Therapy and Healing

Cathcon calls this "not just liturgical decadence but depravity", as much as I respect Chris he doesn't live in Brighton where we know about real depravity. I would suggest it is sad, in the same way as that Italian Archbishop, in pink with facepaint is sad. Both would have me running out of Church, and if I was a parent I would wonder if my child was quite safe in these situations and not just from a spiritual point of view.

Both seem to be about clergy and communities who have lost sight of the Mass as being anything beyond a source of social cohesion, both are serious signs of a tired Church, which is decaying, decadent, that has lost any sense that it supposed to bring Mankind into the presence of God, it is merely horizantal.

The video shows two women wafting incense around whilst a man bellows that, now ancient, and certainly tired ditty, "Spirit of the Living God", whilst a congregation looks on bored.
The great problem is that with "liturgies" of this kind is that they say more about the celebrant than Christ and His Church. We priest are often inadequate, sometimes quite damaged, like the rest of mankind we have to learn to live with that but so often in the "reformed" liturgy, the liturgy can be used as form of therapy, not for the congregation but for the priest or bishop.

I am sure the Italian Archbishop is a fun nice guy but what is his problem? Why is he so desperate to to communicate his ability to be approachable, "at one with his people"? Actually, there is something quite sinister about it, an old man with face paint is very strange. There seems to be a certain moral weakness at the heart of this, a sense that he, and his even more sinister looking priests, needs to be accepted and loved maybe. Why is he not content to let Jesus speak through him, why does he have to get in the way?

The Church is for the damaged; prayer, the sacraments heal, so does feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned. Jesus tells us to do those things as good things aimed at ourselves first, before they are a service to others, so that we might forget self and learn to live for others. That is Christian therapy, not the blatant celebration of self but learning to disregard self.
Monophonic Chant, the Church's music is about the many forgetting themselves so as to sing perfectly at the same pitch and rhythm so only the voice of the Church praising God sounds, when any individual stands out it becomes ugly and is distorted. We have to learn to say with the Baptist, "I must decrease...".

The liturgy too is healing but the healing comes through conforming ourselves  to Christ and forgetting self, personally I find the traditional Mass helps this damaged, foolish, inadequate man to come closer to God, it is all that dark muttering about being unworthy and then turning to the people to tell them "Dominus vobiscum" or announcing "This is the Lamb.... Maybe it is the quite muttering of one's sinfulness with a few intimates that gives a model in the ancient rites, maybe having a public pentential rite actually within Pauline Mass itself makes us want to exhibit our inadequacies publicly.

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Father Michel-Marie

There is a rather edfifying story of a priest in Marseilles on Chiesa

 There is a peace upon him, a joy that is astonishing. But who are you?, you would like to ask him immediately.

In front of a frugal meal, the highlights of an entire life. Two splendid parents. The mother, baptized but only formally Catholic, allows her son to go to church. The faith is imparted to him "by an elderly priest, a Salesian in a black cassock, a man of generous and boundless faith.” The desire, at the age of eight, to be a priest. At thirteen he loses his mother: "The pain devastated me. And yet I never doubted God.” Adolescence, music, and that beautiful voice. The piano bars of Paris, which may seem little suited to discerning a religious vocation. And yet, while the decision slowly ripens, the spiritual fathers of Michel-Marie tell him to keep to the nightlife of Paris: because there as well a sign is needed. Finally the vocation pays off. In 1999, at the age of 40, his childhood wish comes true: a priest, and in a cassock, like that elderly Salesian. Why the cassock? "For me" – he smiles – "It is a work uniform. It is intended to be a sign for those who meet me, and above all for those who do not believe. In this way I am recognizable as a priest, always. In this way on the streets I take advantage of every opportunity to make friends. Father, someone asks me, where is the post office? Come on, I'll go with you, I reply, and meanwhile we talk, and I discover that the children of that man are not baptized. Bring them to me, I say in the end; and I often baptize them later. I seek in every way to show with my face a good humanity. Just the other day" – he laughs – "in a cafe an old man asked me which horses he should bet on. I gave him the horses. I asked the Blessed Mother for forgiveness: but you know, I said to her, it is to befriend this man. As a priest who was one of my teachers used to tell those who asked him how to convert the Marxists: 'One has to become their friend,' he would reply." Then, in church, the Mass is stark and beautiful. The affable priest of Canabière is a rigorous priest. Why take so much care with the liturgy? "I want everything to be splendid around the Eucharist. I want that at the elevation, the people should understand that He is here, truly. It is not theater, it is not superfluous pomp: it is inhabiting the Mystery. The heart too needs to feel."

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Excommunicating A Call To Action?

A Call To Action dissent group meetings seem to have been arranged in vatious dioceses through England and Wales; what can a Bishop do?

Well, according to Mark Lambert who recently attended the Brentwood meeting, in the US Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska issued, under certain conditions, an automatic interdict (which then escalated after one month to an automatic excommunication) on members of the organisation within his diocese.

On appeal to the Congregation for Bishops the then Prefect Cardinal Baptista Re wrote that: "The judgment of the Holy See is that the activities of ‘Call to Action’ in the course of these years are in contrast with the Catholic faith due to views and positions held which are unacceptable from a doctrinal and disciplinary standpoint.... Thus to be a member of this association or to support it is irreconcilable with a coherent living of the Catholic faith."

Do read Mark's thouhtful account and add his blog to your list

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An Authority We Do Not Possess

What makes me a Catholic?
It is surely that I  adhere to the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Faith; in short the faith handed on to, by and from the Apostles.

The Apostles were the first witnesses of Jesus Christ, they in turn handed on their "ministry" to others to have "epi-scope" (oversight) of the Church. Today we call those who exercise this oversight Bishops, and Priests who in scriptural terms are the successors of the Presbyters.

This "oversight" was to do what the Apostles themselves had done: to govern the Church through "word and sacrament". Unlike the Apostle, bishops and priests, though their successors lack one vital element: that of being "first witnesses to the Resurrection". The role of a bishop is not to introduce new doctrine but to ensure the passing on of the Apostolic Faith, without addition or subtraction.

Though in the East there might be grave concern over a Western sense of the "development" of doctrine, both East and West believe that although there is degree of legitimate adaptation to time and place the main role of the bishop is to hand on that which they have received from the Apostles to the next generation.

The ancient Churches all believe what has been given to one generation has to in turn be passed on to the nest, this what is meant by "Tradition", nothing added, nothing removed!


Deacon Nick reports various "calls to Obedience" springing up in England and Wales, following on from Ireland, Austria etc. The American National Catholic Reporter, the US Tablet, has decided to come out in favour of women's ordination.

At the root of this disobedience is a claim to an authority to do something which the Church simply does not have. Protestant communities might indeed think they can do anything, ordain who they wish or change doctrine at will or whim, the ancient Churches understand their power is very limited. We are God's servants not his masters, though we have authority to change bread into the Body and Blood of Christ or forgive the most horrendous sins and although we can open the gates of heaven itself, our authority is limited. We cannot even for the most pastoral reasons substitute rice cakes for bread or sake for wine in the Eucharist or change the words of Baptism from those given in St Matthews Gospel.

Pope John Paul's teaching on the ordination of women, was not his own, and therefore something that can be changed or challenged, it wasn't in that sense "positive" teaching but simply stating, as he said, "the Church has no authority" to ordain women. It is the same answer all the Patriarchs of the ancient Churches would given had they been asked.

Again, it is my contention that those "Liberals" who so energetically want to break with tradition, are in fact modern Ultramontanists, they actually want the Church to claim an authority it does not possess and has no right to claim. These movements are obsessed by "the Church", they want to exalt the Church above any position given to it by the image of any renaissance or Counter Reformation Pope, the only parallels are those mad nineteenth century French Jesuits, who went completely over the top on Papal Infallibility.

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Kyrie ha-ha-ha-ha -ha -haa -a -ha

Mass XVII is the Advent (and Lent) Mass, we sang it this morning.
I love the beautiful simplicity but I find it impossible to sing this Kyrie without smiling. It is plainsong laughter set to music. I just can't imagine Mother Abbess ever remaining poe-faced singing this. For me it is the sound of the Church chuckling at the Coming of Christ, it would be so easy to to replace eleisons with "ha-ha-ha-ha -ha -haaa -ha". It seems to sum up Christian hope - call on the Lord, then laugh in the face of old Nick.
I can so easily imagine Our Lady looking at her swelling womb and giggling at the though that the long awaited is on his way, that Redemption is at hand, that God has dealt so kindly with his handmaid..


The Sanctus is more sober, it is the voice of Christians in the presence of Angels and Archangels reaching out to the Holy but there is a bit more than a wry smile on those Hosannas. The Agnus Dei is just so simple, but it is hardly joyless, it doesn't giggle, but it retains the memory of laughter, there is no sorrow about it, just delight, exultation, in the Lamb.
It is fine for Advent but I think it is a little frivolous for Lent, but then maybe the Church is telling us to delight a bit more in Lent penances and lighten up.

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Advent Wreathes: Just say No

Where do these appear in the Roman Missal?

Being a curmudgeon, I obviously don't like these things. I am sure they have something to do with worship of Odin or some foul pagan deity. They might be very pretty on an Advent dinner table but they really do not belong in Church and if they should be smuggled in by someone from the flower arranging group, they have no place in the Litiurgy, and you will probably find the ame people have brought in Japanese Knot Weed and Ash Dieback Disease.

It would certainly be an abuse to acknowledge one in the celebration of Mass! We cannot add, to or subtract  from the approved rites of the Church. Lighting candles on one of these during Mass would be an abuse!

But Faaaather? I know I am being hard but brace yourself, just say, "No"!

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Advent: The Pregnant Virgin Comes

Of the Divine Word 
Pregnant with the Word Divine
The Virgin pregnant comes
Walking down the road
If you grant her an abode.

(The original Spanish is so much better…)
Del Verbo divino
La Virgen prenada
viene de carmino
si le dias posado.
 St. John of the Cross







In this Advent of the Year of Faith it is worth trying to understand more deeply the role of the Blessed Virgin in the life of Our Lord and of his Church. VII saw her as an integral part of Salvation and the Church.

It might be helpful to think of Advent as the "pregnancy of the Church".

From Lumen Gentium 55. The Sacred Scriptures of both the Old and the New Testament, as well as ancient Tradition show the role of the Mother of the Saviour in the economy of salvation in an ever clearer light and draw attention to it. The books of the Old Testament describe the history of salvation, by which the coming of Christ into the world was slowly prepared. These earliest documents, as they are read in the Church and are understood in the light of a further and full revelation, bring the figure of the woman, Mother of the Redeemer, into a gradually clearer light. When it is looked at in this way, she is already prophetically foreshadowed in the promise of victory over the serpent which was given to our first parents after their fall into sin.

Likewise she is the Virgin who shall conceive and bear a son, whose name will be called Emmanuel. She stands out among the poor and humble of the Lord, who confidently hope for and receive salvation from Him. With her the exalted Daughter of Sion, and after a long expectation of the promise, the times are fulfilled and the new Economy established, when the Son of God took a human nature from her, that He might in the mysteries of His flesh free man from sin.

56. The Father of mercies willed that the incarnation should be preceded by the acceptance of her who was predestined to be the mother of His Son, so that just as a woman contributed to death, so also a woman should contribute to life. That is true in outstanding fashion of the mother of Jesus, who gave to the world Him who is Life itself and who renews all things, and who was enriched by God with the gifts which befit such a role. It is no wonder therefore that the usage prevailed among the Fathers whereby they called the mother of God entirely holy and free from all stain of sin, as though fashioned by the Holy Spirit and formed as a new creature.

Adorned from the first instant of her conception with the radiance of an entirely unique holiness, the Virgin of Nazareth is greeted, on God's command, by an angel messenger as "full of grace",and to the heavenly messenger she replies: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to thy word". Thus Mary, a daughter of Adam, consenting to the divine Word, became the mother of Jesus, the one and only Mediator. Embracing God's salvific will with a full heart and impeded by no sin, she devoted herself totally as a handmaid of the Lord to the person and work of her Son, under Him and with Him, by the grace of almighty God, serving the mystery of redemption.

Rightly therefore the holy Fathers see her as used by God not merely in a passive way, but as freely cooperating in the work of human salvation through faith and obedience. For, as St. Irenaeus says, she "being obedient, became the cause of salvation for herself and for the whole human race." Hence not a few of the early Fathers gladly assert in their preaching, "The knot of Eve's disobedience was untied by Mary's obedience; what the virgin Eve bound through her unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosened by her faith." Comparing Mary with Eve, they call her "the Mother of the living," and still more often they say: "death through Eve, life through Mary."

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