FRATELLI TUTTI, THE LATIN MASS, SAFEGUARDING AND ALL THAT

To comment please open your gmail account or use my email address, Facebook or Messenger. Scroll down for others' comments.

"Seen as a whole, 'Fratelli Tutti' gives the sad impression that, at the price of a universal aspiration to fraternity, the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the only Saviour and King of all humankind and nations was sacrificed."

Bishop Athanasius Schneider's verdict on the latest of Jorge Bergoglio's encyclicals (aka 'Tutti Frutti') affords us a horrifying glimpse of the depth of perversity and depravity gradually wrought on the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church by the Second Vatican Council and the "collapse of the liturgy" ... "a breach into the history of the liturgy whose consequences could only be tragic". 

Pope Benedict's words have been proven prophetic. Speaking at the time as Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, he stated that "the old building (the Traditional Latin Mass) was demolished, and another (the Novus Ordo Missae, the 'New Mass') was built", and the result, as encapsulated in Bishop Schneider's remark above, is truly tragic.

The 'Usus Antiquus' (the Latin Mass)

 

In 2019, 69% of self-identified US Catholics believed that the bread and wine consecrated in the Mass are merely "symbols".  Would that pathetic statistic be any better in New Zealand? 

And isn't that truly pathetic statistic only to be expected? How can anyone who Sunday after Sunday listens to the "fabricated" and "banal" language of the New Mass - "a manufactured, on-the-spot product" - and has the Host handed them like small change by middle-aged women in jeans or teenagers in shorts, continue to believe that this is really the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ Our Lord? 

Lex orandi, lex credendi: we pray as we believe. How many Kiwi Catholics have been taught this ancient axiom of our Faith? It's no longer preached, probably because it's embarrassing. The paucity of Catholic belief in New Zealand and world wide today is due to the paucity of Catholic prayer - in particular the prayer of the New Mass, which should be the renewal of the Sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, the most sublime form of prayer, but which has been reduced in the Novus Ordo to "a banquet" ... "the Jewish Sabbath meal" (+Schneider).

If NZ Catholics truly believed it was really Jesus Christ, Son of God, who is present on the altar at Mass, they'd fall on their knees in adoration. Adoration! It's the first requirement of the liturgy, ahead of thanksgiving and petition (those PC, simpering Prayers of the Faithful now addressing the Almighty in te reo, in execrable Pakeha accents, for the edification of the handful of Māori present) and ahead of atonement - but atonement doesn't figure at all any more, does it, in a Sunday Mass. "Atonement"? Isn't that a movie?

No; at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer at Requiems, Father requests people to "please be seated" for the most solemn moment of the liturgy, the Consecration. Then he asks them to stand for the Sign of Peace - so they can move about freely, shaking hands, hugging and kissing and indulging in a little badinage when they should be preparing to receive the Eucharist  - and then to "please be seated" again while he elevates the Sacred Host at the Lamb of God, for our adoration. In other words, we stand for one another but we sit down for God. 

(Incidentally, an NO type was once heard to say that when God arrives at his Particular Judgment, he "will stand as a mark of respect". An ex-Proddy convert reckons that's the funniest thing she's ever heard.

And even if the awful OHP (bring back hymn books!) instructs the faithful to "bow profoundly" for the words "and became Man" in the Creed, the congregation almost to a man, woman or child follows Father's example and remains standing bolt upright. 

It seems many Catholics have lost the ability to bow, let alone kneel. In his book 'The Spirit of the Liturgy', Pope Benedict speaks of a "story that comes from the sayings of the Desert Fathers, according to which the devil was compelled by God to show himself to a certain Abba Apollo. He looked black and ugly, with frightening thin limbs, but, most strikingly, he had no knees. The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical."

The inability to kneel (and perhaps the high incidence of knee replacements which make kneeling impossible) can be prevented by practice, so the medicos say: https://www.moveitorloseit.co.uk/can-get-floor-easily/ God knows what's good for us!

When lay people are allowed to lay their unconsecrated hands on the Precious Body of Christ, instead of that awesome privilege being reserved as it was for centuries and still is by Church law, to the priesthood, it's only to be expected that Catholics will no longer venerate the sacred person of the priest. Indeed, we think it's a Good Thing that the priest is no longer 'on a pedestal' as he was before Vatican II and the innovations of the New Mass; we've done the Right Thing by kicking the pedestal out from under him. 

Father, of course, being directly affected by this "fabricated liturgy" has helped this sad process along considerably. Vide the newly-appointed Bishop of Hamilton, +Stephen Lowe, who while visiting a church in the diocese prior to his installation mentioned during his homily that not long before, he'd been thinking of leaving the priesthood. Although he didn’t specifically say so, one could have been forgiven for inferring that he was also considering leaving the Church. He was running the seminary at the time.

He told the congregation (all agog, as you can imagine) that his sister, who'd given up the Faith, told him to carry on because “what else can you do?”

How utterly demoralising. One can only wonder at a brand-new bishop making such a disclosure, and conclude that as a New Agey sensitive sort of a guy he thought that "sharing" such doubts would evoke sympathy, empathy even, from his new flock. 

The only alternative explanation is stupidity, and if stupidity is the reason then it may be taken as evidence of a decline in IQ in Catholics since the introduction of the 'updated' Mass. It's anecdotal in the extreme to reference my childhood memory of three Catholic general practitioners attending Mass in my little country parish, but still, how many Catholic professional men and women are to be found in the pews today, singing those effeminate Proddy 'songs', sometimes still to the twang of guitars?

Things in the Church have come to an ugly pass, indeed. St Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles, whose conversion the Church celebrates today, would hardly recognise the Body of Christ as seen in such documents as "Introduction to Safeguarding". 

https://pndiocese.org.nz/pastoral/safeguarding/

Issued by the Diocese of Palmerston North (still wanting a bishop and it shows), "Introduction to Safeguarding" "mandates" that "everyone who does the work of the Church undertakes Safeguarding training." Everyone??? Really? The flower ladies? The cleaners? 

"The Catholic Church of New Zealand has been reflecting" (we're always 'reflecting' and never repenting) "on the impact of abuse, what we can learn, how we can move forward." (love the woke language) Pope Francis wants the Church to be "especially vigilant in protecting children and vulnerable adults". Fine. So why weren't the NZ Bishops "especially vigilant" in protecting unborn children during the 2020 election campaign, which partly as a result of their deafening silence made Mass Murderer Jacinda Ardern Prime Minister? 

The One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church is the Bride of Christ. It is to Christ her Spouse she looks for 'safeguarding'.It is to Christ she entrusts 'children and vulnerable adults'. She does this by prayer, especially the sublime prayer of Holy Mass, especially in the Traditional Latin Mass, the nearest thing to heaven on earth. Had the Church never abandoned the Mass of the Ages, would we now tying pink ribbons to her fences to symbolise the awful toll of souls abused by their pastors and likely lost to God their Father, fallen into the hands of Satan through despair?

The Church 'as a loving mother' protects her children not by 'Safeguarding Workshops' but by repentance, by praying for her children, sacrificing herself for them, recommending them to her own Mother, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Will the 'Safeguarding Workshops' be based on prayer or on bureaucracy, bumf and and bluster? Will they recite the Holy Rosary or even a prayer to Holy Michael the Archangel? 

A reader of this blog and one of PN's flock-without-a-shepherd (which, considering Hamilton's, may not be a bad thing) remarks:

 "It’s ludicrous: volunteers (for Our Lord) need to provide employment history etc to the Diocese. I’d be inclined to note that I’m a slave to Our Lord rather than a ‘volunteer’ and leave them to haggle over church bureaucracy gone mad.  

"They should focus - for now - on those bishops who have knowingly supported their pedo/homo-inclined priests and go after the priests who have grieved the innocent and abused their power. ‘Safeguarding’ by monitoring volunteers seems like a bit of a red herring if you ask me."

Indeed. Or like fiddling while Rome burns ...

"And God indeed having winked at the times of this ignorance, now declareth unto men, that all should everywhere do penance."

- Acts 17:30