The most damaging innovation to Catholic parishes in the last 50 years...

[ConstantineTG]

Wow, that sure is drawing a long bow, comparing removing a crying baby to a crying room to abortion!!!

And I agree with YoungTradCath. We have also taken our noisy children out of Mass out of respect for others, because it is the right thing to do.

I did the same on page 1. I fully agree with Brother JR. Things start small and they grow big. In the UK they are trying to call families with too many children an environmental issue. Too many kids produce too many greenhouses (I won’t contest that, my kid was farty from 6-12 months ). But seriously, when we dehumanize kids and see them as an inconvenience, we’re going that path that is a one way street.

 

[JReducation]

Wow, that sure is drawing a long bow, comparing removing a crying baby to a crying room to abortion!!!

And I agree with YoungTradCath. We have also taken our noisy children out of Mass out of respect for others, because it is the right thing to do.

If you read my post #35 you’ll see that there is nothing wrong with doing what needs to be done for a child who is distressed and to avoid distressing others.

But we must be very careful with the wording that we use. It is immoral to place ritual over the innocent. To say that a child takes away from the reverence of the ritual is an unjust statement against the child. The child’s needs are being subordinated to the ritual. That is never morally permissible.

To say that a crying child should be helped to calm down, be it in the cry room, the vestibule or where ever that may be and that we must always be charitable to others, even when our babies cry, is a perfectly legitimate and morally safe statement.

What was wrong was the juxtaposition between the reverence and the crying child, because the crying child cannot possibly take away from the reverence of the Eucharist. He can distract you and me, distress the parent who is trying to regain control and even bring things to a momentary stop, but the reverence is not disrupted. The reverence is the attitude with which the community worships. We worship reverently or not at all.

We must also be careful never to give anyone the false impression that there is ever a situation in which God is inconvenienced by a child… This is not true. God is never incovenienced at all, not even by sin. God is incapable of being incovenienced. However, those with a pro abortion or pro contraception agenda can say, “Catholics believe that there are times that children are an inconvenience even to God.”

We must watch our words very carefully. The Brothers of Life, Sisters of Life and Priests for Life, we do this day in and day out. We spend a lot of time correcting the way that Catholics say things in public. Even when they don’t mean harm, the wording can be dangerous.

The way that I figure it is that the pro-abort and pro-contraception movement is going to find many reasons to support their position, why give them the script.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Credo_in_Deum]

What’s the single most damaging innovation to Catholic churches over the last 50 years?

It’s not the removal of altar rails or the electric vigil candles, or the fancy felt banners that hang from the ceiling. Guess again.

It’s the “crying room.”

patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Crying-Shame-Greg-Kandra-08-03-2011.html

But Jesus said to them: Suffer the little children, and forbid them not to come to me: for the kingdom of heaven is for such.–Matthew 19:14

I agree with the deacon but I do not agree that this is the most damaging innovation.

While I agree that cry rooms are unnecessary (I don’t use them, and I do have a large, young family), they are by far “the most damaging innovation”. What damage could a cry room do if the a enormous portion of the parishioners are now attending some Mormon or Evangelical church… or no church at all. I feel, the “single most damaging innovation” is ecumenism and the belief that “even those who are outside the Church have a certitude that they are saved, if they are of a good moral standing”; while I wouldn’t be able to guess, the chances are certainly, and logically slim in these cases. It feel, people have made invincible ignorance the rule, rather then the exception to the rule.

Agreed!

The removal of High Altars, I find quite appalling.

The most annoying is public address systems poorly eq’d.

Agreed!

In my opinion one of the most damaging things to hit the Church is the removal of the paten during communion. So many particles of the Eucharist fall unnoticed and are trodden underfoot daily by communicants. I talked to my priest about communion in the hand and he said if people realized how many particles of the Holy Eucharist are left on the paten (and that he scrapes back into the chalice) after communion, they would never use their hands again and would request a paten and communion on the tongue. Especially if they understand that just one drop of our Lords Blood could save countless worlds and that each tiny particle of the Holy Eucharist is Christ’s entire body, blood, soul and divinity.

 

[EzraJacob]

What’s the single most damaging innovation to Catholic churches over the last 50 years?

It’s not the removal of altar rails or the electric vigil candles, or the fancy felt banners that hang from the ceiling. Guess again.

It’s the “crying room.”

patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Crying-Shame-Greg-Kandra-08-03-2011.html

You know, the church I just started going to has one of these. I did not know what it was until now.

 

[daCatholicGuard]

Greetings all,

My money is on the removal of the altar rails, (and in some churches- the removal of the altar altogether), and on the removal of the Tabernacle, (placing Jesus in an alcove or somewhere else “out of sight”), as a couple of the worst things that have happened to church architecture in the last 50 years. Not to mention the diluted stained glass or the “Convention Center”/”Theatre in the Round” designs of late.

I think the deacon goes off the beam a little because he is stressing community above worship; he seems to be focused on the horizontal plain. When I was able to go to Church, I tried to focus on the vertical plain; I am there to seek communion with my God. We all know that God “speaks” to us in quietude; it is difficult to attain that “Celestial Communion” when you have a shrill 70 decibel scream 2 feet from your ear.

Just my opinion.

Oremus pro invicem,

Sean C. :knight1:​

**Please recite the Rosary daily. Each bead; devoutly said; is an eternal rose presented to Jesus and Our Blessed Mother.

Be sure to read The Secret of the Rosary by Saint Louis de Montfort. It will change your life.

When you are in a tight spot; pray to St. Jude and have faith. **

 

[InquisitorMax]

I think the ‘suffer the little children’ quote is not correctly used here. From memory, Jesus was quite harsh about what would happen to people who “caused one of these little ones to stumble” i.e. caused them to turn away from Him i.e. from the pursuit of holiness.

The kids who were gathering round Him, who the apostles tried to shoo away, could walk and talk, I guess: they were capable of perceiving something of Who He was. They weren’t babes in arms letting rip in the temple at the moment of sacrifice

 

[Cat]

I don’t think we should spend so much time and effort trying to define the most damaging innovation. That’s a distraction and I think Satan must be thrilled to see us all trying to place blame on others and on “innovations,” and ignoring our own personal contributions to the damage.

What hurts the Church of Christ is when we rebelliously and pridefully, or carelessly, continue to receive Holy Communion while our own personal mortal sin goes unconfessed and unforgiven.

Many Catholics have chosen to live a sinful life, defying the Church and claiming that what they are doing is not sin at all. They continue to receive Holy Communion as though it were just a symbol.

THIS hurts the Church worse than any “innovation.”

I think it’s dangerous of us to speculate which innovation is the worse when none of these things have been condemned by our Church. We need to pay attention to our own souls, not run hither and thither and get in a dither over nothing.

This is the year 2011. At this time in world history, the most important aspect of human culture is the acquisition of information.

To most of us, the acquiring of information through media, through hearing, through seeing, and through reading, is the way we live moment to moment. I am acquiring information right now, by being on CAF and at the same time, watching my local news on TV. If I had the day off, I would also be reading my local paper. And I would probably be on the phone or sending/receiving emails, or checking in on social media. And I might be reading a novel or a magazine, too. All at the same time!

I’m guessing many of you are behaving the same way right now–sucking up information!

That’s the way humans are right now in this time period of the world–we suck up information like human vacuum cleaners.

There is nothing wrong or evil about this. It’s just the way things are in 2011. There is no use railing against it or condemning it. The acquisition of information is morally neutral.

Anything that interferes with our acquiring information is considered something that needs to be fixed quickly.

We all fuss when our cable goes out, or when our computer is down, or when our phone needs to be recharged, or when our newspaper is late.

That’s because we are living in 2011 and when we cannot acquire information, we have a hard time joining in life and culture in our world. We are “disconnected,” and for most of us, this is unacceptable.

It’s not wrong or evil–it’s just the way things are. We cannot go back to a time when information acquisition was relatlively unimportant. We shouldn’t try to go back, because we live in 2011 and this is the way things are.

A screaming child or fussy toddler makes it harder for us to acquire information because we cannot hear what is being said. This is why modern parents feel uncomfortable allowing their babies and toddlers to make noise during Mass. The parents are behaving in a way consistent with modern culture, and they are acutely aware that the noise their child is making is a disruption to the receiving of information.

I agree that the Mass is NOT all about acquiring information. We all know that. I’m sure many of the young parents know that!

But it is difficult for us to shed the life that we all live in 2011 and behave for one hour as though noise doesn’t matter.

Many of us struggle to cast off our visible life and enter our invisible life when we walk into the nave and kneel down before Mass begins. There are many MANY threads on CAF from people who are having a hard time concentrating at Mass because of one thing or another. It is very hard for us to detach ourselves from all our modern culture and enter into a Mass, which is outside of human time and space.

Young parents are no different. It’s hard for them to behave as though the noise doesn’t matter because in all other areas of modern life, anything that disrupts the flow of information is perceived as something that needs to be fixed.

We all need to figure out ways to see the Mass as beyond time and not behave at Mass as we would in our everyday lives. But that’s really hard, and we probably shouldn’t condemn people who have a hard time letting go of their regular lives while sitting in Mass. We all struggle with this.

I think it would be helpful for all of us to make an effort to be welcoming to small children and babies, and to let parents know in our looks and in our WORDS (after Mass) that their little ones are welcome in Mass.

 

[Tsuwano]

The crying room in our church is glass enclosed and those using it are able to witness the liturgy. Sound is piped in, but the room itself is sound proof so that those on the outside are not able to hear children crying. The room contains pews and kneelers and it is possible to stand, kneel or sit whenever the rest of the congregation does so. An usher stands near the room to assist parents. Far from finding the crying room a damaging innovation, I have found it a convenience which allowed me to care for my infants with a minimum of fuss or distraction for other worshipers and still participate in the liturgy as much as a fidgety or crying child will permit. The crying room in our church is a much welcomed innovation.

 

[ProVobis]

That’s a distraction and I think Satan must be thrilled to see us all trying to place blame on others and on “innovations,” and ignoring our own personal contributions to the damage.

It’s good to know this. Up till now I thought the only thing Satan was thrilled about was the babelization of the liturgy.

 

[Seamus_L]

Cry rooms aren’t even in the top 100 in my list of damaging innovations, and I believe the author is making mountains out of mole hills. In a cry room one is still in church in the presence of God, and in many instances it’s simply a place to temporarily take a screaming baby, until it quiets down.

 

[ConstantineTG]

It’s good to know this. Up till now I thought the only thing Satan was thrilled about was the babelization of the liturgy.

Right. It should have never been translated to Latin in the first place

 

[James924]

Cry Rooms are also a good place for mothers to be able to nurse and “take care of baby business” during mass. I attend an FSSP parish, by that I mean a parish that is 100% Tridentine and as a result as you can imagine its one of the most orthodox in the area. And we have a cry room. If a child is out of control or crying too much, the parent is certainly free to stay in, but who honestly is not stressed out by the fact that their child is shaking the ear drums of those areound them while trying to focus on the mass? So those parents (myself and my wife included) will often go back into the cry room where you can still hear and see the mass and calm the baby down. Likewise, if you have a toddler or small child throwing a tantrum, you can take them to the back to calm them down or discipline them.

The smashing of the altars and the concept of sacrifice and the distgusting anthropocentralization of the floor plans and the replacement of the crucifixes with disfigured cast-iron resurrected Christs and on and on and on are all much more detrimental than cry rooms, in my estimation.

 

[ProVobis]

Right. It should have never been translated to Latin in the first place

Or Greek either. Are you still bitter that they moved to Rome?

 

[JReducation]

Greetings all,

My money is on the removal of the altar rails, (and in some churches- the removal of the altar altogether), and on the removal of the Tabernacle, (placing Jesus in an alcove or somewhere else “out of sight”), as a couple of the worst things that have happened to church architecture in the last 50 years. Not to mention the diluted stained glass or the “Convention Center”/”Theatre in the Round” designs of late.

I think the deacon goes off the beam a little because he is stressing community above worship; he seems to be focused on the horizontal plain. When I was able to go to Church, I tried to focus on the vertical plain; I am there to seek communion with my God. We all know that God “speaks” to us in quietude; it is difficult to attain that “Celestial Communion” when you have a shrill 70 decibel scream 2 feet from your ear.

Just my opinion.

Oremus pro invicem,

Sean C. :knight1:​

**Please recite the Rosary daily. Each bead; devoutly said; is an eternal rose presented to Jesus and Our Blessed Mother.

Be sure to read The Secret of the Rosary by Saint Louis de Montfort. It will change your life.

When you are in a tight spot; pray to St. Jude and have faith. **

Because I’m a Franciscan, communion rails, the position of the tabernacle, stained glass windows, and statuary are not where we have placed our focus in building. We rarely had our own churches. We usually inherited them. However, when we did build a friary, the chapel never had communion rails, statuary or a lot of color. The windows depended on what the friars could afford. If there were good craftsmen who could do the work, they put them in, if not, they used tinted glass or frosted glass. From the year 1209 we have been formed in the mindset that these are non essential elements for worship, because St. Francis built very simple chapels.

There was something that St. Francis brought to the table and the Church adopted, which I like very much and it is not so common today. Chapels had to be beautiful. They did not have to be ornate. In fact, that was always discouraged, because it was against poverty. However, everything had to be beautiful, clean and functional.

I don’t like much of the modern architecture used for building today’s churches. I don’t find them beautiful. I find them bland. However, I notice that it’s not just religious architecture that is this way. Modern architecture is rather bland. I grew up in the south. We have built beautiful old houses with a lot of details inside and out. When I left home to live in the modern suburb, I found houses to be very boring.

I also don’t like the round churches. That was never part of the Judeo - Christian tradition. In the Judeo- Christian tradition people either face in the same direction or sit across from each other with the focal point at one end of the rectangle. That’s why monasteries have stalls instead of pews. The mass is at one end of the chapel, but the monks are looking across to each other and they walk over to the sanctuary for the Eucharistic Prayer. In friaries, chapels tend to be smaller, because friaries are smaller than monasteries. They rarely have stalls. They have seating facing toward the altar. Like monasteries, there are no communion rails; therefore, the sanctuary is open. The entire space is sacred space. That’s because there is no room in the sanctuary for the community. In those friaries where the chapel does have a large sanctuary and the number of friars is small, then the community is in the sanctuary from the offertory until communion.

I like the movement and I like the looking at each other as do monks and friars, but with the altar being at the end. The round church feels uncomfortable to me. From the outside, some look like a spaceship.

If I were going to identify the most damaging, I would have to say that it’s the bland architecture of today. It’s simple, but it’s not beautiful. There is such a thing a simple and beautiful. If you have ever been to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC, the crypt church is simple and beautiful. It’s beauty is in its austerity.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF

 

[Paxvobis]

While priests berating crying children during the Mass is certainly not good, I don’t think the cry room is the “most damaging innovation to Catholic parishes in the last 50 years.” Personally, I don’t understand why they’re a problem. While I’m not annoyed by crying babies in Church (actually, it’s kind of uplifting that they’re at Mass), I do understand the concerns of those who do.

I think that the most damaging thing of recent times in Catholic parishes is that many priests don’t believe in the Real Presence (which, of course, invalidates any Masses they say). I’ve read that the number of priests who don’t believe in the Real Presence is as high as 30% in my diocese.

 

[Cat]

Cry Rooms are also a good place for mothers to be able to nurse and “take care of baby business” during mass. I attend an FSSP parish, by that I mean a parish that is 100% Tridentine and as a result as you can imagine its one of the most orthodox in the area. And we have a cry room. If a child is out of control or crying too much, the parent is certainly free to stay in, but who honestly is not stressed out by the fact that their child is shaking the ear drums of those areound them while trying to focus on the mass? So those parents (myself and my wife included) will often go back into the cry room where you can still hear and see the mass and calm the baby down. Likewise, if you have a toddler or small child throwing a tantrum, you can take them to the back to calm them down or discipline them.

The smashing of the altars and the concept of sacrifice and the distgusting anthropocentralization of the floor plans and the replacement of the crucifixes with disfigured cast-iron resurrected Christs and on and on and on are all much more detrimental than cry rooms, in my estimation.

Thanks for being a voice of common sense.

 

[Cat]

The crying room in our church is glass enclosed and those using it are able to witness the liturgy. Sound is piped in, but the room itself is sound proof so that those on the outside are not able to hear children crying. The room contains pews and kneelers and it is possible to stand, kneel or sit whenever the rest of the congregation does so. An usher stands near the room to assist parents. Far from finding the crying room a damaging innovation, I have found it a convenience which allowed me to care for my infants with a minimum of fuss or distraction for other worshipers and still participate in the liturgy as much as a fidgety or crying child will permit. The crying room in our church is a much welcomed innovation.

Another voice of common sense. Thanks.

 

[Cat]

The crying room in our church is glass enclosed and those using it are able to witness the liturgy. Sound is piped in, but the room itself is sound proof so that those on the outside are not able to hear children crying. The room contains pews and kneelers and it is possible to stand, kneel or sit whenever the rest of the congregation does so. An usher stands near the room to assist parents. Far from finding the crying room a damaging innovation, I have found it a convenience which allowed me to care for my infants with a minimum of fuss or distraction for other worshipers and still participate in the liturgy as much as a fidgety or crying child will permit. The crying room in our church is a much welcomed innovation.

And three voices of common sense!

Thanks to you, also. I am reassured.

 

[At_Trent]

The day I catch myself annoyed by a crying infant is the day I realize I walked into the church for the wrong reasons.

 

[JReducation]

While priests berating crying children during the Mass is certainly not good, I don’t think the cry room is the “most damaging innovation to Catholic parishes in the last 50 years.” Personally, I don’t understand why they’re a problem. While I’m not annoyed by crying babies in Church (actually, it’s kind of uplifting that they’re at Mass), I do understand the concerns of those who do.

I think that the most damaging thing of recent times in Catholic parishes is that many priests don’t believe in the Real Presence (which, of course, invalidates any Masses they say). I’ve read that the number of priests who don’t believe in the Real Presence is as high as 30% in my diocese.

Be very cautious about such statements. You first have to ask, “Who goes around gathering such information and for what purpose?”

It’s very interesting the dirt that some people can dig up on priests, religious and politicians when they have an ax to grind.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF