FR JOE GRAYLAND SETS HIS PEOPLE FREE

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Palmerston North's Our Lady of Lourdes parishioners must be scratching their heads over the newsletter for last Sunday (Pentecost). Let's hope they read it in the pews during the sermon; it would at least have served as a distraction from the homiletics, which were probably made to match.

So let's try to unpack it:

•  "24 young parishioners have been chrismated in the Spirit." The Shorter Oxford Dictionary knows of no such word as 'chrismate'. OLOL's Parish Priest and PN Diocese's eminence gris Fr Joe Grayland has coined it himself, apparently from the word 'chrismation' meaning 'application of the chrism'. We must take him to be referring to their baptism - although in the Eastern Churches, Chrismation means Confirmation. Confused? Me too.
• "People of Christ": buzz words for 'new world church'.
  
• "Called by Vatican II to fully, consciously and actively participate in the Mass": The Council didn't split its infinitives, but apart from that quibble, Vat II called for: "greater awareness of the mystery being celebrated … not the exercise of a specific ministry … an examination of his or her life, recollection and silence, fasting and sacramental confession" (Benedict XVI) … stillness, listening" (JP II).
  Obviously, 'fully, consciously and actively' participating in the Mass does not necessarily mean being up and doing. Vat II tells us to be Mary first and Martha second.
• "I hope to see all the children participate as ministers in the Sacred Liturgy, perhaps as eucharistic ministers" (sic) or readers" (sic). With Vat II calling for "greater awareness of the mystery being celebrated", Father Joe can't be serious. Jesus Christ spent 30 years in preparation for ministry, and OLOL kids can do it right off ? The lack of the essential foundation for ministry - spiritual maturity - explains the failure of so many post-Vat II endeavours. The intervention of females  - let alone female children - in lectorship and as acolytes contradict the liturgical principles of Vat II and have nothing to do with the Ordinary Form of the Mass.
  The second council of Nicaea stated: "If someone is not ordained, it is not permitted for him to do the reading from the ambo during the holy liturgy" (can. 14). This norm has been constantly followed in the Church. Only subdeacons and lectors were allowed to give the reading during the liturgy of the Mass. If lectors and acolytes are missing, men or boys in liturgical vestments may do so, not women, since the male sex symbolically represents the last link to minor orders. Nowhere do the texts of Vat II mention the introduction of new ministries, such as females in civvies 'doing the readings' (https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2012/03/five-wounds-of-liturgical-mystical-body.html)"Young parishioners (sic) Ministry Mass will be on June 23 and we will all enjoy being led in prayer by them'. Sounds like a waitperson delivering your coffee ("Enjoy!") Hardly likely we'd enjoy it, simply because (even if the kids speak audibly) 'young parishioners' lack the spiritual maturity for ministry that Christ thought essential for Himself (33 years) and His apostles (3 years). 
• "Sister-in-Christ, not as convert!" That's the admonition to OLOL parishioners in regard to a woman welcomed into the Church at Pentecost. You see, now that Pope Francis has stated that "God wills a diversity of religions" and has famously told some Protestants, "I don't want to convert you", 'convert' has become a dirty word. Many popes would have condemned this as the evil of indifferentism.
• "For some people change is the biggest threat … the old world is more comfortable even if it means being a slave again … they moan about the present hardships ... It's a typical scenario of human affairs … in churches … preferring the unfreedom of the past to the CHALLENGE of freedom in the future": Father Joe is executing a volte face. Abhorring the term 'convert', which means change, he then frets about 'some people' who are threatened by it.
  When Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, he said to them: “Amen, amen, I say to you, no slave is greater than his master nor any messenger greater than the one who sent him” (Jn 13:16) - implying that it's very much to our advantage to be slaves of a Master who commands us to do what will make us perfectly happy for all eternity.
• "We have already been saved and don't have to bargain with God for salvation using vain sacrifices": WOT??? That's Protestantism, pure and simple. Would you call doing what will make us perfectly happy for all eternity 'vain sacrifices'?
  "You are My friends if you do what I command you" implies "love one another as I have loved you" and "He who hears you (the apostles, meaning the Church) hears me." That's Catholicism, and it's quite a tall order. So much so, the saints tell us, that very few fulfill it and enter heaven.
• "We have use (sic) the Easter seating format and sat in Choir with each other (sic)": this contradicts the habitual religious practice of Christ and his disciples, the unanimous testimony of the Fathers and all prior tradition in both Eastern and Western Churches. Apparently Father Joe considers that testimony and tradition to be examples of the 'slavery' from which he wishes to 'free' his parishioners. Pope Pius XII forbade the table-shaped altar, so you can imagine what he'd have thought about celebrating Mass around a table, "versus populum" - which again is Protestant, in its emphasis on the Mass as a 'special meal' rather than a re-enactment of Christ's death on Calvary. Vat II certainly did not want the Mass in this form and neither has the Magisterium at any time since. 
  
  
  
  

  "The fact that the liturgy is actually ‘made’ for God and not for ourselves seems to have escaped the minds of those who are busy pondering how to give the liturgy an ever more attractive and communicable shape, actively involving an ever greater number of people. However, the more we make it for ourselves, the less attractive it is, because everyone perceives clearly that the essential focus on God has increasingly been lost." - Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.
  

 “How can you believe, who receive glory one from another: and the glory which is from God alone, you do not seek?” (Jn 5:44).

Bob Gill says:

Great observations, Julia. I won’t be able to resist presenting the quote from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger at our next Liturgy meeting!

Sharon Crooks says:

You should have put your application in for Head of Liturgy for this Diocese! Seems you know quite a bit for a TLM-going-woman 

Leo Leitch says:

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What happened to Peter Fahey at P. Nth ? Just a few years ago, he was being groomed to be Protestant Pete's right-hand man. I say:  Fr Peter Fahy decided to retire. Pre-Vat II, did priests 'retire'? I think they just dropped in the traces.

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