Friday, April 30, 2010

Finds Mass Offensive And Effeminate

Micheal Sean Winters a regular blogger for America's In All Things and also authors  his personal blog at NCR.

This is an excerpt from his blog post at NCR entitled, Saturdays Mass in the Extraordinary Form

I am a child of Vatican II, so the old Mass is unfamiliar to me. So, I did not bring any nostalgic sensibilities to my viewing of it. And, without such a sensibility, I confess it left me cold. The music was glorious, of course, but we have equally beautiful ancient music at the Novus Ordo Latin Mass and at the English Mass at St. Matthew’s Cathedral every Sunday. The thing I was most interested to see if whether or not the ad orientem posture, with the celebrant and the people facing in the same direction, really would make the Mass seem more focused on Christ in the sacrament and less on His presence in the gathered community of the faithful. It seemed to me that the focus was almost uniquely on the principal celebrant (Bishop Slattery). 
Yes, there were more than the usual number of genuflections towards the altar, but most of the bowing and scraping, the knelt deacon putting on the bishop’s buskins (Bishop Edward James Slattery), the multiple hand washings, etc., all of that seemed to put the focus on the celebrant not on the Lord. 
And what is with the cappa magna, the long vestment of watered silk that must stretch twenty feet behind the bishop as he processed into the sanctuary? 
I haven’t seen a train that long since Diana, the Princess of Wales, walked down the aisles of St. Paul’s Cathedral when she wed Prince Charles. Just so, the image is one of a royal court, an image that seems not just incongruous to our times, but almost offensive, as if Mass was about dress-up time. 
It does not suggest that the Church is a Church for the poor. I much prefer Cardinal Sean in his brown schmata

Link (here) Micheal Sean Winter's post entitled Saturdays Mass.

Read Fr. Z's piece on the Mass featuring reviews by the laity (here)

Read Bishop Slattery's homily from the Pontifical Mass (here)

Just remember Jesuit's, Micheal Sean Winters writes on your payroll! If you find insulting a Bishop inappropriate and inconsistent with the decrees of the GC35, let the powers that be know.  

2 comments:

Maria said...

'...Bowing and scraping'??

We genuflect to humble ourselves before God, to remind ourselves of our place in the universe before Him. We submit to Him. We kneel, as servants once did for their master, to say, I am here, ready and at your beck and call...Humbling onself before the Almighty? This seems often in short supply over at America Mag...

Two things. Fr. Hardon SJ tell me:

(1) From his commentary on Alphonsus Rodriguez--"Our humility, in essence, is indeed to show itself in our, let's call it humble relationship with others, but the essence of humility in Alphonsus is the paragon of the practice of this virtue. The essence of our humility is not in our dealing with others but in our dealing with THE OTHER who is God".

(2) "And the more educated people become, the more academically sophisticated their minds become through years of education, the more they had better keep their minds in humble submission to the Mind of Christ".

Hardon SJ

Pride. Always the Enemy's favorite means of wresting us away from Him...


Hardon SJ

Andrew said...

Sorta related news... A Jesuit will be celebrating (as Deacon) a TLM in Cincinnati this Friday (May 7) at Old St. Mary's. Apparently not all find this Mass "offensive."

Link is here: http://www.unavocecincinnati.org/