Let me clarify something for you. The Tridentine Mass has been around since, I think, the 1500’s. It is steeped in tradition and reverence and Latin Catholic piety. The new charismatic Catholic Mass is a pentecostal/Catholic hybrid fusion that resembles nothing from history or sacred tradition. I agree with the author. None of the saints or fathers of the Church would recognize such a fiasco. They would be running for the hills. It does not matter how you try to justify your analogy-----it does not work.
That did not need to be clarified for me. The antiquity and special venerability of the Tridentine mass is not an objection to my analogy, but is the premise upon which my argument works. The argument I am making here is
a fortiori from the stronger example to the weaker example. The criticism that something is not Catholic because it would not be “recognized” by saints from a different place and time could be leveled against things that no one would dispute are validly Catholic, and therefore cannot be taken as a test of Catholicity. For a consistent application of that criticism would yield the absurd conclusion that things like the Tridentine Mass (which St. Justin Martyr would not recognize!) should be rejected. If your criticism is not universally valid, then it is not valid at all.
The correct kind of argument to show that something is not Catholic is to show that it is heterodox in its theological substance. Yet our author never deals with substance, but only with outward trappings.
I did not say that you liked it. But you are attempting to defend it.
The reason it is important to point out that I don’t like it is because our author’s arguments are largely aesthetic. Everything else he says is clearly ancillary to the fact that he simply hates the music. On that level,
I can feel the force of his objection, particularly because I take aesthetics seriously. However, our author wields as his weapon a very myopic appreciation of music, which indicates a limited sense of aesthetics. This should prevent his appraisal from being taken seriously, even by someone who can sympathize with his basic complaint.
Yes. It is modernism. And it certainly is not rooted in old-school. It is rooted in 20th century protestant pentecostalism.
Maybe it is new, but you can’t just assert that until you have studied it better. What you say here is not an arguement, but a thesis you must defend with argument, by interacting with the things that charismatics actually say about themselves and how they claim their practices reflect true theology. I see no evidence in your posts that you have read enough of their literature yet to make that argument, although it does seem that you intend to.
It is the Eastern part of the Latin Church (most used to be Orthodox). They would not be so happy to hear that you think they are a hybrid. I was a Byzantine Catholic for eight years.
The reason I said they were a hybrid was not to criticize them, but to show that being a hybrid is not in fact a criticism. The hybridization comes from the fact that they follow a tradition from Greek Orthodoxy that was practised in schism from the Catholic Church and yet was kept intact when they came back to the Church.
Hybridization is common in Catholic tradition, although it is usually called “appropriation.” You can take things from other cultures even from other religions (as the Platonic philsophy that influenced the Fathers hasa mystical, religious dimension) as long as you do so in a critical way, removing those things that are contrary to the faith. The essential error of Protestantism is that is denies the sacramental character of salvation, and yet it is precisely the sacramentality of salvation that is central to the charismatic movement.
Yet they have incorporated protestant rituals!
I had Bach’s *Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring *played at my wedding. Does that mean I have succumbed to Lutheran influence? This “Protestant composer” argument is an
ad hominem. It is just as persuasive as any other
ad hominem, that is, not at all.
I find it rather convincing. And the further research I am doing seems to corroborate his article. It is obvious that he is biased against this. But I think all Catholics should be biased against this innovation.
The author of this article is saying that pop/rock music does not belong in a Catholic worship service. I agree.
So you would like to hear campfire music at your Catholic worship service? Kumbaya perhaps? I suppose if you take out all the rock/pop, you are left with the priest waving his hand and speaking in tongues. S
hamana shamana shamana shamana shamana.
How very sad.
There is a difference between being against something and being biased. Bias is when you have such dislike for another position that you can’t represent it in anything but the grossest colors. If you agree that the article is biased, then you should automatically discard it and not let it convince you. Look for better sources and study both sides. Study the other side as much as your own. I don’t think opposition to the charismatic movement is all unwarranted. There is room for debate here, but I don’t think that the kind of opposition offered by this article is the right way to debate it. Defending its arguments will never advance that debate. The fact that you end your post with mockery is a sign of why that is true.
