CONNECT THE DOTS: THE NEW MASS, ABORTION,CRITERIA FOR SELECTION IN CATHOLIC SCHOOLS

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"The most beautiful thing this side of Heaven" -  the Traditional Latin Mass - has stayed with me all through this past week, after my experience of the sung High Mass at St Anthony's SSPX in Whanganui last Sunday. 

And now, having quoted the famed Father Faber of Brompton Oratory, I'm going to descend from the sublime to the gor' blimey and do something my mother told me never to do: make a personal remark. But as it's about a group rather than an individual, and is a compliment, not a "cheeky remark", I think she'd let me off.

It struck me, looking at the rows of girls, mostly teenagers, in front of me at Mass, all veiled and wearing skirts or dresses, that in comparison with girls just about everywhere else, how slender they all were. What's more, the women in that church were too, I think, from memory. Sounds trivial perhaps, but the reason why, which struck me almost at the same moment, is far removed from trivia.

Those girls, and their mothers and grandmothers, lead ordered lives. They're guided by laws laid out for their care and protection by God in His commandments and by Jesus Christ His Son in His Gospel - laws which proscribe contraceptives for example - laws explained and preached with clarity and precision by the holy priests of the Society of St Pius X every Sunday and every day in between in 'sermonettes', at their daily Masses and services.

And those priests give witness to those laws by their dress (collar and cassock), and an asceticism which obviously inspires their students - and their deportment. 

Not for them the palsy-walsy 'Father Tom, Dick or Harry", approach. They're called by their surnames, even though mostly they're not easy to pronounce. Not for them kisses and hugs, but a handshake; for a tete-a-tete a woman sits the opposite side of the table and the door is left open; in the car she's consigned to the back seat: no accusations of 'sex abuse' could easily be made against a priest of the SSPX. 

Most importantly, in Confession there's no chance of offering a weeping penitent a tissue (or a hug leading to further developments); confessor is separated from penitent by a grille. 

Which leads me to ponder how an SSPX priest in the most unhappy State of Victoria, Australia, be dobbed in for not reporting a sin of pedophilia confessed in the dark, through a grille? Do the Keystone Cops of Oz expect Father to leap off his chair immediately after giving absolution to whisk round the other side and yank the penitent out of the confessional in order to identify him, so he can dob him in? Has Mr Plod thought this one through? 

But back to deportment: another thing which struck me was the ram-rod straight backs of the altar boys, eight of them at least, and a couple not much more than 6 years old, as they made their genuflections (with hands clasped). Lots of genuflections, with the utmost seriousness. And they took their booklets of thanksgiving prayers after Communion, used them and replaced them with seriousness, too.

And that makes me think of the DRS of a Catholic primary school who stopped me teaching the new entrants to go down on both knees before the Blessed Sacrament exposed in the monstrance. "They're too young," she said. 

Ahem. Sr Bernice of sometimes unhappy memory had me and all my classmates in the 'Infants', aged 5, going down on both knees. I don't believe children's intelligence has deteriorated that much in the interim. 

If only that DRS could see the St Anthony's altar boys, even the littlest, all perfectly drilled in all the complicated moves required of them throughout a sung Latin High Mass.

In the week since that Mass, which I described to my kids in their nightly email - before I read Fr Faber's words - as "a glimpse of Heaven", I've read laments from a priest (Fr Thomas Curley, New York) and a bishop (+Edmund Forester, Stamford, England, for the Immemorial Mass, the ancient Roman Rite of Holy Mass, and their fulminations against the calamitous consequences for Church and society of its exchange for the 'New Mass' and the "arbitrary deformations of the liturgy (which) caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church" (Pope Benedict XVI). 

We know what they are:

• Communion in the hand
• Sidelining the tabernacle
• Removal of altar rails
• Mass celebrated facing the people, turned away from God
• 'Prayers of the Faithful' which stop just short of invoking Greta Thunberg's intercession 
• Abolition of Prayers for the Church
• Near-abolition of the saints and need for their intercession
• Abolition of Gregorian chant
• Introduction of banal 'songs'
• Loss of hand missals
• Abolition of statues
• Abolition of Father's private thanksgiving and instead,
• Father's compulsory mixing and mingling outside after Mass
• Introduction of 'overheads'
• Introduction of 'spiritual' banners
• Male and female lectors, the latter often in skirts little more than a frill around the waist
• 'Ministers of the Eucharist' in phalanx
• Disappearance of genuflection
• Chatter in church - even or especially by the priest
• 'Liturgy Committees' to make the 'celebration' more 'appealing'
• Eulogies at funeral Masses canonising the dear departed
• White vestments instead of black for funerals: BE HAPPY!
• Abolition of purgatory
• Abolition of hell
• Dialectic in homilies instead of doctrine in sermons
• No mention of contraception, soon followed by:
• Abolition of the 'A-word': abortion

To return to Father Faber, over 100 years ago at the Brompton Oratory, describing the Latin Mass - the Mass that recently-canonised Cardinal Newman, the leader of the Oxford movement into the Church, said that he could attend forever, and not be tired:

“It came forth out of the grand mind of the Church, and lifted us out of earth and out of self, and wrapped us round in a cloud of mystical sweetness and the sublimities of a more than angelic liturgy, and purified us almost without ourselves, and charmed us with the celestial charming, so that our very senses seemed to find vision, hearing, fragrance, taste, and touch beyond what earth can give.” 

By way of contrast, let's look at CathNews NZ this week, to discover the some fruits of "the revolution" of Vatican II and the 'New Mass'.

"Going to a Catholic school," says CathNews, "and attending Sunday Mass are not necessarily a package deal to many Catholic families." In other words, few Catholic school families go to Mass.

"Taranaki priest Simon Story says many Catholic families approach him ... to get their children into a Catholic school. ... Those families are often nowhere to be seen at Sunday Mass." In other words, they don't turn up. 

Poor Father Story. "It definitely is disheartening when parents seem to think that attending a Catholic school is all that is required to demonstrate a Catholic faith ... As Sunday mass (sic, in a 'Catholic' news service) is at the core of Catholic life, it is disappointing ... By far the majority of Catholics don't practise their faith anyway," Story (sic, in a 'Catholic' news service) admits. 

And why is that? Because, let's face it, for people without deep faith and with a bit of a social life, the 'New Mass' is boring, banal, and a waste of time. 

But who would want to miss the kind of experience described above, by St John Henry Newman and Father Faber? It's the kind of experience we all hunger for, that our friends and our kids go to rock concerts and Big Days Out and Gay Pride parades and watch porn and get drunk and stoned for, and that experience was confiscated - by the Church. 

Take a look at 'some of the criteria for preference' for places in Catholic schools now: 

• A child being baptised or preparing to be (in other words, Mum and Dad say, "Oh yes, we'd like little Carter/Hudson/McKenzie to be baptised" and little so-and-so is in)
• At least one parent being Catholic (as in, baptised a Catholic once upon a time)
• The child's participation at school could lead to the parents having the child baptised (yeah, right)
• One or both parents, are preparing to become Catholic ("Oh right, Father, that sounds like a plan")

"Given these criteria," Cathnews asks plaintively, "the question is, why is there a gap between the appeal of a Catholic education and those who actively practice (sic) the faith?"

Well for one thing, you could drive a truckload of pseudo-Catholics through those 'criteria'. They're simply laughable. 

For another, the appeal of a Catholic education in a secular society is - even with only a few shreds of true Catholicity hanging from its coat-tails - it still gets better results than a secular one. 

For another, Cathnews is comparing apples and oranges. The question should be, why the gap between those who want a Catholic education and those who practise the faith? Those who practise the faith will ensure their children have that Catholic education. 

Those who don't practise the faith want prestige, smaller classes and better exam results. For them, 'Catholic education' actually has no appeal, and they should not be given it. 

"It is not good to take the bread of the children, and cast it to the dogs" (Mt 15:26). And don't tell me that "the whelps also eat of the crumbs that fall from the table of their masters" (ibid 27), because, "Jesus answering said to her "... great is thy faith" (ibid 28). 

The Canaanite woman was granted what she asked because of her great faith. Parents asking for a Catholic education for its prestige, niceness and exam results have no faith, and unless they have actually proved they want faith, by baptism and weekly Sunday Mass attendance for them and their children, to give them a Catholic education is depriving Catholic children of their "bread".

Dear Father Story. "When he talks to parents he reiterates that baptism is a choice to take on the Christian life and faith and that parents agreed to support their children on that pathway." So when he talks to parents he reiterates that parents agreed to support their children, etc? 

Spit it out, Cathnews. I suppose you mean that when Father talks to parents about baptism they say they'll bring their children to Mass. But mostly they don't. Okay?

"He says he has found that Catholic school enrolment can provide a gateway for some families back into the church. Definitely there would be a large number of families included in that bracket.” 

So going to a Catholic school might mean that lots of families might go to Mass on Sundays. And that's about it. They might.

Putting a classic post-Vat2 spin on this dismal account of the 'new springtime of the Church', Cathnews headlines it as "Demand for Catholic education high". That's one way of putting it. I suppose. 

Another fruit of 'the springtime of the Church' which came to my notice this week was the selection  as a semi-finalist for their 'prestigious' New Zealander of the Year Award by Kiwibank (close your account, instanter!) of Dame Margaret Sparrow, abortionist par excellence, who presided over the killing of tens of thousands of unborn children, by violent and painful dismemberment, at the infamous Parkview Abortion Clinic in Wellington in the '80s and '90s. 

It was outside Parkview, protesting (on hospital land, verboten) that I was arrested and banged up for the rest of the day, the last to be freed of our group - which incidentally included Father Story's heroic mother, Gwen. I believe his vocation to the priesthood is the fruit of Gwen's subsequent months and months of incarceration in Arohata Women's Prison for continuing to protest against the dreadful crimes of Dr Sparrow. 

The only consolation is, Dame Margaret didn't even make the finals of Kiwibank New Zealander of the year. (The irony is, it was won by an actor, Jennifer Ward-Lealand - oops, I nearly forgot to say she's a 'Maori advocate'). 

Maybe a few too many Kiwibank accounts were closed and letters written by Catholics of the pre-Vatican II era, who in attending the Ancient Roman Rite of Holy Mass had heard the evil of abortion condemned forthrightly from the pulpit, and learned something of the mystery and wonder of God, that mystery and wonder of which I had a glimpse at St Anthony's SSPX Whanganui, one week ago today.

But cheer up, people, cheer up, priests! Here's Pope Benedict again, in one of the last speeches of his papacy:

"The Church is ever renewed, she is always reborn. The future belongs to us. Of course, there is a false optimism and a false pessimism. A false pessimism tells us that the epoch of Christianity is over. No: it is beginning again!

"The false optimism was the post-Council optimism, when convents closed, seminaries closed, and they said "but  ... nothing, everything is fine!" ... No! Everything is not fine.

There are also serious, dangerous omissions and we have to recognise with healthy realism (NB, Cathnews NZ) that in this way things are not all right, it is not all right when errors are made.

However, we must also be certain at the same time that if, here and there, the Church is dying because of the sins of men and women, because of their non-belief, at the same time she is reborn.

The future really belongs to God: this is the great certainty of our life, the great, true optimism that we know. 

The Church is the tree of God that lives forever and bears within her eternity and the true inheritance: eternal life. 

A footnote: Usus antiquior means “the ancient usage,” or more literally, the usage that is “older than old.”

The first Mass, the archetype of Masses, was consummated at Calvary in Latin as the Roman soldiers, its ministers, went about their grueling business.  By the time it was over, some of the Romans believed (cf. Mark 15:39), and others did not.  The Jews watched it all unfold.  Some of them understood the Romans’ language well, others only dimly or not at all.  Some of them believed (cf. Luke 23:42), others did not.  We, the new Israel, now watch, some comprehending the Latin and some not, some believing and some not (cf. John 6:66-69).

In spiritual terms, however, it is not accurate to speak of the “first” Mass, of Masses in the plural, or of any Mass in the past tense.  That is because, as Heaven views things (and Hell too), there is only one Mass, which began on Good Friday at Jerusalem and continues everywhere until the last day, on which will occur the second coming—this time in glory—of Jesus Christ, Who is your God and mine.  On that day, we still might not fully comprehend the Latin, but there will no longer be any unbelievers, anywhere.
.https://propria.org/

Tony Sumner says:
1st Corinthians 5:12 it’s our job to judge.