LeoWatch: Gaslighting
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I sort of get what the thought process was with “active participation” when it was first considered, but the way most people think, it turns into essentially a “busy work” mentality for the laity.
I see this every Sunday with a parade in offertory (the kids need something to do!) and 4-5 extraordinary ministers of Communion for a congregation of 80 people. Our priest literally thanks anyone who did anything during Mass with applause every time, including the choir. Maddening.
Josh, you forgot altar girls.
“Our priest literally thanks anyone who did anything during Mass with applause every time, including the choir. Maddening.“
– yes, the nearest NO parish to me, the one I’m “supposed” to attend does the same…
Everyone has busy work not prayer..
(the distinction between a male priesthood and the laity is so blurred it’s almost unrecognizable… the distinction between ordinary bread and Holy Eucharist is not really There…
the Sermon becomes stand-up routine with jokes… all fun.. all games… everyone “participates..)
“the only persons clapping at Calvary were the soldiers that Crucified Christ”,,, Padre Pio
– but they were “participating” weren’t they?
Mary,
True. Was never a fan of them even when I was in my super liberal phase as a teenager and early 20’s.
I promise to NOT actively participate at Novus Ordo Mass. I shall do that by shunning all Novus Ordo Mass. I’ll go to Orthodox Anglican or Eastern Orthodox before I will ever return to Novus Ordo.
Think about it. This Democrat from Chicago formed under Hispanic liberation theology puts people supporting abortion, sodomy, socialism, and other heterodoxies in positions of authority in the Vatican. He may be smarter and nicer than Jorge the Heretic but he promotes and promulgates the same heresies. This isn’t the Catholic Church into which I converted back in 1989. This heresy of modernism is just like the ancient heresy of Arianism that led astray so much of the Church for so long.
One last thing: I will NOT obey a cleric who protested with communists against the nuclear deterrent that my shipmates and I on the old submarine were providing to protect freedom in Europe and the United States. As far as I am concerned, Pope Bob the Effeminate is in league with the Enemy. He may be validly Pope, but he needs to be deposed and anathematized. I despise him as much as I did his predecessor, that Marxist Peronist Caudillo.
“Whenever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of the liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment”.—- Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy
Years ago at my old parish, a priest gave a homily in which he passionately denounced abortion. It was a barnburner, and from the gasps I heard from some in the pews, it hit home with more than a few.
When he finished, he was met with sustained applause from most of the congregation, including me. Father did not acknowledge the applause, but carried on with the Mass— which was the best response. Later I wrote him a letter thanking him for his strong sermon and apologizing for clapping, mentioning Pope Benedict’s quote above. (I must admit that my letter had a second purpose besides thanking him— I’d bet his unvarnished truths had a few souls complaining to the bishop, and I wanted Father to have a letter like that in his defense).
The concept of “active participation” has morphed over the years. Before, it meant that the laity would prepare for Mass, review the Propers and the readings, join their prayers to those of the priest, and hold their attention on where they were (at Calvary itself) and Who they were there to worship. Now, “active participation” has devolved into doing things, and not doing things is seen as passive and backward.
It’s a strange sort of clericalism that holds that the laity’s active participation isn’t enough, and that it’s better to be more like the clergy by distributing Communion, lectoring, reading the intercessions — now there’s even a push to have laity give homilies. The message seems to be that simply doing a layman’s duty to join one’s prayers to the Mass, to attend to the Mass, isn’t worthwhile. It’s as if the new “active participation” is to LARP as a demi-priest.
Active participation is a disservice to the laity.
I used to be a lector. (I no longer read because, in my parish, the function is now married to superfluous minister of holy communion.)
I found that, though I was glad to be of service, I never reached the same level of prayer as when I was in the pews. I had to keep part of my mind in practical mode, for fear of missing what I had to “do next.”
I wonder if priests experience the same thing, or if the graces they receive though the sacrament of holy orders mitigates that somewhat.
It strikes me as the Martha/Mary situation, and we are foolishly choosing the lesser, Martha part.
Never mind the fact that Paul VI essentially ignored the Council document on the liturgy in implementing the Novus Ordo. A better English translation of the Latin actuoso participatio would have read actual participation as opposed to active participation. Actual participation can include outward participation but it doesn’t necessitate it.
In fact, the TLM according to the 1962 Missal is closer to what the Council called for than the NO, particularly given how it’s normally celebrated.
But that doesn’t mean the Missal didn’t need a significant update. The inclusion of the vernacular was part of that. Years ago, I remember that even some trads were advocating for a significant portion of the TLM be in the vernacular. In his ten year post mortum on the Council, then-Fr. Joseph Ratzinger claim that even Trent saw the vernacular as a possibility.
Abbot Boniface Luykx was a peritus at the Council. He was an advisor to Bp Malula, who later became a cardinal. In an interview he gave to St Joseph Communications back in the nineties, he goes through all this. He cites problems in the TLM that needed correction and the liturgical movement that had been going on for over fifty years prior to the Council.
But he laments how the NO was put together. Among other things, he says it was conducive to abuses. That much is pretty obvious.
While it seems rather clear that Pope Leo is not going to be overly generous to this attached to the TLM, he’ll probably look the other way at bishops who ignore TC. That’s about the best that can be hoped for given what the pope has seemed to indicate.
Thank you, Donald McClarey