Cardinal Sarah urges Church to embrace young traditionalists

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billy15 said:
Also, we’re painting with a pretty broad brush if we think all “traditionalists” are fairly negative or judgemental. But like cardinal Sarah said, it’s time to stop calling them traditionalists. I’ve never called myself that, despite preferring the EF Mass over the OF, and most Sundays I’m usually attending an OF Mass. I’m curious to know what is hard to understand about Cardinal Sarah’s views, and which specific views we’re thinking of when saying that.
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He’s certainly right about that, but the folks under discussion call themselves that or “traddies” in my experience, so how to change that? We also need to start using the labels Ordinary Form and Extraordinary Form of the Mass rather than negative monikers like “NO” or “Novus Ordo” Mass, "TLM, etc. When those words come out of someone’s mouth my ears tend to close. A local priest, a serious student of Church liturgical history refers to the OF Mass as the AVM, the Ancient Vernacular Mass which really bothers the “traditionalists” (for lack of a better label.)

One thing that really concerns me is that some imply that because there are two approved forms of the Mass, that it equates to two different rites in the Western Church and that’s terribly wrong. It’s also the sort of division that many bishops mentioned to suppress the EF Mass.
 
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pnewton said:
Then do not be disheartened. Pope Francis did not call those who truly love Tradition rigid. He said sometimes he is confronted by someone who is rigid. Do not believe every headline you read, especially in blogs, news papers and television with an agenda to trash the Church.

Someone pointed out that we must not stereotype traditionalists. Generalization is almost always faulty. It is also faulty when generalization is reversed, saying that criticism of some is criticism of all.
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Do you have any examples of PF extending mercy or kindness towards traditional minded or more conservative Catholics? Can you venture a guess as to why he hasn’t answered the dubia or allowed an audience with the “dubia Cardinals”?
 
Debbie_Kono said:
Do you have any examples of PF extending mercy or kindness towards traditional minded or more conservative Catholics? Can you venture a guess as to why he hasn’t answered the dubia or allowed an audience with the “dubia Cardinals”?
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For the first question:

Pope Francis paves way for recognition of SSPX marriages
He also granted permission for them to hear confessions during the year of mercy.

As to the second question, it has nothing to do with the topic. But if you go to some of the threads on Amoris Laetitia and see how it goes in unending and unchanging circles, I really would not think any answer would have done anything but give rise to the next set of dubia and so on until Christ returned.
 
Have no worries on that front - we already embrace and have deep respect for our elders such as His Eminence Cardinal Sarah, His Eminence Cardinal Burke, His Eminence Cardinal Ouellet, His Excellency Bishop Schneider. We’re way ahead of you 😀
 
I read about half of what Cardinal Sarah said there at the Angelicum. It seemed that much of what he said was directed at the west. As a westerner, I found his assumptions to be misplaced. He is postulating that, “…we … are not approaching the summit [liturgy] toward which the activity of the Church is directed as we should,…”.

He then implicitly goes on to blame a “godless age” on the lack of, apparently, his favorite liturgical rubrics. I don’t know how he arrives at a correlation equals causation conclusion with his assumptions.

I found his assumptions not only to be wrong, but offensive to my own Catholic experience, and that of my entire family going back several generations.
 
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I find that there’s nothing more authentic than a small neighborhood parish with all the flaws and noise intact. The mass is a sending forth into the world, not an escape from the world. A child crying during mass is about as holy and transcendent we can get here on earth and the child doesn’t need to be crying in Latin.

I don’t care that the TLM exists. I may even attend one someday. What I don’t want is for the Church to go backwards. The past is dead, nobody lives there.
 
One young Catholic who likes the EF Mass wrote recently in America magazine about his discovery of the Latin liturgy, and ponders on Pope Francis’ seeming distress at such people as himself:

“As for the “strict” and “rigid” people about whose insecurities Pope Francis frets, he is clearly not referring to everyone who wants the option of attending the pre-conciliar liturgy. Although some of my friends will wrinkle their noses at certain kinds of homilies or deviations from the liturgical rubrics, their tastes are hardly worthy of a psychiatrist’s couch. They do not need anyone to “dig” into their psyches. Love of God and neighbor runs at least as deeply in them as it does in me, even if that love manifests sometimes in Latin prayers.”
 
I do not think anybody who likes the TLM wants to go back to the past. However, sometimes it is necessary, in going forward, to first ‘go back’ a bit.

Let’s suppose that a national government nutrition agency back in 1985 said something like, "Coffee is bad for you. It is full of caffeine. Studies have proven that excess caffeine not only causes insomnia, but also is responsible for cells utilizing free radicals to become more prone to cancer. We therefore recommend and endorse far less consumption of coffee, and the use, wherever possible, of decaffeinated coffee, at most 2 cups daily’.

So okay, People cut down on drinking coffee, use more decaffeinated coffee, etc., for say 20 or 30 years.

Then the same agency comes out and says, “Coffee is wonderful for you. Studies have proven that people who drink at least 5 cups of coffee daily have much less chance of dying from heart disease and cancer. The health benefits of coffee are enormous, and the health detriments of caffeine are very low. We highly recommend that people drink at least 6 cups of coffee daily.”

So, in order to move ‘forward’ in life, in essence people are going back, with regard to coffee consumption, to the ideas of the 1970s and earlier --where coffee was seen as beneficial and where people drank a lot of it.

Nobody is going back to any other type of 1970s living --nobody is going back to disco, Afros, throwing out the Internet or cell phones–but with regard to something specific–coffee consumption–people have in essence ‘gone back’ to a view which was correct then (Coffee is good) but which had been erroneously perceived as being ‘wrong’ for some 30 years and which now is once again known to be ‘right’.

Again, fixing something which had been once seen as ‘good’, had been for a time seen as ‘not good’ (through error) and now once again clearly seeing it as ‘good’ is not ‘going backward’ but is actually fixing the error which had kept us from going forward properly and now, in going back to the original correct understanding, will help us to continue to move forward.
 
You’re definitely wrong. Not only wrong, your comments are divisive. You’re trying to treat your liturgical preferences as a separate Church rite and that’s just wrong. Preferring the EF Mass to the OF Mass is NOT akin to a separate sui juris church. It’s something that Pope Benedict XVI took great pains to avoid and make clear. As long as you continue to push for division, you’ll harm the reputations of those who prefer the OF Mass.

“NO”, “Novus Ordo” and to a lesser extent “TLM” are most definitely offensive. Particularly in light of Pope Benedict XVI carefully giving us the monikers “Ordinary Form of the Mass” and “Extraordinary Form of the Mass”, along with the existing “Pauline” and “Tridentine” Masses monikers.
 
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J_Peterson said:
I find that there’s nothing more authentic than a small neighborhood parish with all the flaws and noise intact. The mass is a sending forth into the world, not an escape from the world. A child crying during mass is about as holy and transcendent we can get here on earth and the child doesn’t need to be crying in Latin.
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It’s very sad when the setting for a Mass is not reverent. I suppose much of that has to due with a general coarsening of society, coupled with poor parish leadership in some cases.
 
I didn’t say anything about it being irreverent. I find my neighborhood mass to be very reverent. Does a child crying ruin the mass?
 
J_Peterson said:
I didn’t say anything about it being irreverent. I find my neighborhood mass to be very reverent. Does a child crying ruin the mass?
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No, I did. Noise inside of a parish church before or after Mass is not reverent behavior.
 
It will never be a separate sui juris church rite as some so struggle to make it causing division along the way. Your use of “novus ordo” says loads about you in this context.

My regrets but being a “highly educated priest” does not necessarily mean that one’s personal opinions are valid.
 
I am a convert. My father is an Episcopal Priest. Our church was this huge old beautiful building with polished woods, marble floors and drop dead gorgeous stain glass windows. During the summers it was my own personal playground. I would wander the choir rooms and attics, looking at old stuff and books, exploring the organ chambers [where the giant organ pipes were housed] it was quite an experience. How wonderful heaven must be I must have thought.

The music was very traditional and so was the liturgy. We used what was called the 1812 prayer book. “We are not so worthy as to gather thy crumbs under thy table” we cried before communion. My father would give us the Host and said “The body of Christ” and the Crucifer next to him handed me the jeweled chalice, “the cup of salvation.” It was all a grand experience every Sunday.

What a good prep for Catholicism that was for me. Though that rich Episcopal experience was very inspiring, I knew there was something missing or wrong as I grew up. Something didn’t make sense. Along the way I grew to discover that the problem for me at least was faith without works. It just did not sync with what I felt was right. As I got older, the magic of it all faded.

Catholicism brought all that back for me. The truth hit me like water on a desert. I started attending Catholic Church and then finally became Catholic. I knew all along it is where we all came from and after a great deal of suffering and pain I finally swam the Tiber and my life changed forever.

Like my childhood experiences, I find the old Catholic liturgy, prayers, and traditions to be wonderful, and yet my church also has quite a chorus and orchestra. The music is wonderful! I think there is room for both old and new in this wonderful church, and I cannot imagine having one without the other. To throw out the old, is to forget where we came from, a rich 2000 year heritage, and to shut the door on the new, is to never open windows to nature and God’s world.
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Duesenberg said:
My regrets but being a “highly educated priest” does not necessarily mean that one’s personal opinions are valid.
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Agreed. We need to avoid appeal to authority. Even counting the old forum, that’s why you can count on two hands on times I’ve quoted the catechism or the Bible on here.
 
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Actually they changed considerably in the USA through the implementation of so-called “Latinizations.”
 
That is absolutely incorrect and a great way to lose an argument with anyone who is non-Catholic.

The duty of every Catholic is to the Truth FIRST, not the Vatican, the USCCB or ANY other Christian leadership that at one point or another has sinned.

If you think you are going to get anywhere with people by saying “because the Pope/Vatican/ MY favorite bishop said so”, you are dead wrong and will be hung out to dry.

That’s exactly how the Evangelical right and its supporters in the West have all but lost their dominance, and the same thing will happen to the Catholic Church if Catholics think they are exempt from fallacies of thought and language.
 
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Me too and I’m also young. It’s a lot more reverent and makes it believable that what is actually happening is a sacrifice rather than some NGO meeting house where we gather to sing songs and eat bread.

The dumbing down of Catholicism was the biggest mistake our predecessors of the 60s-80s ever made. People lost so much faith because of it.
 
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