A READER DIDDLED, GOD CHEATED: A TALE OF TWO CHURCHES AND ONE

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St Patrick's Church Makara: abandoned and now a "venue"

"St Patrick's Makara was abandoned by the Catholic Church" - a reader of this blog acclaims last weekend's Latin Mass retreat, vents on "Be The Change Catholic Church Aotearoa" (BCCCA) - and feels diddled.

"My understanding is the Latin Mass Society had to hire that church and hall which is telling, considering the Catholic Church would have  facilities all over the region that could have been made available." St Patrick's (1873), is now a "venue" while up the road the much newer Anglican church is still running. The Catholics got to Makara first but the Anglicans have outlasted them.

Post-retreat, Mass at St Mary of the Angels and Palmerston North's cathedral was a terrific comedown, revealing why St Patrick's and so many other Catholic churches in Wellington Archdiocese (aka the Land of Mordor) are closed: lack of faith.

A second reader comments: "Derelict, abandoned, sold-off, deconsecrated Catholic churches  are all over the place. Hundreds, thousands, world wide, by one stroke of the pen. Shows the immense power of the Sovereign Pontiff, signing off the V2 reform for new churches in their place.

And rather turned out a big commercial blessing for the architects, builders and timber companies.  And publishers - of the New Missal."

The Archdiocese of Wellington 

BCCCA. What a mouthful - which BCCCA obviously realises, otherwise they'd surely have added "NZ" as is right and proper, "Aotearoa" being as yet a fictional entity. BCCCA, a submission on the Synod from a bunch of religious sisters of a certain age who evidently wish they were  priests, deserves a post to itself, which in due course they'll get. 

In the meantime, a prediction from our disaffected reader (the first): "In a decade or two, a new normal: Novus Ordo Masses (only), said by women wearing rainbow-coloured scarves, mostly in Te Reo."

Of the retreat, he says it "captured the spirituality and camaraderie we had at the Ashhurst Latin Mass." (That was before it was cancelled by the Cardinal-in-Charge of the Land of Mordor, Cardinal John Dew.) He goes on: "It was a wonderful affair ... self-catered, a feat in itself ... the priestly leadership of Fr Matthew Gibson was superb." 

He liked the "cute church mouse that during proceedings ran repeatedly between the sacristy and a spot behind the altar. 

"The long-term strategy of the Latin Mass Society, as I understand it, is to be nice to the hierarchy, have events like this retreat whenever permitted (perhaps once a year), and lobby the hierarchy to change its attitude on banning regular Latin Masses.

"With groups like ‘Be the Change Catholic Church Aotearoa’ (BCCCA) in ascendancy, and their strategy seemingly supported by many in the senior hierarchy, right up to the pope, I don’t think a seemingly passive approach to get the Latin Mass back is likely to succeed, or change the now-established direction of the Church towards absolute modernism.

"The mouse is symbolic of the Latin Mass Society, the cat is the Church hierarchy.  The cat plays the mouse, then eats it when it gets bored. 

"I was frankly shocked. It took a day to work out it wasn't a proper Catholic Church. I felt cheated."

St Patrick's Makara as "venue" - tricked out for a wedding 

At St Mary of the Angels' midday Mass in Wellington on Monday, it would have been God Almighty Himself who felt cheated. Principally by the priest's refusal to give His Son in holy Communion to a Catholic in good standing with the Church - who had in fact made her confession to Fr Matthew Gibson the day before at the Latin Mass retreat (she'd had to queue for the privilege). At base it can only be a total lack of faith that would allow a priest to hold His Eucharistic Lord in his hand and refuse to give Him to a communicant in the only manner approved by the Church for hundreds of years, on the tongue, even if half a dozen cardinals had told him to, as +Dew has.

And there was the casual way the Sacred Host was plopped onto the paten after the Consecration. A priest's handling of Our Lord can be very revealing and in the Novus Ordo where the celebrant faces the congregation instead of God, it can be blindingly obvious. Surely no man of faith could treat Our Lord in such a cavalier fashion.

St Mary of the Angels, these days a bastion of the Society of Mary so-called, positively reeks of the lack of faith (and hope) which closed St Patrick's Makara down (and Greytown's, Carterton's and Eketahuna's Catholic churches, to mention only the three passed today, on return from the retreat).

To make a depressing little catalogue of the signs of lack of faith in the new SMOA:

• The carpark gate is operated electronically. You're desperate for a park to attend Mass, the carpark is practically empty but your car will not be admitted unless you've rented a space (there's one advertised in the newsletter this week, be in quick)
• "Sanitise on your way in" by order of the New Zealand Government say the signs in the porch, with plastic bottles of sanitiser instead of sacramental holy water in the fonts. St Padre Pio tells us to "take the holy water and make the sign of the cross carefully and slowly". Hah! And please don't say, but that was before Covid. Why not just put holy water in the fonts with signs saying "Dip your fingers at your own risk"? Huh?
• Propped up against a statue of St Anthony, another notice: "Warning: surveillance camera operating" (and probably noting our presence, recording it for use in evidence against us)
• In front of St Martin de Porres (?) "Food Bank Collection"
• In front of the Sacred Heart: "Please place Mass Offerings, Donations in the Slot Below" (in contrast, at St Anthony's SSPX in Whanganui there are eight statues or so in the church. Each statue is adorned not with notices but with fresh flowers)
• On a table, cookbooks for sale. Now a church needs money, and a central city church like SMOA, lots of it, to stay open. But it's the faith and hope obtained by prayer that brings the money in, not notices and cookbooks - although getting said cookbooks together is, or should be, a work of charity 
• This morning there was not one votive candle burning in front of Our Lady and St Joseph 
• Yesterday afternoon there was a woman in a pew chatting on her phone at normal conversational decibel level 
• Father's homily was preceded, before Mass, by chortling in the sacristy 
• There was no Angelus 
  
  
  In his little homily yesterday Father talked about "a relationship. We have the Lord with us by His presence whereby He will come and make His home with us", as if His presence with us were a given. That's surely the sin of presumption, which springs from lack of that "fear of the Lord (which)  is the beginning of wisdom" (Proverbs 1, 7). The Catholic Encyclopedia notes how presumption – which it defines as a state in which the soul “hopes for salvation without doing anything to deserve it, or for pardon from his sins without repenting of them” – is born of a sense of pride.
  
  God, please give to your Church today
  many more priests after your own heart.
  
  May they be worthy representatives of Christ the Good Shepherd.
  May they wholeheartedly devote themselves to prayer and penance;
  be examples of humility and poverty;
  shining models of holiness;
  tireless and powerful preachers of the Word of God;
  zealous dispensers of your grace in the sacraments.
  
  May their loving devotion to your Son Jesus in the Eucharist
  and to Mary his Mother be the twin fountains of fruitfulness for their ministry. - St John Vianney (the Cure of Ars).
  
  Our disillusioned retreatant reports that at Mass at Palmerston North's cathedral in on Sunday evening, "Fr Joe Grayland told the congregation to be ready for "change" in the Church. It brought one back down to earth."
  
  One wonders what Fr Joe Grayland and "Be The Change Catholic Church Aotearoa" make of the Chapter for Vespers on the Fourth Sunday after Easter (last Sunday, in the pre-Vat2 liturgical calendar)?
  
  
  
  "Dearly beloved: Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with Whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration" (James 1,17).