How to fix Liturgical Abuses

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JoeyWarren

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I want to thank everyone that pointed the way to determine what Liturgical Abuses are. We do have some, and steps have been initiated to get these corrected. Fortunately I have to only deal with 2 of them that can be dealt with immediately. The other two will involve an “Awareness Campaign”

I know what I am going to do. Now, what are you going to do?

Leave your Parish?

OR

Stay and give God 100% effort to make a difference?

Reccommendations:
Charitably approach your priest and, with the supporting documents in hand, explain that you require the Church’s Liturgical rubrics be followed.
Don’t be afraid to do this.
If personal contact is difficult, try writing a letter and again include the referenced Church documents.
** And I would send the same information to the Liturgical Committee members and members of the Pastoral Council.**
If, after several attempts, the priest does not return to the Church’s rubrics, report the priest to his Bishop.
And pray that the Bishop is not of like mind of the Priest.
If you must contact the Vatican to deal with liturgical abuse, then write to

Cardinal Francis Arinze
Prefect - Congregation for Divine Worship
Piazza Pio XII, 10
Vatican City (Europe) 00120
And send a copy of the letter to your Bishop.

Something to consider:

Source: catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9901fea1.asp

Nevertheless, if you flee your home parish when things get ugly, you are in a sense not living up to your responsibility as a lay person. It is your duty to point out that liturgy is not entertainment. The liturgy is reality, the primary reality of this world. Christ is God, the reality on whom the secondary reality of creation depends (“through him all things were made,” remember?). And the liturgy is the sacrament by which he comes personally and physically among us. The Mass is indisputably the single most important thing that human beings can do.

You have your part to fill in this great work. In fact, that’s what the liturgy is: the word is from the Greek meaning “the laity’s job.” We are the Church itself, we are not the Church’s customers. Still less are we the Church’s audience. And we have a right to authentic liturgy (Inaestimabile Donum), liturgy exactly in line with all applicable rules and celebrated with a suitable sense of reverence (CIC 528). So if your priest offers sloppy, illicit, or even inappropriate liturgies, guess whose job it should be to pitch in and fix the problem?

Awareness campaign? Print out some flyers put them on windshields while everyone is at Mass. Either they will read it or not. But at least you can say that you tried to make a change and a difference.

Good Day and God Bless.

P.S. How many times should you attempt to fix Liturgical Abuses at your own Parish? The only answer that I can give is the same one that one gives when asked how many times you must forgive someone. SEVEN TIMES SEVENTY
 
Fortunately I am able to go daily to a Traditional Mass. When my parish priest said that we would no longer geneflect before entering the pew but only bow I knew it was time to leave.
The Tabernacle was in a back room, the crucifix was without the body of Christ, there were no statues, no altar boys only girls, pop music with drums and guitars. It was too much. Should I have stayed and complained? Quit giving money? Went to the Bishop? Maybe. I decided to leave and not look back. It will take the Pope to fix the liturgical abuses and bring back the sacredness to the Church.
 
Excellent job, Joey! Your parish mass will be all the better for all you’ve done. Our Novus Ordo mass is also relatively free of abuses, but now that we have a beautiful Traditional Latin mass (ICRSS) to go to, that’s where we go. It’s not a matter of forgiveness, but having a choice in worship. If you had two Novus Ordo masses within the same distance, but one is more reverent and dignified than the other, which would you choose?
 
Excellent guidelines Joey, I hope that I will never have to go through this. We are blessed in Montreal to have more than 10 parishes within reasonable distance. I’ve been to a few of them, all completely different. I still genuflect, deeply in fact, some people look at me funny. I prefer the older churches to the newer “fast food” style ones, but I can live with that.

So long as there is a reverence and respect for the presence of our lord I am happy.
 
I left my geographical parish in 1983 back when you had to have permission from your local pastor to change parishes. I had been invited to join the cathedral choir and then in 1984 my second son was born and DW and I decided to have him baptized in and us join the cathedral parish.

I was summoned to explain myself to my geographical pastor. Why do you want to change parishes??? Umm, well, Father, we haven’t attended here in over 18 months. I like the reverence and we’re still singing some Latin at the cathedral. And it went downhill from there.

Within a week I received a letter from the parish “freeing” us to join the cathedral parish with the note in writing:

“If you are sick, I will not visit you. If you die, you will not be buried from this church nor will you be buried in our cemetary”…and so on and so forth. No I am not making this up nor am I exaggerating.

We have driven 25 miles each way since 1983 to attend the cathedral parish and I have sung in the cathedral choir for most of those years. Our congregation has grown from 200 individuals in 1983 to well over 1800 families today. Folks are free to “vote with their feet” today without going through what we went through.

I have never forgotten the church in which I was raised. It’s not about the TLM or the NO. It is about trying to regain that which was lost after 1970. I want to be able to genuflect upon entering the pew and pray in silence before Mass. I don’t want to introduce myself to my neighbor before the sign of the cross is even made. I am aware of the rich musical heritage of HMC and the fact that most parishes sang plainsong routinely before 1965 not to mention the classic Catholic hymns which if I hear (even at my cathedral parish) once a year I consider myself lucky. I don’t want to join hands to pray the Our Father nor do I want to engage in “the wave”. This is an innovation of the last 20 years.

More than anything else, I want to kneel to receive Communion. I want to once again sing “Jesus, my Lord, my God, my all” at Communion. At 56, I still receive on the tongue and I am not looked at strangely because there is a large majority of us who still do.

I’m not trying to force what I believe down anyone’s throat. All I am asking is that I be allowed to return to the practices under which I grew up. I don’t particularly want to go back to the TLM per se. I’m looking for reverence…The All Saint’s Day Mass on EWTN was a NO in Latin and in English.

Forty-five years ago I could go to any Catholic church anywhere in the US or the world and participate in the same Mass. We wouldn’t be having this thread if it were the same today.
 
I’m fortunate enough to have a licit TLM within driving distance. So, except for the rare occasion that I oversleep, I don’t have to deal with any liturgical “distractions”.

But, if I did, I might give serious consideration to calling in a Liturgical Referee: tinyurl.com/2r7a43
 
I want to thank everyone that pointed the way to determine what Liturgical Abuses are. We do have some, and steps have been initiated to get these corrected. Fortunately I have to only deal with 2 of them that can be dealt with immediately. The other two will involve an “Awareness Campaign”

I know what I am going to do. Now, what are you going to do?

Leave your Parish?

OR

Stay and give God 100% effort to make a difference?

Reccommendations:

Don’t be afraid to do this.
And I would send the same information to the Liturgical Committee members and members of the Pastoral Council.
And pray that the Bishop is not of like mind of the Priest.

And send a copy of the letter to your Bishop.


Something to consider:

Source: catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9901fea1.asp

Nevertheless, if you flee your home parish when things get ugly, you are in a sense not living up to your responsibility as a lay person. It is your duty to point out that liturgy is not entertainment. The liturgy is reality, the primary reality of this world. Christ is God, the reality on whom the secondary reality of creation depends (“through him all things were made,” remember?). And the liturgy is the sacrament by which he comes personally and physically among us. The Mass is indisputably the single most important thing that human beings can do.

You have your part to fill in this great work. In fact, that’s what the liturgy is: the word is from the Greek meaning “the laity’s job.” We are the Church itself, we are not the Church’s customers. Still less are we the Church’s audience. And we have a right to authentic liturgy (Inaestimabile Donum), liturgy exactly in line with all applicable rules and celebrated with a suitable sense of reverence (CIC 528). So if your priest offers sloppy, illicit, or even inappropriate liturgies, guess whose job it should be to pitch in and fix the problem?

Awareness campaign? Print out some flyers put them on windshields while everyone is at Mass. Either they will read it or not. But at least you can say that you tried to make a change and a difference.

Good Day and God Bless.

P.S. How many times should you attempt to fix Liturgical Abuses at your own Parish? The only answer that I can give is the same one that one gives when asked how many times you must forgive someone. SEVEN TIMES SEVENTY
Very hard for me to do…and I explain to others the truth…

Because some of what is legal and allowed now… was once Liturgical Abuse. Complaints were lodged- and the abuse still continued and now seems like the norm.

And I will number them-
  1. Communion in the hand. Started as a liturgical abuse and is now considered by many to be the norm (even though it is NOT the norm but continues under indult)
  2. Lay Ministers of Holy Communion at Holy Mass.
  3. Female Altar Servers. A push by radical feminists for female priests…once an abuse and now allowed.
I can possibly name others…clear wine glass instead of chalice without veil…maybe many more that were “abuses” back in the day after even 1970 but are now allowed.

I cannot participate in this thread after this post- just to show you that it is not worth fighting the “abuses” in the Novus Ordo.

I saw a woman strummin a guitar the other day at the local parish in front for everyone to watch her…to me that is an abuse- to others it is legal, allowed and even inviting…and I wanna puke:( .
 
Excellent information.

However, my questions is that if the battle has already been fought for years to no avail, the Bishop is not willing to make a change, you have young children who are being to be raised with the liturgical abuses presented (even with our correction, the reinformcement via the mass is constant and continual), and the movement is growing as the average person prefers ease rather than truth, what then?

Your point is well taken, but one of the main reasons we and many others choose the Catholic faith is because of the guidance of the leaders and the correctness of the traditions. This leadership and orthodoxy is what differentiates us from the other faiths and has given us the longevity and consistency over the years.

That is the whole purpose for their existence.

By participating, with or without fighting back against the abuses, isn’t that “guilt by association” ?
 
Those of you who can attend daily or weekly TLM should be lucky. I have to drive almost 40 miles to Harrisburg to the TLM so it is a treat if you can. I really wish my parish would abolish the folk group. We do have a very good choir, but they tend to play vigil mass so on sundays, you must sit through the untrained youth muscians or the dreaded Folk Group. They have to pick specific songs on the missalettes just for 9 and 11 am mass that cater to the folk groups style. For instance Just yesterday at vigil mass we sang a closing him of “People look East.” Well that isn’t good enough for the folk group, they have to sing “City of God”. This is the mass?😦 Makes the TLM low mass look Pontifical.
 
Those of you who can attend daily or weekly TLM should be lucky. I have to drive almost 40 miles to Harrisburg to the TLM so it is a treat if you can. I really wish my parish would abolish the folk group. We do have a very good choir, but they tend to play vigil mass so on sundays, you must sit through the untrained youth muscians or the dreaded Folk Group. They have to pick specific songs on the missalettes just for 9 and 11 am mass that cater to the folk groups style. For instance Just yesterday at vigil mass we sang a closing him of “People look East.” Well that isn’t good enough for the folk group, they have to sing “City of God”. This is the mass?😦 Makes the TLM low mass look Pontifical.
At my Cathedral Parish, we have to tolerate “Soon and Very Soon” with clapping and swaying to and fro!

I feel your pain!!
 
At my Cathedral Parish, we have to tolerate “Soon and Very Soon” with clapping and swaying to and fro!

I feel your pain!!
We’d have a heckuva lot’a folks in my cathedral parish walking out if we had that!
 
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