This is a timely post, given our recent discussions about the wolves among the shepherds.
Many, perhaps even most, of us ortho-Catholics aren’t fans of homilies (e.g., Bonald’s post on the topic from earlier this year), those long, bloviating, insipid talks delivered after the Gospel reading and before the offertory, pockmarked with jokes and irrelevant personal anecdotes. I often shake my head after hearing them, thinking something I often think after my interactions with parish leaders: “What a missed opportunity.” But I had never before heard or read about a homily that was actively pernicious until I came across this one, delivered by a deacon at a San Francisco Bay-area parish, entitled “Chasing the Money Changers out of the Temple.” Guess who the money changers are?:
As we celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the beginning of Vatican II, I think it’s important to remember what things looked like before the council reforms. As the people of God we have always been called to worship well. But, as Father Dibble reminded us last week, the council was called to “open the windows”, to bring some fresh air into every aspect of the church, including worship. If you are as little as five or ten years younger than I, you probably have few memories of the pre-Vatican II church. So I want to take a few minutes to walk down memory land and share with you what it looked like back then.
(Slide 1) This is what the inside of a typical Catholic Church looked like in 1960. There was beautiful art work, painted ceilings, and many statues. If you look at either side of this picture, you’ll notice the “side altars”. Very often, while one mass was being offered at the main altar, separate masses would be offered at one or both of the side altars. The idea that any mass was more about the celebrant than the people might be viewed as one of the pre-Vatican II failings of the church.
(Slide 2) As we look at a closer shot, we see a wooden structure that separates the body of the church from the sanctuary. That’s the communion rail, and it served two functions. It was where one received communion, but it was also a physical barrier between the altar and the people. Could that be a money changer? I’ll come back to that in a minute.
(Slide 3) Look at this altar, with its ornate carvings. You could always tell if the mass was really “important” by two things: how many candles were lit on the altar and how many acolytes served at mass. The more important the feast was, the greater were the numbers of both. Look at all of the steps the priest had to climb to approach the tabernacle. Do you think these trappings might be thought of as institutional failings or “money changers”?
(Slide 4) Here’s another communion rail in front of the altar. This is where everyone had to kneel to receive the Blessed Sacrament. The Communion Cloth, this white cloth, was draped over the communion rail by the altar servers, and then communicants had to kneel with their hands under the cloth in case the priest dropped the host and the altar server didn’t catch it with the paten that was held under the chin of each Communicant. Only the priest and bishop had thumbs and forefingers consecrated so they could touch the host. To me the idea that only consecrated fingers could touch the Blessed Sacrament was a bit silly. Why is any finger more sacred than any other?
(Slide 5) This is a rather innocent looking picture, but there is one thing that is worth noting: we didn’t have altar servers, just altar boys! That’s a pretty obvious failing in the institutional church, and we thankfully now include both girls and boys in altar service.
(Slide 6) And then, after we realized that we had so many money changers in our own lives, we had to go to the confessional. It was dark. It was scary and it seemed to be focused on us doing the correct penance rather than on understanding our failings.
(Slide 7) This last slide shows a joyous day, the day that these young people were confirmed. Don’t they look joyful? I think “terrified” is a better adjective. And look how the boys and girls are segregated.
Get that? 400 years of the Church’s liturgical history, approved by an ecumenical Council and a sainted Pope, a mass for which men were willing to die (and often did), was all just an “institutional failure.” And if you disagree, well, go hang, you sexist Pharisee prick!
From the vaguely hinted-at Marcionism in the opening lines to the typically modernist blindness to the withering of the Church in the postconciliar age, I don’t think there’s a single element present in this homily that wouldn’t have driven me to storm out of that church in rage.
Amazing stuff, really, especially when you compare the “institutional failings” of the preconciliar Church (children feel uncomfortable, that incense smell is so strong, etc.) to those of the postconciliar Church (obvious heretics pronounce rebellion with the tacit approval and support of renegade bishops, vocations collapse, ignorance of Catholic moral teachings reach unprecedented highs, etc.). And this, as our Pope (himself no great fan of the novus ordo Mass) struggles to reconcile the SSPX to Rome.
Woe to us, saddled with such shepherds in these dark latter days!
400 years? Closer to 1400. St Gregory the Great would likely have felt at home in any Catholic church in 1950. In 1970, not so much.
What an utterly repulsive homily.
There is no staying power in that sort of religion. It quickly collapses under its own weight. Men stop going, then most women stop going. Collections dry up. You’re left with a bunch of spinsters in crew cuts. The only staying power of leftist religion is… well… leftism. And while that is no doubt a powerful force, there are just so many options out there. I mean why compromise with the leftist-wannabe Catholic church, when you could go down the street to the UUs or Episcopalians or the UCCs or PC-USA or (for that matter) the American Baptists? They are just so much purer, unfettered incarnations of leftism. And after all, since you aren’t really going to hell for missing mass… well why don’t you just sleep in once in a while?
Re: the Novus Ordo. The new translation is, however, a massive improvement dontcha think? I mean not just the responses, which are a trifling bit of it. I mean all the priestly prayers are so much more exalted, richer, meatier. Who’d a thunk that a simple re-translation could effect such a massive change?
Sad tho’ about the Archdiocese of Frisco.
Yeah. The same thing happened in my kirk at about the same time, and throughout the Protestant denominations. We now have a functional division The women on the committees who make declarations… and the ministers, elders and laypeople who cheerfully ignore them and continue to preach the gospel, not what is the current ideological fashion.
The people ignoring the leadership are called conservative. Or fundamentalist. And they are growing… and they act as a brake on the mainline leadership. For when they leave (as most recently happened in the Presbyterians and Anglicans in the USA) the liberal rump go frankly pagan… keeping the forms of religion, but denying the power of it.
And that branch dies.
My comment to my Catholic friends is that the same can easily happen to you. I think the current Pope is aware of this, and has used the last few years trying to turn the Roman church away from liberation theology and back to Christ… but there remain too many progressive fools everywhere.
Which is why we have exceptionally bad sermons (sorry, homilies)
“Sad tho’ about the Archdiocese of Frisco.”
Mmmmh, maybe I shouldn’t say anything since I am not RC. But do you think this concerns only the Archdiocese of Frisco? Me thinks it is a worldwide calamity for the RCC…
Look at Europe, it is now basically devoid of Christianity… never even mind the Protestants, they are barely alive and when they are more of a socialist political group or Gaia-greenies than Christians. The Catholics are down to about less than 8% attendance now (Germany)….and the majority of those who are attending mass are ill catechised flaming liberals.
In my book the only RC remaining, resembling the original RCC, are the SPX group….
In another two or three generations the West might be ripe to be re-evangelized. This time from the Eastern Church…. if the Muslims allow it, that is…
“Mmmmh, maybe I shouldn’t say anything since I am not RC.”
Good point, except that you continued after it. There are certain and many trenches that the Catholics have found necessary to inhabit for the salvation of souls, that the Eastern Orthodox have not faced (though I would be remiss not to acknowledge the particular difficulties Eastern Christians have faced, e.g., Communist Russia). When inhabiting dangerous trenches the weaknesses of the militant are bound to be exposed, some (perhaps many) soldiers are bound to be lost, and the overall mission is not assured of success. This does not mean we should avoid those trenches (though it might mean that we could or should have been better prepared). Whether because of conscious decisions of its hierarchy or for other reasons, the Eastern Orthodox do not face the struggles that come from the apostate West with the head-on intensity that the Catholic Church does. There have been benefits (at least as I see it) to souls because of the Catholic Church’s actions in these modern days, boneheaded as many of these actions have been. If the Eastern Orthodox were as much a part of Western society as the Catholic Church is, I would expect to see similar failings on the part of the EO’s. Since they are not as much a part of Western society, a comparison of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox in such a way as you do comes across as short-sighted to me.
I’ve never looked into it really, but I have heard it said that the Divine Liturgy in Greek Orthodox Churches in the US is not the same as it was in, say, the 1970s. That it, at least as a matter of general practice, has been significantly shortened, for example. Do either of you know if this is true?
I don’t know much about it, except that I’ve read consistently reports that the Greek Orthodox Churches are not as tradition-minded as others, like Serbian Orthodox, or ROCOR. This is probably not news to you however.
“Mmmmh, maybe I shouldn’t say anything since I am not RC.”
Of course…! I knew sooner or later somebody would use this line of mine as an opener for his rebuke. However, I thought of using this line more as a matter of politeness and statement from where I am coming, since this is not, I hope, an exclusive RC forum….
Having said that and read your reply, I ask myself what is your point? Obviously, you have a very limited knowledge of the Orthodox Church here in NA and abroad, as well as of her history, ancient and modern. Otherwise you would not speak the way you do…
My point is, that all that is bemoaned by traditional Catholics about the present shape of their church is that, the dilemma is self-inflicted. The Catholic church, for anyone with a minimum of awareness, is in schism with itself. The question remains which part is the true RC church. I would hazard a guess that at least three quarters of today’s Catholics are in fact apostate and that includes her priests and bishops. However, no Pope in his right mind would acknowledge that fact, for obvious reasons…
“Since they are not as much a part of Western society, a comparison of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox in such a way as you do comes across as short-sighted to me….”
For your information, the Orthodox Church (after producing hundreds of thousands of martyrs under the Communists and the Muslims) is now very much a part of the West. In fact, since the fall of Communism, the OC is a growing part of the West and around the world. She is growing with converts leaving the dilapidated churches of the West in search for traditional teaching, worship and guidance.
I think you are somewhat disingenuous by tooting the wonderful, “boneheaded” things the RCC does in order to right the cart she herself drove into the ditch… and I don’t quite see it, except in the SSPX group.
BTW, I am definitely NOT anti-RCatholic. However, I am saddened looking a the shambles of what was once the great (even if schismatic) Western Patriarchate… I pray that the Eastern and the Western Church will one day be re-united. However, as it looks today, this day is moving further away from us with every day.
@Bill & buckyinky
The Divine Liturgy is in all jurisdiction the same. The language may change.. The liturgy is unchanged for at least the last twelfhundred years. What some Greek OC (and other) churches have done (mainly in NA) is to introduce pews and a couple have even organs. That is quite non-canonical and a sorry consequence of wanting to fit in with the “West”
You won’t find things like this in the newest mission churches of the OC (doesn’t matter what jurisdiction) and it may slowly disappear again in the erring churches… If you know Byzantine chant (or Valaam chant for that matter), then you understand that this sounds atrocious in context with any instrument (which are not allowed at all in OC services). On top of it pews are completely impractical. We do prostrations and deep bows during liturgy, how can you do those in pews? You probably bang your fore-head…
Pews and organs (instruments) are not conform with orthopractice.
The liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom lasts at least two hours, the liturgy of Saint Basil even longer… and good orthopractice is, you stand….
Politically, you find Zebras of all stripes in the OC as everywhere…. but Holy Tradition is unchangeable….
How many Orthodox are needed to change a light-bulb?…. Change???
“And look how the boys and girls are segregated.”… He failed to mention that they were no female priests. Why can’t I consecrate the host? It is revolting.
I was born after Vatican II, grew up in Latin America, and I did have to go through a lot of liturgies in which songs were sung by a guy with a guitar singing John Denver melodies. However, there are still no altar girls, and people still receive the host on the tongue. Actually, few people take communion, as not everyone fells worthy of the host, so helpers were not needed.
I was a little surprised when I first came to the U.S. that people would take the host in their hands, and that everyone took communion. Once I noticed that confessions are given only for an hour a week, the math didn’t make sense to me. Either these people are really saintly around here, or there is little respect for the Blessed Sacrament. (By the way, in Spanish we call it “Santísimo Sacramento”, which means the Most Holy Sacrament – maybe we should change the language to properly reflect the appropriate level of reverence). This homily is reflection of that.
I agree with Steve on the new translation. They should also bring back chest thumping into the Confiteor, to bring us a little bit closer to the ground (humus, humiliate, humble, human), and attack our pride. I do the chest thumping anyway now.
The chest-thumping never left. Neither did performing a minor bow each time Our Lord’s name is used. Neither did the profound bow at the incarnatus. All are in the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (both the old one and the new translation). Same with genuflecting (sort of). We novus ordo types are required to do them.
Now, Americans don’t do any of these things, of course, disobedient turds that we are. At my parish (which is the best one anywhere near me for this stuff), about half bow at the incarnatus, about 10% strike their chests at the mea culpas, and maybe 1% bow at each mention of Our Lord’s name.
It might help if the priests pointed out, every once in a while, that these gestures are required. On the other hand, the poor guys at my parish made a big production a few weekends ago of preaching about proper attire. I have noticed no effect of that, so presumably it has to be repeated to have any effect.
Where was the chest thumping supposed to happen in the old translation? There was no “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa”. Thankfully, it has been reintroduced. Before that, I didn’t do chest thumping in the English version, as I had no clue when to do it.
Good point. I never noticed the “(strikes breast)” notation in the old missal, either. No one did it at my parish. With the new translation, maybe a third to half the people present do it. Nearly everyone does it at the weekday masses I attend.
I never heard the rule about bowing at the mention of the Lord’s name. Never once seen any one do it. I always do the chest strikings at the mea culpa and bowing at the waist at the incarnatus, and I thought my parish (while fecklessly administered) was pretty holy in its disposition, being older and very Hispanic.
In the old translation, you struck your breast at “through my fault,” i.e. at the crappy translation of mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Proph, begin at para 273 on this page. In relevant part:
So, it’s not just at Our Lord’s name, but at His mother’s name as well and at the name of the saint in whose honor Mass is being celebrated. There are other profound bows as well. I confess to not doing all of them, but I am working up to it.
On the bow for the Lord’s name, a minority of old women (and nobody else) does it, in my experience. Also, the bow tends to be fairly slight, as I imagine they get tired of answering the question “what are you doing?” Nobody asks me ’cause I look like a jerk. Even though, in reality, I’m a teddy bear on this sort of thing in person.
The saddest part of the homily was the total lack of understanding of the beauty of the Latin Mass. It offered us a hint of the sacred, of something bigger than ourselves, of the true mystery of God. I didn’t need the focus on me, mine, my. I needed help focusing on God. I miss it very much.
Subversive sermons and a banal formulary preferred to a beautiful liturgy are pretty much the case these days at almost every Roman Catholic and Anglican church. It appears that the Eastern Orthodox Church is the only holdout against the forces of modernism which, in the name of ecumenism or some other chimera, destroy ancient and hallowed forms of worship.
I was born after V-II but was raised in a parish headed by a pastor who was very anti-Vatican II and kept his communion rail, kept boys and girls separated during the sacramental ceremonies of First Penance, First Holy Communion, and Confirmation, never allowed altar girls – only boys, and kept his dark confessionals lining the sides of the church.
I feel uncomfortable in a modern confessional, with only a screen separating me and the priest in a well-lit room. To me, a dark confessional is reflective of the dark and somber mood, and of the promised anonymity and security of the seal of the Confessional, something that is lost now.
I am not very comfortable in this new RCC. I feel especially lost at Communion, when I choose to receive by mouth. It seems to discomfit the priest greatly. The state of dress of the Eucharistic ministers (never, ever had those in my old parish 20+ years ago) is ghastly – no suits, no ties, or dresses, or even special stole or other vestment to indicate the holy duty of distributing the host.
I am starting to wonder if Catholicism can be saved. The pace and strength of modernity is fast and great and the church is being swept up in it – willingly, it seems.
At rehearsal for Easter vigil last night, we practiced receiving first communion on unconsecrated wafers. The deacon told us explicitly that while it was our right to receive communion on the tongue, he would vastly prefer we receive it on the hand. This struck me as a strange thing for an ordained man to say, as if communion were about him and his preferences.
We are fortunate, I think, that the modernist heretics are largely old and dying off, while the seminarians and young priests are stunningly orthodox. I suspect the heretics drove out all the leftists and only the committed Catholics remained. A great winnowing, indeed.
That’s better than I got when I was received into the Church. Nobody ever mentioned to me that it was possible to receive on the tongue. In RCIA, we practiced receiving and they just went through the “making a throne with your hands” thing as if that was the only option. They did the same thing with my kids in CCD. Holy Week at RCIA was quite weird, generally, though. On Holy Thursday, they had us attend a “Seder meal” in the Church basement. Some of the RCIA teachers were so moved by this ceremony that they were crying (I kid you not). Naturally, I received first communion on the tongue and have always received on the tongue since. It’s kind of fun to do it when you are travelling and in an urban parish. The EMHC often get pretty tense about it. Nobody has ever said no, though.
It is a little strange that you are receiving your first communion from a deacon. Why is that?
It was only the rehearsal; the priests weren’t present, being distracted, I assume, by other duties. I should receive it from the priest on Easter vigil. Hopefully.
We did a seder meal, too. It was heavily Catholicized, which is good, as I’ve heard these things can veer into superstition when done according to traditional Jewish rubrics. The deacon who ran it and the RCIA class in general lacks the gravitas to make it a particularly moving or even holy affair.
Once a priest told me it was away to avoid the spreading of the flu.
So your baptism and communion are imminent this week? Bless you and congratulations. Your old blog was one that brought me back, you should know that. It was refreshing to see a converts view on a faith I thought I had abandoned for life.
Yes, I get all my sacraments on Saturday night. It’s been a long time coming. Eight months seems like a cruelly long time to make a man wait for them.
I’m so glad to know you found my ramblings helpful! Feedback like that is always nice; it reminds us we’re doing at least some small bit of good in the world. I, in turn, owe Bonald a debt of gratitude.
Eight months seems like a cruelly long time to make a man wait for them.
You should try getting married in the church. Eight months is practically a trip on the autobahn. Actually tho’, since the ordinary ministers of the sacrament of holy matrimony are the baptized couple themselves, they should be able to so administer it any-the heck-time they want… with obedience due only to canon law, from which a dispensation can easily be obtained.
I’m not looking forward to this when any of mine get married. A year or more wait is way too long for a couple pledged to each other to have to wait. As much as I’d want them to get married according to Catholic norms, the norms locally construed are so onerous and incoherent, so as to positively encourage fornication, that I’d think it better for them just to see a JP, do the wild thing, goto confession, and get a convalidation later.
A year or more? Yikes. I plan on taking advantage of the sacrament of matrimony soon, and I was under the impression the norm was more like 4-6 months.
Huh, so the Seder meal thing is some kind of RCIA fad? I wonder what it’s origin is? The people doing it at my parish made some claim about how it was going to help us understand the Last Supper or something. As I understand it, little done at a Seder meal is surviving tradition from the first century, so how it is going to help me understand anything is a mystery.
Huh, so the Seder meal thing is some kind of RCIA fad?
Bill, there’s a little known rite within the Catholic Church known as the Easter Vigil, where catechumens are baptized, chrismated, and receive first Holy Eucharist. It could be said to be related to the Seder, but few would confuse the two.
A year or more? Yikes.
YMMV, Proph. All I know is that in our parish they say meet with a priest to reserve the church at least one year in advance and sign up for, oh what do they call it, Pre-Cana… which is some sort of discernment process wherein all the cohabitating faithful can carefully and prayerfully discern their vocation. It is, veritably, a joke.
I mean, I understand why our parish would be a popular place to hold a wedding. I understand therefore why you might need to reserve it a year in advance… but what has that to do with holy matrimony? Since when is a private mass required? Why can’t you all just get married at a normal old Sat vigil? The faithful would be thrilled to show up at a regular ol’ mass and find out someone is getting married. Bang! That’s be better than any worship band that the protestants have. And it isn’t as though there is a wedding there EVERY saturday anyway… but in spring and summer more often than not.
What does the church truly require of two people who wish to confect the sacrament of holy matrimony? Only that they are properly disposed confer this sacrament on one another–proper matter, form, and intention. That’s it! And what does that take? A whole freaking year of “pre-Cana”? Wouldn’t a twenty minute interview with a priest do? I mean at least the priest could discern in 20 min, assuming he asked the right questions, whether or not you were in a state of grace.
So what do I know… I hope your experience is different… and if not, well there’s always my plan B above: goto the JP, do the wild thing, goto confession, get a convalidation. No muss, no fuss.
Still, ugh. From my brief Googling, six months definitely seems to be the expected minimum of pre-cana. I guess I can see why it would be useful for the average Catholic couple, but my girlfriend is a certified catechist for Theology of the Body and I’ve done my homework. I have a horrible feeling it will wind up being just like RCIA — an agonizingly long and vapid time-waster filled with lots of missed opportunities. I’m sure she and I could bang out all the required details with her parish priest in like, three hour-long sessions.
Scratch that Bill, I see what you were referring to. My apologies.
Because of the fundamental unity of the Christian faith with the OT, there are inevitable Christological inferences from the Seder, whether or not it is today practiced as it was in the 1st century or not.
@Ralph
“Once a priest told me it was away to avoid the spreading of the flu.”
The good man must be of deep faith. He believes the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ our Saviour might spread disease… Oy vey, meshugge.
Not to mention 6 extra mo. of increasingly difficult temptation.
Father Dibble?
I mean, the jokes just write themselves, don’t they?
For comparison, here’s a nice article on the sacred traditions of the Mass, and how the Church protects and preserves the very culture of Western Civilization:
The Mass and the World
Ha ha. This one is good too: Mantilla the Hon on Comfortable Churches
I must be charitable and NOT send that to the leadership of my Kirk. But then, my congregation (we have three) meets in a school hall, and trust me, it is neither beautiful or comfortable.
/rant/. As a musician… look, we are no more holy than anyone else, and our job is not to stand up the front and LEAD. It is to accompany, with skill, the congregation. Perhaps to play an introit, or support the choir. It is not about being on stage or having egos. In fact, we are better stuck in a corner, and allowed to work from there.
And we don’t need amplification. An organ can drown out a congregation. Two or three guitars can cut through… that is what steel strung acoustic guitars were designed to do. Instead of having one or two string players and mike them, simplify the music (which is not that hard if you transpose most things down to make them singable) and get the kids who play to be there and play along with their parents.
Leave the trained chior and evensong to the cathedral. Us amateurs can still play Bach, Handel, Luther and Wesley.
/end rant/
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The following might improve Homilies
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/anichols/year-ofthe-lord's-favour/year-ofthe-lord's-favour.htm