Keep the Mass in Christmas

This Advent season, as we meditate upon the threefold advent of Christ (His Incarnation, His spiritual presence in our hearts and souls, and His Second Coming) and thus prepare for the grand celebration of Christmas, I urge us Catholics to not only fight the secularists who would take Christ out of Christmas, but to fight the heretics who would take Mass out of ChristMass.  This is a Catholic feast for which we prepare, and we celebrate the Church's calendar in and through the sacred liturgy, which has as its focal point the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  Catholic is Christian.  Christian is supposed to be Catholic. 

Keep the Mass in ChristMass!!

My thoughts on the new translation of the Novus Ordo

Since that is what everyone is talking about in Catholic-land right now, I guess I will too.  So here is my thought:

I went to the Traditional Mass today.

Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue are Boring

"All power is given to me in heaven and in earth.  Going therefore,

teach ye all nations; baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,

teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world."

--OR--

"I am the nicest person there ever was.  I suggest then, that you

set up meetings all over the world with all different types of people,

dialoging with them about what you have in common and ignoring your differences: and behold who cares who I am, there are lots of nice people."

I was an atheist.  I thought religion was for people too lazy to solve their own problems and God was an outdated sophistry of pre-scientific times.  Then I was a Protestant, of the non-denominational evangelical variety.  I believed whatever I liked; I decided what I believed.  Jesus loved me, that I knew, for the Bible told me so.

Then I converted to Catholicism.  I did not "come into the fullness of Christianity;" I did not find a new denomination I preferred to my previous allegiance; and I did not become Catholic because I privately and personally believe it is the best of several valid forms of Christianity.

I converted from error to truth.  While I was received into Holy Mother Church in a rite that only allowed me to profess the following: "I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God."

This is what I professed in my heart and would have professed in public had I been able to do so:

"I, Matthew, 21 years of age, born outside the Catholic Church, have held and believed errors contrary to her teaching. Now, enlightened by divine grace, I kneel before you, Reverend Father ...., having before my eyes and touching with my hand the holy Gospels. And with firm faith I believe and profess each and all the articles contained in the Apostles' Creed, that is: I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried; He descended into hell, the third day He arose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God, the Father almighty, from there He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints; the forgiveness of sins; the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.
I firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and all the other constitutions and ordinances of the Church.
I admit the Sacred Scriptures in the sense which has been held and is still held by holy Mother Church, whose duty it is to judge the true sense and interpretation of Sacred Scripture, and I shall never accept or interpret them in a sense contrary to the unanimous consent of the fathers.
I profess that the sacraments of the New Law are truly and precisely seven in number, instituted for the salvation of mankind, though all are not necessary for each individual: baptism, confirmation, holy Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, holy orders, and matrimony. I profess that all confer grace, and that baptism, confirmation, and holy orders cannot be repeated without sacrilege. I also accept and admit the ritual of the Catholic Church in the solemn administration of all the aforementioned sacraments.
I accept and hold in each and every part all that has been defined and declared by the Sacred Council of Trent concerning original sin and justification. I profess that in the Mass there is offered to God a true, real, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; that in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ is really, truly, and substantially present, and that there takes place in the Mass what the Church calls transubstantiation, which is the change of all the substance of bread into the body of Christ and of all substance of wine into His blood. I confess also that in receiving under either of these species one receives Jesus Christ whole and entire.
I firmly hold that Purgatory exists and that the souls detained there can be helped by the prayers of the faithful.
Likewise I hold that the saints, who reign with Jesus Christ, should be venerated and invoked, that they offer prayers to God for us, and that their relics are to be venerated.
I firmly profess that the images of Jesus Christ and of the Mother of God, ever a Virgin, as well as of all the saints should be given due honor and veneration. I also affirm that Jesus Christ left to the Church the faculty to grant indulgences, and that their use is most salutary to the Christian people. I recognize the holy, Roman, Catholic, and apostolic Church as the mother and teacher of all the churches, and I promise and swear true obedience to the Roman Pontiff, successor of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles and vicar of Jesus Christ.
Moreover, without hesitation I accept and profess all that has been handed down, defined, and declared by the sacred canons and by the general councils, especially by the Sacred Council of Trent and by the Vatican General Council, and in special manner all that concerns the primacy and infallibility of the Roman Pontiff. At the same time I condemn and reprove all that the Church has condemned and reproved. This same Catholic faith, outside of which none can be saved, I now freely profess and I truly adhere to it. With the help of God, I promise and swear to maintain and profess this faith entirely, inviolately, and with firm constancy until the last breath of life. And I shall strive, as far as possible, that this same faith shall be held, taught, and publicly professed by all who depend on me and over whom I shall have charge.
So help me God and these holy Gospels."

People do not become Catholic because the Church is comfortable and fuzzy and "nice" and so ecumenical.  People, generally, do not find that appealing.  It is not a challenge, it does not set the heart on fire, it does not enlighten the mind, and it does not speak to the soul.  People do not become Catholic because it is the preferable form of worship of "the almighty" or because it is a nice religion.  The martyrs did not willingly die to prove that Islam is just as good as Catholicism, or that the Old Covenant is actually not abrogated, or that atheists are men of good will.

The martyrs died because they tried to fulfill the first text I gave at the beginning of this post; it is what Our Lord preached, it is what the saints taught and lived, and it is that for which the martyrs offered their earthly lives.

Nowadays, churchmen up and down the hierarchy mutter garbage in line with the second example, by their actions often, by their words too often as well.  They pedal ecumenical and interreligious rapprochement as salvific, they exalt worldly peace above the Pax Christi, and all whilst they fiddle, the world burns.

Would we really peddle this crap if we believed, from the full Profession of Faith above: "This same Catholic faith, outside of which none can be saved, I now freely profess and I truly adhere to it."

Heresy, then and now

Studying any sort of Church history, whether in a basic undergraduate class or Ph.D. work, or even on one's own, and whether one be Catholic or some form of Protestant or whatever, nearly always involves learning about the heresies and conflicts affecting the Church in its first few centuries of existence.  Most of the bigger ones are household names: Gnosticism, Donatism, Pelagianism, Marcionism, etc.

Awhile ago, in my Protestant days, I read a book entitled Heresies and How to Avoid Them.  In a bout of extreme irony, it was penned by two Anglican clergymen - a note I did not fail to miss even at the time.  The book performed the cursory look at each of the major heresies affecting the Church in her first few centuries, and explained avoiding them by presenting some bare basics of the theological doctrines in question, platitudinous exhortations to "balance" and the like, and little urgency concerning the necessity of orthodoxy.  The interesting thing, though, about this book is that it even mentions heresy, and is written (at least mostly) by Protestants.

Heresy has become a rather rare term.  It certainly has always been an uncomfortable one, I suppose, though nowadays it is even uncomfortable for the orthodox and not just the heterodox.  Heresy is a word inadmissable to discussion now that ecumenism rules the day and now that we must focus on what we supposedly have in common rather than what divides us.  Instead of orthodox and heterdox, truth and error, revealed dogma and heresy, we have multiple interpretations, different traditions, commonality, and other endlessly boring banalities.  We are told and we imbue the mindset that this is all due to a rather remarkable increase in charity and mutual understanding over our more rigid predecessors, those demonically dogmatic folk, that these times are so much more enlightened and different than ages past.

Really?  Is that really the case?

Or is it this:

“If heretics no longer horrify us today, as they once did our forefathers, is it certain that it is because there is more charity in our hearts? Or would it not too often be, perhaps, without our daring to say so, because the bone of contention, that is to say, the very substance of our faith, no longer interests us? Men of too familiar and too passive a faith, perhaps for us dogmas are no longer the Mystery on which we live, the Mystery which is to be accomplished in us. Consequently then, heresy no longer shocks us; at least, it no longer convulses us like something trying to tear the soul of our souls away from us.... And that is why we have no trouble in being kind to heretics, and no repugnance in rubbing shoulders with them...It is not always charity, alas, which has grown greater, or which has become more enlightened: it is often faith, the taste for the things of eternity, which has grown less.”

Think about that.  Read it again.  Really force yourself to consider it.

Interesting, at least to my mind, is who penned the above quote: Henri Cardinal de Lubac, he of the liberal, nouvelle theologie, Springtime-of-Vatican-II.  I don't wish to enter a debate about Card. de Lubac, just to simply point out that even he could write such a thing as he witnessed the human element of Holy Mother Church wreak its horrendous havoc in the years following the Council.

Back to the subject at hand: Eternity must always be the reference point, the point of departure and reference, for the spiritual life.  The whole point of religion is to take us to the best side of eternity.  You and I each have an immortal soul intrinsic to our nature.  Death is not the end.  We go somewhere when we die.  Heaven is not guaranteed.  Hell is possible; it is a reality for many souls.  Heresy compromises our place in eternity.

The ugly, opposite side of this, of course, is that heresy doesn't matter if everyone goes to Heaven, if all Christian "denominations" are equally or at least relatively equal, or even if Catholicism is even the "best form of Christianity."  You do the math.

Holy Mass as a Journey

[A note: Some posts that I write will be more academic in nature, critically engaging theories and ideas, citing and interacting with sources, etc., and some less so - some more descriptive and experiential.  Really, to drive a wedge between these two especially when discussion something like Sacred Liturgy is destructive and misses the point, but there are different perspectives from which to look at the same thing.]

Kneeling in the pews of a beautiful Gothic Church, priest upon the altar, during Holy Mass, I sense as though everyone is going somewhere.  The straight, narrow arc of the Church, the Sanctuary elevated one step up from the Nave, and the Altar three steps up from the rest of the Sanctuary, all give the presentation of "Further Up, Further In." 

It appears, in the fullest sense of the word, to me that Holy Mass is a movement.  Everyone in the nave, all the masses of people (and, just as equally, the several, when the Church is far less full) pray collectively and together, provocatively evoking that ancient symbolism of the nave as the ship.  Ships are traveling vessels; those on ships travelers.  When we enter the Church and assist at Holy Mass, we get on the ship and we embark upon a journey.  And, as the laity, we are the followers at Holy Mass.  By virtue of our baptism, we have the prerogative to enter the nave, to get onboard the ship, wherein at Holy Mass we follow. 

*Let no one dare to say that this implies a derogation of the "role of the laity" at Holy Mass.  To do so would impugn the significance and dignity of baptism and represent the most obtuse form of "clericalism," if such a thing really even exists.  There are no leaders if there are no followers, democracy be damned.*

At the beginning of Holy Mass, at least for centuries upon centuries if not according to the experience of most Catholics these days, the priest at the outset declares: "Introibo ad altare Dei" - I go unto the altar of God, wherein the server responds: "Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam" - To God, who giveth joy to my youth.  So the priest ascends the altar, but as the servers affirm on behalf of the faithful steeped in preparatory prayer, so I go from the nave.  "Go" - it is a verb, an action, which denotes a movement from one place to another.

From another angle, my own physical movement throughout Holy Mass reflects this point.  I enter the Church from the rear, through the vestibule and into the nave.  I proceed through the nave to a spot from which to assist.  At various points, I kneel - even beyond the remarkable significance of this posture, it is a forward movement.  And then, provided I am in the State of Grace, I approach the Sanctuary to receive the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord.  This too is a movement, wherein I approach the precipice of this world and the one above.

As I mentioned at the outset, I notice this "movement" inherent in Holy Mass especially in Gothic Churches: long, narrow edifices which nearly feel like a tunnel (though not in the claustrophobic sense).  Our walls and maps are the sacred images adorning the walls, floor, and ceiling.  The lamp really is the lamp: the continually-burning Light of the Presence.  The river's current carries me forward and opens the gates, and all the way to the throne, for at the Elevation of the Host and Chalice, the priest, totally in persona Christi, has taken his flock to the Father, and shows everything to Him.  Thus then may we reap the fruit of this movement, as I mentioned above.

In Holy Mass, I can really experience the Church, and myself in it, as the Church Militant, marching determinately toward Christ, the author and perfecter of the Faith.  The Mass, then, is the Church's recommendation of itself to God and thus proclamation of God to mankind.  The barque will be assailed from all sides, but we have many maps and guides to clearly lead us, and this barque is the only ship going where we need to go.  The outside flood will spare none.

*I should add that the above experience only happens, and really only can happen, when the priest too prays in the proper direction.  The whole Mass, and the proper "experience" of the Mass, crumbles when the priest chooses a backwards posture that encircles the people, for then they go nowhere, God is not invited, they are stagnant and appear to only be celebrating themselves.*

Greetings!

This being my introductory post, I want to outline my ideas for this blog.

I intend to stand firmly within my own tradition, a resolutely Catholic Latin-rite Catholic, and from there examine the Church, theology, philosophy, culture, morality, and perhaps politics.

The title of the blog comes from the Secret of the Mass for the Solemnity of the Annunciation in the Traditional Roman Rite.  Soon enough I will write further about its further significance for me. 

I am a young convert to the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, and a member of the Church Militant.  Now possessing the true faith, I seek to profess it in word and deed as I continue to learn it and grow in it.  Hopefully this perspective will mean that I have useful contributions to make to Catholic thought, both in the blogging realm and beyond.

Enjoy, and please keep the conversation charitable!