Our Catholic Identity

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TrueLight said:
Are you for real?

I just saw this post. I have to get ready to make my 2.5 hour trek to the TRADITIONAL LATIN mass that you put down in this post, but we’ll talk later. 😃
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True Light,

Why do you do that? Are there no Catholic Churches near you? Even the way you phrased it, makes it sound like you are not thrilled about going, Is Latin your first language? Did you take the time to learn it? I flunked it in High School. I hated learning it because I could see no value in learning it. I should have switched classes, it didn’t go well from the start. Does the Priest have his back to you during the Mass? It’s funny, we didn’t give that a thought back then. I really think that the only ones that have a problem with that are too young to remember how it was, and think they would resent it if the Priest turned his back to them. Just not that big a deal.The big deal now and for the past 35 or so years is that the mass is in English. well an old guy says hurray!!! and thank you God. People in general are joining in much more than they did in the Latin Mass. Oh sure, they would sing the beautiful Latin songs, so did I, but as beautiful as they were, if we didn’t have a translation right there, NOTHING, NADA, NO HOW.
We might as well been saying Greek, which by the way was the original language of the Catholic Church. Greek was international language at the time.
Now I don’t know your thoughts, but how is the Latin Mass bringing you closer to God.
I know a web site that you might be interested in seeing, it’s THE CATHOLIC TREASURE CHEST, give it a try you might like it too.

fall fox
 
Hi Fall Fox,

I just thought you might like to know that at my parish only the Traditional Latin Mass is offered. It looks a lot like this (though this picture is not my parish):

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

I’m going to be travelling to Europe later this year. The first Sunday I will be here:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1889/feb152009iii1fi8.jpg

And the second Sunday I will be here:

 
We never called the sisters by their last names, and they didn’t lack for respect, did they? The Benedictines have been going by their Christian names for–what?–1500 years, and it didn’t hurt the respect people had for them. Likewise the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the other religious orders, priests and religious alike. I also don’t think the evidence exists to show that a life of piety and virtue can’t happen without an obsession with damnation, either.

A Catholic can devote himself to prayer, almsgiving, and penance, to learning virtue and sanctity and avoiding vice, to devotion towards the Sacraments and the life of the Church, to a life inspired by the example of the saints and helped by their intercession, and to cultivating an attitude of love towards God and neighbor without being scared into it. It is necessary, however, that these things be held in high esteem. It is necessary that people realize that the impoverishment that occurs when the goal is hold onto the hope of heaven all while attempting to be formed by God and to share in the life of the Church as little as possible!

I think the main thing that was lost after Vatican II was that in saying “you may do this instead of this” (e.g., you may give alms or do penance instead of abstaining in observance of Fridays), the message that was seized on was “you don’t have to do this any more!” (Meat on Fridays is OK!! No confession every week? Whoohoo! No confession at all! A one-hour fast! That’s practically no fast at all!!)

Let’s face it: If Catholics had really made certain that they were using Fridays to feed the poor or spend more time in prayer if they weren’t abstaining, the identity that goes with observing Fridays would not have been lost. Fridays might have actually been about more than getting your identity from fish sticks. That isn’t what happened.

The other thing that happened was that in dropping the scandalous feuding aspects between Catholics and Protestants–let’s hope nobody wants to go back to the days when the Protestant kids and the Catholic kids had their own violent religious dust-ups after school–was that the misconception spread that religious tenets didn’t make a difference. Instead of taking the message that beating other people up is not fitting behavior for a Christian, instead of changing our identities to encompass the true essence of the faith, the message seems to have been that if a difference isn’t worth hitting somebody about or shunning them over or doesn’t make it necessary to call attention to onesself, it must not be much of a difference. We’re all at peace? We must all really be the same.

Now, it can be argued that many things happened in the 20th century, wars and fashions in philosophy and technical advances and the upheaval of societal boundaries of every kind, things which conspired to smear out all kinds of identity into a brown goo of “I’m OK, You’re OK, so why does life seem so empty?” Who knows.

I don’t see that it matters why we became lukewarm. I think all that matters is to hear that we are being called to more, that we are being called to be fervent, and to all the habitual virtues that fervence implies.

“But seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.” Matt. 6:33-24
 
fall_fox said:
People in general are joining in much more than they did in the Latin Mass.
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Not in the English Mass. And 70% of American Catholics don’t even bother going at all.
We might as well been saying Greek,
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In case you haven’t noticed they did away with all the Greek (Kyrie Eleison) in the Mass as well. At least we Romans kept some Greek (and the Hebrew Sabaoth) in the Mass. 😉
 
fall_fox said:
People in general are joining in much more than they did in the Latin Mass.
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But 70% of American Catholics don’t even bother going to Mass at all.
We might as well been saying Greek,
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In case you haven’t noticed they did away with all the Greek (Kyrie Eleison) in the Mass as well. At least we Romans kept some Greek (and the Hebrew Sabaoth) in the Mass. 😉
 
Will_S said:
Hi Fall Fox,

I just thought you might like to know that at my parish only the Traditional Latin Mass is offered. It looks a lot like this (though this picture is not my parish):

http://www.traditionalmass.org/images/mass/1.jpg

I’m going to be travelling to Europe later this year. The first Sunday I will be here:

http://img155.imageshack.us/img155/1889/feb152009iii1fi8.jpg

And the second Sunday I will be here:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_6hoXex41p6I/RyyepN6yPVI/AAAAAAAAACo/QOMJUXauEAI/s320/P1011941.JPG
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Will, this brings back warm memories for me. I’m originally from Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was known as the city of Churches. We had Catholic churches that were built rather close to others because they were ethnic Parishes. French-St.Marys, Irish-st.Pats, German-St. Peters, it has been renovated recently, beautiful, the way of the cross stations are still in German, I don’t remember the rest of them. They all had intricately carved alters, carved in Italy and were built, I think in the 19th century. The parish where I learned to serve mass had the same kind of alter, just beautiful. I went there about 4 yrs ago, in front of that beautiful alter they put up a plywood wall with drawings on it between that alter and the table they are saying mass on now. Just a shame. I know that the economic character of that area changed but I still think they could have had better ideas when they changed things.
 
EasterJoy said:
We never called the sisters by their last names, and they didn’t lack for respect, did they? The Benedictines have been going by their Christian names for–what?–1500 years, and it didn’t hurt the respect people had for them. Likewise the Dominicans, the Franciscans, and the other religious orders, priests and religious alike. I also don’t think the evidence exists to show that a life of piety and virtue can’t happen without an obsession with damnation, either.

I don’t consider myself quite as knowledgeable on the names the Nuns went by, but if memory serves, they chose a new name having to do with possibly a saint they admired when they took final vols.
Obsession ??? I think that we were loaded down with a large portion of the fear of God. The saying went this way " a good Catholic feels guilty all the time" When the change came, the pendulum swung too far the other way, God is a loving God. Well I certainly believe that but things that you do or don’t do can loose your place in heaven.
You know, when the Church was more threatening with their messages, 75% of Catholics went to Church every week and they also supported the Church. Now where there is no consequences to sin addressed in our Homilies, less than 30% of those that call themselves Catholic, practice the faith. I wonder if there is a connection. We need a balance of the truth that we need to hear, hell exists and heaven exists It is up to you which way are you going.
,
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EasterJoy

Now, it can be argued that many things happened in the 20th century, wars and fashions in philosophy and technical advances and the upheaval of societal boundaries of every kind, things which conspired to smear out all kinds of identity into a brown goo of “I’m OK, You’re OK, so why does life seem so empty?” Who knows.
I don’t see that it matters why we became lukewarm. I think all that matters is to hear that we are being called to more, that we are being called to be fervent, and to all the habitual virtues that fervence implies.

fall fox

I believe that we have been educated to a point that it has become difficult to say, yes I believe that, even though I don’t understand how that could be. Even in Jesus’ day, when he said you must eat my flesh and drink my blood to achieve everlasting life. His followers walked away. It was too much for them to believe and they were hearing it from the Christ himself. Peter had it right, where else am I to go. If Catholics were hearing a good balance of the truth from the Priest at the Ambo on Sunday, maybe we wouldn’t have so many Lukewarm Catholics that are some how in a **** shoot with God." He won’t send me to hell."
 
ProVobis said:
But 70% of American Catholics don’t even bother going to Mass at all.

In case you haven’t noticed they did away with all the Greek (Kyrie Eleison) in the Mass as well. At least we Romans kept some Greek (and the Hebrew Sabbath) in the Mass. 😉
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fall fox

You can blame the Catholic Church herself for that. The Catechesis in the 1970s was terrible. Now you have grownups from that time period that are raising their children without the Church.
I don’t understand your comment "we Romans " and you do not keep the Hebrew Sabbath if you are In the Latin rite Church, We observe the day Christ rose from the dead, Sunday, we call that the Sabbath but I think Jews would give you an argument on that being the Sabbath.
 
fall_fox said:
Obsession ??? I think that we were loaded down with a large portion of the fear of God. The saying went this way " a good Catholic feels guilty all the time" When the change came, the pendulum swung too far the other way, God is a loving God. Well I certainly believe that but things that you do or don’t do can loose your place in heaven.

You know, when the Church was more threatening with their messages, 75% of Catholics went to Church every week and they also supported the Church. Now where there is no consequences to sin addressed in our Homilies, less than 30% of those that call themselves Catholic, practice the faith. I wonder if there is a connection. We need a balance of the truth that we need to hear, hell exists and heaven exists It is up to you which way are you going.
,
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Do not get me wrong. I used to teach the kids getting ready for the First Reconciliation this: Guilt is a gift from God, but it is like a smoke detector. Its function is to alarm you, to let you know that you need to examine what you’re doing, and to ask yourself if you need to repent. Like a smoke detector, you can turn it off while you fight the fire. Once you’re awake and attending to the sin, guilt has done its job. What you may not safely do is to just turn it off because the noise annoys you. That can get you killed. If your guilt is going off all of the time, though, it is not as useful as if it is trained to go off when there is something wrong and not when there is not even any smoke in the air. If what you have is shame and not guilt, that is nothing more than the devil lying to you about God’s mercy and how absolutely dependent we all are on God for any grace at all. Shame is beating yourself up because you can’t manage to feel proud of yourself!

If good Catholic kids were going to confession every week but still getting into fights with the little Protestant kids after school, the guilt was not well-calibrated. If the kids were petrified of God or could not get rid of the guilt even when they had repented, confessed, and did their best to make amends, then the guilt was not well-calibrated.

In fact, sometimes I wonder if the reason the batteries were yanked out of the gift of Catholic guilt the first chance people got wasn’t because the thing was going off so often as to be rendered useless.

The fear of God is reverence and the awesome awareness of the obligation of graitude that makes one eager to please. It is not mere terror. As is often mentioned, after all, the most oft-repeated phrase in the Bible is “Fear not”. More to the point, it is an imperfect contrition that is based on fear. A perfect contrition is based on the desire to love. That has always been the ideal, even back when we memorized the Baltimore Catechism. The fear of hell may get more people into church, but the desire to love is what makes saints.
 
fall_fox said:
If Catholics were hearing a good balance of the truth from the Priest at the Ambo on Sunday, maybe we wouldn’t have so many Lukewarm Catholics that are some how in a **** shoot with God." He won’t send me to hell."
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Sometimes, too, I think an overemphasis on differentiating between mortal and venial sins can backfire. The way some people talk, venial sins are the “allowed” sins, because they “only” crank up the amount of purification the soul will require. Stay away from the mortal sins, those are the ones that will get you, but only saints concern themselves too much with venial sins, and “Hey, I’m no saint.” That is a very dangerous attitude, too.
 
EasterJoy said:
Sometimes, too, I think an overemphasis on differentiating between mortal and venial sins can backfire. The way some people talk, venial sins are the “allowed” sins, because they “only” crank up the amount of purification the soul will require. Stay away from the mortal sins, those are the ones that will get you, but only saints concern themselves too much with venial sins, and “Hey, I’m no saint.” That is a very dangerous attitude, too.
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You are too right, I’m no saint, but I’m trying my best to get there, I am well aware of how far I need to go. I know what you are saying though by that phrase, “Hay, I’m no saint” is said with, what sounds like, a certain amount of pride.

Sin, in order to sin it needs to be a serious matter, you must know it is a sin, and you must be willing to do it anyway. I really believe people can take somethig, that for others, would not be a sin and turn it into a sin for themselves. If they " THINK " something is a sin and they do that activity anyway, I think that it is a sin for them.
 
fall_fox said:
You are too right, I’m no saint, but I’m trying my best to get there, I am well aware of how far I need to go. I know what you are saying though by that phrase, “Hay, I’m no saint” is said with, what sounds like, a certain amount of pride.

Sin, in order to sin it needs to be a serious matter, you must know it is a sin, and you must be willing to do it anyway. I really believe people can take somethig, that for others, would not be a sin and turn it into a sin for themselves. If they " THINK " something is a sin and they do that activity anyway, I think that it is a sin for them.
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Yes. The idea of moral theology is not to make people afraid of getting the attention of the Almighty Smiter of Sinners! That is about as useful as a cancer awareness campaign that makes people afraid of oncologists!

The goal of moral theology is to form the conscience so as to instill an awareness and repugnance for evil and an appreciation and love for virtue. The idea is to be repelled by all the repels grace and to fall ever more in love with all that God loves, to make that a habitual attitude and to put that into habitual action, for the sake of an ever-deepening relationship with God “who is all-good and deserving of all my love”.

That is the true identity of a Catholic, to be a person in pursuit of all that God pursues, desiring to will what God wills and to love what God loves. The incense and the candles and the liturgical colors and the fish sticks on Fridays are only valuable insofar as they are put in the service of that end. It is not these things that make the Catholic Church what it is, but the truth and grace God has given it towards his end of making us into eternally free sons and daughters of God. That is what being Catholic is all about.
 
I have had a hard time with my catholic identity .Until I read about the faith prior to Vatican 2 and I found my calling .I wish it become more widespread .I must admit I am still learning latin but since I have a reverance for things of the past this felt like coming home The catholic just seemed different to me .I can’t discribe it to anyone else.
 
Irish Pride

You would be better served if you learned the Gaelic Tongue at least that is your heritage.
The Latin will always be with the Roman Rite but I can imagine you will see it less and less. Right after Vatican II, there were Catholics that were getting themselves in trouble by refusing to accept the change from Latin to English. They stopped going to Mass and wouldn’t receive any of the Sacraments because they insisted that the Catholic Church was no longer the true church that Jesus founded. They even went to clandestine masses, a priest from Chicago would travel around and say the Latin Mass without permission. My own wife’s aunt died not receiving the sacraments because of this. I hope that in God’s Mercy she is okay.
Please, please, please, don’t focus on the Latin, Focus on the Holy Eucharist, learn everything you can about it, what was it’s history in the early years. The code words for it was the breaking of the bread during the times of persecutions., and they had Mass in their homes. In the early days they would go to the synagogues on Saturday to observe the Sabbath, then on Sunday they would celebrate the Mass or Breaking of the Bread. St. Paul remained a devout Jew his whole life, as well as most Jews at that time. The real break came with the Gentiles, St. Paul insisted that they didn’t need to become Jewish to be a follower of Jesus.
Do you know why the bread we use is unleavened bread? The early Church of Rome was a Jewish community, we don’t even know who evangelized them. It wasn’t St.Paul, when he wrote the letter to the Romans, he was introducing himself to them with the hopes of getting support for a mission to Spain. The bread that the Jewish community used was a flat bread, no yeast.
St. Paul is more identified with the Eastern Rite Church, they use leavened bread made with yeast.
Our church is so rich in heritage, Latin is only a small part of that heritage. I mentioned this earlier in this thread, the language used by the early Church of Rome was Greek not Latin.
Greek was spoken all around the Mediterranean. It was the language of business. In more recent years, French was the international language, now it’s English.
 
From the (:() outside looking in, I think Catholics still have a unique identity. Catholics still have the stereotypes attached to them. (i.e Irish, Italian, German, Polish, lots of kids, etc.). The Catholic Church still has the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist, and is still the pillar and foundation of all Truth. It is the only ecclesial community/church I can think of that is still teaching the same Christian morals that the Church taught 1000 years ago and beyond. it still has the most liturgical liturgy of any Christian community. the Catholic Church still has churches that were built 1000 years ago. It has the most beautiful Cathedrals in the world - the best architecture for any buildings on the globe. So look on the positive side. the Catholic identity is still very much around. It is just going through a transition (different Mass, etc.), even though it is stuck in the middle ages and even before then ;).
 
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