Why is their lagging Interest in the OF?

[sruyle]

So why are we looking at this in terms of quantity? Instead lets look at quality. First let me say this I attend the OF on multiple occasions each week. I have attended the EF less times than I have fingers but have watched it on TV a few times as well.

When I look at those who attend the EF as a whole they believe and practice what the Church Magisterium teaches, and those faithful use the Sacrament of Confession and do not contracept.

When I look at those who attend the OF there is no whole. Its a mishmash of what people believe and practice. Confession lines in most parishes don’t exist and those in the pew contracept at the some rate as secular society.

Even though I attend the OF, something tells me the EF is where its at.

St. Paul tells us there will be a great apostacy prior to the second coming. It certainly appears as we are living throught that apostacy. So if thats the case, and I think it is, lets put our focus on quality of faith not the quantity of those attending Mass. For those in attendance lets live our faith as one.

I’m willing to bet that if each parish had one EF service a weekend, and you didn’t have to drive to the seedy part of town to attend it, there would be more butts in pews for that one EF Mass than the highest attended OF Mass of that parish each weekend.

 

[Redratfish]

The problem with Our Generation and it would appear your generation remains the same then. IE - Whats in it FOR ME. When we go to Holy Mass - we dont go for ME we go for GOD. When the Priest is offereing the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass facing the Altar where the Relics of the Saints lie - he is offering the Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ in Propitiation for SIN - your Sin and my Sin.

It isnt meant to be party. It isnt meant to be a dance. It isnt meant to be fun and good times. If you want fun and good times - Comedians and Dancing girls then go Protestant. Honestly.

The Catholic Faith in the EF is solemn not festive. And you dont speak for all teens. There are hundreds at the Church I go to including two of my Children. And this summer they had to build two more classrooms because the school keeps growing exponentially.

Teens dont need to be entertained - they need to be educated. The problem with most people today , is they want to put kids on a pedestal instead of teaching them disicpline. Everything has to be fun and games. Well guess what - there is nothing fun about being sent to Hell - or having a Child out of wedlock or seeing a baby aborted. And the sooner our children realize that life isnt fun and games that life is serious business the sooner teens especially will realize that there is a price to be paid for irreverence - for sin and for debauchery.

You want to grow up and be a man - or do you want to exist in a false utopia that doesnt exist?

Really , its your choice isnt it.

pax

I agree with you. However, until the average teen is educated, it will remain that way. Once people are educated, there will be no need to change, will there?

 

[ConstantineTG]

If you can’t see the problem we face today and understand its roots…then pray for almighty God to enlighten you.

I will pray for you to be enlightened of whats going on in the world today.

 

[Dum_Spiro_Spero]

Liked your post!!! I agree…we don’t need the “Big Tent” mentality in The Catholic Church…what we need are orthodox, devout, Catholics

So why are we looking at this in terms of quantity? Instead lets look at quality. First let me say this I attend the OF on multiple occasions each week. I have attended the EF less times than I have fingers but have watched it on TV a few times as well.

When I look at those who attend the EF as a whole they believe and practice what the Church Magisterium teaches, and those faithful use the Sacrament of Confession and do not contracept.

When I look at those who attend the OF there is no whole. Its a mishmash of what people believe and practice. Confession lines in most parishes don’t exist and those in the pew contracept at the some rate as secular society.

Even though I attend the OF, something tells me the EF is where its at.

St. Paul tells us there will be a great apostacy prior to the second coming. It certainly appears as we are living throught that apostacy. So if thats the case, and I think it is, lets put our focus on quality of faith not the quantity of those attending Mass. For those in attendance lets live our faith as one.

I’m willing to bet that if each parish had one EF service a weekend, and you didn’t have to drive to the seedy part of town to attend it, there would be more butts in pews for that one EF Mass than the highest attended OF Mass of that parish each weekend.

 

[Dum_Spiro_Spero]

The Church is not of this world…therefore we should resist every effort to see The Church “in light of the world today”…The Church is The Truth…Truth transcends all time and it is relevant regardless of what is going on in the world today. The Church doesn’t need to conform to what you think it should be today…you should conform to The Church.

I will pray for you to be enlightened of whats going on in the world today.

 

[ProVobis]

Truth transcends all time and it is relevant regardless of what is going on in the world today.

 

[ProVobis]

I agree with you. However, until the average teen is educated, it will remain that way. Once people are educated, there will be no need to change, will there?

Unfortunately, ignorance begets ignorance.

 

[Dum_Spiro_Spero]

True that my friend

Unfortunately, ignorance begets ignorance.

 

[OraLabora]

The Church is not of this world…therefore we should resist every effort to see The Church “in light of the world today”…The Church is The Truth…Truth transcends all time and it is relevant regardless of what is going on in the world today. The Church doesn’t need to conform to what you think it should be today…you should conform to The Church.

I agree completely. The issue though is that fewer and fewer people see the Church as the custodian of the Truth.

How do we reverse that?

However we do so, the Church must remain orthodox, regardless of the Mass rite used.

 

[CradleCath]

If the purpose of Vatican II was, as stated, the renewal…revitalization…the rebirth of the Catholic Church, the empty pews of today show us that the council has failed dismally. The hierarchy can delude itself as much as it likes but the laity have long since given their considered opinion with their feet – Vatican II was a disastrous experiment that has failed.

Yes, I believe the council was “valid” whatever that means, considering the pastoral nature of Vatican II & the fact that no Dogma, no Doctrine was infallibly proclaimed. However, their has been no revitalization of the faith.

I agree with Michael Davies that “The new Mass is for automatons. Stand up, sit down, speak, sing, shake hands, line up for Communion, clap hands, and so on. Everything is up-front and frantic. There is no light and shade, no space for individual reflection, no allowance for any personal encounter with our Lord and God. The congregation is regimented and controlled on a human, physical level and no allowance is made for the transcendental and the uplifting of the soul”.

 

[Phemie]

If the purpose of Vatican II was, as stated, the renewal…revitalization…the rebirth of the Catholic Church, the empty pews of today show us that the council has failed dismally. The hierarchy can delude itself as much as it likes but the laity have long since given their considered opinion with their feet – Vatican II was a disastrous experiment that has failed.

Yes, I believe the council was “valid” whatever that means, considering the pastoral nature of Vatican II & the fact that no Dogma, no Doctrine was infallibly proclaimed. However, their has been no revitalization of the faith.

I agree with Michael Davies that “The new Mass is for automatons. Stand up, sit down, speak, sing, shake hands, line up for Communion, clap hands, and so on. Everything is up-front and frantic. There is no light and shade, no space for individual reflection, no allowance for any personal encounter with our Lord and God. The congregation is regimented and controlled on a human, physical level and no allowance is made for the transcendental and the uplifting of the soul”.

There are built in spaces for silence & personal encounters with God. Unfortunately, most priests do not avail of them. Any time “Let us pray” is spoken there should be a time of silence to allow us to pray and then all these silent prayers are ‘collected’ and presented to the Lord by the priest in the Collect. I’ve only experienced that silence in the LOTH when those leading it were modeling for us how it was to be done.

The homily should be followed by silence. One priest of ours did that. The first time, the fidgeting started about 10 seconds into the silence, but each time he was able to extend the time longer and longer until we had several minutes of silent prayer.

Blaming Vatican II for what we see in church today is to totally ignore the radical changes in society in the 60s that affected every religion in North America. You can’t discount the effect of what was happening outside the church door at that time; it had a big effect on what has happened inside the church doors.

 

[ProVobis]

Blaming Vatican II for what we see in church today is to totally ignore the radical changes in society in the 60s that affected every religion in North America. You can’t discount the effect of what was happening outside the church door at that time; it had a big effect on what has happened inside the church doors.

I agree for the most part. But one has to wonder perhaps the collegiality documents of Vatican II might have gone a little too far in giving too much control in the hands of the bishops and taking away too much from the Vatican. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding or mistranslations of those documents. Just saying.

 

[ConstantineTG]

I agree for the most part. But one has to wonder perhaps the collegiality documents of Vatican II might have gone a little too far in giving too much control in the hands of the bishops and taking away too much from the Vatican. Perhaps there was a misunderstanding or mistranslations of those documents. Just saying.

No doubt the leaders of our Church would have seen these changes coming to society. They wanted the Bishops to be able to react to their own environments rather than waiting for Rome all the time. A Bishop in the US would be able to tell the situation in the US better than someone in Rome. And given that the world is rapidly changing, cutting the red tape helps the Church adapt to changes quickly.

 

[Dum_Spiro_Spero]

You mean like adapting and changing to Catholics in name only that support homosexual marriage, divorce on demand, birth control, abortion, sodomy, pedophilia, etc? IT has been great putting all the power in the hands of the USCCB. The Church is realling flourishing in this country…I was being fecicous of course. And according to what I hear around the world…all the Bishop’s conferences are doing a bad job managing The Church in their particular countries

No doubt the leaders of our Church would have seen these changes coming to society. They wanted the Bishops to be able to react to their own environments rather than waiting for Rome all the time. A Bishop in the US would be able to tell the situation in the US better than someone in Rome. And given that the world is rapidly changing, cutting the red tape helps the Church adapt to changes quickly.

 

[ProVobis]

No doubt the leaders of our Church would have seen these changes coming to society. They wanted the Bishops to be able to react to their own environments rather than waiting for Rome all the time. A Bishop in the US would be able to tell the situation in the US better than someone in Rome. And given that the world is rapidly changing, cutting the red tape helps the Church adapt to changes quickly.

The world has been changing since Adam and Eve. Don’t know why all of a sudden they decided to remove the power of the Vatican in the 60’s.

 

[ConstantineTG]

The world has been changing since Adam and Eve. Don’t know why all of a sudden they decided to remove the power of the Vatican in the 60’s.

Its a bigger, broader world today. In the first few centuries of the Church, everrything was centered around Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa. After the age of exploration, the Church has expanded to North and South America and established in the Far East. Before the enemies of the Church are few. But today, you can’t even tell. Sometimes society itself is against the faith.

The world is progressing at a more rapid rate in the lasst 100 years. Sadly, the level of morality is also regressing at the same fast rate. People with unpopular ideas are suddenly given avenues to influence a greater majority. We didn’t have radio, TV or the internet in the past. Now we do. Celebrities, whethery anyone agrees with it or not, suddenly become role models. What they do affects what the rest of the world wants to do. Sadly, very little of them ever take this responsibility up. They deny it claiming they don’t want to become role models, but the fact is because they are in the limelight they are emulated by a lot of people. This didn’t exist 100 years ago. Blogging has become a powerful tool that anyone with an opinion is suddenly a journalist. Again, something that didn’t exist 10 years ago.

 

[ProVobis]

The world is progressing at a more rapid rate in the lasst 100 years.

Yes, and the Pope has even asked us to make more extensive use of the internet. We can get Vatican documents within seconds after they’re issued. Even faster if we’d learn Latin. I’m not saying we don’t need the bishops anymore, we do, but for them to have all the control over the Church matters doesn’t make that much sense if we still believe in the Papacy having the control.

 

[Phemie]

Yes, and the Pope has even asked us to make more extensive use of the internet. We can get Vatican documents within seconds after they’re issued. Even faster if we’d learn Latin. I’m not saying we don’t need the bishops anymore, we do, but for them to have all the control over the Church matters doesn’t make that much sense if we still believe in the Papacy having the control.

Since the laity never heard of encyclicals or documents before, Bishops could get away with never doing what they said and nobody ever knew.

How many people in 1968 read Humanae Vitae? Less than 5% of North American Catholics, I’d wager. How many ever heard of it in their parish? How many who were advised by a priest that ABC was up to their own conscience, like I was when I was 18, would have known that HV contradicted that? Few. Who knew about the Winnipeg Statement before the advent of the internet?

Today we await the publication of a document with bated breath and read it hot off the press on the net. Then we get ticked off when our bishops do nothing about them (Redemptionis Sacramentum being a prime example). 40 years ago, we’d never have known the document was coming out, let alone read it and been aware that it wasn’t being followed. 15 years ago, we might have become aware of it but would have been hard pressed to find a copy.

 

[ProVobis]

How many people in 1968 read Humanae Vitae? Less than 5% of North American Catholics, I’d wager. How many ever heard of it in their parish?

Good point. All’s I remember is the phraseology “to use your conscience” in such matters, even for years to come. The phrase no doubt came because that’s what had been said in an earlier document Progressio Populorum, and the bishops and priests were already running with it when HV was issued. In retrospect communication seemed very poor in the 60’s as mistranslations and misinterpretations abounded. Today you could get Humanae Vitae issued and you will have a million comments made within minutes. But at least they would know.

 

[ConstantineTG]

Yes, and the Pope has even asked us to make more extensive use of the internet. We can get Vatican documents within seconds after they’re issued. Even faster if we’d learn Latin. I’m not saying we don’t need the bishops anymore, we do, but for them to have all the control over the Church matters doesn’t make that much sense if we still believe in the Papacy having the control.

I’m pretty sure all Catholics use the internet to read Vatican documents

The thing is the Church was set up from the beginning to be semi-autonomous. Remember that they put in the bishops to be leaders and elders of each Church in each locale they setup a Church. The pope was never meant to micromanage the Church. That is why we say we are communion with the Pope, instead of being ruled or being under him. We are under our respective Bishops. We are never in communion with the Pope directly (I guess unless we belong to the diocese of the Vatican?) but always through our bishops. In the Sacrament of Confirmation, we become in communion with our Bishop, not with the Pope

CCC 1301 The sign of peace that concludes the rite of the sacrament signifies and demonstrates ecclesial communion with the bishop and with all the faithful.

Same with Holy Orders for the Deacon and Priest. They are ordained by the Bishop in the service of the Bishop. Not of the Pope directly. Its like if you work for a company, the CEO is your boss, but not directly. The CEO doesn’t evaluate your work nor give you tasks and assignments. Its your manager who does that. Communion with each other and the Pope ensures that the Bishops are of one mind, even though they operate autonomously.