Armchair Priests

[LeahInancsi]

How is it that so many people on this forum know so much more about celebrating Mass than 99.9% of the bishops and parish priests in the United States?

 

[Genesis315]

Probably because they’ve read the GIRM.

Why is it that many priests ignore their lawful superiors and don’t follow the GIRM?

But you do have a point. We should pray and do penance for our priests and bishops rather than just complaining.

 

[brotherhrolf]

If Mass was being celebrated the way it should be celebrated, would people post to these threads?

 

[grotto]

Why do you make this claim? Its not accurate obviously!

 

[brotherhrolf]

Why do you make this claim? Its not accurate obviously!

Me or the OP?

 

[WenckebachCath]

Why does my sister-in-law always try to drive the car when she rides with me? I don’t understand that either. Can’t she see I’m the one behind the wheel???

So many questions and so little time…

 

[scylla]

We don’t, but that doesn’t make them right.

I can know all the laws on the books and still speed, buy drugs and kill my wife.

Knowledge and position doesn’t force you to do what is right. Anyone can understand that Jesus is in the Eucharist, it takes a lack of faith to deny it and even write it in a Pastoral Letter. Just because someone is a Bishop doesn’t make them perfect.

We should love them as our spiritual fathers, but pray for them and support them to be faithful when they are not. We shouldn’t just follow them when they practice each error, but faithfully stay and witness to truth, while supporting them.

It is difficult to be a Priest especially these days when many seminaries are compromising the truth and destroying Priests’ faith.

In Christ
Scylla

 

[LeahInancsi]

Scylla,

Thank you for a serious answer.

I’m curious. There seems to be so much criticism of priests who have dedicated the lives to God by lay people. Of those lay people who are male, why didn’t they join the priesthood? I sometimes wonder about the background of those who seem to know more than the parish priests in our country.

 

[Brendan]

Scylla,

Thank you for a serious answer.

I’m curious. There seems to be so much criticism of priests who have dedicated the lives to God by lay people.

I don’t see so much as criticism of the priests, but rather particular actions.

I don’t believe that anyone in the Church cannot be helped to perform their life’s vocation in a more holy fashion, including myself.

For example, if we heard of a husband who was falling into infidelity, who here would not remind him of his marriage vows?

Likewise, if we find a priest falling into disobediece, who here whould likewise not remind him of his oath of obedience?

Performing both actions are Spiritual Works of Mercy and worthy of praise.

Of those lay people who are male, why didn’t they join the priesthood? I sometimes wonder about the background of those who seem to know more than the parish priests in our country.

Every person has a vocation, a calling in life from God. Everyone who has a true calling to the priesthood should accept it. Likewise, anyone who does not should not seek it.

The call to the priesthood originates from God and God alone. For for a man who is not called to seek it would be denying their true vocation and setting themselves up for failure.

If someone on this board recieved such a call and ignored it, I feel sorrow at that. I personally did not recieve a call to the Preysbeteral Orders, but am rather in training towards the diaconate.

 

[brotherhrolf]

My answer was serious. And believe me, I prayed long and hard about whether or not I had a calling not to the priesthood but to the monastery.

You ask your question in honesty and I will answer in honesty. HMC is NOT the same HMC I grew up in. No one would have dreamed of clown Masses, Halloween Massess, liturgical dancing, changing the rubrics of the Mass, etc. etc. etc. when I was a boy or an adolescent for that matter.

I drive 25 miles to attend a reverent NO cathedral. I could drive 24 miles to attend a reverent TLM parish. There is one of whom I am aware on these fora who does such. I have been doing this for close to 30 years. Why? Because I have seen with my own two eyes and heard with my own two ears the kind of shenanigans that go on in your basic local parish. Am I so stupid that I cannot read the GIRM and interpret just exactly where things have crossed the line? God bless our priests but unfortunately there are far too many of them who play fast and loose with the GIRM.

My feelings are this: I grew up with the TLM. We attend Mass to worship God. We are not there to celebrate community. Coffee and donuts are available after Mass to celebrate community.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

We don’t, but that doesn’t make them right.

I can know all the laws on the books and still speed, buy drugs and kill my wife.

Knowledge and position doesn’t force you to do what is right. Anyone can understand that Jesus is in the Eucharist, it takes a lack of faith to deny it and even write it in a Pastoral Letter. Just because someone is a Bishop doesn’t make them perfect.

We should love them as our spiritual fathers, but pray for them and support them to be faithful when they are not. We shouldn’t just follow them when they practice each error, but faithfully stay and witness to truth, while supporting them.

It is difficult to be a Priest especially these days when many seminaries are compromising the truth and destroying Priests’ faith.

In Christ
Scylla

Best answer so far to the question.

I would only add that people need a place to vent their frustration (I know I do). This is a good place for that, and to have it acknowledged that Father So-And-So does not have the final word on Mass innovations that are too far gone wrong, let alone downright abuses.

 

[palmas85]

Scylla,

Thank you for a serious answer.

I’m curious. There seems to be so much criticism of priests who have dedicated the lives to God by lay people. Of those lay people who are male, why didn’t they join the priesthood? I sometimes wonder about the background of those who seem to know more than the parish priests in our country.

As a young man I dreamed of becoming a Priest A long time altar boy f, there was nothing in the world as important to me as the Church and devotion to Christ. But reality poked its ugly head into my dreams with a letter from Uncle Sam summoning me. Not having the grades for a scholarship, the money to pay my own way and a deep sense of gratitude to the U.S for allowing me to live here I went. Maybe not the best decision I’ve ever made.

After several years overseas involved in things I don’t like to remember, I returned older, maybe wiser or just more cynical and saw that the Church of my youth was gone and in its’ place something I hardly recognized. The Priests I had idolized as an altar boy were breaking into draft board offices and burning them down, or leading violent demonstrations in the streets assaulting Police Officers and destroying property… The Sisters who had taught us in school were lined up at the airports throwing pigs blood on us and spitting in our faces as we got off the plane. God, we were told then cared for one thing only, social and political justice and that we were fascists. I went to Mass, in uniform as I had to be, and was refused Communion by a Priest who was wearing what were called love beads and sandals and who told me I wasn’t even Christian let alone Catholic. Mass seemed to be totally improvised with absolutely no resemblence to the Mass of my youth. The tabernacle was gone, shunted off to where a confessional had once been… Altars were gone, altar rails were gone, statues were gone, crucifixes were gone and confessionals were gone. All that was left was a bare table with what appeared to be a dingy tablecloth on it.

I was heartbroken After days in prayer and contemplation, I decided that someone with my conservative views would have a hard time at the seminary if i was even able to get in, which given the climate of the time would have been doubtful at best. Seminary admissions at that time seemed to be designed to gather only those that adfhered to the “New Church” ideals and attitudes.

Years later still in the service of the U.S. I was stationed in South Texas in an area that had been pretty much left devoid of Priests, , except for circuit riders, Jesuit Priests, who came through once a month or so. All Masses, and comunion services were handled basically by my good friends the Sisters of the Most Precious Blood:bigyikes: They really didn’t need the Priests for much and handled everything themselves. This was during the time of the Sandinista war in Nicaragua in which many of the guerilla leaders were Jesuit Priests. So whenever we did have a Priest for Mass, a fellow Jesuit of course, it was really not so much a Mass as a thinly disguised class on Liberation Theology, complete with illegal aliens wearing hoods who often apparently con celebrated Mass with the Priests.

Now years later, we have unordained female Priests, supported by some Bishops celebrating Masses in various locations, Halloween Masses where the Priest dresses up as Satan, and gay men in body suits or females in flowing grecian style robes dancing around an altar holding bowls of incense. Most people act as if they are spending an afternoon at the park for a family re-union. Priests don’t seem to genuflect anymore or even have the time to bow. They do have time to wear dignity pins, rainbow hued stoles and preach about accepting diverse lifestyle choices as Gods will, while inviting the faithful to join them holding hands around the altar during the consecration of either onion bagels or tortilla chips, both of which I have personally seen Altar servers now appear almost uniformly disinterested in the proceedings. I watched one who spent the whole Mass alternately twirling and braiding her hair. She was the lead server by the way I guess I should be thankful though, I haven’t seen one with an IPOD yet, but I’m sure its coming.

I did not go into the Priesthood when I could have, and in many ways I regret that. In other ways, I don’t think I could have survived in the environment that seems to have permeated the Ordained for the past forty years. Maybe I should have though. Maybe if a few more like me and I had gone we could have made a difference. Or maybe not. Who knows at this point.

 

[AlexV]

A heartbreaking post, but alas, so common a tale.

It’s been a real springtime, these last 40 years.

 

[scylla]

I understand how you feel I grew up in a small parish with a good strong Priest. This was a man who sacrificed himself for God the way Priest’s should be. I am pretty sure he is the one who inspired my brother.

My brother went off to study to become a Priest, the rest of my family just went on being cafeteria catholics.
Eventually I fell away with my brothers and rarely stepped inside the Church even with a brother at seminary.

A couple years ago I start studying the faith and I come back and my hometown parish has been modernized. There is a parish coordinator, no priest and plenty of silly things going on. I did not see the changes gradually, but I came back to see people dancing around like pansies and a lady trying to give a sermon.

I can tell what is right and wrong and can tell that there is much that is being done that isn’t Catholic. I sympathize with the Priests who have had to suffer all this and who are scared to stand up and fix this. I think years of small changes have made many indifferent to the changes that some of us see as radical departures from truth.

I am married and looking into the diaconate, my brother who was kicked out of the Seminary gave me some advice…
–Don’t be too orthodox or give away that you are firm in your beliefs as my diocese is one where they send the orthodox seminarians through the most liberal formation program to form them properly. Then they kick out who doesn’t fit. ----
Those who make it and are faithful have often had to endure things that would make others lose their faith.

We need to pray and look for every way we can support the few Priests we have. They have it very tough.

In Christ
Scylla

 

[Andruschak]

How is it that so many people on this forum know so much more about celebrating Mass than 99.9% of the bishops and parish priests in the United States?

In the immortal words of Casey Stengel, “Include me out!”

 

[netmilsmom]

I would only add that people need a place to vent their frustration (I know I do).

This is so important and bears repeating…

 

[LeahInancsi]

This is so important and bears repeating…

Yes, I agree. This point has been very enlightening for me. When I looked down the list of topics in the Liturgy category, all I saw was whining and complaining. It seemed so trivial compared to the abuse alegations that my parish will hear about from our bishop tomorrow. Our Father hand holding, EMHCs, altar girls, etc., etc., are nothing. Now, I can understand how it might be important to some people when that is the worst going on in their world.

 

[netmilsmom]

Yes, I agree. This point has been very enlightening for me. When I looked down the list of topics in the Liturgy category, all I saw was whining and complaining. It seemed so trivial compared to the abuse alegations that my parish will hear about from our bishop tomorrow. Our Father hand holding, EMHCs, altar girls, etc., etc., are nothing. Now, I can understand how it might be important to some people when that is the worst going on in their world.

Well, actually it might not be the worst thing in his/her world, but it may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, so to say.
Better we vent here than in our parish.
I’ve seen many people corrected here. The biggest thing is when something is stated to be an “abuse”. Many actions in modern parishes are innovations but not abuses. Better people come here, vent, get backup or get corrected, before they take it to a liturgical committee or the Bishop.

 

[davy39]

You know, I have been Catholic my whole life. (67 years). I have come from a time that we used to be proud to be Catholic, and I still am, but I still can’t reply to this question: How can you be a member of a church that hides child molesters, and pedaphiles? You can use the old answer that most of our priests are great priests, but this doesn’t cut it in our throw the baby out with bathwater philsophy of this day and age. I do believe we have a lot more serious problems in the church than EMHCs, altar girls, singing songs by Dan Shutte, etc. I will continue to be Catholic until my dying day, and I’ll try to do what I can to help the church, and not set on the sidelines like an armchair quarterback on Sunday afternoon. I am glad we have the CA forum to vent our frustrations, so lets all pray for our Church.

 

[OutinChgoburbs]

This is so important and bears repeating…

Thank you, because I have an example from last night’s vigil Mass, where we were told during the homily that the War in the Middle East is strictly about oil, and that instead, we should be having a war to rescue the slave children in Africa. It was just stuffed in there, as part of the homily, out of place and not even on track with his notes.

What this has to do with the Feast of Christ the King, or the readings for Sunday is beyond me. Never mind the fact that if this war was about oil, we would have simply surrounded the oil fields and made a path for a pipeline. Never mind the geography of Africa where the slave trade is taking place is different from the Middle East. Never mind that while the slave trade is despicable, 9/11 happened here and has a direct connection to the Middle East.

It is not the first time it’s happened. We’ve heard we should never model our lives on other Catholics, even saints, but it’s OK to take up the lifestyle of Ghandi, a real Christian. We’ve heard about the wonders of our brothers and sisters who belong to Baptist and non-denominational congregations and their door-to-door evangelization; and how if we did that, the pews would be filled. And for a congregation of less than 200 last night, 8 EMHC were not enough. He asked for one more.

So, yes, in that instance, I *will *play “armchair priest” and say something. Not that I’m angry with Leah for asking. Right now, I’m just very frustrated.