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By Will Boomhower
I have to believe that most thinking Catholics are troubled and often confused by the divisions that currently plague the church. I just returned from morning Mass; afterward I stopped in the office to visit with our business manager and our DRE. The three of us always enjoy this “chat-up” and this morning was no different. At issue was whether or not to allow a number of children from CCD whose parents don’t bother to bring them to Sunday Mass, and subsequently don’t take instruction seriously, to be confirmed at the Vigil Mass this weekend.
If I understand this correctly, the diocese says to confirm them and our DRE does not feel, in good conscience, that she should. To make matters worse, one of these children is her niece!
Novus Ordo, what hast thee wrought?
We have a Pope who has elevated ambiguity to an art form. We have a College of Cardinals that, in large part, fancies itself an elite gay men’s club. Communists and Freemasons long ago infiltrated the Church hierarchy. The USCCB is populated by “go along to get along” careerists who, if they object to Modernism, don’t have the spine to say so. Two days ago Notre Dame burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances thereby joining the list of 800+ Catholic Churches in France that have been attacked this past year.
I’ve told my priest more than once that I am a “hair’s breadth” away from leaving the church, but where would I go? I don’t know how not to be a Catholic! So it’s on me, right? It’s on us, the laity.
Now take a big step backwards to see the bigger picture. I mean a big step backwards, far enough to get a panoramic view of two thousand years of Church history. Now consider this: God made time for us and made us for eternity. When you step outside time you enter the Eternal moment; time is of no consequence. This is where you find Christ, still tied to the whipping post, just as He is still being born; He is is still teaching and healing; He is still bleeding out on the cross, and He is still rising! Across the span of two millennia our Mother Church has been under assault from within and without. It plays out in time as the Church Militant ebbs and flows: the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages and Medieval Europe flowering during the Renaissance , stumbling through the Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment and arriving intact to stand against the worst of our Modern world.
On May 19, 1841, from the pulpit of the South Boston Church, a man named Theodore Parker, one of the small group of New Englanders (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Orestes Augustus Brownson among them) who came to be known as The American Transcendentalists, gave a sermon entitled A Discourse of the Transient and Permanent in Christianity. I quote. “The end of Christianity seems to be to make all men one with God as Christ was one with Him; to bring them to such a state of obedience and goodness that we shall think divine thoughts and feel divine sentiments, and so keep the law of God by living a life of truth and love. Its means are purity and prayer; getting strength from God, and using it for our fellow-men as well as for ourselves. It allows perfect freedom. It does not demand all men to think alike, but to think uprightly, and get as near as possible at truth; not all men to live alike, but to live holy, and get as near as possible to a life perfectly divine.” Obviously, every civilization falls short of that, despite the saints and mystics among them. Where does that leave us, the ones who time will forget but God never will? The gospels tell us to abide by one another: to exercise forbearance. They also tell us to stand by what we believe and boldly declare it. Woven into the fabric of that quixotic endeavour is the Providential thread of God, the Master of History. He will sort it out! As for this time and this place…. everyone must choose, but remember, God is Love, and Love desires unity. We are the laity and I think it’s our time! God knows our leaders are failing us. Objective Truth is worth the battle!
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Lovely, and perfect for this Good Friday!
I think it leaves us with St Vincent of Lerin’s Commonetory on how to remain catholic in times of confusion.
http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/0370-0450,_Vincentius_Lirinensis,_Commonitorium_Primum_%5BSchaff%5D,_EN.pdf
and if this is so , many of the Eastern Orthodox Rites are also in communion. In fact, Buignini used this as the stated model for renewing the Mass at Vatican Two and the prelates present agreed. However ,sadly the original promulgation ,which was in Latin was heard by few. I was one of those few and was struck by comparison to the Divine Liturgies of Sts John Chrysostom and St Basil the Great. Sadly, the accompanying Vatican Two documents provided the excuses for the abusive variations which became the prolific norms. Surely the Traditional Latin Mass of Trent is one Rite that must be preserved but in keeping with these beautiful Liturgies one cannot discount the Eastern Rites which are Catholic in every sense and preceded the politically purposed schism which divided the ancient Christian Rites. A true unification would, in my humblest opinion , require a return to the ancient traditions of the Faith in the first millenium and proceed in unity from there without the barriers of language, distance ,worldly politics and feudal rights. It is possible in this day in age.
No advocate of the TLM says to abolish the Eastern liturgies. Most of them haven’t been touched by the revolutionaries, save for the Maronite liturgy, and have maintained their sacred nature
Agreed…we are in times of Jacob’s troubles. Check cgi.org