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Friday, August 9, 2013

WHY LITURGICAL TRADITIONALISTS FEAR LITURGICAL PROGRESSIVES



I think we can sum it up in one word, banality. I use it as "drearily commonplace." While a caricature and hopefully not typical outside of Masses with nearly 4 million people anywhere in the world, the plastic cup ciboria pictured during Pope Francis' final Mass in Rio is exactly what I mean.

Progressives don't care about these sorts of things and think plastic cups for ciboria containing the glorious crucified and risen Body and Blood of our God and Savior Jesus Christ is fine. After all, Jesus was held in a manger when He was born. Progressives hold an extremely low Christology that seems to forget that Christ is no longer a baby in a manger and he is no longer on the Cross. He is in heaven clothed in majestic glory. There is no doubt about His divinity now that the resurrection and ascension have occurred and the end times are here. He, the Christ, is clothed in glory!

Is not the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass a foretaste of the eternal banquet? Does not the Eastern Church tell us that if the Second Coming of Christ occurred during the Divine Liturgy we would not know the difference? Is not the one Sacrifice re-presented in an "unbloody" way, precisely that, unbloody, resurrectional in that sense, a foretaste of all of salvation history from the Word of God that always was, eternal, compressed into a "black hole" that we call the Divine Liturgy, the Holy Mass?

What is causing discomfort amongst orthodox Catholics are signs from the liturgical 1960's and mentality creeping into the papacy and being exaggerated by the left. The plastic cup ciboria of Rio is a result of a dumbed down pre-resurrectional theology of Christ, low Christology. It was rampant in my seminary in the 1970's and a time when corruption of all kinds was rampant there too and in the Church at large, a period of Church history when the molestation of teenage boys by Catholic priests was unprecedented.

Let us hope that the plastic cup ciboria is being viewed in Rome as a horrible abuse at a papal Mass in Rio and steps taken to prevent it in the future.

And while we are at it in Rome, let us pray that the plastic liturgical music at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in Rio with Pope Francis is viewed as a liturgical abuse and steps are being taken to prevent that in the future too.

With a review of liturgical practices for the pope on the road in foreign territory where progressive liturgist exert their compromised view of the liturgy based upon a low Christology born in the 1960's and 70's, perhaps Pope Francis was reflecting upon that when he answered a question upon Air Pope 1 as he flew back from Popacabana Beach and its antics to Rome. This is the most accurate translation of what the Holy Father had to say about the Eastern Rite Liturgies:

In the Orthodox Churches they have kept that pristine liturgy, so beautiful. We have lost a bit the sense of adoration. They keep, they praise God, they adore God, they sing, time doesn’t count. God is the center, and this is a richness that I would like to say on this occasion in which you ask me this question. Once, speaking of the Western Church, of Western Europe, especially the Church that has grown most, they said this phrase to me: “Lux ex oriente, ex occidente luxus.” Consumerism, wellbeing, have done us so much harm. Instead you keep this beauty of God at the center, the reference. When one reads Dostoyevsky – I believe that for us all he must be an author to read and reread, because he has wisdom – one perceives what the Russian spirit is, the Eastern spirit. It’s something that will do us so much good. We are in need of this renewal, of this fresh air of the East, of this light of the East. John Paul II wrote it in his Letter. But so many times the luxus of the West makes us lose the horizon. I don’t know, it came to me to say this. Thank you.

Was the Holy Father reflecting upon the rah, rah, cheerleader stuff of World Youth Day and its Masses filled with plastic music and plastic cibori, the disposal generation of the west gone liturgical? Consumerism based upon a low Christology that is neither timeless or beautiful and far from the East from which the Holy Father tells us that we, meaning the Latin Rite Catholics have "lost a bit the sense of adoration" where God is not the center and consumerism and wellbeing based upon it creeps in and is the progressives point of view of liturgy par excellence that we were on the way with Pope Benedict of purging?

Did Pope Francis see in Rio what Pope Benedict wanted to purge? Pray God that the Holy Father did!

The Traditional Liturgy, what some call the Extraordinary Form, captures in a Western way, what the Eastern Way has never lost and we didn't have to lose it either except for a cabal of progressives who thought it was time for the Latin Rite Church to be more like the Protestant communions in style and liturgy rather than the Church of the east.

The EF Mass and the Eastern Rite liturgies are on the same page in terms of "splendor, beauty, adoration and God-centeredness" whereas the OF Mass as drifted off into banality and Protestant corruption what Pope Francis describes as what we have lost compared to the East. It did not have to be that way except the progressives manipulated things and made it so and are trying mightily hard to regain ground they lost under Pope Benedict.

Will Pope Francis allow it to happen? Let us hold our breath and pray that plastic doesn't return from the top down or from the bottom up!

15 comments:

Gene said...

Fear progressives? No...disdain, abhor, contemn, ridicule, combat, yes...fear...no. They have no Christology in any true sense because most of them do not believe Christ was the Son of God, rose from the dead, and will return. They are, quite simply, apostates and enemies of the Church. They should be scorned, countered, defeated, and anathematized....wait, they already were. It is just that we forgot and think we should now be nice to them.

John said...

I would have no problem attending a reverent Novus Ordo. Unfortunately, most of the time NO Masses are celebrated carelessly and adulterated with bad musical programs. The nearest Church has a grand piano which appears to be twice the size of the altar. The piano is situated so close to the "table" that the priest at the altar and the pianist seem to be in a contest for dominating the occasion.

The impression is that a piano concert from time to time is interrupted by prayers. If the Mass is the source and summit of the Church's prayer life, those in charge of it (particularly the priest)not guard its integrity?

The only time I assisted at a reverently in the last 10 years was at Opus Dei retreats.

Father, thank you for all your efforts on behalf of the Mass NO or EF.

Anonymous said...

I did not know that Pope Francis said that about the Eastern Church...thanks for sharing that bit of good , and hopeful, news!

~SL

rcg said...

My problem with the plastic cup is not plastic, per se. Christ was and is humble. But it it is totally different when He chooses plastic so others can have more than when we chose plastic for him so we can keep more. The moment I knew I had to move my family to out trad parish was when the priest explained the presence gesturing to the tabernacle. He knew he was in the pretense of God and behaved that way. Perhaps it is my upbringing, but that is where I depart sharply from 'progressives'.

Marc said...

John, good point about Opus Dei priests. Diocesan priests could learn from them for sure. Both with regard to Mass and with regard to hearing Confessions.

Hammer of Fascists said...

There are two related problems with a so-called progressive liturgy:

1) The low Christology you mention, that, if exaggerated, comes darned close to eliminating the difference between man and God, making us presumptuously feel as if we can approach Christ, God the Father, and the whole subject of salvation as if we are near-equals, or at least bring something of intrinsic value to the table. This is reflected in our treating Christ, through the Mass, as "one of the guys." Obviously this has _some_ basis in the fact of the incarnation and the humble circumstances of Christ's life, but it can easily be overdone. It _has_ been overdone in the last 50 years, I think, because of the systemic reaction against authority in the West (particularly America) since World War II that resulted from the horrendous abuse of that authority. Disdaining the power of the state to commit genocide, turn fire hoses and attack dogs on little black children, or firebomb civilians in Vietnam, we turned God into nothing more than a buddy, since to treat him as someone in authority would have been to lump him with the bad guys. In doing this, we a) confused athoritas with potestas ignoring the fact that God, unlike Hitler/Bull Connor/LBJ is the source of all morality, and b) threw the baby out with the bath, seeing _all_ majesty/sovereignty/authority, and liturgical acknowledgement of it, as wrong and insulting to the dignity of man (or rather, "the people"). It was, and is, and attempt to redefine God in terms comfortable to us.

2) The second problem is that when lots of stuff is being changed drastically in a very short period of time, doctrinal error can come in unnoticed. There is a tendency to uncritically accept it--especially among those who wanted change to begin with--as good change that is merely disciplinary disciplinary without stopping to consider things bit by bit or to consider that some of the changes may frankly be heretical or at least tending to the heretical. But the modernists will hear none of this paragraph and little of the last, because they are so wedded to the ideas of progress and utopianism that they have no use for the chains of the oppressive past.

Gene said...

Very good analysis, Anon 5, and right on point in my opinion.

david said...

Why Liturgical Traditionalists fear Liturgical Progressives? Because the Progressives STILL hold all the power and call all the shots.

Doreen said...

The "low Christology" terminology is new to me, but absolutely a perfect nutshell descriptor for what has happened insidiously over the past 50 years to the Western church. I graduated high school in '65, and have watched the every bit of the demise first-hand. No one English word completely describes the experience. The real problem with this low-Christology is that it pretty quickly devolves into no-Christology IMHO. And then, of course, Church and culture become basically synonymous, operating on the same level with each other. Small wonder that the Church no longer inspires the culture to higher things...
5.5 years ago I could no longer tolerate the spiral down and moved East; still Catholic, but without all the liturgical problems discussed daily on this forum. the change has not always been easy (family and friends, etc.), but I find the liturgy transcendent and focused on God alone (ad orientem of course), which is what is supposed to happen in good liturgy, yes? I have found the solution, at least for now.

Anonymous said...

For a great, quick take on the difference between love and toleration-inclusion, and the inherent danger in confusing the two:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l_OfAX5LLOI&feature=related

Natty Bumpo said...

Fear? No.

Loathe? Dread? Repulsed?

Absolutely.

George said...

So Right Anonymous5 on the modern origins of our current predicament.

What developed was a repudiation and lack of respect for Authority which came out of the rebelliousness of the '60's. Certainly one can understand the opposition to the Vietnam war and to segregation but there was a conflation of Good and Bad authority in the minds and attitudes of a good number of people and so all authority was to be distrusted and disdained.
There was a desire among many to be free of what they saw as the shackles of oppression and tradition.Those with that mind set within the Church applied that same attitude in implementing
of Vatican II reforms.

John said...

Rejection of authority is symptom, a result of loss of FAITH. In people's lives faith has been replaced by ideology. Liberal ideology approves of radical individualism and relativism. Its priests (authority figures) are those who fulfill this ideal. Entertainers and celebrities do this best with their reckless, emotion fueled life-styles.

The zeitgeist demands the same behavior from religious leaders. (From church musicians). The Church has a choice conform or resist. Music is the leading indicator of where the culture is going. Like it or not banal music in Church is culture friendly, Gregorian chant is "old school."

Celebrities have authority even in religion. A religious leader seeming to accept current cultural norms. For example, if he uses liberal vocabulary and supports secular social concepts in public statements he will be popular. Counter cultural religious leaders will be labeled right wing -never left wing- extremists.

However, God is in charge. In His good time, He will renovate the Windswept House.

Anonymous said...

The problem isn't that Jesus would humble himself to be in a plastic cup--it's that WE would put him there. Lord, have mercy.

Gene said...

Mark Duch, you nailed it! Amen.