NZ BISHOPS' M.O. LIKE LABOUR'S

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An 'altar' of earth - one of the daring liturgical adaptations approved by a Bishops' Conference, somewhere in the Novus Ordo wasteland

The NZ Catholic Bishops' concept of liturgical renewal is like the late unlamented Labour Government's modus operandi: keep doing the same inept thing and producing the same awfully bad results.  They intend to rehash the lectionary again (groan) and apparently expect - against all the evidence - that moving the chairs on the deck of the Novus Ordo Titanic will stop that ship going down.

Wouldn't you know it, the Bishops want an "inclusive" lectionary - the "poetic" New Jerusalem Revised Version (NJRV). But, your Excellencies, God's justice does not want inclusivity; It wants Tradition. 'Inclusivity' is not God's will so your efforts are doomed to fail, once more.

However in today's N O Church, what the Bishops' Conference says, goes. Canon law has now been modified to emphasize the responsibility of bishops’ conferences for judging the accuracy and suitability of liturgical translations and adaptations. 

Translations adopted by a bishops’ conference now require only “confirmation” by the Dicastery for Divine Worship (the quondam Congregation, now downgraded) rather than the more rigorously studied “recognition.” In other words, canon law has been softened up.

The pope informed Cardinal Robert Sarah, the then-Prefect of the Congregation, that the Vatican is not to “impose” a specific liturgical translation on bishops’ conferences, but rather is called to recognize the bishops’ authority and expertise in determining the best way to faithfully translate Latin texts into their local languages.https://www.catholicsun.org/2021/10/22/vatican-formalizes-process-for-approving-liturgical-translations/

The bishops' "authority and expertise".  God help us.

PN's 'young Catholics Team Leader' Nick Smith

If God doesn't help us, then Palmerston North Diocese apparatchik Nick Smith (easily recognised as such by the enormous bone appendage, always a give-away of woke on a Pakeha) is here to assist. He concedes that the NZ Bishops' Synodal Consultation is "a good start" but he wants Absolutely Everyone to be consulted on liturgical texts, covering Absolutely Everything from language to culture. 

This is A Never Ending Story, people - of boredom, bad taste and bastardisation of Holy Mass.  

'Young Catholics Team Leader' Smith (shouldn't their leader be the PP, not a random layperson?) is calling for 'inclusivity' and 'clarity'". The heterodox hierarchy have given us a fair idea by now of what's meant by 'inclusivity': it's welcoming all-comers including adulterers and sodomites. And 'clarity' means dumbing-down the liturgy to suit the lowest common denominator (and with NZ's education system under Labour/Greens, that has sunk lower than ever).

Opines Smith:

The words (of the liturgy) should help people from different walks of life hear a universal truth, just as they did in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:5-12).

Lest Smith or anyone else should want to convey by Acts 2:5-12 (when everyone in Jerusalem heard the Apostles speak in their own language) an argument for the vernacular in the liturgy, or licence for local liabilities (aka 'inculturation'), let him/they hear St Augustine: 

"(T)he conversion of all nations to the Church, and their being united in one faith, all having one language or confession, is a perpetuation of the same miracle in the Church" (Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary). 

For St Augustine that "one language" was Latin, and it was universal. Millions of Catholics still recall the thrill of walking into a Catholic church on Sunday anywhere in the world and hearing the same inexpressibly dear, familiar words. 

The Second Vatican Council and documents like Sacrosanctum Concilium and Comme Le Prévoit set the stage ..., emphasising “dynamic equivalence” for translations that resonate with listeners.

As Australia's Cardinal Pell observed, the translation "was not always equivalent and even less frequently dynamic". His Eminence wasn't awfully popular with the rest of the hierarchy, not even (or especially not even) after his success with sorting the Vatican finances. And then he died, suddenly. Funny, that. 

When it comes to blending liturgy with culture (inculturation), the Apostolic See recognises legitimate liturgical adaptations, even the more daring ones by Bishops’ Conferences.

Presumably the image above, of an 'earth altar', is a 'legitimate liturgical adaptation', more daring than the Snickers Bars pallium worn by the President of the NZ Bishops' Conference, +Stephen Lowe, which presumably was legitimate also.

Secondly, a lectionary is a liturgical resource and a teaching tool. It contains readings and songs that need to be heard by the assembly, not just privately. So translation should prioritise making these texts “proclaimable”.

In New Zealand then, in other words, texts must be dumbed-down even more, so that the 'Proclaimer' (who in the Novus Ordo is often a teenager in a mini-skirt or jeans, or even younger) can get their head and tongue around them. 

Traditional Latin Massgoers are spared all this nonsense. They hear the texts read by the celebrant priest, who knows them in their unadulterated state back to front and probably off by heart. And does it strike our Bishops, or Mr Smith, that without any 'inculturation' whatsoever, the numbers of faithful in the Latin Mass pews steadily increases? Of course it does strike them, as it strikes Francis, which is why he is determined to stamp out the Latin Mass.

Archbishop Mark Coleridge - depressing

Mr Smith is dispiriting enough, but Brisbane's Archbishop Mark Coleridge, speaking mid-October for a second time to NZ's Diocesan Priests' Assembly, is downright depressing. Why was he asked back? To hear inspirational insights such as these (below)?

• "Societal change is affecting the Church" - wow
• "Move from maintenance to mission" - about time 
• "The Church and parishes were built on the assumption that most Catholics would come to Mass. But now they don’t" - and the Archbishop seems not to know why
• "He suggested showing a bit of apostolic integrity" - a priest should show nothing else  
• "Taking some risks" - like getting lay people to do your work?
• " 'Communities of communities’ where each community is respected but drawn into a larger community" - as in, parish amalgamation, AGAIN
• "The prime goal is to generate new possibilities for mission" - not to save souls, then? 
• "The priesthood could be re-situated in a leadership team" - oh now there's an idea
• "Moving from a hierarchical to a charismatic leadership model, although not all priests have that charism" - that line must have brought the house down; and priests already have a hierarchical and charismatic leadership model, in Jesus Christ Our Lord
• "The community of communities’ model leadership team might include lay people, a deacon, or a consecrated religious" - ah, once you exclude priests, who else is there?
• "The 'new approach' will need training and proper preparation" - lots of opportunities for the Brother Dobbyns. Think laterally, be imaginative NZ Diocesan priests told (cathnews.co.nz)

And while we're on the subject of liturgy: 

"I have felt it my duty to affirm that “The liturgical books promulgated by Saint Paul VI and Saint John Paul II, in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, are the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite” (Motu Proprio Traditionis custodes, art 1) (n. 31).

Francis may affirm this till the cows come home, but it simply is not true.

"The holy pontiffs St. Paul VI and St. John Paul II, approving the reformed liturgical books ex decreto Sacrosancti Œcumenici Concilii Vaticani II, have guaranteed the fidelity of the reform to the Council.[1] 

"For this reason I wrote Traditionis custodes, so that the Church may lift up, in the variety of so many languages, one and the same prayer capable of expressing her unity. As I have written, I intend that this unity be re-established in the whole Church of the Roman Rite" (n. 61).

No wonder Bergoglio is such an angry old man. This 'unity in the variety of so many languages' that he intended to be re-established has not been re-established. And neither will it be. 

Because it is not God's will.