Reforming the Irreformable? A priest begins to see the light vis-a-vie the NO

Started by Parresia, February 09, 2014, 09:43:03 AM

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Kaesekopf

Is that the kwasniewski article?  I just read it and was shocked it came from him (I wrote him off as very RotR...), but it seems I'll have to change my mind on yet another nlm contributor, lol.

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Wie dein Sonntag, so dein Sterbetag.

I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side.  ~Treebeard, LOTR

Jesus son of David, have mercy on me.

Parresia

Quote from: Kaesekopf on February 21, 2014, 02:33:54 PM
Is that the kwasniewski article?  I just read it and was shocked it came from him (I wrote him off as very RotR...), but it seems I'll have to change my mind on yet another nlm contributor, lol.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

As I noted above, I think we are beginning to see the stirrings of a resistance.  There are a good many people who simply refuse to go back to the 1970-80's and are worried that Francis is trying to take us there.  As a result, they are being open in a way that never would have happened before, and finding solidarity in the fact that through the internet, others like them can be found.  Previously, it was easy to marginalize such people and make them feel alone, or it was simply difficult for them to find good information on the Sacred Liturgy.  Its a different time now. 

Kaesekopf

Indeed, indeed.  Let us praise God for that.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk

Wie dein Sonntag, so dein Sterbetag.

I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side.  ~Treebeard, LOTR

Jesus son of David, have mercy on me.

Parresia

Quote from: Parresia on February 18, 2014, 07:38:24 PM
Here is another priest, this time a Benedictine Monk, who seems to be making the same journey as Fr. Kocik is taking, and many of us have already taken to some extent or other.  He has not gone as far as Fr. Kocik at this point as he still talks about saving the NO towards the end, but he appears to be on the way.  He also discusses how Fr. Kocik's post on NLM the other day rocked him completely, lending credence to Rorate Caeli's claim that this was a seminal moment of some kind. 

QuoteHere probably comes the nub of the issue: the new Mass has the inherent quality that it allows the celebrant to take over. He is "president" (awful word in liturgy), and too easily he becomes star of the show. I see regularly the pressure that some priests unconsciously feel to be creative, to say something relevant or meaningful, to be constantly babbling. Being in the vernacular allows the priest to dominate the Mass, in a way that is near impossible in Latin. He can interject and extemporize at will. There is the modern plague of the opening mini-sermon telling you what the readings are going to be about (cannot the people understand vernacular readings for themselves?!). Then there are the myriad changes and "improvements" that some priests feel that they must impose (must the people be patronized so?). The most dangerous thing of all, perhaps, for the priest is facing the people. Now, everyone's eyes are on him and not on God and his Christ, who will return from the East. Instead of priest and people together facing God they face each other, a closed and often self-satisfied circle. Many a priest will recite the Eucharistic Prayer with his eyes on the people, and so inevitably end up talking to the people, even showing them the host as he pronounces "Take this all of you...", talking all the time to the Father, not to the people.

In other words, there is a disjunction between what is meant to happen at Mass and what seems so often to be happening. There is an incongruence between the words and the actions. It is possible to do the new Mass properly; but the new Mass seems to have the inherent flaw that it is so easy to do improperly.

The whole blog post can be read in its entirety here: http://hughosb.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/the-lament-of-a-liturgical-loner/

In response to this, on the Fr.'s Facebook page a monk of St. Louis Abbey says the following:

Quote from: Fr. Bede Price, OSBDom, I just finished reading your insightful and honest blog post. You realize you have declared war don't you? You have very capably given voice to everything that most of the 'under 50's' want to be able to say, but are frightened to even think. I assume it is because you are a fellow 'colonist' that you are allowed this sort of heresy. I'm sure the brethren of our venerable congregation are willing to overlook this sort of enthusiasm from those of us in the wild west, but from the depths of Berkshire! Unthinkable!

Assuming (and it is a big if...) that you don't quietly disappear in the next few days and months, I will very happily teach you the joy of saying the Old Mass at our forum in 2015. Sadly, once you start saying it, it pretty much ruins your life. Go reread Plato's 'Parable of the Cave'.

Fr. Hugh's Reply:

QuoteOh Dom! As a declaration of war, mine must rank as one of the least terrifying ever. It is most certainly a declaration of discontent, confusion and dissatisfaction with the compromise we now endure, which pleases so very few (and as for pleasing God...).

Perhaps many of the brethren are yet to see it, but there has been no reaction... yet. There are a couple of considerations not appropriate to list here but they will the litmus test of whether I am sent to Craggy Island or not.

Your kind offer is clearly noted, for which offer I thank you.

And another one. 

Some very interesting little tidbits there.  One, that the monk, who is the Rector at the St. Louis Oratory says that Fr. Hugh said what pretty much what most under 50 wish to say.  I take that to mean he is speaking of priests or at least monks.  His further statement that the Old Mass is a joy, but pretty much ruins your life, I take to mean that once you say it, you realize how poor the NO is and how screwed up everything is, and it causes you dismay. 

Keep 'em coming!

Kaesekopf

Wie dein Sonntag, so dein Sterbetag.

I am not altogether on anybody's side, because nobody is altogether on my side.  ~Treebeard, LOTR

Jesus son of David, have mercy on me.

Pheo

Quote from: Fr. Bede Price, OSBGo reread Plato's 'Parable of the Cave'.

This is excellent.  It describes prisoners in a cave since childhood who can only see shadows cast on the wall.  One of them feels compelled to turn around and sees that those shadows are cast by real objects.  He eventually ends up coming out of the cave and, although at first he's blinded by the sun, he begins to see the world around him in a new light (literally) and deduces that, in a certain sense, the sun was the first cause of all the dim shadows seen in the cave.

This paragraph, spoken by Socrates in the narrative, is really something:

"Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which? Moreover, were he to return there, wouldn't he be rather bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the darkness? Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead them up, wouldn't they kill him?"

Oh yes.  I think we can all relate to that.
Son, when thou comest to the service of God, stand in justice and in fear, and prepare thy soul for temptation.

Fiat Varitas

Quote from: Parresia on February 12, 2014, 03:33:11 PM
Quote from: Petrie on February 12, 2014, 03:20:49 PM
Quote from: Parresia on February 12, 2014, 02:57:07 PM
Quote from: Der Polka-König on February 12, 2014, 09:09:07 AM
Best part is, this article has even gotten lots of NO Catholics talking about this, and many of my Novus Ordo friends/acquaintances sympathizing with the Reverend Father's view. The TLM is authentically Catholic, the NO is a human fabrication. The more people that come to realize that, the better things will become, I hope.

Same here.  B16 said as much when he called the NO Mass a "Banal on the spot product".  If something was "on the spot" it can hardly be consistent with Sacred Tradition now can it?

And yet he did nothing to stop it.  It's banal, but we're going to keep using it AND call it the ordinary form.

I think we might find in the years to come that SP will have done much to stop it eventually, particularly when combined with his other teachings on the Mass. 

Except he isn't Pope anymore. He of the Tango and Puppet "Mass" is.

Parresia

Quote from: Fiat Varitas on February 22, 2014, 05:09:16 AM
Quote from: Parresia on February 12, 2014, 03:33:11 PM
Quote from: Petrie on February 12, 2014, 03:20:49 PM
Quote from: Parresia on February 12, 2014, 02:57:07 PM
Quote from: Der Polka-König on February 12, 2014, 09:09:07 AM
Best part is, this article has even gotten lots of NO Catholics talking about this, and many of my Novus Ordo friends/acquaintances sympathizing with the Reverend Father's view. The TLM is authentically Catholic, the NO is a human fabrication. The more people that come to realize that, the better things will become, I hope.

Same here.  B16 said as much when he called the NO Mass a "Banal on the spot product".  If something was "on the spot" it can hardly be consistent with Sacred Tradition now can it?

And yet he did nothing to stop it.  It's banal, but we're going to keep using it AND call it the ordinary form.

I think we might find in the years to come that SP will have done much to stop it eventually, particularly when combined with his other teachings on the Mass. 

Except he isn't Pope anymore. He of the Tango and Puppet "Mass" is.

He doesn't have to be pope for the things he set in motion to bear fruit.

Parresia

Dom Mark Kirby, OSB speaks again on the issue, and in response to the comments he received after his post which is linked above.

http://vultus.stblogs.org/index.php/2014/02/home-from-the-liturgical-thirty-years-war/

QuoteSlowly but Inexorably

A few people have asked me if my personal assessment of "the reform of the reform" means that, somehow, I have decided to shun the vast majority of Catholics who continue to worship using the rites and texts in the current reformed liturgical books. Nothing could be further from my mind and heart. I am well aware that in dioceses and parishes all over the globe an immediate reviviscence of the older liturgical forms is not realistic. It will, I think, happen slowly but inexorably, as new generations discover, here and there, thriving centres of traditional Catholic worship in which, as Joseph Ratzinger once said, "beauty is at home", and in which the mysteries of the faith are transmitted with integrity, with serenity, and with profound humility.  Such centres will, I believe, over time, exercise an attractive, not a coercive, force over parishes and other religious communities, drawing them freely to re–engage with the Church's traditional liturgical rites.


The Privilege of Liminality

I write, of course, as a monk and not as a parish priest. Monasteries take root, flower, and bear fruit in a liminal territory that begins where the secular city ends and that stretches into the uncharted vastness of the desert. The immerited privilege of this sacred liminality allows monks the space and the freedom to reclaim, preserve, and transmit elements of the liturgical tradition that may, for the time being, remain remote and inaccessible to ranks upon ranks of generous priests engaged in the care of souls.


A Weary Veteran Lately Come Home

After having devoted nearly forty years to a worthy "reform of the reform"; after having taught and defended the Novus Ordo Missae to the best of my ability; after having composed — to a certain acclaim, even from a dean of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Liturgy — an entire monastic antiphonal in modal plainchant for the French liturgical texts; after having composed hundreds of plainchant settings for the Proper of the Mass in the vernacular; after having fought mightily for the restoration of the Proper Chants of the Mass; after having argued to the point of exhaustion for an intelligent obedience to the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani; after having poured myself out in lectures and in preaching to priests, seminarians, and religious, I am obliged to conclude that I could have better spent my time and my energy humbly carrying out the traditional liturgy such as I discovered it — and such as I so loved it — in the joy of my youth. I say this not with bitterness but with the seasoned resignation of a weary veteran lately come home from an honourable defeat in the liturgical Thirty Years War.


Good Neighbours All the Same

I respect those priests and layfolk who continue to believe in "the reform of the reform". I honour their devotion and perseverance but, from where I stand and at this point in my life, I think their energy misplaced. Life is short. I can no longer advise others to devote the most productive years of their life to patching up a building that was, manifestly, put up with haste during a boom in frenzied construction; it has shifting foundations, poor insulation, defective fixtures, and a leaky roof.  Right next door, there is another old house, comely, solidly built, and in good repair. It may need a minor adjustment here or there, but it is a house in which one feels at home and in which it is good to live, and it is there that I choose to live out my days. If others choose to live in the "fix–up" next door, I can only wish them well, confident that we can live as good neighbours all the same, with frequent chats over the fence in the back garden, exchanging insights, and perhaps even learning something from one another.


Thomas Merton

One the things I have learned over the past forty years, and this amidst the taedium of much dura et aspera, is that monks (and nuns) who profess the contemplative life gained nothing from changing the forms, content, and language of the sacred liturgy. Liturgical change swept through monasteries like a hurricane, leaving the most pitiful destruction in its wake. Did the so–called liturgical renewal in monasteries give rise to an increase in vocations? Did it generate a more generous commitment to the touchstones of sound monastic observance? Did it foster a greater zeal for the Opus Dei? Few monasteries have recovered from the ensuing decades of liturgical unrest. Even Thomas Merton, when first he caught wind of imminent liturgical changes, warned of the the danger menacing the enclosed contemplative life. In 1964 he wrote to Dom Ignace Gillet, then Abbot General of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance:

This is what I think about the Latin and the chant: They are masterpieces, which offer us an irreplaceable monastic and Christian experience. They have a force, an energy, a depth without equal. All the proposed English offices are very much impoverished in comparison–besides, it is not at all impossible to make such things understood and appreciated. Generally I succeed quite well in this, in the novitiate, with some exceptions, naturally, who did not understand well. But I must add something more serious. As you know, I have many friends in the world who are artists, poets, authors, editors, etc. Now they are well able to appreciate our chant and even our Latin. But they are all, without exception, scandalized and grieved when I tell them that probably this Office, this Mass will no longer be here in ten years. And that is the worst. The monks cannot understand this treasure they possess, and they throw it out to look for something else, when seculars, who for the most part are not even Christians, are able to love this incomparable art.


Bare Ruin'd Choirs

The liturgical reforms of the 1960s and 70s wrenched the interior of life of more than one monk off its axis. The blessed monotony of the psalter, repeated week after week in familiar accents borne aloft on a plainsong at once sturdy and lightsome, gave way to distributions of a vernacular psalter over two, three, and even four weeks, in flagrant violation both of the Rule of Saint Benedict and even of the objective laws of anthropology. I shall never forget the anguish generated by trying to invent new psalm tones suited to the vernacular, all the while clinging desperately in my heart to the chants of the Antiphonale Monasticum that had taken root there. Memories of the traditional liturgy persisted, through the winter of my discontent, like the lovely blossoms of the crocus, in trying to pierce the frozen crust that had been laid over my hortus conclusus.  The "bare ruin'd choirs" of so many abbeys today attest, sadly, to the inward wreckage wrought by liturgical innovation, even when carried out, as it usually was, with the best intentions, and out of a skewed notion of uncritical obedience to what was misrepresented as "the mind of the Church".


Paul VI

I say misrepresented because, although Pope Paul VI wavered on liturgical questions, sided, in some matters, with the most iconoclastic reformists, and even authorised the most dubious innovations, Sacrosanctum Concilium itself, (particularly when read through the lens of Mediator Dei, as it must be in order to be understood correctly) and certain of the same Pontiff's more personal pronouncements called for something quite different from what became the order of the day.  For instance, Pope Paul VI, in writing Sacrificium Laudis to the superiors of clerical religious of men in August 1966, did not shrink from calling them to obedience in matter close to his own heart:

In present conditions, what words or melodies could replace the forms of Catholic devotion which you have used until now? You should reflect and carefully consider whether things would not be worse, should this fine inheritance be discarded. It is to be feared that the choral office would turn into a mere bland recitation, suffering from poverty and begetting weariness, as you yourselves would perhaps be the first to experience. One can also wonder whether men would come in such numbers to your churches in quest of the sacred prayer, if its ancient and native tongue, joined to a chant full of grave beauty, resounded no more within your walls. We therefore ask all those to whom it pertains, to ponder what they wish to give up, and not to let that spring run dry from which, until the present, they have themselves drunk deep.

Of course, the Latin language presents some difficulties, and perhaps not inconsiderable ones, for the new recruits to your holy ranks. But such difficulties, as you know, should not be reckoned insuperable. This is especially true for you, who can more easily give yourselves to study, being more set apart from the business and bother of the world. Moreover, those prayers, with their antiquity, their excellence, their noble majesty, will continue to draw to you young men and women, called to the inheritance of our Lord. On the other hand, that choir from which is removed this language of wondrous spiritual power, transcending the boundaries of the nations, and from which is removed this melody proceeding from the inmost sanctuary of the soul, where faith dwells and charity burns – We speak of Gregorian chant – such a choir will be like to a snuffed candle, which gives light no more, no more attracts the eyes and minds of men.

In any case, beloved Sons, the requests mentioned above concern such grave matters that We are unable to grant them, or to derogate now from the norms of the Council and of the Instructions noted above. Therefore we earnestly beseech you that you would consider this complex question under all its aspects. From the good will which we have toward you, and from the good opinion which we have of you, We are unwilling to allow that which could make your situation worse, and which could well bring you no slight loss, and which would certainly bring a sickness and sadness upon the whole Church of God. Allow Us to protect your interests, even against your own will. It is the same Church which has introduced the vernacular into the sacred liturgy for pastoral reasons, that is, for the sake of people who do not know Latin, which gives you the mandate of preserving the age-old solemnity, beauty and dignity of the choral office, in regard both to language, and to the chant.

Obey, then, these prescriptions sincerely and calmly. It is not an excessive love of old ways that prompts them. They derive, rather, from Our fatherly love for you, and from Our concern for divine worship.



The Old Passion for Things Once Loved

This compelling mandate met, not with filial obedience, but, in most quarters, with indifference and with a dismissive hubris. Even today, forty–eight years later, there are monasteries where the clear mandate of Sacrificium Laudis is utterly unknown. I no longer dream of making an active contribution, however humbly, to a restoration of the sacred liturgy. I am, for the most part, content to return quietly to my choir stall, day after day, and hour after hour, there to chant the changeless praises of the unchanging God. I am, it is true, bone–weary of bloody campaigns in the liturgical Thirty Years War; there are, nonetheless, moments when, to my own surprise, the old passion for things once loved, then lost, and now regained, blazes up and compels me to write.

He has a good deal of credibility on this topic so it is good to see him writing more openly about these issues. 

Fiat Varitas

Quote from: Parresia on February 23, 2014, 03:32:13 PM
Quote from: Fiat Varitas on February 22, 2014, 05:09:16 AM
Quote from: Parresia on February 12, 2014, 03:33:11 PM
Quote from: Petrie on February 12, 2014, 03:20:49 PM
Quote from: Parresia on February 12, 2014, 02:57:07 PM
Quote from: Der Polka-König on February 12, 2014, 09:09:07 AM
Best part is, this article has even gotten lots of NO Catholics talking about this, and many of my Novus Ordo friends/acquaintances sympathizing with the Reverend Father's view. The TLM is authentically Catholic, the NO is a human fabrication. The more people that come to realize that, the better things will become, I hope.

Same here.  B16 said as much when he called the NO Mass a "Banal on the spot product".  If something was "on the spot" it can hardly be consistent with Sacred Tradition now can it?

And yet he did nothing to stop it.  It's banal, but we're going to keep using it AND call it the ordinary form.

I think we might find in the years to come that SP will have done much to stop it eventually, particularly when combined with his other teachings on the Mass. 

Except he isn't Pope anymore. He of the Tango and Puppet "Mass" is.

He doesn't have to be pope for the things he set in motion to bear fruit.

Not if Francis undoes then all. Which he is already starting to do. FI and his comments on trad and the Trad Mass. Francis is the enemy and the polar opposite of Benedict liturgically. The only fruit that Francis will bear will be rotten to the core we already see that happening now.

Parresia

Quote from: Fiat Varitas on February 23, 2014, 05:02:04 PM
Quote from: Parresia on February 23, 2014, 03:32:13 PM
Quote from: Fiat Varitas on February 22, 2014, 05:09:16 AM
Quote from: Parresia on February 12, 2014, 03:33:11 PM
Quote from: Petrie on February 12, 2014, 03:20:49 PM
Quote from: Parresia on February 12, 2014, 02:57:07 PM
Quote from: Der Polka-König on February 12, 2014, 09:09:07 AM
Best part is, this article has even gotten lots of NO Catholics talking about this, and many of my Novus Ordo friends/acquaintances sympathizing with the Reverend Father's view. The TLM is authentically Catholic, the NO is a human fabrication. The more people that come to realize that, the better things will become, I hope.

Same here.  B16 said as much when he called the NO Mass a "Banal on the spot product".  If something was "on the spot" it can hardly be consistent with Sacred Tradition now can it?

And yet he did nothing to stop it.  It's banal, but we're going to keep using it AND call it the ordinary form.

I think we might find in the years to come that SP will have done much to stop it eventually, particularly when combined with his other teachings on the Mass. 

Except he isn't Pope anymore. He of the Tango and Puppet "Mass" is.

He doesn't have to be pope for the things he set in motion to bear fruit.

Not if Francis undoes then all. Which he is already starting to do. FI and his comments on trad and the Trad Mass. Francis is the enemy and the polar opposite of Benedict liturgically. The only fruit that Francis will bear will be rotten to the core we already see that happening now.

Francis will not overturn SP.  It would set him in direct opposition with his predecessor which is something he does not wish to do.  The Pope causes me an incredible amount of angst, to the point of losing sleep many nights over him and his doings, but he will not be able to stop what is going on now.  If you note earlier, I posted comments from a monk who said that other's expressions on the lack of ability to salvage the NO represent the opinions of the majority of priests under 50.  It may not happen in our lifetime, but it will come. 

Jayne

Quote from: Parresia on February 23, 2014, 05:22:55 PM
Francis will not overturn SP.  It would set him in direct opposition with his predecessor which is something he does not wish to do.  The Pope causes me an incredible amount of angst, to the point of losing sleep many nights over him and his doings, but he will not be able to stop what is going on now.  If you note earlier, I posted comments from a monk who said that other's expressions on the lack of ability to salvage the NO represent the opinions of the majority of priests under 50.  It may not happen in our lifetime, but it will come.

I do not expect Francis to officially overturn SP, but he has implicitly declared open season on trads.  There are statements from the current pope giving a negative interpretation to virtually every aspect of our approach.  When we pray the Rosary, we are neo-Pelagians.  When we appreciate the beauty of the Mass, we are placing aesthetics over faith.  He is in a position to create a climate of hostility toward us.  He does not need to do so officially.

As many of these passages you have cited express, priests and monks who are sympathetic to tradition feel  intimidated and are reluctant to make their views known.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.

Parresia

Quote from: Jayne on February 23, 2014, 05:37:32 PM
Quote from: Parresia on February 23, 2014, 05:22:55 PM
Francis will not overturn SP.  It would set him in direct opposition with his predecessor which is something he does not wish to do.  The Pope causes me an incredible amount of angst, to the point of losing sleep many nights over him and his doings, but he will not be able to stop what is going on now.  If you note earlier, I posted comments from a monk who said that other's expressions on the lack of ability to salvage the NO represent the opinions of the majority of priests under 50.  It may not happen in our lifetime, but it will come.

I do not expect Francis to officially overturn SP, but he has implicitly declared open season on trads.  There are statements from the current pope giving a negative interpretation to virtually every aspect of our approach.  When we pray the Rosary, we are neo-Pelagians.  When we appreciate the beauty of the Mass, we are placing aesthetics over faith.  He is in a position to create a climate of hostility toward us.  He does not need to do so officially.

As many of these passages you have cited express, priests and monks who are sympathetic to tradition feel  intimidated and are reluctant to make their views known.

I agree with you on all accounts.  The one thing I would mention is that it is only just now that these priests and religious are speaking out publicly and putting their name to it.  As I noted above, I think the climate that Francis is starting to create is causing those who might otherwise stay silent to speak up as they fear a return to previous decades. 

Jayne

Quote from: Parresia on February 23, 2014, 06:12:10 PM
I agree with you on all accounts.  The one thing I would mention is that it is only just now that these priests and religious are speaking out publicly and putting their name to it.  As I noted above, I think the climate that Francis is starting to create is causing those who might otherwise stay silent to speak up as they fear a return to previous decades.

I suspect that this climate succeeds in silencing those who are ambitious for advancement or who, by temperament, don't like making waves.  However, there are some whom the situation goads into action.  Thanks for drawing attention to this good side of current events.  It is far too easy to discouraged by it.
Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine.