WHERE DID ASCENSION THURSDAY GO? TO NEXT SUNDAY - BUT WHY?

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He means you can't criticise the faith of others, even if it's faith in a wooden goddess

Today is Ascension Thursday. Today is still Thursday, but whatever happened to the Ascension? 

It's gone to Sunday, of course.  Sundayised, like every other Holy Day of Obligation in New Zealand except for the Assumption of Mary (our patronal feast) and the Solemnity of the Mother of God (January 1). 

It's the Novus Ordo effect. The Mystical Body of Christ in New Zealand has been gradually stripped of her garments - her Holy Days - as Jesus Christ Himself was stripped for His scourging and His crucifixion, and as her churches have been stripped too, of all Catholic Sacred Tradition.

A woman in tears, her mother on her deathbed, paid a visit yesterday to St Joseph's Church in Waipukurau, "the church of my childhood school",  she said. She turned at the door and said, "Where's the holy water?" Obviously she hadn't darkened any Catholic church door for a couple of years at least. 

St Joseph's, like every other church in Palmerston North Diocese, has been stripped of its sacramental holy water. At St Joseph's the fonts now hold the collection baskets. In other words, filthy lucre has replaced our source of spiritual blessings. 

At St Patrick's Waipawa the historic brass gong has vanished. Except when a reader of this blog attends St Joseph's, and rings the bells still there on the front pew probably just because she likes to ring them (because, as she's been told, she's "doo-lalley") there is no acknowledgment of the appearance on these parish altars of the Son of God, "Christ the Lord, King of all the Universe, of all in Heaven, on Earth, and Beneath".* The reason, as Father explains it, is that bells and gongs are "historic".

Speaking of altars, St Joseph's has been stripped also of the relics of the saints. And of altar servers which are also "historic" now, because they are not to be had any more. It's too hard, one suspects, for St Joseph's School next door to supply them because they're just not available.

Bells, gongs, altar relics, holy water and altar servers are not just "historic". They are Catholic and the reason they've all gradually been stripped away is, the make-over of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church since Vatican II, accelerated by the so-called Pope Francis, into a New World Church made agreeable to "Mr Global", a church with no distinguishing features, no dogma, no doctrine, and no Sacraments.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, or Pope Francis as he prefers to be known, is assisted in this make-over, this transformation of the Catholic Church into a Protestant Freemasonic institution, by liberal, modernist bishops like New Zealand's (especially PN Bishop Emeritus Peter Cullinane), bishops who deploy chaps like Brother Kevin Dobbyn, who graced the Palmerston North cathedral with his presence this week at two meetings of "The Church in the 21st Century."

Brother Kevin Dobbyn

Brother Kevin - speaking on the doorstep, as it were, of the once-thriving Latin Mass community of St Columba's Ashhurst now arbitrarily cancelled by Cardinal John Dew - referred to the Latin Mass Society as "the Latin lace and haberdashery society".  With such a witty turn of phrase, perhaps he like his brother Dave could have written pop songs for a living. 

Obviously Brother Kevin was referring to the beautiful traditional vestments worn to celebrate the Traditional Latin Mass, described by the revered Father Faber as "the most beautiful thing this side of heaven." Father Faber continued:  

“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.”

 

The Tridentine (Latin) Mass: "the most beautiful thing this side of heaven"

Brother Kevin, it seems, prefers the ladies' nightie-like look of Novus Ordo garb to the vestments of the Latin Mass, intricately made and richly embroidered as is only right and fitting for the celebration of the Mass of Ages. He's entitled to his personal tastes but foisting them on other Catholics, especially in Palmerston North, was perhaps tactless, to say the least..

Although not too much harm would have been done - a total of only 18 people attended his two meetings of "The Church in the 21st Century". As we all know from attending Novus Ordo Sunday Masses, there aren't that many people left in the "Church of the 21st Century".

Brother Kevin, it seems, would like to strip the Church of those vestments of sacred tradition as she has been stripped of so much else which adorned her for hundreds of years, until the Communists and Masons remade her into their own image, into a Church that worships man, not God. 

It's no wonder that N O Catholics can't be bothered with Mass on what used to be Holy Days of Obligation, like Ascension Thursday. The wonder is that any still turn up on Sunday - especially when Sunday, especially a Sundayised Day of Obligation - is handed over to the school for a "School Mass", with songs that would embarrass even Dave Dobbyn. 

The Church obeys God, not man - or woman, be she ever so keen to dress up in extra-special lingerie like a Novus Ordo priest and actually be a priest herself. 

A reader of this blog asks why Ascension Thursday was Sundayised. The only reason to be found in a quick search, in print, is that our bishops have decided it's "too hard" these days for lay people to turn up to a Holy Day of Obligation. So out of the kindness of their hearts, to avoid the Holy Day being an occasion of sin for us as it were - because missing it like missing Sunday Mass would be a serious sin - they plonk the Holy Day on the following Sunday. A reason not to be found in print might be that the numbers turning up to Holy Days of Obligation now would be so small as to be embarrassing for the priest, and the hierarchy. Go to Mass next New Year's Day and see for yourself.

Brother Kevin and our bishops, especially Bishop Peter Cullinane (has he made up his mind YET, on whether to sit, stand or kneel for the Eucharistic Prayer?), need to remind themselves that the Catholic Church is founded on the Rock of Peter, a metaphor chosen by Jesus Christ Himself to express its durable and unchanging nature, like stone. The Catholic Church is "set in stone" and not subject to the whims and fancies of bishops, religious or even popes, not even real popes. 

 

 Every best 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 (Jas 1:17).

*"Preparation for Mass",p 3, "Praying the Latin Mass as the Passion" by Sharon Crooks PhD.