Brass Tacks (rant #2)

So let's recap; where were we? Oh yes! Wizard of Oz, New Springtime, alien shaking its' three heads, struck match.
Now read on!
   I can recall a discussion where an acquantaince was telling me of his past involvement with a parish youth group. He attended every week, sang songs (accompanied by obligatory guitar), listened to and reflected upon passages of scripture, discussed with his peer group his experience of God  and how it impacted on his life. A priest "facilitated" this youth group, the recollections of this person did not seem to allude to the reverend father actually saying much or guiding the young people in their exploration of the Faith.  To cut a long story short this lad then went to work in London and when he saw the multitude of people, of different cultures and different faiths, he lost his. He reasoned thus; how could he be so sure of his faith when everyone else seemed so sure about their beliefs?
   Perhaps the most telling comment was that his initial enthusiasm stemmed from the fact that this was the first time he had encountered his Faith. In other words he had gone through 14 years of "Catholic Education" and only when he had finished this, only when he stumbled across this youth group did he encounter a semblance of the Catholic religion. Too little, too late.
   This is not an isolated example, this same story is repeated over and over ad infinitum. In every parish you will find maybe a handful of young people who will live their faith, "here , look here, new springtime" is the cry as the priest and the parish council gesture towards them. Yes but never a mention of the hundreds of others wandering in the desolation. The Church is accused of a lot of things, but perhaps the greatest crime perpetrated is the apparent willingness to condemn so many souls to damnation.
 The betrayal starts on the first day of school.

Brass Tacks (rant #1)

 "Close your eyes and tap your heels together three times. Think to yourself, there's no place like home, there's no place like home...."    - Wizard of Oz.

The New Springtime.   I've been hearing that tedious mantra from the neo-con/charismatic wing of the Church for years, but it is always tinged with a smidgen of optimistic desperation. If you say it enough times it must come true!!  New Springtime, beautiful thought, nice notion, cut adrift from reality.
       The argument goes that the first buds are appearing after the nuclear winter that followed Vatican II, young people strong in faith are taking up the gauntlet thrown down by JPII hence more lay faith groups, more vocations to new orthodox religious groups, eg the Legion of Christ (ahem! let's not go there) etc etc etc .
       It seems as though any meeting of young people under a canopy in a field (with obligatory guitar and clapping) is a sure sign of the  New Springtime. Yet if some visitor from a far distant galaxy landed in this field and watched the proceedings and then went to another field close by where there was an evangelical protestant revival , apart from the Blessed Sacrament, it would be hard pressed to find the difference (in fact it would probably teleport away shaking it's three heads at the expense of two tents rather than one, wasteful bipedal carbon lifeforms!!!).  It seems that the New Springtime consists of any public display of religious feeling,as long as it is vaguely Christian and doesn't  necessarily have to be Catholic.
      The phrases used by these serious  people are along the lines of "How I came to know God" ,"God changed my life" ," I feel a happiness that I never knew before" (for this see the evangelical utterance "I invited Jesus into my heart and now I'm saved"). The common theme is the feel-good factor, experiential, individual and subjective, and mostly based on FEELING!!. The problem with  this is that our feelings and emotions are fickle, we are human therefore we are subject to change.  What was it that Our Lord said about the seeds scattered among the rocks? (Matt 13:5-6) So it is with some of these enthusiastic adherents, life gets in the way, concerns, responsibilites etc. and their faith wanes. It is similar to a match being struck, flares brightly, then steadies to a small flame and eventually splutters into darkenss. But why does this happen?  What is going on?
Find out in the next exciting installment of Brass Tacks!!!
      
   
  

Of Having a Humble Opinion of Oneself

From "The Imitation of Christ."

" It is natural that man should desire knowledge; but what doth knowledge avail him without the fear of God?  An humble rustic that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher who, neglecting the good life, contemplateth the courses of the stars. He that knoweth himself well groweth ever more conscious of his own sinfulness, and findeth no delight in the praises of man. Were I endowed with all the knowledge in the world, and lacked love, what would that avail me in the sight of God, who will judge me according to my deeds?"     Thomas a Kempis

Farewell to Dear Old Ireland

Yes I know I know, these pages are supposed to be filled with the incoherent ramblings of a Catholic trying to make sense of his Faith!! But...
   This week in Ireland we were greeted by the sight of the elected officials of this state, lining up to prostrate themselves before an unelected EU official, and to be told, TO BE TOLD, how to run this country. I don't claim to know much about Olli Rehn, he might be a nice guy, but I do know  he is from Finland,  why then does my country's future rest in the hands of someone ( and other eurocrats) who never received my vote and are not citizens of this country?
    Occasionally one hears the utterly stupid notion expressed "sure let the EU run the economy, they couldn't do as bad a job as the government!"  What drivel? Talk about burying your head in the sand!! Once you let any big external organisation into the vital organs of a state, you will need a crow bar to prise them off again. Ask any of the African countries who let the IMF in!! Allied to this is the moronic perception that somehow that paragon of virtue, which is the EU, can supplant the cronyism and corruption of the Irish elite that caused the mess.  The answer to this is just take a look at the budget for the EU in the last 5 years, the wastage, the funds diverted and unaccounted for, the salaries of the MEPs etc.  They make the dodgy dealings of the Irish look like trivialities.
    The truth of the matter is that we have been lied to for 15 years. We should never have joined the single currency (the euro), it was more suited to the sedate and settled economies of France and Germany with huge savings base and high interest rates; not a young, small and open economy that was seeking to grow. Now we find ourselves in the nice pickle of trying to pay back the German banks for the gamble that they took on the Celtic Tiger.  If I was a betting man (which I'm not) it is the equivalent of me walking into a bookies and saying "Look I bet 20 on that horse which collapsed and died half way down the course, but you Mr Bookie have to redeem my wager!!!"
    Loss of economic sovreignty means loss of national sovreignty (the lies of Lisbon revealed), for if you hold the purse strings you determine how people live. Think about that for a moment, do Irish people want the EU running every aspect of the country? The EU is anti-family, anti-life, anti-faith. This is all too clear in its dealings with its bette noir, the Catholic Church.
    So what to do? Well firstly lets create a political party that is not in awe of the EU, there is presently not one political party in this land that is not hypnotised by the EU, they cannot see the wood for the trees. Secondly do not rely on the media to offer any support, the so called intelligentsia love the liberal, unethical posturings of the European parliament. After all many of the journalists get paid junkets (first class flights, top hotels, freebies all covered) to Brussels and Strasbourg to hear seminars on how good the EU is and what a good job they do; anecdotally they also receive bonuses for writing positive articles in their papers.
      So a new political movement that can successfully combat the negative headlines of a biased media, then what?  Tell our creditors, tough, you took a risk and it didn't work, swallow the bad medicine and move on!! Then pull out of the euro, no media outlet has dared to think never mind suggest this course. But why not? After all our two biggest trading partners are the UK and the USA. Iceland, Denmark etc never joined the euro and they are in far better shape than ourselves. Will withdrawing from the currency be painful? Of course it will be, but I would suggest that the pain will be less drawn out and over quicker than the present suicidal policy.  Lets face it if you have a plaster on your skin what do you prefer to do, rip it off quickly in one sharp pull, or slowly prise it off taking more skin and hair, prolonging the pain.
   If something is not done quickly then the Irish state which has been in existence for less 100 years will simply become a grubby little rocky outpost on the fringes of the euro empire.

All Souls Day

From the Preface of the Dead.

Tuis enim fidelibus, Domine, vita mutatur, non tollitur: et dissoluta terrestris hujus incolatus domo, aeterna in coelis habitatio comparatur.

For to Thy faithful people, Lord, life is changed, not taken away; and when the home of this earthly sojourn is dissolved, an eternal dwelling is made ready in heaven.

For Today

Matthew 7:15-27

" Be on your guard against false prophets, men who come to you in sheep's clothing but are ravenous wolves within. You will know them by the fruit they yield. Can grapes be plucked from briers, or figs from thistles? So, indeed, any sound tree will bear good fruit, while any tree that is withered will bear fruit that is worthless; that worthless fruit should come from a sound tree, or good fruit from a withered tree, is impossible. Any tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down, and thrown into the fire. I say therefore, it is by their fruit that you will know them. The kingdom of heaven will not give entrance to every man who calls me Master, Master; only to the man that does the will of my Father who is in heaven. There are many who will say to me, when that day comes, Master, Master, was it not in thy name we prophesied? Was it not in thy name that we performed many miracles? Whereupon I will tell them openly, You were never friends of mine; depart from me, you that traffic in wrong-doing.
     Whoever, then, hears these commandments of mine and carries them out, is like a wise man who built his house upon rock; and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, it was founded upon rock. But whoever hears these commandments of mine and does not carry them out is like a fool, who built his house upon sand; and the rain fell and the floods came and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it."

 

We're heading back to the Trees!!

I don't have much truck with the theory of evolution, there are a few too many gaps for my liking, but supposing that I did agree, is it possible to state that the human species is de-evolving?
    Not in terms of physical attributes, average height is increasing, mortality rates are diminishing etc. But what about the notion of common sense, the value of intelligence, a comprehension of the true nature of reality? I would argue that these essential human qualities are fast disappearing.True there is a passing nod given to intellectuals but always it is to the boffins whose views happen to coincide with the secularism that is rampant in Western cultures. But mostly reverence seems to be paid to the qualities of ignorance, world weariness, hedonism and victimhood.
  Western society had descended to the level of the spoilt and dissolute child who if they find something too challenging complains about it and waits for the doting parents ( in this case the body politic) to make life easier.  In Ireland during the Celtic Tiger years the biggest boom was in construction, but after that it was advocacy services. The number of quangoes and advocate support services that sprang up was astounding. Liberally subsidised by the government they ran around making work for themselves, endeavouring to right wrongs and make sure that they kept their vastly overinflated wages. If you stubbed your toe then you could rest assured that there would a helpline to ring to get help and counselling and to commence the legal process whereby you sued the table maker (for not having a warning on the table that the legs could hurt!!!).
     So we wait for the state to make things right and level the playing field, while go about in our little goldfish bowl, cajoled into impulse purchases, triggered by carefully targeted advertising. Why bother to strive? Why bother to adapt? Why bother to be challenged?  Yet it is these very issues that make us human, that differentiate us from the rest of the living population of this planet.  So now we revert to animals, passive in our environment unless acted upon by external stimuli. Pavlovs dog?
    It is a sad indictment of human history, the Iron age, Ancient Egypt, Roman Empire, Renaissance, Industrial Revolution and X factor!!!
  If we do not appreciate the gift of our creation, if we do not recognise Christ as the centre of the universe and the centre of history,  then there is no progression. We will find ourselves repeating the mistakes of the past. Incidentally does anyone see the similarities between reality TV and the gladiator sports of the Empire. Both were designed to placate the population and keep them quiet and docile, chattering about trivialities. Why?
   

Aggiornamento. Beginning of the End?

Two interesting speeches by two church men in the last week. Firstly the usual excellence from Raymond Cardinal Burke. Strong, uncompromising and to the point.http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/ 
  More interesting  was the speech given by Archbishop Charles Chaput (Denver), a brief excerpt:
" Christians in  my country and yours - and throughout the West, generally, - have a done terrible job of transmitting our faith to our own children and to the culture at large....  Instead of changing the culture around us, we Christians have allowed ourselves to be changed by the culture. We've compromised too cheaply. We've hungered after assimilating and fitting in. And in the process, we've been bleached out and absorbed by the culture we were sent to make holy."
      What is interesting is who is saying this. Archbishop Chaput is the poster boy for the neo-cons within the Church. Those who believe that Vatican II created no problems other than those created by the nasty liberals who didn't listen to the real content of the council and pursued their own agendas.
                   But is this actually a  critique of what for almost 50 years has been the underlying position of the Church? Namely aggiornamento, an opening up to the world? Don't get me wrong the Church needs to proclaim to the world the message of Our Lord, after all it was a commandent given to us at the Ascension,  but the Church  needs to do it from a position of strength and certitude.  Aggiornamento coincided with a weakening of the philosophical and theological underpinnings of Catholic thought, the byproduct of Vatican II and the creeping modernist movement within the Church in the 20th century.
   The city of God and the city of man are two diametrically opposed entities, using different languages, different world views. For the Church to attempt to "fit into" the age was always going to be a futile gesture, not only that it was downright dangerous, witness the damage done. Now when the Church attempts to use the langauge of the Faith it finds itself preaching to "catholics" and society at large who have no inner religious core. The words no longer have a fertile place in the heart in which to implant and germinate.
   Being Catholic means not fitting in, it is to stand out. After all throughout the New Testament we have Our Lord exhorting us to be a light in the darkness, salt of the earth etc.  In effect this means being counter cultural, different, conservative, "at odds" with the world around us. Could this lead to persecution? Probably. But look at what trying to be " one of them" has done.
 

Building Sandcastles

  

      Why is it that certain reverend fathers and "informed" lay people,  who  really  should  know  better, want  to  make  the  Mass  more  “relevant"?   More  modern  music  here,  more  dance  there,    a  sprinkle  of  extra  gifts  and  a  dash  of  extra  colour.  There,  perfect!   Of  course  it  will  change  next  week  as  a  new  “theme”  for  the  Mass   is  created .  Therein  lies  the  problem,   for  something  to  be  relevant  it  must  be  by  its very   nature  temporal,  fleeting  and  of  this   age  and  place.   Always  becoming  and  never  being,  always  journeying  and  never  arriving.   It  is  akin  to  building  sandcastles  as  the  tide  comes  in.

    Liturgy  that  dwells  on  our  humdrum,  everyday  existence  misses  the  point,  it   glorifies  the  ordinary  and  ignores  the  extraordinary.    For  Liturgy  is  the  interface  between   the   earthly  and  the   eternal.  More  than  that  it  is  where  we  as  a  faithful  people  receive  the  vision  of  our  true  reality.   It  should  lift  us  up  and  beyond  what  we  are  familiar  with  .   We  see  what  is  truly  relevant,  Christ  Jesus.   Christ  is  the  centre  of  history  and  the  universe.   If we  as  Catholics  profess  this,  then  we  must  accept  that  our  encounter  with  Christ  in  the  Mass  is  an  encounter  with  timelessness.   To  confine  this  encounter  within  time  is  to  diminish  the  full  impact  of  the  relationship  between   Redeemer  and  redeemed.

       The  earthly  liturgy  is  a  foretaste  of  the  heavenly  liturgy.   We  journey  towards  this  as  a  pilgrim  people,  we  know  our  destination  and  we  should  realise  that  this  here  and  now  is  not  our  home,  we  are  merely  passing  through.  Yet how many of us know  cradle Catholics who are wandering in the wasteland, lost and confused.  “Relevant “  liturgy  throws  up  confusing  signposts  that  send  the  unwary  down  the  wrong  path,  towards  the  human  rather  than  the  Divine.  “The  glory  of  God  is  man  fully  alive”… the  rallying  cry  of  those  attempting  to  replace  Catholicism  with  humanism,  forgetting  of  course  what   St. Irenaeus  added, “ the  full  life  of  man  is  man  seeing  God.”    Without  this  vision  of  the  Divine,  without  the  sense  of  the  eternal   that  the   Mass  should  impart,   we  are  consigned  to  sell  ourselves   short,  casting  our  eyes  down   to  the  earth  rather  than  gazing  up   at  the  heavens.    We  are  “hardwired”  for  the  eternal.  Why  is  it  that   any  person  (religious or no)  is  moved  by  the  sight  of  the  ocean  or  the  mountains?   To  our  time-conditioned  eyes  these  vistas   have  echoes  of  power  and    majesty,  echoes  of  the   eternal.    Inherent  in  our   human  existence  is  the  realisation  that   the  transcendent  is  in  our  midst.

         The  Catechism  tells  us  that  the Liturgy  is  the  summit  of  all  the  activity  of  the  Church.  If   liturgy  elevates  the  relevant  and  reduces  the  Divine  this trickles  down   into  all   parts  of  Catholic  faith.   Lex  orandi,  lex  credendi  -   or more correctly   "Legem credendi statuit lex orandi" - the rule of prayer determines the rule of faith,  that  is,  what  we  pray  determines  what  we  believe.   If   the  Church's liturgy is the most effective means of preserving and interpreting  the  faith then, looking  round  the  world,  one  has  to  ask  the  question,  what  do  we,  as  Catholics,   now  believe?  Where  have  misguided  attempts  at  ‘relevant ‘  liturgy  led  us?   Well  examples abound.   Recently   in  the  news  is  the  idea   to  say  mass  in  a  shopping  centre   because  that’s  where  people  are  on  Sundays!  It  is  no  surprise  that  this  is  so  since   we  listen  to  the   Holy  Eucharist  being  described  as  a  communal  celebration .   If  it  is  communal  then  you   don’t  need  priests  in  this  human  project  so  there  is  no  need  to  worry  about  vocations.   Churches  should  resemble  meeting  halls  since  it  is  the  assembly  who  are  the  focus  of  the  liturgy,  they  should  feel  comfortable.  Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Corpus Christi  processions should be abandoned  since they don’t reflect the reality of the community.  You  should  not  teach  children  the  facts  of  the  faith  ( oh the dangers of indoctrination!)  but  rather  get  them  to  “share”  their  experience  of  religion.    The  list  goes  on  and  on,  without  liturgy  grounded  in  the  true  reality  and  its  eternal  promise   we   try  to  construct  the  New  Jerusalem  without  the  Divine  Builder,  and   looking  at  the  blueprints  I  don’t  think  we  will  get  planning  permission.

       The  Mass  “plugs  us  in”  to   the  life, death  and  resurrection  of  Christ,   into  the   sacrifice   born  of  the   unfathomable  love  that  is  at  the  heart  of  the   Holy  Trinity.  Surely  that   is  a  sufficient  theme  without  resorting  to  the  “flavour  of  the  month.”  Chesterton  once  wrote  “fallacies  do  not  cease  to  be  fallacies  because  they  become  fashions.”  Too  true.
(c) servus 2010.

When is a chapel not a chapel?

  They are "reordering" my home church. The new parish priest has some ideas that the altar is too small, the altar rails have to go and  that the steps in the sanctuary have to be levelled. Various reasons are trotted out, health and safety being the foremost reason ( never remember any injuries from genuflecting!!)
      My home church, where I was baptised, where I made my first Holy Communion is, truth be told,  not the prettiest from the outside. Built in the mid 19th century the instructions seem to have been "make it neo gothic" and they certainly did!!

 But what I always loved about the church was when you stepped inside, you knew you were in a Catholic church. The noise from the traffic abated, the light was sifted through the stained glass windows and the sanctuary with its red lamp brought you face to face with the sacred.  The chapel in question was lucky in that the "wreckovators" never got near it, yes part of the high altar was detached to form the new mass altar, and the pulpit was moved into the sanctuary from its place among the pews, but otherwise not much changed in 150 years.

    You could feel the years in that structure, the sense of those who had gone before, who had paid for the building, for the high altar, for the altar rails, for the paintings of the stations of the cross, for the stained glass windows, for so many things. Parishoners who had given whatever they could as a testament of their faith and for the assurance that when they passed on, their souls would be remembered in the masses that were said in their chapel.  Catholics should know it as the Communion of the Saints. The Church is not just now, it is of the past, the present and the future.So in a sense when a "liturgical design consultant" starts to talk about "reordering" a chapel, of replacing altars, of liturgical space, of changing seats, they are in fact desecrating the memory of those who went before, as surely as if they were dancing on their graves.

GK Chesterton once wrote that" Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of classes - our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around."

   Of course those well educated Catholic priests and lay people who have "done" theology will say that the renovations are in line with the "spirit of Vatican II"  (that's for another day), that is the way the Church is going. Strangely I have done something that most of these innovators have not done, namely read the documents of Vatican II. Funny enough I can find no mention of ripping out statues, removing altar rails, geting rid of crucifixes and replacing them with vague shapes drapped over plus signs. Oh well maybe I missed those paragraphs!!

  When is a chapel not a chapel? When it is turned into a protestant prayer house!!