brutally honest look at the Catholic Church and its failings and challenges. The authors explain in their introduction that the book is not a formal theological study, but rather the result of many years of research and experience.

Higgins and Letson begin with a concise history of the papacy, which gives the layperson a clear understanding of the Pope's role and his influence on the Catholic institution. The views of the current Pope, John Paul II, are explored in some detail, including the responses of various theologians and experts to his ideas and writings. Higgins and Letson then provide their own prescription for change: "new directions, a revitalized papacy and a new wave of internal reforms to help it [the Church] face an increasingly needy but uncomprehending world."

Power and Peril also explores the abuse of clerical power. Clerical sexual abuse has been confirmed in 23 countries, with the situation in Africa, where priests have repeatedly raped nuns, the most persistent. Other controversial issues are given plenty of attention as well: health care and education; gay vocation to the priesthood; and the Church's refusal to ordain women. One of the most controversial and well-argued sections of the book concerns the Church's views on procreation, birth control, masturbation, and men and women's traditional sexual roles.

Higgins and Letson conclude that Catholics need personal common sense to guide them through today's labyrinths of morality, suggesting that if the Church doesn't move forward in its thinking, Catholics will. It is hard to disagree with their persuasive arguments.

Carolyne Van Der Meer

This content is provided by Quill & Quire. The views expressed do not express the views of CBC. CBC is not responsible for this content.

To defend the faith, contact:

Most Rev. Douglas Crosby, O.M.I., D.D.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Hamilton700 King Street W. Hamilton, ON., L8P 1C7
[905] 528-7988 FAX [905] 528-1088

bishopsoffice@hamiltondiocese.com

William Joseph Cardinal Levada

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193 Roma, Italy

Telephone: 06.69.89.59.11

Fax: 06.69.88.34.09

cdf@cfaith.va
 

The Lethargy of the Guardians

ONE OF THE MOST horrifying and widespread diseases in the Church today is the lethargy of the guardians of the Faith of the Church. I am not thinking here of those bishops who are members of the “fifth column,” who wish to destroy the Church from within, or to transform it into something com­pletely different. I am thinking of the far more numerous bishops who have no such intentions, but who make no use whatever of their authority when it comes to intervening against heretical theologians or priests, or against blasphemous performances of public worship. They either close their eyes and try, ostrich-style, to ignore the grievous abuses as well as appeals to their duty to intervene, or they fear to be attacked by the press or the mass media and defamed as reactionary, narrow-minded, or medieval. They fear men more than God. The words of St. John Bosco apply to them: “The power of evil men lives on the cowardice of the good.”

It is certainly true that the lethargy of those in positions of authority is a disease of our times which is widespread outside the Church. It is found among parents, college and university presidents, heads of numerous other organizations, judges, heads of state, and others. But the fact that this sickness has even penetrated the Church is a clear indication that the fight against the spirit of the world, has been re­placed with swimming along with the spirit of the times in the name of “aggiornamento.” One is forced to think of the hireling who abandons his flocks to the wolves when one reflects on the lethargy of so many bishops and superiors who, though still orthodox ⁴ themselves, do not have the cour­age to intervene against the most flagrant heresies and abu­ses of all kinds in their dioceses or in their orders.
But it is most especially infuriating when certain bishops, who themselves show this lethargy toward heretics, assume a rigorously authoritarian attitude toward those believers who are fighting for orthodoxy, and who are thus doing what the bishops ought to be doing themselves! I was once allowed to read a letter written by a man in high position in the Church, addressed to a group which had heroically taken up the cause of the true Faith, of the pure, true teaching of the Church and the Pope. This group had overcome the “coward­ice of good men” of which St. John Bosco spoke, and ought thus to have been the greatest joy of the bishops. The letter said: as good Catholics, you have to do only one thing: just be obedient to all the ordinances of your bishop.

This conception of a “good” Catholic is particularly sur­prising at a time in which the coming of age of the modern layman is continually being emphasized. But it is also com­pletely false for this reason: what is fitting at a time when no heresies occur in the Church without being immediately condemned by Rome, becomes inappropriate and unconscion­able at a time when uncondemned heresies wreak havoc within the Church, infecting even certain bishops, who never­theless remain in office. Should the faithful at the time of the Arian heresy, for instance, in which the majority of the bishops were Arians, have limited themselves to being nice, and obedient to the ordinances of these bishops, instead of battling the heresy? Is not fidelity to the true teaching of the Church to be given priority over submission to the bishop? Is it not precisely by virtue of their obedience to the revealed truths which they received from the magisterium of the Church, that the faithful offer resistance? Are the faithful not supposed to be concerned when things are preached from the pulpit which are completely incompatible with the teach­ing of the Church? Or when theologians are kept on as tea­chers who claim that the Church must accept pluralism in philosophy and theology ⁵ or that there is no survival of the person after death, or who deny that promiscuity is a sin, or even tolerate public displays of immorality, thereby betraying a pitiful lack of understanding for the deeply Christian virtue of purity?

The drivel of the heretics, both priests and laymen, is tolerated; the bishops tacitly acquiesce to the poisoning of the faithful. ⁶ But they want to silence the faithful believers who take up the cause of orthodoxy, the very people who should by all rights be the joy of the bishops’ hearts, their consolation, a source of strength for overcoming their own lethargy. Instead, these people are regarded as disturbers of the peace. And should it happen that they get carried away in their zeal and express themselves in a tactless or exagger­ated manner, they are even suspended. This clearly shows the cowardice which is hidden behind the bishops’ failure to use their authority. For they have nothing to fear from the orthodox; the orthodox do not control the mass media or the press; they are not the representatives of public opinion. And because of their submission to ecclesiastical authority, the fighters for orthodoxy will never be as aggressive as the so-called progressives. If they are reprimanded or disciplined, their bishops run no risk of being attacked by the liberal press and being defamed as reactionary.

This failure of the bishops to make use of their God-given authority is perhaps, in practical consequences, the worst confusion in the Church today. For this failure not only does not arrest spiritual diseases, heresies, and the blatant as well as the insidious (and this is much worse) devastation of the vineyard of the Lord; it even gives free rein to these evils. The failure to use holy authority to protect the holy Faith leads necessarily to the disintegration of the Church.

Here, as with the appearance of all dangers, we have to say, “principiis obsta” (“stop the evil at its source”). The longer one allows an evil to develop, the more difficult it will be to root it out again. This is true for the upbringing of children, for the life of the state, and in a special way for the moral life of the individual. But it is true in a completely new way for the intervention of the ecclesiastical authorities for the good of the faithful. As Plato says, “when evils are far advanced, . . . it is never pleasant to eliminate them.” ⁷

Nothing is more erroneous than to imagine that many things ought to be allowed to rage and do their worst, and that one ought thus to wait patiently until they subside of their own accord. This theory may sometimes be correct with regard to youths going through puberty, but it is completely false in questions of the bonum commune (the common good). This false theory is especially dangerous when ap­plied to the bonum commune of the holy Church, involving blasphemies in public worship and heresies which, if not con­demned, go on poisoning countless souls. Here it is incorrect to apply the parable of the wheat and the tares.

NOTES

4. By “orthodox” we mean the belief in the unfalsified, official teaching of the holy Church. which represents the authentic, revealed Truth, guar­anteed by the Holy Spirit. The expression “orthodox” in no way refers here to membership in the schismatic Eastern Church.

5. By “pluralism” I mean the notion that one can have different opinions and views with regard to defined truths of faith, or that every philosophy has a place in the Church — ultimately an absolute relativism. Of course as long as no definition has been given concerning a pure question of faith, different opinions may also be advocated by orthodox Catholics. Thus, with regard to the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, contradictory opinions were held by St. Thomas and Duns Scotus. But after the definition of 1854 this would no longer have been possible. Similarly, as we will see, there are philosophical theses only one of which can be true, but neither of which is in contradiction to the Revelation of Christ. But this kind of pluralism is clearly different from the pluralism advocated by Rahner and others.

6. A shocking example of the activity of the “fifth column” in the Church are the religion books recently introduced in Austria: Glaube Gefragt (“ Faith Questioned”) and Christus Gel ragt (“Christ Questioned”). These books are consciously aimed at the destruction of the Faith in the souls of the young. This is also a crass example of the lethargy of the guardians.

7. Plato, Laws, no. 660.


Dietrich von Hildebrand
The Devastated Vineyard, Chapter 1, The Lethargy of the Guardians:

Collapse of Irish Catholicism: A Self-Induced Crisis?

Nov 1

Posted by shane

My sincere thanks to Peadar Laighléis, President of the Latin Mass Society of Ireland, for kindly allowing me to repost his excellent article, appended below, concerning the crisis in the Irish Catholic Church. It was first published in the Sunday Business Post in 2001. He also sent me this helpful bit of background to the article:

I wrote this piece nearly ten years ago and at the time, I was annoyed I left one major source of discontent out. In the mid-1990s, the Bishops of Ireland transferred the feasts of Ascension Thursday and Corpus Christi to the nearest Sunday. This was calculated to please the laity and was greeted by the greatest outpouring of lay anger than anyone could anticipate which resulted in the dropping of the second phase of the programme fast (ie the transferance of the obligation to hear Mass on feasts falling on a Saturday or Monday to the Sunday – a ‘two for the price of one’ arrangement).

The bishops were surprised as they were led to believe that that was what the faithful expected. This was done through a process of consultation enthrusted to the clergy. The respondents were specially selected and they gave the correct responses. The problem was that these responses were totally unrepresentative. This attracted more correspondence to the Irish Catholic than any other single issue in David Quinn’s editorship.

When I wrote the article under discussion, I intended it as a wake up call and I found it very well received by laity, including many of whom would not go down the road of the older liturgy with me, and badly received by the clergy. Just over a year later, Father Joseph Briody (Raphoe diocese) wrote an article in the Irish Catholic [see here - shane] which described Maynooth during his time there in a much more specific manner than I did in my article. He was pilloried as a kind of traitor by his confreres, including many conservatively minded younger clergy and seminarists.

I can recall the response of Bishop Willie Walsh and Father Colm Kilcoyne to criticisms advanced by Kieron Wood in a television debate. It seems that the clergy and the faithful occupy two different worlds at times. One might rather ask what has happened with the Irish Church since these criticisms were voiced? The answer is that the Church is in free fall. The issue of clerical paedophilia cannot be blamed for this – I am unaware of any new cases emerging in that decade.

Most of the material dealt with in the reports is historical. The Church in Ireland has failed on a different and altogether more significant level. That is communicating the faith to the faithful. The most striking recent example of this was the utter cluelessness of Irish Catholics under the age of 65 in regard to the importance of the seal of confessional following the legislative proposals advanced after the publication of the Cloyne Report.

The principal reflection I will make in this regard is to recall a lot of the predictions of the late Monsignor Francis Cremin [see here - shane] whose jeremiads in regard to the Irish Church fell on deaf ears but have substantially come to pass. Nonetheless, I do not believe that the situation we have is irreversible. I just don’t see it as being reversible by human effort alone.

The following is the article in full:

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

by Peadar Laighleis,
Sunday Business Post, 21 January 2001

The Catholic Church is in serious trouble, but is the cure worse then the illness?

In the late 1980s, Cardinal Tomas O’Fiaich shocked the nation with his prediction that missionaries would soon come from Africa to evangelise Ireland because of the vocations crisis here at the time.

A decade later, his prophecy has come true, and worshippers in several Dublin churches have already experienced the ministry of African clergy.

When the late primate made his remarks, there were about 350 diocesan seminarians at Maynooth. Now, there are 110. A number of diocesan seminaries that were open at that time — St Kieran’s College, Kilkenny, St Peter’s College, Wexford, St John’s College, Waterford, and Holy Cross, Clonliffe — have now closed down because of the shortage of vocations to the priesthood. St Patrick’s College, Thurles, and St Patrick’s College, Carlow, may not be far behind.

Last year, 19 first year students entered Maynooth. The Church of Ireland theological college in Braemor Park accepted 10 entrants — even though Catholics outnumber Anglicans on this island by about 10 to 1.

So what are the causes of this accelerating collapse?

The wave of clerical scandals of the 1990s is usually blamed, but this only partially explains a pre-existing trend. Seminaries are no longer a traditional route to higher education. More third-level avenues are now available to young men, and this is reflected in the qualifications some candidates bring to the seminary. Several students at Maynooth entered with master’s degrees or even doctorates.

A more telling factor is reflected in the recent survey showing that only 14 per cent of young Catholics regard attendance at Sunday Mass as important. The catechisms of the Council of Trent and the Second Vatican Council both reiterate the Church’s teaching that the Mass is the same sacrifice as Calvary, with Christ made present again on the altar.

Despite 13 or 14 years of religious education, this idea is lost on the vast majority of school leavers.

Faith is jointly transmitted by home, school and Church, so its loss during the years of most complete exposure would seem to indicate grave defects in the catechesis and liturgy to which this generation has been subjected. Catholic parents are continually assured of the benefits of the post-conciliar changes in these areas.

In the 1970s, parents were dissuaded from using traditional forms of prayer with their children at home, were patronised when they questioned the Children of God catechetics series and were dragged to aimless meetings about their children’s reception of the sacraments.

Similar treatment is now meted out to parents who express concern about religious courses such as Alive-O and Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE).

The Children of God series fell short of the requirements in the General Catechetical Directory, and Alive-O — now integrated with the RSE programme — ignores the teachings of the catechism of the Catholic Church and the document of the Pontifical Council for the Family, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality.

At the same time as the faith of Catholic children was being undermined, a campaign was underway to ravage the Church’s architectural heritage — the patrimony of all Irish people, regardless of their faith. Third-rate architects aspiring to rival Le Corbusier reckoned they could improve on Pugin masterpieces. Ecclesiastical treasures were destroyed to gratify the new iconoclastic spirit — despite the pleas of the faithful, whose impoverished forefathers had paid to build and upkeep their parish churches.

This vandalism was justified by the line: “Vatican II requires it.” In the Connolly v Byrne case (about the changes to Carlow Cathedral), the High Court was given evidence of a letter from Cardinal Ratzinger to Bishop Laurence Ryan, informing him that the Second Vatican Council had imposed no obligation to make such changes.

In other words, churches had been razed on the basis of an untruth, while the laity — who generally opposed changes mandated by clerical autocrats — were expected to foot the bill. Hierarchical lobbying even led to alterations to the Planning and Development Act 2000 to protect the Bishops’ newly-discovered power.

New liturgy brought new music. The organ was dismissed as old hat, and traditional hymns were replaced by folk music based on pop songs of the 60s and 70s. It was a good illustration of the adage that whoever marries the spirit of the age today is widowed tomorrow.

In 1980, I was confirmed in an ugly modern church with bare concrete walls, to the strains of a ‘hymn’ which parodied Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind. For most pre-teen children in 1980, Dylan was as archaic as Palestrina. Someone reliving a flower-power youth did not bring my contemporaries nearer to the Holy Ghost.

Yet, in the 1990s, English and Spanish monasteries featured in the charts with compilation CDs of Gregorian chant. Soon afterwards, the Faith of Our Fathers CD of rejected devotional hymns was a smash hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Most pastors took no cue from the faithful on this matter.

Catholics are assured that today’s banal and uninspiring liturgy is “better than ever” and will be further enhanced by greater lay participation. Experience suggests that the word ‘female’ could be substituted for ‘lay’.

Laymen are disappearing from today’s Church, further diminishing the pool from which vocations are drawn. After all, why should a man sacrifice career and family to pursue a way of life that does not confer any privilege not already open to laity?

The Catholic priesthood is fast becoming invisible. Several years ago, the archdiocese of Dublin ran a vocations campaign asking ‘Who are the men in black?’ A more appropriate question might have been: ‘Where are the men in black?’ A clerical tailor in Dublin recently informed me that he had made more cassocks for Anglican ministers last year than for Catholic priests.

One orthodox young priest in rural Ireland told me he was frustrated with his Roman collar, as many people mistake him for a Protestant clergyman. At the same time, another young priest in Galway sees no problem in wearing the collar — and nothing else — for a photograph in a charity calendar. Does anything go for today’s priests — short of paedophilia?

If a candidate nevertheless presents himself to the seminary, what can he expect? He probably lacks the support of family or local clergy enjoyed by previous generations. He may be told that his beliefs about priesthood — even about Catholicism — are wrong. He might see Marian devotion trivialised or ridiculed. He could well see psychology used as a weapon against orthodox dissenters. He might see academic performance, or bookishness, denigrated.

It is not unknown for seminarians to be coerced into leaving because they are seen as academic, pious, distant from girls, or strict about moral issues, particularly homosexuality. Today, expulsion can be the reward for behaviour that one might have expected of clerical students in the past.

Some Catholic clergy, schooled in the prevailing current of paternalistic liberalism since the 1960s, seek to persecute recalcitrant quasi-traditionalist elements. But the Church will increasingly have to rely on such conservative and traditionalist churchmen for vocations, as liberal and radical thinkers challenge the fundamental need for Church or priesthood. Time to sing ‘Where have all the young men gone?’ with guitars around the campfire.

Blaming celibacy is inadequate. Celibacy dates from Apostolic times, and studies have suggested that married clergy existed only by way of exception. Celibacy was still a requirement when one eighth of Irish school leavers opted for the priesthood in 1959.

The Eastern Catholic Churches — which still have married clergy — also experience periodic vocations shortages. In any case, married clergy are not immune from scandal, as evidenced by some of the British tabloid headlines about the adulterous behaviour of vicars and ministers.

The Catholic Church is fast disappearing on many levels. Most obviously, it is no longer visible in the media. Official statements have become muted: the various conferences of bishops, priests and religious are more inclined to pronounce on economic issues than morality or dogma.

Individuals in these groups are more likely to make worthy but uncontroversial statements on popular social issues than to defend Church teaching on issues such as birth control, divorce or abortion. Few clerics who feature in the media are noted for upholding unpopular aspects of Catholic doctrine.

There is a new relationship between Church, state and the media, and the consensus which has emerged between these institutions has dangerously stifled debate. Many liberal clergy pride themselves on being ‘on the margins’ when they publicly oppose the Pope or Church teaching on old chestnuts such as sexual morality, priestesses or clerical celibacy — yet this earns them media praise, which would not be quite as forthcoming if they were to defend the Catholic position. Christ was a sign of contradiction, and He warned His apostles about the danger of courting human respect.

In the closing decades of the second millennium, Irish society became increasingly secular and materialistic, and the Irish Church reflects this shift. Today, the so-called Catholic press largely reflects that consensus. Conservative and traditional opinion are confined to publications like Catholic World Report, Position Papers and the Brandsma Review, none of which feature prominently on the publication racks in most churches. One wonders who is dissenting from what.

The Church’s liberal wing is hypercritical and dismissive of Pope John Paul II. Conservatives, for their part, cast the Pope as a superhero, and pray for a similar cardinal to succeed him. But — to borrow a word from the evangelical Protestant lexicon — both views are papolatrous. Both seem to regard the Pope as master of scripture and tradition, when he is in fact servant of both. It is a difficult time to govern the Church, and the Pope needs prayers, not unfounded criticism or flattery.

The liberals would like to see the next Pope allowing priests to marry, ordaining women, reversing Humanae Vitae and admitting remarried divorcees to communion.

A Protestant minister once challenged the dissident theologian Professor Hans King about such changes. The minister pointed out that the mainstream reformed Churches had for some time featured the characteristics Father King was seeking — yet they were in an even more advanced state of decline than the Catholic Church.

So is the cure worse than the illness? We may soon have to judge for ourselves.

Peadar Laighléis, who is 32, spent two years as a seminarian in a religious order. He now works as a civil servant and is president of the Latin Mass Society of Ireland.

German priest indicted on 267 child sex counts

1 November 2011470 viewsNo CommentBY: BNO News

 BRAUNSCHWEIG, GERMANY (BNO NEWS) -- A German Catholic priest has been indicted on 267 counts of sexual contact with children, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

The 46-year old man is accused of repeated sexual assault on at least three boys aged between 9 and 15 since 2004 in the northern town of Salzgitter, where he ran a parish. No date has been set for the trial, the dpa news agency reported.

In 2006, Catholic authorities came under fire for taking no action when they learned that the priest slept with a boy in his bed one night. But the Diocese of Hildesheim has argued that there were no sexual contact allegations at the time.

The priest, who has confessed to most of the charges to detectives, was ordered to stop seeing the boy after the boy's family complained. The man, who has been in pretrial custody since July, was later arrested, according to the news report.

The Catholic church in Germany has faced a series of allegations of sexual abuse and brutal corporal punishment by clergy over the past 60 years. It has offered financial compensation to hundreds of victims.

http://channel6newsonline.com/2011/11/german-priest-indicted-on-267-child-sex-counts/

German Bishops caught in massive porn scandal - why didn’t they listen to the faithful?

by John-Henry Westen

• Mon Oct 31, 2011 18:26 EST

 COLOGNE, October 31, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - After ten years of being internally warned by faithful Catholics, including in a 70-page dossier sent to all of Germany’s main bishops, the scandal of the German bishops ownership of a publishing company that sells a large volume of porn has hit the mainstream media.

Pur magazine cover story on the scandal

Last week the mainstream media outed the fact that the German bishops are 100% owners in one of the most profitable book companies in Germany. The huge company, in addition to offering many religious and other ethical books and items, also peddles 2500 porn titles and additional books highly offensive to Christian principles.

A spokesman for the bishops promised immediate corrective action. However, the false pretense of ignorance about the situation has only served to add to the scandal especially for faithful Catholics who were treated with silence and even disdain when they repeatedly attempted for years to bring the scandal to an end out of public view.

WELTBILD, is the second largest bookselling company in Germany. It is wholly owned by the German bishops and has a $1.7 billion turnover. Its 2500 porn titles (with covers too sexually explicit to reproduce) include perverse sexual fantasy of every type. WELTBILD also sells books promoting Satanism, the occult, esoterism, and anti-Christian atheist propaganda.

More than that, the bishops are also 50% owners in another company - Ver-lagsgruppe Droemer Knaur - which actually produces the pornographic novels.

German Catholic activist Gabriele Kuby, who has for years pointed out to bishops various shortcomings in the Catholic Church in her nation, said that the worst thing about the current public scandal is the hypocrisy. Each of the affected bishops received 70 pages of documentation in 2008 detailing the fact that the publishing company was selling the pornographic titles, Kuby told LifeSiteNews. She noted that most bishops ignored the communications, not even bothering to reply.

The Archdiocese of Munich did reply, said Kuby, but she says their response was “arrogant and spiteful.”

In reaction to questioning from the mainstream press, church officials claimed it was a filtering problem which resulted in the oversight, adding that the matter will be dealt with.

Another faithful Catholic, Bernhard Mueller, the editor-in-chief of the Catholic magazine PUR, was himself involved in trying to have the bishops resolve the scandal internally. Now, PUR’s front page story covering the current state of affairs is titled “Bishops as porn producers.”

In his coverage of the now-public scandal, Mueller describes the 10-year-long attempt to convince the bishops to take action on the matter. He concludes: “But over the years, all internal efforts to bring the scandal have come to nothing.”

The reaction from the public, as can be seen in reader comments beneath the mainstream media reports, has been to ridicule the Catholic Church. Mueller summed up the public view succinctly with the phrase: “Preach chastity and sell pornography.”
Contact information:

German bishops conference

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith:
His Eminence William Joseph Levada, Cardinal, Prefect
His Excellency Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., Secretary
Piazza del S. Uffizio, 11, 00193 Roma, Italy
Telephone: 06.69.88.33.57; 06.69.88.34.13
Fax: 06.69.88.34.09
E-mail: cdf@cfaith.va

Congregation for Bishops
Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Prefect
Palazzo della Congregazioni,
Piazza Pio XII, 10
Roma, Italia
00193
Phone: 06.69.88.42.17
Fax: 06.69.88.53.03