Lost Again and Crazzetto,
**You wrote: ** * **Lost Again: ** I guess my question in return is how do we change this mentality? If you look back throughout this thread you’ll notice I mentioned that we just received two new priests in my parish. I was so excited! Here I was thinking… “Great! two young priests, one of them fresh out of the seminary and full of zest, passion for God, and ready to change the world”. WRONG!!! Here it is a little over a month since their arrival and its like I’ve stepped back in time to the church I went to in the 60’s. These priests act like the old men that just left…only worse!
Don’t they teach homiletics in the seminaries any more? These guys read stale, prepared statements from behind the lectern like a high school speech class student. Most of them sound like they were pulled out of some “Stuff to read when you haven’t prepared a proper sermon” book. We’re back to one central line for communion with the priests the only ones dispensing communion, No more Eucharistic ministers, and many things I haven’t done since I was an altar boy back in 1963. Some would call that a good thing, I for one don’t.
I am so torn between staying and trying to do the best I can to make this work between the RCC and me, and going back to a church that has proven to my family over and over again that it loves, cares, and misses us. “God’s one true church”? What does that mean? What good is the “One true church” if that church is nothing more than the “true” church in name only? *
***Crazzetto: *** *First the quality of Homilies will vary from region to region I suppose. I’ve seldom been exposed to a truely bad one, at least that I remember anyway. With regard EWTN, everyone can access that on the internet. So as long as you have internet, you can access EWTN’s preaching. There is also CatholicTV (
www.catholictv.com) which again, may be accessed online or on a service like Sky Angel which I subscribe to.
Also, I recommed listening to Fr. Barron with his Word on Fire podcast via iTunes or Zune. You can also connect at his website www.wordonfire.org*
Thanks, Crazzetto, for the tip about EWTN on computer; I am so old and set in my ways of thinking about technology that I stupidly did not consider the possibility of Internet radio for EWTN. I do receive by e-mail Real Catholic TV’s short Internet broadcasts, and, yes, they are helpful to a point, but their orientation is at least as much political (and downright partisanly Republican/Neo-Conservative, to their shame) as it is spiritual. I’ll have to seek out this option for EWTN. As for Fr. Barron, I don’t have the hardware to access his programmes, but it is good to know about them!
Lostie, I went through the sort of qualms and torn loyalties and desires that you express, but, dear one, there just is no replacement for the Holy Eucharist, even in the downgraded and rather wilted form of the
Novus Ordo. Cling to it! If you can find a parish with the Traditional Latin Mass (according to the
genuine Vatican II liturgy, the 1962
Missale Romanum), seek it out! Those Protestants (or, as they seem to me from your description, sectaries) do not have clergy who hold valid Holy Orders and do not have, or probably even desire, the true Eucharist. A Catholic must keep that in mind in evaluating “the bright trimmings” of the sects! I know that there is no chance, in my own spiritually dead diocese, for change, unless the Vatican take really drastic steps that could shake up the whole Church, “clean house”, and to reform it. However, I look to my own direct devotional life of prayer (from my favourite Catholic and Orthodox devotional manuals), Scripture reading, and study to compensate for the sheer vacuity of what goes on in the parishes and cathedral of this diocese. I know that the solution is not in the Protestant denominations or in the fundamentalist and neo-evangelical sects.
It is sad to hear of those young priests getting off to such a sodden, uncaringly perfunctory start. However, the Church in so many dioceses and in the seminaries has sunk to the level of a mere “professional entitlement”, the kind of career and status security that attracts those who want life to be safe, assured, and mildly prestigious. This is as true of the seminaries and their young postulants as it is of the dioceses and the older clergy. The level of training in the seminaries, too, with the study of Latin abandoned or severely downgraded, and the doctrinal courses emptied of their content and of the assurance that the Catholic and Christian faith is incontestably true and something to cherish. At Mass, concentrate on what no indifferent or lax priest can take away, on our Lord’s Presence and offer of blessings. Take advantage of moments of spiritual refreshment that come along from time to time, e.g. retreats and conferences that can be edifying. Even avail yourself of what is good and true in Protestantism (especially in more Catholic-friendly Lutheranism and Anglicanism), where these can be helpful, but, above all, cling to the Holy Catholic Faith! Do not give lazy and unbelieving clergy the satisfaction of you becoming alienated and estranged completely from the Catholic Church and its faith!
Pax, Jerry Parker
(as, alas, not just a few priests are), the solution may not be attainable at the parish church of which he has charge. One can organise discussion groups from within the parish, whether or not they are linked explicity to the parish. One can draw parishioners into discussion groups elsewhere from which they also may benefit.
the more so since most preaching (little homilies) in Catholic parishes is wan, lacking in substance, sentimental, and vapid. That’s a pity, but the aftermath of Vatican-II made the clergy to lose their preaching skills, probably because they undervalue the importance of homiletics, which the pre-Vat-2 Church emphasised far more. The Catholic alternatives of EWTN are not available to everyone, either, unless there is a shortwave radio in the house (and a better capability of using it than I have with my own!).