Alienation in Tridentine Mass Community

[sw85]

M-Dent and Triumphguy are exactly right.

The idea that it is just me and Jesus at Mass is incorrect. The idea of Jesus and me religion is a truly modern invention, best left to the Evangelicals.

Israel rose and fell together. Their fate was always tied to each other. At the end of the day we are either in the Church - the covenant family of God - or we are not. When we sin injure the entire Body of Christ. When we practice virtue or suffer for Christ it is redemptive for the entire body of Christ. We are supposed to die for each other if called to do so.

I love to see the Narthex and parking lot full of people chatting before and after Mass. Black, white, fat, skinny, men, women, Asians, Anglo, and Hispanics, all together smiling, enjoying each others company, talking about the faith and making plans for next weekend. That’s God right there.

Even Carthusian hermits are required to spend a few hours every week with someone whether they like it or not. It is so they don’t go insane.

-Tim-

You’re right here in principle, but I think you are equivocating between two different senses of community. There is the sociological sense which you are describing in the paragraph that starts with “I love to see the Narthex,” and then there is the liturgical sense. These two overlap heavily but they are not exactly identical. Pope Benedict addressed this, when he was still Card. Ratzinger:

To a large extent, contemporary talk about “community” presupposes a homogeneous group which is able to plan common activities and jointly carry them out. And then, of course, this community may perhaps be asked to “tolerate” none but a priest with whom it is mutually acquainted. All of that, of course, has nothing to do with theology. For instance, when at a solemn service in a cathedral church a group of men gather who from a sociological point of view do not form a unified congregation and who find it very difficult to join in congregational singing, for example do they constitute a “community” or not? Indeed they do, because in common they turn toward the Lord, and He approaches them interiorly in a way which draws them together much more intimately than any mere social togetherness could ever do.
(This was from his address on the Regensburg tradition and the reform of the liturgy, which I copied from The Essential Pope Benedict).

There is benefit in making, e.g., the liturgy, more participative, in that it presents more effectively to the senses the communal character of the Church. This is why I (unlike some other trad-minded folks) don’t object to dialogic TLM Masses. But there are real drawbacks too in that it is easy to conflate the sociology and the mysticism which is, in a nutshell, the modernist heresy.

 

[M-Dent]

Maybe God’s Church never had a beginning. What’s the theological answer?

The CCC indicates God began the process at a very primitive time? To my understanding, Church being an action by God to draw mankind into Communion with Him.

The Church - prepared for in the Old Covenant

761 The gathering together of the People of God began at the moment when sin destroyed the communion of men with God, and that of men among themselves. The gathering together of the Church is, as it were, God’s reaction to the chaos provoked by sin. This reunification is achieved secretly in the heart of all peoples: “In every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable” to God

752 In Christian usage, the word “church” designates the liturgical assembly, but also the local community or the whole universal community of believers. These three meanings are inseparable. “The Church” is the People that God gathers in the whole world. She exists in local communities and is made real as a liturgical, above all a Eucharistic, assembly. She draws her life from the word and the Body of Christ and so herself becomes Christ’s Body.

vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a9p1.htm

 

[ProVobis]

Pentecost is the birthday of the church.

CCC761, which M-Dent quotes, seems to disagree with this.

However, I think this misses the point. What are we arguing about, personalities? The local parish community consists of individuals who sometimes get together at Mass, sometimes in prayer at home with family or alone, sometimes in the Adoration Chapel, or sometimes at bingo games. Then there is the worldwide community with an everlasting Mass going on somewhere in the world. One doesn’t need to be physically present at each and every Mass to join this community.

But all this goes without saying. I’m also done with the thread, I don’t see any purpose in further discussion here.

 

[TimothyH]

Precisely.

At one point, for forty days straight.

Jesus often went on retreat.

-Tim-

 

[triumphguy]

CCC761, which M-Dent quotes, seems to disagree with this.

However, I think this misses the point. What are we arguing about, personalities? The local parish community consists of individuals who sometimes get together at Mass, sometimes in prayer at home with family or alone, sometimes in the Adoration Chapel, or sometimes at bingo games. Then there is the worldwide community with an everlasting Mass going on somewhere in the world. One doesn’t need to be physically present at each and every Mass to join this community.

But all this goes without saying. I’m also done with the thread, I don’t see any purpose in further discussion here.

I’ll see you quoting another poster, and raise you one Pope’s General Audience:

vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19911002en.html

John Paul II: The Birth of the Church at Pentecost: General Audience October 2, 1991