'IM INDOORS AND I HAD ENTERED THAT DEN OF INIQUITY, THE SSPX

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Last Sunday, 'im indoors and I heard an appeal from the pulpit at Mass for parishioners to take part in a Rosary Crusade on behalf of the unborn: 

• To pray at least five decades of the Rosary daily
• To offer intentional sacrifices
• For the special protection of Mary over New Zealand, especially for the unborn and the elderly
• For the defeat of the Abortion Legislation Bill and the End of Life Choices Bill
• For the conversion of sinners
• And the triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in New Zealand.

WOT??? 

You're making it up, I hear you say. Some more enlightened readers, on getting as far as "the conversion  of sinners" might have guessed: 'im indoors and had I entered that den of iniquity, the SSPX, at St Anthony's Priory Whanganui, for High Mass at 9 a m.

Among other things, we were treated to:

• A very nearly full church, following a Low Mass at 7 a m and another Low Mass at 11 a m.
• A written sermon which would have taken up 2 A4 pages, cogent, constructed and brimful of doctrine, based on the Gospel as it should always be
• The dearest little altar boys (and big ones too), who with hands clasped genuflected every time they passed the tabernacle
• Silence before Mass and after (except for babies crying, but only once or twice)
• 9 statues (not counting the angels kneeling either side of the altar) each with an arrangement of florist's flowers
• Women and girls all wearing hats or mantillas and dresses or skirts
• A lengthy notice in the foyer stating the DRESS CODE ('No ripped jeans No jeans. No necklines lower than two fingers below the collarbone' etc
• A shorter notice on a pew at the back which announced simply, 'Confessional Queue'
• Families with children so close in age that except for the babes in arms they might have been quintuplets
• A choir, not up front performing but hidden from view in a choir loft
• A consummate organist, who was self-effacing during the Mass, and let 'er rip in a beautiful voluntary after the Recessional hymn 
• 5 pews of nuns in full habit with novices in front

In how many other Catholic churches tomorrow will we hear a plea for the unborn, for a request to make submissions to Parliament on this horrific Bill which if passed will inevitably lead to infanticide, let alone a call to pray the Rosary and make 'intentional sacrifices'?

We can place ads in newspapers, we can stuff letterboxes with pamphlets, we can hold meetings and write letters to the paper, but none of it will avail us or God's little ones anything, unless we pray and fast. 

Our Blessed Lord reminded the Apostles that for certain devils a mere exorcism is not enough and "there is no way of casting out such spirits as this except by prayer and fasting." (Mt. 17:20)

Lol! Love the headline Julia 😉 Day by day more and more Catholics are looking into Tradition and the group/Archbishop who saw the ‘Reforms’ for what they always were - a revolt from Christ and His Church. My wife and I are so grateful for having found them a couple of years back and can’t wait to soak it all up when in two weeks time we move to Whanganui to be part of it all. Deo gratias!

Anonymous says:

Come to the Cathedral Julia.  There you will get social justice and climate change.  And often there is not even a priest. SSPX cant compete with that.

Philippa O'Neill says:

Love it! Spot on!

Anonymous says:

Good work. Those NOs  (people attending the Novus Ordo or 'New Mass')who still have reservations about SSPX are neglecting to examine the matters you highlight, the essential Catholicity. Even Pope Francis has acted to endorse SSPX by comments on their Masses, confessions, and marriages. I suspect that NOs who manifest reservations are actually hostile, because they know the SSPX will drag them back to real Catholicism, not social masqueration.

Carry on please.

Paul Collits says:

Who, I wonder, are those in schism with God? Not these folks, I'm guessing.

Bob Gill says:

And with Rome wanting to convert the SSPX to their modernism, I believe we have z difficult road ahead.  

Monica Devine says:

The underground unapproved Church.

KILL THE BILL OR KILL THE BABY

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"Women", opines Hon Clare Curran, MP for Dunedin South, "should have the legal right to bodily autonomy, and should not feel criminalised for having undertaken what is a health procedure".

Last week I'd sent Honourable Clare a one-line email, stating in the subject line, KILL THE BILL. Honourable Clare was not won over: today I received a nice reply stating, in effect, KILL THE BABY.

Honourable Clare thinks - nay, she "firmly believes" - that the current laws on abortion are "40 years old, and not fit for the modern era". Ah! She's a Modernist! I might have known. I've seen a lot of them around in the Catholic Church.  

Honourable Clare needs to know the dictionary definition of the feminist catch-cry of 'bodily autonomy'. In this context it means a woman's right to control her own body. Her own body, not someone else's, such as that of the baby in her womb. 

And before she starts on 'bodily sovereignty' which in her email she did not, perhaps I suspect because she doesn't know the meaning of the word 'sovereignty', she does not have absolute sovereignty over her body and anything within it, either. If you have sovereign ownership of a property, that doesn't mean you can kill someone who enters it. Not yet, anyway (watch this space). 

Honourable Clare needs to know you can't tell a woman what she should or shouldn't feel. A woman is responsible for her own feelings. Honourable Clare ought to know women were never 'criminalised' by abortion; women have been diddled into thinking that by irresponsible politicians. 

Honourable Clare needs to realize that 40 years ago when the current laws were introduced, a mother was a mother and an unborn child was an unborn child. 40 years has made no difference. 


Anyway, enough of  Honourable Clare. I sent her a link to enlightenment in the form of an interview with Dr Norman McLean NZOM of Invercargill, recorded 2 weeks ago.

I must add however that Honourable Clare is "confident that there are sufficient safeguards in place to ensure women have adequate advice and support before, during, and after their abortion, including counselling if needed."

Like for example, the 'counselling' Anonymous received (see HOW TO SURVIVE ABORTION COUNSELLING). When she said she wasn't going to have an abortion, the counsellor said she'd burnt her bridges and no other man would have her ...

http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward/show?u=0cd68702160c587ec85116fce&id=f229b241ff


I defy anyone to watch this interview with Dr Norman McLean, a former abortionist, and continue to support the Abortion Legislation Bill. 

To do so would simply not be Honourable. 

HOW TO SURVIVE ABORTION COUNSELLING AND TELL THE TALE

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"She said I had 'burnt my bridges and no other man would want me now'."  

This, incredibly, was the year 1996. 'She' was a counsellor. A friend of mine had been referred to this 'counsellor' by her GP, after she'd confirmed my friend's home pregnancy test as positive. 

"She instructed me to go immediately to see the counsellor – I saw them talking in the hallway before I was sent through.   I didn’t want to see the counsellor. I didn’t think it was any of her business.  

"She asked me what I had done over the holidays, I told her I had been away up North.  She began to get angry and said ‘What ELSE?!’ So, I told her I was pregnant.  She advised me to have an abortion and continue with my studies.  I said I didn’t want to.  She said I had ‘burnt my bridges and no other man would want me now.’ "

My friend - yes, her name is Anonymous - is making this experience the basis for her submission on the Abortion Legislation currently before Parliament. She continues:

"I became pregnant during my second year of study at Wellington Polytechnic - Fashion Design and Technology, 1996.  I went to see the Doctor to confirm my home pregnancy test.  She instructed me to go immediately to see the counsellor – I saw them talking in the hallway before I was sent through.   I didn’t want to see the counsellor. I didn’t think it was any of her business.  

She asked me what I had done over the holidays, I told her I had been away up North.  She began to get angry and said ‘What ELSE?!’ I told her I was pregnant.  She advised me to have an abortion and continue with my studies.  I said I didn’t want to.  

She said I had ‘burnt my bridges and no other man would want me now.’  

That was over 23 years ago.  My daughter – the tiny person who was then in my womb, in my care – is now married to a lovely man and has a two year old son.  

If I had been more vulnerable – unsure of my decision (by the way - there was no way I would ever consider abortion!!) I could have been coerced into terminating my baby and never seen her grow into the woman she is now.  And I can promise you that if I had gone down that road (abortion), it would have been a disaster for me – mentally, spiritually and potentially fatal.  

The notion that it is ‘hard’ to get an abortion is absolutely absurd.  Rather I would like to know what protection you can provide to prevent women from being coerced into something they don’t understand or want?  

I believe that every woman has the right to know what happens during the procedure of abortion.  That they should be fully informed of what it entails and just as strongly encouraged to consider adoption.  

I also believe ‘the woman’, who is my daughter, had rights when she was in my womb, in my care.  She had every right to live her life!  She is the apple of my eye – no matter what the circumstances of her conception were.  She is an individual, beautiful, brave, loyal and deeply loving.  I have been truly blessed, and am continually blessed by the new family she has created.

‘The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.’ – Mahatma Ghandi  

I say: 

Here we see the quality of the 'counselling' offered pregnant NZ women. It's enough to make me write my submission. 

IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT JESUS IS AS REAL AS QUEEN ELIZABETH

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"As we sit at his feet," says Janferie Sefo Kelekolio, "especially  when we are singing at mercy parish as our choir sit in front of the Tabernacle ... He is behind us in front of us and beside us."

 The misunderstanding of the Doctrine of the Real Presence in so pervasive, due to an almost total lack of catechesis on the subject in the Church of Nice, that it warrants further discussion, to which Janferie Sefo Kelekolio makes a valuable contribution. 

"We are in his Tabernacle," continues Janferie, "and even more we are a temple of the Holy spirit x".

I say:

Sitting at the feet of Jesus in the tabernacle is beautiful, but because He is Really Present we must face Him, just as we would face Queen Elizabeth, not sit with our backs to her. 

In the Blessed Sacrament Jesus is either behind us, or in front of us, or beside us, just as the Queen would be in one place or another, not several at once. In the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus is as Real as the Queen. We are 'in his Tabernacle' and we are 'a temple of the Holy spirit', but that's talking about God's spiritual presence, not his Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

Janferie Sefo Kelekolio adds:

Julia du Fresne I understand what your saying definitely x thankyou for another way of looking at things. 

When I take Holy communion I become the Tabernacle, I become overwhelmed with the Holy spirit , but I'm still learning and growing.... We are made Holy and right thru the blood and body of Christ Jesus xx blessings and thank you.

Roseanne Sheridan says:

 His Real Presence, Julia, is not only in the consecrated bread and wine. If it were, then what would be the point of the Resurrection? The Eucharistic Presence of Jesus Risen, celebrated in the Mass, transforms all of Creation from death into life. So the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, in Holy Communion, is present in uniting all the people in the life of Christ in His Resurrection, 

Right from the beginning of time to the end, no one and nothing is left out, since all were created in Jesus, the Word, so all are raised to life in, though and with Him. Jesus is therefore really present in Word and Sacrament,in the people, including the Priest and in all Creation, The bread and wine of the Mass go back to the Passover grace, the "Thanksgiving." we celebrate our lives being saved in Christ, the Life. The old and new Covenants become one in Christ. The Blood of the Lamb, goes right back to Abel, the wheat grain in the bread, to Cain. 

So it is that the redemption of the Resurrection overturns death from not only that point onward, but right back in time to the beginning. So the Eucharist is to reveal to us, the real Presence of Christ Jesus in all of Creation. He as the Life from the beginning and the Resurrection from the dead.So all is in Him, As Church, as a consecrated people, we are transformed into the mystical Body of Christ,,as the Temple, the Tabernacle of God. 

As St Theresa said "Christ has no body now but yours." Holy Communion unites all together in Christ. We receive and are received into Him.Transformed and transcended. The life we live is Christ Jesus. We become one in life together with Him.The Bride and the Bridegroom, one life. It is in His Life that we are united with the Father in the Spirit, in being within the Real Presence of God..

I say:

At the risk of boring people, I have to repeat myself: Jesus Christ is Really Present, physically present, on earth only in the consecrated Bread and Wine. He is not physically 'present in uniting all the people'. He is not physically present in ''The Priest and in all Creation'.

As a lay Carmelite I can assure you that St Teresa did not, and could not, say such a thing as 'Christ has no body now but yours'. As a Doctor of the Church she could not and would not have contradicted Church doctrine.

It was in fact a Methodist minister, Mark Guy Pearse who spoke those words in a sermon in 1888.

And that makes sense, because "Christ has no body now but yours" is a thoroughly Protestant statement of Protestant disbelief in Christ's own proclamation of the doctrine of the Eucharist.

CARDINAL GEORGE PELL, A WHITE MARTYR FOR CHRIST

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Faithful Catholics throughout the world will be appalled at the failure of Cardinal George Pell's appeal against his conviction for sexual abuse of two choirboys twenty-something years ago. 

But I might have known. 

I was taken aback and dismayed during my short stay in Australia recently when in St Patrick's Cathedral, Bendigo Victoria, I came across a list of answers to the question, 'What Aspects of Parish Life are helpful?' asked at a Parish Assembly in June. (So Australian parishes are subjected to the same footling, navel-gazing exercises we have here.)

The answer which riveted me was 'Courage of Parish to address the challenge with the George Pell situation'. Not 'Cardinal George Pell, Prince of the Church'. No. Just 'George Pell'. 

What 'courage' was needed to pray for and defend an obviously innocent man? The Victorian police had launched an investigation against him two years before they could fetch up with an accuser. His 'crime' was physically impossible; he was given an alibi by a priest, the cathedral's master of ceremonies, Monsignor Charles Portelli; in Cardinal Pell's first trial, it's widely believed, 10 of the jury of 12 voted to acquit; his accuser's testimony appeared, almost word for word, in a 2011 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, in a description of an alleged assault against an American priest. The journalist who uncovered the story stated the two cases' similarity point by point, calling them "uncanny" and concluding the witness' account was "a sham". 

'Courage of Parish to address the George Pell situation' spoke volumes. The Cathedral Parish of Bendigo Victoria seemingly had found 'George Pell' guilty. One can only imagine the avidity with which parishioners read The Rise and Fall of George Pell, by one Louise Milligan, a bestseller in spite of its awful writing and ridiculous claims.

Hands up, anyone who has heard Cardinal George Pell defended from the pulpit anywhere in the NZ Church of Nice? Hands up anyone who has even heard a call for prayer for this Prince of the Church, whose real crime in the sight of a huge majority of Australians was exactly that: his status as 'the Pope's right-hand man' and his forthright proclamation of the doctrine of the Catholic Church, that sodomy, contraception and abortion are sinful.

He was hunted down, put on trial and into jail because he is a defender of Christ and His Gospel. In my view, Cardinal George Pell suffering this vile injustice in a prison cell - like St Paul before him, in his chains - will achieve more for the Church than the rest of the priesthood put together.

Obviously the prayers offered for the repeal of his conviction were not enough. Mine, I know, were mingy. 

But the result is a white martyr for the Church. 

"White martyrdom” involves tremendous suffering accepted and offered up to God in union with the cross of Christ. It's a form of sainthood which, with the inevitable increase of persecution of faithful Catholics both within the Church and in society, is more accessible to us than perhaps ever before in the history of Christendom. 

Our Lord wants martyrs, needs martyrs. In Cardinal George Pell we have a model and all we need, says St Maximilian Kolbe (who should know) is to call on the Immaculate.The Blessed Virgin Mary, he says, will make sainthood "easy". Let's fix our gaze on "the things that are above" and go for it.  

White martyrdom consists in a man’s abandoning everything he loves for God’s sake, though he suffer fasting or labor thereat. 

Linda Clarke says:

This man is so good, so holy, so faithful, that in a way despite the failed  (so far) appeal he will be at peace, having loved God's Will for a long time.   What say you?!  And I for one, can't put my hands up as regards this parish here unfortunately, quite the opposite. Great blog!

I say: Yes, Cardinal Pell loves the Will of God. We can see he is at peace, by his demeanour throughout all the ignominies of his trial and conviction; always we are told, serene and gracious.

Bob Gill says:

I’ve heard it said that Cardinal Pell’s problem is his strength of character. That alone tells me he would have no shortage of enemies, especially in the New Zealand Catholic Church when trying to install any much needed orthodoxy.
And for those who still think liberalism is the way forward: https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/.../with-record-number...

Paul Collits says:

They hate him for his efforts to re-introduce Catholicism to NZ seminaries, an effort that, alas, appears mostly to have been in vain.

2

I say:

The dismal failure of liberalism in the NZ Catholic Church is so obvious, one has to recognize the Satanic influence at work. If it were not so, how could so many of our clergy and laity be so misled?

PN CATHEDRAL GIVES SUNDAY MASS THE GO-BY

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The Cathedral of the Holy Spirit, seat of Bishop Charles Drennan in the Palmerston North Diocese, has given Sunday morning Mass the go-by. 

"It's because the priests at the cathedral are 'supplying' for the whole of the Tararua Parish". We can't drum up any sympathy: had their attitude to Father Bryan Buenger, the former Parish Priest, been positive and supportive, he'd not have left New Zealand; there'd be no need for cathedral priests to be tootling all over Tararua on Sundays. One is sorely tempted to say they brought it on themselves. 

It's hard to escape the conclusion that some clerics want to do themselves out of a job.

The cathedral parish has an obligation to advertise, by email, on the diocesan website and in the newsletter, the fact that on Sundays it offers only a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion. 

They have an even more serious obligation to explain Canon Law, which states that a Liturgy of the Word, when there is Mass available, does not fulfill the Sunday obligation. The Liturgy is an option in Palmerston North only for people who can't get themselves to St Mary's, Our Lady of Lourdes or St Columba's, Ashhurst. Otherwise, attending the Liturgy instead of Holy Mass is a mortal sin.

A correspondent has reported on Sunday's pathetic event at the cathedral:

"We had a Liturgy of the Word with Holy Communion (as Welcom seems to call it), instead of Mass, at the cathedral at 9:30 this morning. I found it a very hollow experience.

The 'gospel' was read by a woman.

The 'homily' was by a man.  Its hard to comment, I don't have the text or a recording. The gospel was Luke 12:49-53: "Do you think I came to bring peace on the earth? I tell you, no! I came to divide."

I felt the speaker was almost contradicting Christ's message, speaking more of ecumenism instead."

Snap! Wouldn't you know it, at my parish Sunday Mass also, the homily wound up wallowing in 'ecumenism'.

It opened with the usual doubts and self-questioning, intended I suspect to bring Father down to our level, just as he physically descends the step from the sanctuary to deliver the homily (so that he's one of us). 

Father couldn’t “understand” the Scripture readings. He couldn’t understand how the angels sang Peace to people of good will at the birth of Jesus, and then that Jesus during His ministry would say, “I have come not to bring peace but a sword” - and how, Father asked, could Jesus want families to be divided and argue among themselves about Jesus’ message???

Oh, the rush of blood to my head! Or rather, the unspoken words to my lips! 

The angels came offering peace not to everyone, but to people of good will. It was up to those people either to accept that peace or spurn it. 

And of course Jesus knew, when He began His ministry, that He would create division (with "a sword") in Jewish families, and throughout Israel: some would accept His word and try to share it with friends and relations, who would angrily reject the message and often the messenger with it. (Even just last century, Jewish intellectual and philosopher Edith Stein's conversion to Catholicism met with something like horror in her family, particularly her mother.)

When Jesus later proclaimed the doctrine of the Eucharist many of his followers deserted Him, and decried and denied Him to those who stayed faithful. Those deserters were forerunners to Martin Luther and all the Protestants, who still deny His Presence in the Eucharist. 

Now we have deserters of a different stripe: Modernist 'Catholics' who deny Church doctrine and dogma, or subvert it to their own ends and strategies, bringing schism into the Church and very often into their families.

“We used to emphasise the differences between religions, but now we know better," Father declared.

Oh, yes. Now, the Church of Nice has by and large stopped preaching the doctrine which Jesus preached - the hard bits like the Transubstantiation and the Judgment.

"Now we emphasise what we have in common,” said Father.

Oh, yes. Now the Church preaches only the nice bits, the bits that Protestants like too. Worse than that, doctrine and dogma is heretically contradicted, as in Sunday's homily in my church, when Father strayed from ecumenism into the separation of Church and State,"which is right", said Father, "and much better than what we had in the past”.

Leaving aside the "synthesis of heresies", Modernism, which Father invoked in that statement, ecumenism has to be Satan's most successful exercise in deception and deviation in our day. The Catholic Church has been totally hornswoggled by Satan, the Father of Lies.

Ta Whakatairanga i te Nohotahitanga o nga Whakapono I Aotearoa is the title of a booklet currently to be found in our church foyers. 

What that means is Promoting Interfaith Relations in Aotearoa New Zealand, Second Edition - and further, New Zealand Catholic Bishops (sic) Committee for Interfaith Relations. 

How much did this document cost to produce? How much did it cost to organize and stage the 'interfaith councils', 'forums', and 'groups' and their 'Sounds of the Sacred', 'Exploring Sacred Spaces' etc, which fill its stiff, expensive pages? How much time and money, which should have been expended on Christ's Great Commission to His Church, not of cosying up to heretics but their conversion, preaching the Gospel - the whole Gospel, including the doctrine of Transubstantiation - "to all creatures"?

The opening line of this piece of puffery is 'Growing religious diversity'.

WOT??? Jesus Christ came to bring a sword, not to 'grow religious diversity'. He did not want Pope Francis' "diversity of religions". The unity He prayed for his disciples was unity with Him in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

He came to teach us - as yesterday's saint, St John Eudes, Priest, states - to be "one with Jesus as the members are one with the head, so you must have with him one spirit, one soul, one life, one will, one intention, one heart. It is he himself who is to be spirit, heart, love, life, everything for you. In the life of a Christian all these marvels … are perfected above all by the holy Eucharist".

Philippa O'Neill says:

What can I say … this is awful.

ASHHURST LATIN MASS: THREATENED BY JESUIT, CM INFLUENCES

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The little jewel of St Columba's Ashhurst has been threatened with "a reshaping of seating in our church", a la Fr Joe Grayland's desecration of Our Lady of Lourdes, Palmerston North.

One Pat Mullin - could he/she possibly be responsible for parenting Dave 'Six Men in a Leaky Boat' Mullin? - says this should be done "in preparation for Pope Francis' call for the implementation of the Extraordinary Mission Month in October" (Mullins' emphasis) "as written about in the most recent Welcom.

"He (presumably Pope Francis) "suggests that we have "A personal encounter with Jesus Christ living in his Church: in the Eucharist, in the Word of God and in personal and communal prayer". 

So far, so good (except why are being asked to do something 'in preparation for Pope Francis' call' when that call has happened already?) 'A personal encounter with Jesus Christ living in his Church' is exactly what we've had going in the One, Holy, Apostolic, Roman Catholic Church since forever.

This isn't coming off Pat's own bat. The inspiration for all this is - goodness me - Frank Doyle SJ.  A Jesuit. Well I never. The genie is out of the box. I'll return to Fr Doyle, and to our other eminence gris, Father Grayland, later.

Such heretical fifth-columnizing doesn't deserve an in-depth response, but taking it point by point we discover that Pat wants the parish to view the DVD "The Journey of Meditation" by Laurence Freeman. Ah. We read that Christian Meditation, a form of silent prayer tried and found wanting by world-renowned retreat master, Father Thomas Dubay SM, who in his classic work Fire Within dismisses Christian Meditation as "a dead end", is underway at St Columba's. And lo and behold, it's supported by none other than the Catholic Workers of Napier Rd, Palmerston North, which some might call a neo-Marxist cabal. 

Given that CM took off in the '70s (post Vat 2, surprise surprise) and took the religious world by storm, we need only look at its fruits in terms of vocations to the priesthood and religious life to see that it's not just a dead end but a dead loss.

Next paragraph, who should pop up but Bishop Peter Cullinane. Talk about all the usual suspects   - if these weren't mostly clerics, one might call it a rogues' gallery.

But back to Pat Mullins, who "basically wants to open a conversation. Pat, you've asked for it.

•  We read Richard Rohr OFM declaring that "When the Spirit is alive in people. they wake up from their mechanical thinking and enter the realm of co-creative power". This would undoubtedly come as a surprise to all the Catholics and Christians who are in a state of grace, and so in whom the Spirit is alive but nonetheless look like they're sleep-walking through life.
  
• A Sister Ilia Delio, in a recent book, Christ in Evolution (trending!) states Christ is being formed in us … well, not if we're not in a state of grace. The good news of Jesus Christ is not so much what happens to us but what must be done by us … the choices we make … we must reinvent ourselves ... must consciously evolve … Is it really all about us? I thought it was about Christ crucified. I'd rather rely on the Holy Spirit than on me.
  
• Then we have Tui Motu and Welcom we might have known): Anything needs to change. Like for instance, the Mass should change (again)? The sacraments? The commandments? Church dogma? A good example can be found in Pope Francis. You can say that again.
• We need to make that sense of a faith community which appeals to younger age groups. Try the Traditional Latin Mass. OCDS Carmelite monasteries in the Eastern US who reintroduced the TLM in 2000 are now bulging with young novices, to the extent that they're building a new monastery.
• As well as remembering and giving thanks … the Eucharist is when we express unity. Excuse me, but the Eucharist is about adoring God, making atonement to God for our sins, and petitioning God for all our needs.
• 
  
• The key is … love not only for God, but for every single person. If we truly love God, we automatically love 'every single person'. "May they all be one … that the world will realise that it was You who sent me (John 17:21,23). It's only by becoming one with Christ in prayer, primarily the Mass and contemplation, that we become one with 'all'. NB: That means becoming one with Christ's disciples, not with other denominations or religions. Jesus was speaking to his faithful disciples, not those who deserted after his proclamation of the Mystery of the Eucharist. 
  
• Eating together … Sense of togetherness. Oh, spare me. Mullins takes a pot-shot (one of several, it's a scatter-gun approach) at faithful Catholics and the concept of 'saving my soul'. We come into the church on Sunday largely as strangers to each other. If we do, it's only because the other parish activities and devotions like Benediction, novenas, parish concerts and garden parties which were fostered and fed by the TLM have now vanished - which means that now well-meaning people like Mullins have to say things like Mass is not the time to manufacture community; rather it is time to celebrate it. 'Community' has largely vanished. along with the TLM.
• Mullins complains about stiff and formal signs of peace. It's instructive to read recommendations from the Congregation for Divine Worship in this regard: "Bishops’ conferences should consider “changing the way in which the exchange of peace is made.”
  
  In particular, “familiar and worldly gestures of greeting” should be substituted by “other, more appropriate gestures.” The CDW also noted several abuses of the rite which are to be stopped: the faithful moving from their place to exchange the sign; the priest leaving the altar to exchange the sign with the faithful; and when, at occasions such as weddings or funerals, it becomes an occasion for congratulations or condolences.
  
  The GIRM states that "As for the actual sign of peace to be given, the manner is to be established by the Conferences of Bishops in accordance with the culture and customs of the peoples. However, it is appropriate that each person, in a sober manner, offer the sign of peace only to those who are nearest."
  And in fact the Sign of Peace is optional. So people who find it out of place when they're preparing to receive the Lord can keep their eyes closed and ignore it. They're allowed.
• We … are taking part in the joyful celebration of a community of brothers and sisters. Regrettably, that ain't necessarily so. We're brothers and sisters only if we're all Catholic and in a state of grace. There's not much joy in realizing that as the Sacrament of Reconciliation has so diminished in importance, and the number of divorced and 'remarried' Catholics has risen, we are quite likely not 'a community of brothers and sisters'.
• Mullins likens the Mass, in particular receiving the Son of God in Holy Communion, to going to a birthday party. Truly. What Dr Peter Kwasniewski describes as "the formal, solemn, public cultus of God, wherein the Church, on behalf of mankind and all of creation, adores, blesses, glorifies, and gives thanks to the Most Holy Trinity" is like a birthday party. How dumbed-down can we get?
• This one Bread and one Cup represent Jesus in his Risen Body. In this banquet of heresies, this might be called an item on the graze table. This 'one Bread and one Cup' is Jesus in His Risen Body. In the US, new PEW research shows just one-third of Catholics still believe in the Real Presence and it's likely the same here. Sounds like Mullin belongs to the two-thirds; is this document intended to swell that number?
• Jesus is … in the hand of the one who receives. Communion in the hand is perhaps the major driver of these tragic statistics. St Basil the Great considered Communion in the hand "a great fault", permitted "only  in times of persecution". Mullins takes another pot-shot, this time  at ultra-devotional people who genuflect just before receiving. What does Mullins call someone who kneels to receive, like me? (Actually, I don't care.)
• Now Mullins dishes up the whole baked salmon, the main course: By right, they should genuflect to the whole congregation because that is where the real presence (sic) of Christ is. This is egregious, appalling heresy.
• Sooner or later we were bound to get around to lay Eucharistic ministers - because we have moved from a purely priest-centred Eucharist at which the laity are passive spectators to one that is community-centred, because that is where Christ is to be found.They're not 'Eucharistic ministers'. The only Eucharistic Minister is the priest. At best, those helpful people can be described as Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion.
• Our sick brothers and sisters cannot come personally to the community celebration. How about someone picks them up and takes them? How many Masses are celebrated in private homes, or in retirement homes? Just asking.
• In communion (sic) not just Jesus but the whole parish comes to them. Pardon me? My theology's not up to this one. Tell me its doctrinal dogmatic basis.
• Jesus' flesh and blood comes to us through the Word. Words actually fail me. I can't even crack a joke on this one.
• Mullins quotes at length from Sacrosanctum Concilium, in particular the popularly misinterpreted 'active participation' which literally-minded liturgists with no sense of recollection take to mean getting 'up and doing'.
  
  But as St John Paul II stated in 1998, "Active participation does not preclude the active passivity of silence, stillness and listening: indeed, it demands it. Worshippers are not passive, for instance, when listening to the readings or the homily, or following the prayers of the celebrant, and the chants and music of the liturgy. These are experiences of silence and stillness, but they are in their own way profoundly active. "
• THE CHALLENGE then, says Mullin, is to rethink how we use our church building as a place of worship and prayer and to show how well we are all "celebrating" together. Here we arrive at the nub of the whole thing. We sense the dead hand of the Jesuit, revealed in the accompanying article by Frank Doyle SJ - who harks back to 'active participation' and blithely dismisses that 'one-to-one' relationship with Him which was the making of all the saints of the Church. No, in Father Doyle's view the saints got it wrong.
   
  
• It is a horizontal faith, says Father Doyle. Speak for yourself, please, Father. Our faith is in God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit, who are in God's children, yes, but also utterly, transcendently and infinitely beyond them.
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• Every Lord's Day we come together as that Body, to say thanks to him. It is regrettable, then, if we are only in church to "keep the Third Commandment". 
• Father, it is far more regrettable if we are in church only to give thanks to Him (see above).
• Mass is not a time for contemplative prayer. Really, Mullins and Doyle's apologia is so shallow that wading into it as we have we barely get our feet wet. The Mass may certainly be prayed contemplatively, on a deeper level of understanding of the Mass than apparently these liturgists dream of (read Fr Gabriel of St Mary Magdalen OCD, on the subject).The Jesuitical neo-Marxism which has the Catholic Church in its coils also appeals to none other than Cardinal John Dew. For him the Church's mission is to be out there serving the poor, those who are struggling, and give them hope, and caring for the environment. Does it ever occur to Cardinal Dew that the 'poor' to be served in the Church now are the spiritually poor, the people who've never been catechized, who've never been shown the way to God, let alone how to find Him.
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The church (sic) is here to be at the service of the world, not just to be looking inwards. The Church is here primarily to be at the service of God the Most High, to "keep our minds fixed on the things that are above" so that we are fit to look outwards to the world.

Enter Father Grayland once more (for the last time, I promise):
The church building ... is a tool to help us worship. (We thought it was the house of God.) He talks about how the influence of Maori and Polynesian cultures have shaped the liturgical environment. But how many Maori or Pasifika people do we see in that 'liturgical environment'?

The argument that their (sic) is a form of church building that must be adhered to be (sic) historically and culturally naive. ... Many communities still sit (in) the 'liturgical bus' seating pattern facing the back of the person in front of them. (And, we might add, in the tabernacle in most Novus Ordo churches, unless He's been sent out of the room or offside, God faces the back of the priest.)

We can't escape the conclusion that Pat Mullins is being used as a Trojan Horse by Father Grayland who is being used as a Trojan Horse by Father Doyle who is being used as a Trojan Horse by the Jesuit Order for the abolition of the Traditional Latin Mass,  specifically in the humble little church of St Columba's Ashhurst. 

Because if the seating there is rearranged to Father Grayland's requirements, shifting the altar to a lateral position, that would invalidate the church for the TLM. And that would trangress the shared use arrangement at St Columba's whereby each group - the Novus Ordo group and the TLM group - leaves the church as it is now, for both groups' use.Which would seem only right and fair, would it not? Putting individual and collective egos aside as we should, the more Masses celebrated, the better.

The late, great Fulton Sheen (come back, Bishop Sheen, we need you now!) emphasises that the Mass doesn't depend on us, on who says it or who hears it; it depends on the One High Priest and Victim who is Christ our Lord.The Mass is the greatest event in the history of mankind; the only holy act which keeps the wrath of God from a sinful world, because it holds the Cross between heaven and earth.”

Sharon Crooks says:

I’m really not sure why laity like yourself haven’t been headhunted to guide Liturgy in this Diocese, given you clearly have the grace of God on your side, guiding your thoughts and your pen to spell out THE TRUTH!  Putting all this into practice would probably yield a bigger harvest of vocations locally! 

Well done!

Long may the little jewel at Ashhurst shine, and if the numbers in attendance late Thursday night for the TLM offering of The Assumption of Mary was anything to go by, along with the reverence and beauty with which the Mass was celebrated,  it sparkled for all heaven to see and wish to preserve it!”

Philippa O'Neill says:

Groan … I am so pained reading this … but best not to have my head in the sand. Surely Julia … it's not all about me?!!

I say:

Who's 'me'? There's quite a selection in this post - and then of course there's its author.  Do you mean the motivation behind the St Columba's biz is ego? 

Philippa O'Neill The Mass is not all about me! It is becoming my byline... I really mean us.. the people, the people, the people... :-) Oh how it hurt at the Mass of the Feast of the Assumption of our Blessed Lady to see people sitting in Mass with their backs to Our Lord in the Tabernacle. How can that be right?

I say: 

It's not right, in the eyes of the Lord I believe it is criminal. (But possibly not so much as the priest seated at Mass in place of our Lord in the tabernacle, as in Wellington's Sacred Heart Cathedral. No wonder it's closed.) 

Just where is your church? Are you prepared to 'name and shame', Philippa?  

Janferie Sefo Kelekolio says:
And yet I see it as we sit at his feet (esp when we are singing at mercy parish as our choir sit in front of the Tabernacle) .. He is behind us in front of us and beside us. We are in his Tabernacle and even more we are a temple of the Holy spirit x
I say:

Sitting at the feet of Jesus in the tabernacle is beautiful, but because He is Really Present we must face Him, just as we would face Queen Elizabeth, not sit with our backs to her. In the Blessed Sacrament Jesus is either behind us, or in front of us, or beside us, just as the Queen would be. In the Blessed Sacrament He is as Real as the Queen. We are 'in his Tabernacle' and we are 'a temple of the Holy spirit', but that's talking about God's spiritual presence, not his Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

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