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TantumErgo90
Guest
Is a Catholic free to disagree with the “Norms of Ecumenism”? I think it contains many novelties, such as non-Catholics using Catholic altars.
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brotherhrolf
Guest
Can we not hope that the Holy Spirit (or as it was when I was a child the Holy Ghost) use such opportunities? I think that such is a very rare occassion and much thought and discernment have been put into it. I am a product of a “mixed marriage”. My father was not Catholic (even though his father was). (Can you imagine the “scandal” that was caused when my Catholic grandfather married my divorced protestant grandmother in the 1920s?) My mother and father could not be married in church in 1947. They had to get married in the sacristy after archepiscopal approval.
I am as traditional as they come. But I remember it was my father who woke me up at 5 am and brought me to church to serve Mass as an altar boy long before ecumenism became accepted.
In 1967 my father’s mother died. We had to get permission to attend my grandmother’s funeral at my father’s church. Yes, it was an “alien” experience.
Since then I have been a member of a cathedral choir for close to twenty years. I have sung with Episcopalians and Lutherans in ecumenical concerts. I don’t agree with them but I am not going to cut them off.
Did you ever think that the Holy Spirit might act with our protestant brethren using our altars?
I am as traditional as they come. But I remember it was my father who woke me up at 5 am and brought me to church to serve Mass as an altar boy long before ecumenism became accepted.
In 1967 my father’s mother died. We had to get permission to attend my grandmother’s funeral at my father’s church. Yes, it was an “alien” experience.
Since then I have been a member of a cathedral choir for close to twenty years. I have sung with Episcopalians and Lutherans in ecumenical concerts. I don’t agree with them but I am not going to cut them off.
Did you ever think that the Holy Spirit might act with our protestant brethren using our altars?
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TantumErgo90
Guest
I see where you’re coming from. Just for me, I try really hard to read the documents of Vatican II in Light of Tradition, and that can be hard at times because they are written so ambiguously. But when I see something such as the Norms of Ecumenism it is hard to read them in the light of tradition, and them seem to be novelties.
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brotherhrolf
Guest
I could look at the Dali Lama et al at Assisi as a “novelty”. There is only one God and we are his children. Although I am not a practicing anthropologist, I do have a master’s in Anthropology. We are all children of the one God.
I don’t see them as “novelties”. Our Lord broke bread with tax collectors, Pharisees…
My father, God rest his soul, began attending Mass with us as a family when we transitioned to the NO in 1969. My grandfather (his father) married my protestant grandmother and devastated his Catholic family. The only way I ever met my Catholic grandfather’s side of the family was via my maternal great-aunt and then only in preparation for All Saint’s Day in New Orleans. Aunt Claire and Aunt Sophie were childhood friends.
Just before All Saint’s Day we would clean the familial tomb, white wash it, and place flowers. My maternal great-aunt Claire would take us over to my father’s family’s grave in the same cemetary. Aunt Claire was a friend of Aunt Sophie (great aunt on my father’s side) and that was the only contact I had with my father’s Catholic family. (My grandfather shocked his family to its roots by marrying a divorced woman).
You can imagine my shock when cousins I did not know I had came to my father’s funeral.
Because of my experience, I look at ecumenism in a different light.
I don’t see them as “novelties”. Our Lord broke bread with tax collectors, Pharisees…
My father, God rest his soul, began attending Mass with us as a family when we transitioned to the NO in 1969. My grandfather (his father) married my protestant grandmother and devastated his Catholic family. The only way I ever met my Catholic grandfather’s side of the family was via my maternal great-aunt and then only in preparation for All Saint’s Day in New Orleans. Aunt Claire and Aunt Sophie were childhood friends.
Just before All Saint’s Day we would clean the familial tomb, white wash it, and place flowers. My maternal great-aunt Claire would take us over to my father’s family’s grave in the same cemetary. Aunt Claire was a friend of Aunt Sophie (great aunt on my father’s side) and that was the only contact I had with my father’s Catholic family. (My grandfather shocked his family to its roots by marrying a divorced woman).
You can imagine my shock when cousins I did not know I had came to my father’s funeral.
Because of my experience, I look at ecumenism in a different light.
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brotherhrolf
Guest
So, okay. We had to ask permission of our parish priest in 1967 to attend my grandmother’s memorial service at her church. (My mother’s brother whisked the three of us off and we did not attend my grandmother’s burial. I don’t think y’all know just how completely different things were just after Vatican II. So when the question of ecumanism comes up, I was there.)
You can’t know just how hard it was back then in 1967 to have to go to our pastor and ask for a dispensation to go to my grandmother’s memorial service. I attended my grandmother’s wake but I did not see her buried because in 1967 we were Catholic and she was Protestant.
I was 16 going on 17 when we attended my grandmother’s memorial at her church. I remember the service to this day. …
I am a Roman Catholic. I went to 13 years of Catholic school.
I have vivid memories of the time when we could not associate with Protestants.
Bottom line. I sang as a member of a cathedral choir for the wedding of one of our members and an Episcopalian. The liturgy was sooooo similar that we gave Catholic responses to the Episcopalians. They finally had to tell us to shut up.
I long for my protestant brothers and sisters to return to the fold.
You can’t know just how hard it was back then in 1967 to have to go to our pastor and ask for a dispensation to go to my grandmother’s memorial service. I attended my grandmother’s wake but I did not see her buried because in 1967 we were Catholic and she was Protestant.
I was 16 going on 17 when we attended my grandmother’s memorial at her church. I remember the service to this day. …
I am a Roman Catholic. I went to 13 years of Catholic school.
I have vivid memories of the time when we could not associate with Protestants.
Bottom line. I sang as a member of a cathedral choir for the wedding of one of our members and an Episcopalian. The liturgy was sooooo similar that we gave Catholic responses to the Episcopalians. They finally had to tell us to shut up.
I long for my protestant brothers and sisters to return to the fold.
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bpbasilphx
Guest
Is a Catholic free to disagree with the “Norms of Ecumenism”? I think it contains many novelties, such as non-Catholics using Catholic altars.
**What in particular (besides this) do you disagree with, and how do any of these Norms affect how you live your daily life in matters temporal or spiritual?
Be specific, please.**
**What in particular (besides this) do you disagree with, and how do any of these Norms affect how you live your daily life in matters temporal or spiritual?
Be specific, please.**
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bpbasilphx
Guest
I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that in the Middle East, Orthodox, Melkites, and other Eastern Christians (both Catholic and Non-) frequently share the same church building, and even use the same altar! 
No ceilings have fallen yet, nor has the earth opened to swallow up any of their edifices.
Does this offend you, too, Tantum Ergo?
Forgive me if I observe that for a person who is so ultra-montane about pianos, the superiority of the Latin rite to all others, and how the Pope can even judge scientific affairs…
to suddenly seek “to be free to disagree” with a document issuing from the Holy See, with the authority of the Pope behind it, is displaying an unexpected inconsistency.
In other words, it’s being a cafeteria Catholic.
No ceilings have fallen yet, nor has the earth opened to swallow up any of their edifices.
Does this offend you, too, Tantum Ergo?
Forgive me if I observe that for a person who is so ultra-montane about pianos, the superiority of the Latin rite to all others, and how the Pope can even judge scientific affairs…
to suddenly seek “to be free to disagree” with a document issuing from the Holy See, with the authority of the Pope behind it, is displaying an unexpected inconsistency.
In other words, it’s being a cafeteria Catholic.
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japhy
Guest
What document are you referring to? The 1993 Directory of Principles and Norms on Ecumenism? Something else?
I don’t see the word “altar” mentioned once in the DPNE.
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Aramis
Guest
You’re free to disagree with them, in private, so long as you obey the strictures within, since they are put forward as doctrine, and don’t teach otherwise.
It’s that assent of will issue: disagree but obey.
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