Thank you; it has been explained previously that the Carnival Novena was in fact not a Mass. I still think it was horrid. Barnum and Bailey would of course be pleased by it, but a circus act with rediculous circus music is not the proper way to honor Our Lady in a cathedral.
I agree with you that to our American mindset, it reminds us of Barnum and Bailey. Having lived in South America, I learned that they never heard of Barnum and Bailey. A circus to them is what we would call a carnival. A carnival to them is what we would call a street fair. This art form used to honor Our Lady does not match their idea of a circus or a carnival. It’s a very unique thing, for them. For us it’s very common place and it makes us feel uncomfortable.
Having been a missionary opened my eyes to many things. One of them was accepting the fact that Europe and the USA are not the center of the world or the Church. The other was that with the exception of the white population, the rest of the people in the Southern Hemisphere are nominally Catholic and have always been nominally Catholic, because what we think of as tradition, they think of as European and American colonialism.
They can’t help that. The white minority adheres to these traditions. That’s not bad. However, the white minority also adheres to racial discrimination against the mestizos, blacks and Indians. The prevailing comment when someone makes a mistake is, “You’re as dumb as an Indian.” If you’re sweaty from the gym or whatever, a typical white Latino expression is “You smell like a n i g g e r.” I think both statements are utterly disgusting. My saying so got me into trouble with many white Catholics down there.
Now, since these are the same people that you would find clamoring for “tradition”, how much Catholicism can we expect from the mestizo, Indian and black Latino? They’re either cool non practicing or very devout, but with very different customs from those of their white Catholic brethren.
There is more to conquer here than just introducing the Tridentine form. There is a hatred toward those people who subscribe to the Tridentine Form and the form becomes “guilty by association.” For some mestizos, becoming a Traditionalist is socially upward mobility. Don’t ask me why? Maybe the fact that the whites have usually been wealthy.
You do not have to be biritual to concelebrate.
Thanks guys. I don’t know much about Eastern Canon Law. I know that the other way around it works. The Eastern priest can concelebrate in any of the Latin rites, but didn’t know that it went both ways, because some things don’t seem to go both ways.
Unfortunately, we still have some people who refuse to give Holy Communion to Eastern Catholic infants attending a Roman Rite mass, which is absurd to the extreme. Don’t look at me. When they come in and say that they are Melkite and that they have a 9 month old, I tell our priests to give them Holy Communion. We even have a special little spoon just for that purpose. We keep it in our friary sacristy (really a closet
).
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
and “pagan faith dances” 