Michelle is Mad, but at Least She's Not RadTrad
A few comments on a post by Michelle Arnold over at Jimmy Akin's blog, called Surviving Sunday Mass.
Already I'm amused by the title. "Surviving Sunday Mass" is a great description of what I did for weeks and months on end before I sold out to the reverence and respect of RadTrad Masses.
I think Michelle and I could probably get along, if we were to sit down for coffee sometime and swap liturgical horror stories. I despise all the things she despises, and probably for the same reasons - even before I read Jimmy's book Mass Confusion and could actually attach a canonical document name or paragraph number to my frustrations, I had a gut-level reaction to the general ambience of and specific actions carried out during my parish's regular Mass.
Holding hands during the Our Father? Sure, that's an easy one. Or listening to half the congregation brazenly impose their gender-neutral and anti-clerical values on the rest of us by mucking up the Gloria ("... and peace to God's people on earth"), the Creed ("who for us men and our salvation ..."), and the Orate Fratres ("May the Lord accept the sacrifice at our hands, for the praise and glory of God's name ... for the good of all God's Church") ... that was another favorite of mine.
But more than this, it was the attitude of this regular parish Mass - and of every Novus Ordo Mass I've ever been to (and believe me, I traveled all over my diocese looking for a good one). And it was not until I heard about those "radical Traditionalists" that it finally made sense - why all those little abuses angered me, why the whole ambience of the Novus Ordo got under my skin, why I seemed doomed to a lifetime of barely surviving Sunday Masses.
Are you ready, boys and girls? The answer is community-centered Mass. Put more harshly, the problem is the cult of Man is replacing the cult of God. And the Novus Ordo Mass just invites this sort of abuse.
I used to think the problem was that priests abused the New Mass. After spending six months attending nothing but the Tridentine Mass, and then having to go back to the New Mass for one Sunday, I realized that the New Mass is the abuse - it's an abuse of the Old Mass, and an abuse of the trust of the council fathers who unwittingly signed the death warrant for the Old Mass when they approved Sacrosanctum Concilium.
Michelle says, "I sympathized with the outrage radical Traditionalists feel when liturgical rubrics intended to safeguard the dignity of the Mass are treated as menu options at Cafeteria Catholicism."
To which I say: Michelle, dear, take another look please. The "menu options" are an officially approved part of the Mass. Shall I use Greeting Form A, Penitential Rite C, Eucharistic Prayer II, Memorial Acclamation A, and Blessing Form C? Or will it be Greeting Form B, with Penitential Rite A, Eucharistic Prayer IV with Memorial Acclamation B, finishing out with Blessing Form B? No! I got it! We'll use form B for both the Greeting and Penitential Rite, add Eucharistic Prayer I (do I use the option to invoke all the saints, or just some of them?) with Memorial Acclamation D, and close with Blessing Form A.
Michelle, are you listening? The do-it-yourself, piece-it-together-on-the-fly form of liturgy is the essence of the New Mass. The priest has options out the Bugnini - and after he's spent years on the job, learning how to get creative with this kind of spontaneous liturgy, tell me how on earth can we expect him to not take spontaneous liberties everywhere else in the Mass?
He's been trained to tinker! Everything about this Mass screams sure, go ahead, fiddle around and fine tune, and nothing in the rubrics of the Mass cultivates the sense that this liturgy is too sacred to be tampered with on a whim. Nothing.
So, I really do feel bad for those folks who are scandalized (as Michelle obviously was) by liturgical abuses, but on the other hand, I don't feel sorry for you - just like I don't feel sorry for someone who goes out to play mud football and ends up coming back dirty.
Folks, you know this New Mass is broken - not merely abused, but essentially broken. It was "fabricated" as a "banal on-the-spot product" (those are Cardinal Ratzinger's words, not mine), specifically designed to please the Protestants and eliminate obstacles to ecumenism (the council said in Sacrosanctum Concilium, par. 1, that the reform was undertaken "to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ").
Of course it's going to be offensive to a Catholic at a gut-level. It ought to be. Why are you so constantly surprised and/or upset by this? You keep going back to it!
What is amazing to me is the spiritual sadomasochism of some Catholics - such as Michelle, well-meaning though she may be. Here she is, having her sensus catholicus trampled upon, and she's forced to engage in a series of exercises meant to counteract the natural frustration she's feeling. Why?
Because this is a cross from Christ, a kind of meritorious suffering that must be endured? I don't think so. I did at one time, but then it dawned on me - isn't it more offensive to God that I'm actually participating in this nonsense?
And what's so sadly amusing about all of this is that people who get so frustrated over liturgical abuses end up becoming the very thing they hate - Michelle alludes to this in an oblique way in her post.
The priest skipped the Creed. So what did she do?
So she broke with the unity of the congregation, rebelled against the prevailing tide of the current liturgical direction, and did her own thing.
The priest "cordially invited" the congregation "to extend their hands to the elect and pray along with the priest. Then we were to 'welcome' the elect with a hearty round of applause."
Humanistic, anti-clerical nonsense. Michelle knows this. So what did she do?
Make no mistake about this, folks - what she did in response to these liturgical innovations was come up with a few liturgical innovations of her own. Sure, she felt hers were a bit more on the side of orthodoxy, but that's rather a bit relative in this case, don't you think?
Michelle is so bent on not getting infected with the disease of "radical Traditionalism" that she doesn't realize she's already caught the disease. She's become a liturgical maverick who refuses to play by the rules of her priest, who rebels against the accepted direction of the liturgy when she decides that an "abuse" has occurred, and who spontaneously invents her own liturgical novelties in order to counter-act what she perceives as innovation in the liturgy.
How is this any better than what the liturgical innovators are doing?
It isn't. That's why I quit going. Because I used to do those same things; I'd emphatically say "I believe in one God ... " at the Creed because I knew that's what the Latin text of the Novus Ordo said; I'd change the Domine non sum dignus so that I was saying, under my breath, "Lord I am not worthy to receive you under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed," because - again - I knew that's what the typical text of the Novus Ordo called for; I would close my eyes and clasp my hands during the Our Father because I didn't want to hold hands; I would remain the lone person still kneeling until the final sung "Amen" was over after the consecration, even though everyone else would get up as soon as the singing began; I refused to turn my back on the altar during the sign of peace, and if someone behind me reached up for my hand, I would ignore them.
Basically, it boiled down to this: why was I still attending a Mass whose rubrics I could so little stand that I was barely following any of them any more? Why even go, if at every turn you have to lapse into Liturgical Lone Ranger mode and deviate from what the congregation is doing?
If you're going to go mud-wrestling, expect to get dirty and don't complain. If you're going to go to the New Mass, expect spontaneity, innovation, and a lot of signs and gestures geared towards making the community feel all warm and fuzzy - expect to hold hands during the prayers, expect to be asked to applaud for people, expect to be asked to simulate the priest's gestures and prayers - and don't rebel against this because you are, in fact, a guest in this house. Don't be rude. If you don't like it, stop going.
So Michelle asks:
Apparently she does this by creating her own on-the-spot liturgies, and rebelling against the congregation as she sees fit - all to keep her head above water while participating in the one activity of her week that should bestow peace upon her. Does this not smell a bit funny?
She asks again:
Ah, but Michelle, this is entirely the wrong question. The first and most obvious question is "why am I likening my local parish Mass to something which drops acid into my soul?"
The problem is that she's already decided the case. After describing several abuses at her local Novus Ordo parish which made her mad enough to have to rebel against her parish's liturgy, she immediately turns her attention to ... finding a "cure, or even an inoculation, to radical Traditionalism"?! Excuse me?!
I don't think Traditionalism is what needs the attention right now. Maybe start with your priest, and since he's not going to listen to you, go to the bishop. Now, he's not going to listen to you either, so you might just want to cut to the chase and write to the pope, who will - I promise - take less severe action than he took against the Neo-Catechumenal Way, who for their abominable liturgical abuses and heretical teachings have earned a stern rebuke from Rome and have been given two years to knock it off, before they receive another warning.
Michelle, here's a better idea and a much better use of your time (assuming you're on this earth to save your soul, and you recognize that you have a limited time in which to do so): find the nearest Tridentine Mass and drop the Novus Ordo like the acid-dispenser that it is. I don't care if that Tridentine Mass is an Indult Mass, a Mass offered by the Fraternity of St. Peter, or a Mass offered by the Fraternity of St. Pius X (which everyone ought to know by now is an option which incurs no penalty for the lay-faithful).
Alternatively, you can continue doing the maverick thing at your own parish, ironically enough, engaging in the same kind of so-called disobedience for which you are trying to find a cure - or at least, an inoculation.
Already I'm amused by the title. "Surviving Sunday Mass" is a great description of what I did for weeks and months on end before I sold out to the reverence and respect of RadTrad Masses.
I think Michelle and I could probably get along, if we were to sit down for coffee sometime and swap liturgical horror stories. I despise all the things she despises, and probably for the same reasons - even before I read Jimmy's book Mass Confusion and could actually attach a canonical document name or paragraph number to my frustrations, I had a gut-level reaction to the general ambience of and specific actions carried out during my parish's regular Mass.
Holding hands during the Our Father? Sure, that's an easy one. Or listening to half the congregation brazenly impose their gender-neutral and anti-clerical values on the rest of us by mucking up the Gloria ("... and peace to God's people on earth"), the Creed ("who for us men and our salvation ..."), and the Orate Fratres ("May the Lord accept the sacrifice at our hands, for the praise and glory of God's name ... for the good of all God's Church") ... that was another favorite of mine.
But more than this, it was the attitude of this regular parish Mass - and of every Novus Ordo Mass I've ever been to (and believe me, I traveled all over my diocese looking for a good one). And it was not until I heard about those "radical Traditionalists" that it finally made sense - why all those little abuses angered me, why the whole ambience of the Novus Ordo got under my skin, why I seemed doomed to a lifetime of barely surviving Sunday Masses.
Are you ready, boys and girls? The answer is community-centered Mass. Put more harshly, the problem is the cult of Man is replacing the cult of God. And the Novus Ordo Mass just invites this sort of abuse.
I used to think the problem was that priests abused the New Mass. After spending six months attending nothing but the Tridentine Mass, and then having to go back to the New Mass for one Sunday, I realized that the New Mass is the abuse - it's an abuse of the Old Mass, and an abuse of the trust of the council fathers who unwittingly signed the death warrant for the Old Mass when they approved Sacrosanctum Concilium.
Michelle says, "I sympathized with the outrage radical Traditionalists feel when liturgical rubrics intended to safeguard the dignity of the Mass are treated as menu options at Cafeteria Catholicism."
To which I say: Michelle, dear, take another look please. The "menu options" are an officially approved part of the Mass. Shall I use Greeting Form A, Penitential Rite C, Eucharistic Prayer II, Memorial Acclamation A, and Blessing Form C? Or will it be Greeting Form B, with Penitential Rite A, Eucharistic Prayer IV with Memorial Acclamation B, finishing out with Blessing Form B? No! I got it! We'll use form B for both the Greeting and Penitential Rite, add Eucharistic Prayer I (do I use the option to invoke all the saints, or just some of them?) with Memorial Acclamation D, and close with Blessing Form A.
Michelle, are you listening? The do-it-yourself, piece-it-together-on-the-fly form of liturgy is the essence of the New Mass. The priest has options out the Bugnini - and after he's spent years on the job, learning how to get creative with this kind of spontaneous liturgy, tell me how on earth can we expect him to not take spontaneous liberties everywhere else in the Mass?
He's been trained to tinker! Everything about this Mass screams sure, go ahead, fiddle around and fine tune, and nothing in the rubrics of the Mass cultivates the sense that this liturgy is too sacred to be tampered with on a whim. Nothing.
So, I really do feel bad for those folks who are scandalized (as Michelle obviously was) by liturgical abuses, but on the other hand, I don't feel sorry for you - just like I don't feel sorry for someone who goes out to play mud football and ends up coming back dirty.
Folks, you know this New Mass is broken - not merely abused, but essentially broken. It was "fabricated" as a "banal on-the-spot product" (those are Cardinal Ratzinger's words, not mine), specifically designed to please the Protestants and eliminate obstacles to ecumenism (the council said in Sacrosanctum Concilium, par. 1, that the reform was undertaken "to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ").
Of course it's going to be offensive to a Catholic at a gut-level. It ought to be. Why are you so constantly surprised and/or upset by this? You keep going back to it!
What is amazing to me is the spiritual sadomasochism of some Catholics - such as Michelle, well-meaning though she may be. Here she is, having her sensus catholicus trampled upon, and she's forced to engage in a series of exercises meant to counteract the natural frustration she's feeling. Why?
Because this is a cross from Christ, a kind of meritorious suffering that must be endured? I don't think so. I did at one time, but then it dawned on me - isn't it more offensive to God that I'm actually participating in this nonsense?
And what's so sadly amusing about all of this is that people who get so frustrated over liturgical abuses end up becoming the very thing they hate - Michelle alludes to this in an oblique way in her post.
The priest skipped the Creed. So what did she do?
While the congregation was busily singing a hymn of repentance (I kid you not), I flipped to the Creed and, sotto voce, read it aloud. (I’ve found that even a memorized prayer is hard to recall when everyone else is singing a song.)
So she broke with the unity of the congregation, rebelled against the prevailing tide of the current liturgical direction, and did her own thing.
The priest "cordially invited" the congregation "to extend their hands to the elect and pray along with the priest. Then we were to 'welcome' the elect with a hearty round of applause."
Humanistic, anti-clerical nonsense. Michelle knows this. So what did she do?
I prayed but did not extend my hand and settled for aiming a bright smile of welcome to the elect rather than applaud.
Make no mistake about this, folks - what she did in response to these liturgical innovations was come up with a few liturgical innovations of her own. Sure, she felt hers were a bit more on the side of orthodoxy, but that's rather a bit relative in this case, don't you think?
Michelle is so bent on not getting infected with the disease of "radical Traditionalism" that she doesn't realize she's already caught the disease. She's become a liturgical maverick who refuses to play by the rules of her priest, who rebels against the accepted direction of the liturgy when she decides that an "abuse" has occurred, and who spontaneously invents her own liturgical novelties in order to counter-act what she perceives as innovation in the liturgy.
How is this any better than what the liturgical innovators are doing?
It isn't. That's why I quit going. Because I used to do those same things; I'd emphatically say "I believe in one God ... " at the Creed because I knew that's what the Latin text of the Novus Ordo said; I'd change the Domine non sum dignus so that I was saying, under my breath, "Lord I am not worthy to receive you under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed," because - again - I knew that's what the typical text of the Novus Ordo called for; I would close my eyes and clasp my hands during the Our Father because I didn't want to hold hands; I would remain the lone person still kneeling until the final sung "Amen" was over after the consecration, even though everyone else would get up as soon as the singing began; I refused to turn my back on the altar during the sign of peace, and if someone behind me reached up for my hand, I would ignore them.
Basically, it boiled down to this: why was I still attending a Mass whose rubrics I could so little stand that I was barely following any of them any more? Why even go, if at every turn you have to lapse into Liturgical Lone Ranger mode and deviate from what the congregation is doing?
If you're going to go mud-wrestling, expect to get dirty and don't complain. If you're going to go to the New Mass, expect spontaneity, innovation, and a lot of signs and gestures geared towards making the community feel all warm and fuzzy - expect to hold hands during the prayers, expect to be asked to applaud for people, expect to be asked to simulate the priest's gestures and prayers - and don't rebel against this because you are, in fact, a guest in this house. Don't be rude. If you don't like it, stop going.
So Michelle asks:
How do we avoid going rad Trad when the temptations to do so can sometimes be overwhelming?
Apparently she does this by creating her own on-the-spot liturgies, and rebelling against the congregation as she sees fit - all to keep her head above water while participating in the one activity of her week that should bestow peace upon her. Does this not smell a bit funny?
She asks again:
How do we prevent righteous anger at genuine problems in the Church from eating away at our souls like dropped acid and turning us into bitter, disaffected souls isolated from the mainstream of Catholic life?
Ah, but Michelle, this is entirely the wrong question. The first and most obvious question is "why am I likening my local parish Mass to something which drops acid into my soul?"
The problem is that she's already decided the case. After describing several abuses at her local Novus Ordo parish which made her mad enough to have to rebel against her parish's liturgy, she immediately turns her attention to ... finding a "cure, or even an inoculation, to radical Traditionalism"?! Excuse me?!
I don't think Traditionalism is what needs the attention right now. Maybe start with your priest, and since he's not going to listen to you, go to the bishop. Now, he's not going to listen to you either, so you might just want to cut to the chase and write to the pope, who will - I promise - take less severe action than he took against the Neo-Catechumenal Way, who for their abominable liturgical abuses and heretical teachings have earned a stern rebuke from Rome and have been given two years to knock it off, before they receive another warning.
Michelle, here's a better idea and a much better use of your time (assuming you're on this earth to save your soul, and you recognize that you have a limited time in which to do so): find the nearest Tridentine Mass and drop the Novus Ordo like the acid-dispenser that it is. I don't care if that Tridentine Mass is an Indult Mass, a Mass offered by the Fraternity of St. Peter, or a Mass offered by the Fraternity of St. Pius X (which everyone ought to know by now is an option which incurs no penalty for the lay-faithful).
Alternatively, you can continue doing the maverick thing at your own parish, ironically enough, engaging in the same kind of so-called disobedience for which you are trying to find a cure - or at least, an inoculation.
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