Before I submit to Rome, or even take her seriously as a church, she must first do a few small favours for me.
I. Correct her gross alterations of the liturgical texts in the last 100 years and bring them back into line with the liturgical Tradition of the Church. And excommunicate anyone who dissents.
II. Reverse her anti-Evangelical and anti-Traditional teachings since the Council of Trent.
III. Convene an Ecumenical Council of all the world's bishops to discuss the true nature, and authoritative limits, of the Papacy, vis the last 100 years of liturgical reform, and the liturgical issues of Munificentissimus Deus and Ineffabilis Deus.
IV. Abolish the new translation of the Missal as offensive to the very principles of translation.
V. Abolish Summorum Pontificum as offensive to the very principles of Liturgy, and which belies the true course of liturgical reform in the 1960s when the liturgical books of 1962 were never allowed as an option.
I wonder if people think that I want the Roman Church to conform to my own view of things? I would counter that view with this question: do you seriously think that any of these five points, even if you don't agree with all of them, are unreasonable?
Patricius....you are never unreasonable!
ReplyDelete"Bless me Father.........."
If I might make an observation, the normal definition of 'Tradition' amongst the Latins is "what has been handed down". To break with the tradition of five-hundred years is as much to break with Tradition as anything else.
ReplyDeleteIn a sense, the problm about the idea of abolishing the 'New Rite' is that it is, for many young Catholics, now part of the Church's tradition.
You ask if your points are unreasonable. Simply put, yes, they are. Far from restoring tradition, I see these requests as a demand that the Roman Church overthrow her Tradition, and erect some new construct in its place.
Your demand for an ecumenical council on the limits of Papal authority is slightly odd, because we've already had one. Further, the idea that the Papacy is subject to the authority of other bishops is both against the Canon 1404 ("The First See is judged by no-one"), and actually heretical (see the Council of Constance and 'Haec Sancta Synodus' in particular, which was judged anti-Magisterial).
More importantly, though, your question as to whether your demands are unreasonable does not deny the fundamental point of the question you seek to defeat with it. If I may be so blunt, who are you to make demands of the Church?
Such a personalist approach is generally considered the preserve of Protestantism.
Please pray for me.
...Yes.
ReplyDelete"Before I submit to Almighty God, there are just a few small favours I ask:
ReplyDelete1. Set aside this absurd idea of taking flesh as a human being - a weak, material creature. If He must have a union of any sort, it must surely be with angelic nature.
2. Recognize my own position as the most excellent created nature. In particular, this absurd idea of a mere human being (I mention it again) being the 'Queen of Angels' is too absurd to be countenanced.
3. Give up this totaliarian idea what we should absolutely conform our wills to His Will. This is not compatible with our angelic dignity - which He has Himself created. He has given us will, it is only reasonable that He should permit us to use it.
Regrettably, if He does not agree to these demands then I, and my followers - who include some of the most excellent and beautiful spirits - will be forced to withdraw an infinite distance from Him for the protection of our own dignity.
Signed: The most High Seraphic Spirit, Lucifer."
Since I am more traditional than all Traddies put together I would say that the Roman Church would be vastly diminished if she lost me...
ReplyDeleteSince I am more traditional than all Traddies put together I would say that the Roman Church would be vastly diminished if she lost me...
ReplyDeleteDon't let the door hit you on the way out
...and that is exactly your problem. Regardless of how "traditional" you are compared to the "Traddies" you make yourself a law unto yourself. It is not the Church that must conform to you, you must submit to the Church whether you personally like it or not. The First See is judged by no one. If you like, you can certainly voice your opinions but to make demands on it is the height of hubris.
ReplyDeleteThe Church will go on in her divine mission whether you are there or not. If you die tonight, Satan will not win. No matter how much one knows or does not know, pride never serves them well. You may very well know better than much of the Roman Curia about matters liturgical, but if this knowledge separates you from the unity of the Church Christ himself founded, it is of absolutely no good to you. You can have all the non-lace surplices and non-baroque vestments and non-'62 rubrics in the world and all that can drag you down to hell even if taken in the right degree these things are good in themselves.
Why should anyone submit to the Roman Pontiff when it's demonstrably clear that he has no interest what the tradition actually is? Which leads me to Pachomius' point: the last five hundred years (and probably more) may well be "the tradition" for Catholics today, but what good is it if it's based on a falsehood? All it means is that the last five hundred years has been spent creating scafold in order to prop up the original falsehood.
ReplyDeleteThe doors of cathedrals up and down the land will be quivering on their hinges at the thought of having this nailed to them.
ReplyDeleteCome on Patricius, the liturgy is far too important to behave like an adolescent over it.
Have you considered offering yourself as a a sacrificial victim to God for the restoration of Traditional Liturgy? I'd be tempted to think it has some better chances to work than wasting time, energy, talent, etc in the expanses of the web.
ReplyDeleteRetire to some wood or secluded grove, and begin to pray night and day, fasting assiduously for some years. And when you've grown a respectable beard, go then by the villages of England and Wales and cry out 'poenitentiam agite' to the people.
Frankly, I dont see where all this will lead you unless you enter the ascetical path.
Armchair dilettante havent achieved much in history. Either sword or sackcloth. Or a pen as sharp as a sword.
Andrew,very well put. I had considered posting something similar myself, but you got there first.
ReplyDeletePatricius, please, please do not allow yourself to continue to be mired in this preoccupation with Liturgical pedantry while apparently completely losing sight of what the Liturgy is for.
You seem to be like a husband who is obsessed with his wife's dress, appearance, speech, manners, etc., while having long ceased to love, respect or even know her as a person.
Please recall the Catechism - God made us to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next.
The Liturgy exists to foster our relationship with God, but our own prefrences and prejudices can easily interfere with this.
I urge you to think on Our Lord's own words to the Pharisees, 'Sabbatum propter hominem factum est, et non homo propter sabbatum'.
It seems you are becoming rather like a characature of a Victorian, preciously following the rules of etiquette when calling on friends to the extent that they cannot relax or enjoy the friendship.
The Church's mission is not the presentation dramatic spectacle or military drills; Her mission is the salvation of souls. Please do not allow yourelf to lose sight of this.
You are in my prayers.
Pax tecum.
Patricius,
ReplyDeleteYou made comment earlier about the fact that I've stopped following. This is the reason why. You see, I agree with many of your points regarding the past 500 years of history, but I do not believe one can act in such black-and-white a matter regarding these points. One becomes pharisaical, expecting a perfect following of the law (which you have basically made tradition into) or else eternal damnation.
It's the attitude you hate so much in the 1962 trads, but instead of the '62 missal being your law, it is the medieval liturgy.
Furthermore, any discussion as to how you may be wrong is brushed off by a multitude of claims, often centering around an attack on the papal chair or '62 trads, that depict no sense of humility or even teaching. The claims are often made in an authoritative hubris with condemnations of those who do not follow your path. The only appeals to scripture I can distinctly remember you making are requesting scripture that condemns others.
I pray such a comparison will not drive you to something foolish, but your actions, thoughts, and bearing (at least over the media of your blog) bear a striking resemblance to Tertullian, a psuedo-Christian apologist of the 3rd century. He too expected perfection from those about him and would settle for no "pastoral" compromising in his Church. After a handful of years in the Church, he left for a charismatic sect know as the Montanists, but ultimately left them when they didn't fit his idea of Christianity to form his own sect, the Tertullianists.
I have made clear that I sympathize with your position. The fact that my closest friends and family, desiring my own sanity and an end to my liturgical suffering, push me constantly to simply accept the way things are is a constant pain upon my heart and source of more than a few tearful nights. As for your path of "this or no way," I cannot reconcile the vitriol you wrap your thoughts up in with the Catholic tradition, the Medieval Saints, the Church Fathers, the Epistles of Paul, or the life of Christ.
The fact that you will either give me no response or laugh me off as a man unable to handle the fire of your faith does not prove to me the humility that is demanded by Christ, his Martyrs, or his Saints, and thus does not make you a person I wish to allow to influence my life. There is enough hate and silent disgust outside the Church.
I will be monitoring the blog from time to time in order to perhaps glean those beautiful kernels of the tradition you make known. I pray some humility finds its way into your writing. The Church will not be diminished without you, but one with your knowledge, equipped with the humility and the obedience that animated such the reforms of the past and the Fathers who built up the Church, could aid in ending this time of turmoil that much more quickly.
Christ is in our midst.
I think it is a bit unfair to Patricius to write off his post as monomaniacal liturgical curmudgeonry. There is an interesting ecclesiological question contained within it. The question is what "Apostolic," in the phrase "One, Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church" means. Is "Apostolic" a genealogical term meaning, "traceable line of Popes back to Peter [actually, Linus]," or does "Apostolic" have doctrinal content? Asked another way, the question is: "Does Tradition (with the capital 'T') have actual content? Or is there only tradition (with the minuscule 't') and Authority?"
ReplyDeleteBased upon Patricius' prior posts, I am assuming here that he believes that because the Eucharist is the "source and summit" of Catholic life, he believes that there are liturgical matters which are part of Tradition, rather than mere tradition. If "Apostolic" has content--i.e. it is not simply ordination genealogy--then the content must be Tradition. If this Tradition is changed pursuant to Authority, then it means one of three possible things: Either one has mistaken tradition for Tradition, or there is no such thing as Tradition, or that the Authority has been severely abused--calling into question whether that Authority is actually "Apostolic," and therefore whether the Church of that Authority is really the true Church.
Taking the first possibility, that there is a true difference between tradition and Tradition, it seems to me that Patricius is asking if there is any objective way to distinguish the two before something gets changed. After all, one cannot logically argue that "tradition" is whatever got changed and we know it after the fact. This question is a serious issue with which serious men like Newman wrestled. His "Essay on the Development of Doctrine" is a book-length inquiry into this very issue. Because the Roman Church has demonstrably changed its doctrine (not to mention liturgy) over time, Newman was trying to find a way to reconcile these changes with the notion that the Roman Church had not nevertheless modified Tradition. This is not my blog, so I will not sidetrack this thread to go into why Newman's conclusions were wrong; I bring it up because I think the dismissals of Patricius' complaints implicitly assume without any argument--except the logically fallacious argument from authority--that what he complains about fall into the realm of tradition rather than Tradition.
If we move on to the other two possibilities, one is faced with a question of ecclesiology. Is the Church the Church because it is Apostolic in the genealogical sense--i.e. the true Church is the one that possesses true Authority, or is the Church the Church because it is Apostolic in the other sense--i.e. the true Church is the one that possesses true Tradition?
These are the real issues behind Patricius' post. I get the sense that Patricius believes that "Apostolic" has content--it does not simply refer to a line of ordinations traceable back to the Apostle Peter. Therefore, he is now wrestling with whether he has been presented with enough evidence to convince him that the Roman Church has changed the faith of the Apostles, such that he would be unable to remain in good conscience a Roman Catholic.
It's a great hobby, but is it a vocation?
ReplyDeletePatricius, your problem is that you are Orthodox and refuse to accept the fact. Nothing in your manifesto would be the least bit exceptional in an Orthodox Christian. It is when you pretend to be a Roman that your difficulties start.
ReplyDeleteSo, Tawser, a Catholic with an Augustinian-Thomistic understanding of original sin and who says the filioque is welcome in the Orthodox Church? Is that your implication, that liturgical differences and papal authority are all that separate us? That's nice to know.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen a shred of evidence that our friend is remotely close to being Orthodox; a (more-or-less)common critique of Roman distortions in ecclesiology, and a willingness to connect cause with effect - but that's about it. That brings you no nearer to Orthodoxy than opposition to women bishops in the Anglican communion does to Rome.
ReplyDeleteRather than "Orthodox", Patricius is, I suspect, bascially an "Old Roman Catholic" who would rather be faithful to the maintenance and continuance of the Catholic Faith as it was believed and practised in the West before Ultramontanism eventually took power over the Holy See. Its the fact that HE IS an orthodox Roman Catholic that he perceives the problems extant with that which has claimed to be Roman Catholicism since 1854...
ReplyDeleteI find it curious to be lectured on Catholic orthodoxy by someone who by their own admission (or so it seems), was never part of the Holy Roman Church. I don't accept it from loony Wykehamists, either.
ReplyDeleteCanon Jerome, then what would you perceive to be the problems extant with Utrecht and her offshoots since the 19th century?
ReplyDeleteRegarding the post-1911 Breviary, as a layman I shall wait until I am *regularly praying the pre-1911 Matins* before I presume to bash Pope St. Pius X over the head with it.
ReplyDelete@James C: re Utrecht, probably the same as you?! From 1870 the rot sets in both ways (Rome/Utrecht) - which is why Old Roman Catholicism declared independence from Utrecht in 1910.
ReplyDelete@Pachomius: to whom are you referring?