THE NOVUS ORDO EFFECT ON ST PATRICK'S WAIPAWA

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There's more explicit Christianity inscribed on the Waipawa Cenotaph than was preached by the priest at the 150th Jubilee of St Patrick's Catholic Church Waipawa this weekend.

"To the honour and glory of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost", runs the inscription on this little town's fine memorial to the fallen. 

 Well God, as in 'let's thank God', did get a mention in Father's homily at St Patrick's this morning for Good Shepherd Sunday - twice, in fact. As for Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd Himself, He didn't rate. Not at all. The Mass was "all about celebrating ourselves." That's what Father said. Truly. You couldn't make it up.

I'd like to quote something of Cardinal John Dew's homily at the Jubilee Mass yesterday but I can't remember a word of it. Probably because of the trauma of hearing him preach the good shepherd who does not abandon his flock.

Bishop Peter Cullinane was there too, of course, concelebrating with several other priests. One wonders if they all individually said private Masses yesterday morning, as they would have before Vatican II, with each separate Sacrifice of Calvary re-enacted calling down untold blessings on a world in desperate need. Reluctantly, one would conclude that no, those Masses went unoffered.  

And it's reluctantly that I write this, because the cardinal, the bishop and the priests are products of this age in the Church. The Novus Ordo has done its work. 

So much good will and kindness and hours of hard work went into the Jubilee, given so freely by a superb team of dedicated people (chiefly women, it should be said). And the Jubilee dinner last night was well-attended by our lovely parishioners and a fine time was had there by all.

St Patrick's Church itself - the architectural jewel of Waipawa and probably the most beautiful church in the entire Diocese of Palmerston North - after a new paint job and adorned with sumptuous flowers, looked stunning.

the sanctuary

In the sanctuary

But the sad truth which must be faced and should be examined is that for the Jubilee Mass yesterday, celebrating 150 years of Catholic history in Central Hawke's Bay and celebrated by the cardinal (a former parishioner), the church wasn't as full as it would be for your average funeral. 

in the porch

No amount of gorgeous lilies, be they ever so expertly arranged, could disguise that fact, or completely divert attention from the preponderance of grey heads in the congregation, or from the lack of younger people to proclaim the readings and lead the POF, and of altar boys. I think commonsense and sheer lack of space in the little porch might have dictated the abolition of sign-in nonsense and bottles of 'sanitizer', but sadly there was still no holy water in St Patrick's unique conch-shell fonts. And no "Hail Glorious St Patrick" was sung!   

Look, the jubilee book is a fine production, text and photographs and history most professionally recorded; there was food in abundance and beautiful flowers everywhere. 

In one of the two holy water fonts

But. The talented team of floral artists had seemingly completely overlooked the statue of Our Lady - although its opposing number, the Sacred Heart, was well-decorated. That detail might seem neither here nor there, but as a pointer to the plight of the parish it could be hugely significant. (P S On Monday morning when the flowers from the Municipal Theatre dinner venue were imported, still there was nothing placed in front of the Blessed Virgin in the church.) 

Since Vatican II Mass counts have plummeted (while the population exploded) and many children at the parish school, St Joseph's, don't present for Holy Communion, we must assume because they're not baptised and so, not Catholic, which makes somewhat of a mockery of Catholic schools.. And if it weren't for the Philippinos (God bless 'em), there'd be precious few baptisms, or babies and children at Mass.

the statue of Our Lady

Our Lord desires - He actually insists - that His Mother be greatly honoured. In Holy Trinity Parish, to which St Patrick's belongs, public recitation of the Rosary died out several years ago with the departure of an Irishman, George Timmins (born Geoirge O'Toimmins, but Kiwis couldn't get the hang of it). The Catholic Women's League with its devotion to Mary (Cardinal Dew's mother Joan was a past-president), faded away similarly and as for the Children of Mary in their veils and blue mantles, they're but a very distant memory. 

It's probably not since the pre-Vatican II parish missions of the redoubtable Redemptorists that such a thing as devotion of reparation to the Immaculate Heart of Mary has been preached in Holy Trinity Parish.

"During the messages of the Angel (of Fatima) in 1916, and again during the apparitions of Our Lady on June 13, July 14, and shortly after that in the apparitions of Pontevedra, Heaven urgently asks for reparation for all "the sins by which God is offended ... for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference" which wound the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, and finally, for "the blasphemies and ingratitude" of men who pierce the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

 

Dante's 'Inferno'

"This grave and terrible warning ... seems to us like an echo of the first part of the Secret (of Fatima) with its terrifying vision of hell: "So numerous are the souls which the justice of God condemns for sins committed against Me that I (Our Lady) come to ask for reparation. Sacrifice yourself for this intention and pray" -The Whole Truth about Fatima, the Secret and the Church by Frère Michel de la Sainte Trinité of the Little Brothers of the Sacred Heart.

So we see that this Faith of ours, the Catholic Faith, is not a cakewalk. Not a social club that has outings called Mass like concerts where you laugh and chat while waiting for the entertainment to start, and begin again the moment it's over while Christ Jesus Our Lord is still our Guest, and deeply offended by talking in His Presence. 

At jubilees, Christmas and Easter people turn up who haven't darkened the door for months or years, and present themselves for Holy Communion. If they're not conscious of unrepented serious sin, well, "Who am I to judge?" as Jorge Bergoglio has infamously said. But God has implanted in every man, no matter how ignorant, pagan or badly catechised, an instinctive knowledge of good and evil.

And if they knew the risk they were running of making sacrilegious Communions - hell, for ever and ever - if they'd heard hell preached any time in the last 50 years surely they'd go to Confession first. That is, if they had time for another trip to town or along to the church, for the very rare occasions when confessions are heard.

But they don't hear hell preached. We're all going to heaven, alleluia! The hell revealed to the little children at Fatima - by their Blessed Mother, the Mother of God - in order to save them and as many souls as possible from that terrible eternal fate, is considered in the world of Novus Ordo to be not eternal at all, but a thing of the past. It defies logic, but there you go. 

I had a chat after Mass with a parishioner who shall remain nameless, whose liberal Catholicism - a product of the N O - would doubtless be shared by most in his 'community'. I don't know for sure, because the practice of the faith is never mentioned. Not around me, anyway. 

I opened with a sincere thank you his input, for his time and expertise and we were getting on famously - until I said I'd put the disappointing turn-out down to 60 years of the Novus Ordo.  He said he'd put it down to societal effects. I said if we'd retained the traditional Latin Mass the societal effects would have been much less harmful. And then I mentioned the Abortion Law Act (ALA).

I asked if he knew what it entailed: killing babies up to birth without anaesthetic, sex-selective abortions, no parental notification of their pregnant teens etc etc. Hey, it's a great conversation starter. It can be a bit of a conversation ender, too.

He wouldn't confirm or deny that he knew what's going on now in our hospitals. But he did say that he thought abortion wasn't such a big issue. 

"Not such a big issue as what?" I asked. But I did assure him he was on the right side, 'Pope Francis' having stated that fighting social injustice is as important as fighting abortion. 

"Well. Sending young people to war," he said. I said at least young people had a life and could choose what to do with it. Then he wanted to know on what basis I thought abortion was a big issue."It's all through Scripture for a start," I said. 

"Where?" he asked. That nearly floored me but I rallied, and quoted Jeremiah 1:5: "Before I formed thee, I knew thee." But the conversation was going downhill, and when Donald Trump came into it it was all but over. 

"Trump's so divisive," he said. 

I defended him. I defended Trump! I must be mad! Even if he is the most pro-life president in US history! 

My interlocutor thought that standing outside a church with a bible in his hand was just despicable. I said, "So you judged him as insincere," and then I went from bad to worse by attacking Biden, for systematically undoing all the good that Trump accomplished.

At that point my fellow-parishioner thought we'd call it a day. I agreed and proffered an excuse for such appalling bad manners, talking about justice instead of the weather or food or medical procedures: I said I'd reached the age where time is growing short, and that "the night cometh when no man can work" (Jn 9:4).

In other words, I said, I believe that we must speak the truth, no matter how unpalatable, because before long we'll face God at our particular judgment and be called to account for our witness, or the lack of it.  

I think we parted friends. I hope so. He was honest, after all, in admitting that he thought abortion isn't such a big issue. 

Killing babies in their mothers' wombs, without anaesthetic, isn't such a big issue. How does a life-long, committed-insofar-as-Mass-attendance goes-Catholic, come to believe that? Because he doesn't know the teaching of the Church, because he hasn't been catechised. He hasn't heard the teaching of the Church preached from the pulpit. 

It's the Novus Ordo effect. 

A reader of this blog would disagree. He'd say it's the Vatican II effect.

And then I'd say the Novus Ordo is the chief manifestation of the Vatican II effect. And he'd say the collapse of Catholic schools is the most obvious manifestation of “the spirit of Vatican II”.

And I'd say the most obvious manifestation of "the spirit of Vatican II"- the collapse of Catholic schools - has been achieved by the Novus Ordo.

Game, set and match? I wonder. 

But I certainly didn't wonder at the poor attendance at the 150th Jubilee Mass yesterday, or at the Sunday Mass for the whole parish (usuallly celebrated in the two churches) this morning, or the excess of food, left over from the day before. I expected it, because that is the Novus Ordo effect.

self-explanatory

To quote Dr Peter Kwasniewski  https://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2019/11/on-fiftieth-anniversary-of-novus-ordo.html 

"This is a monumental flaw baked into the Novus Ordo: the “smells and bells” are only optional, at the whim of the people in charge. Consequently, everything depends on the education, good taste, and orthodoxy of the pastor or the celebrant, or whoever is entrusted with decision-making power. 

Yet such optionitis combined with the current ecclesiastical power structure is a deadly combination: all it takes is one too many complaints to the bishop and boom!, Father Incensus Oriens is gone, sent scurrying across town or away to the boonies; the next guy comes in, and destroys, in a matter of weeks, the work of beautification and resacralization that it may have taken years or decades to build up. We all know this happens."

Do we? If we do know, then we're pretending that we don't. Just like we're pretending that Jorge Bergoglio is pope. 

St Robert Bellarmine:

"A pope who is a manifest heretic automatically (per se) ceases to be pope and head, just as he ceases automatically to be a Christian and a member of the Church. Wherefore, he can be judged and punished by the Church."