Ad orientem is forbidden in the Catholic Diocese of Venice. But...

Frank Dewane, the bishop of Venice, Florida, got word that some of his priests were celebrating the new form of the Latin Church's worship ad orientem. 

So he's trying to squash that.

Meanwhile, here is a fully-compliant, a-ok with the Ordinary mass in the same diocese.

That is "what serves the common spiritual good of the People of God, rather than private inclination or arbitrary choice."  

That meets his "vigilance over the whole of the Diocese's liturgical life."

Look, I can understand a bishop allowing Sacred Heart-type parishes their peculiarities. But the same latitude should be extended to parishes that face east.

But not in the situationally-deaf "listening church," alas.

In the faux open church, you can do anything with the new order of mass except make it look or sound (how many Latin NOs are there?) anything like what proceeded it. And so it is with the Reverend Dewane: livestreamed hammy pastors with constant ad-libs and close-ups are what mass is permitted to be. A priest facing east--no, hell no and nuh-uh too.

And for all those garbage people in Venice "who[] wish[] to celebrate with devotion according to earlier forms of the liturgy" where they "can find in the reformed Roman Missal according to Vatican Council II all the elements of the Roman Rite"?

Ad orientem is verboten, but Sacred Heart passes muster.

Yeah, that ought to hold the little bastards. What the Rev. Dewane thinks of such retrograde devotion to the Roman Rite is abundantly obvious.

I mean, the above-quoted part about finding all the elements of the old liturgy in the new is 13 percent true. 

To be fair: as Groot would point out, that is better than 12 percent.

And then there's the shredded liturgical calendar, making the Roman Canon optional and thus almost extinct, etc.

Yeah, well, too bad. "Unaltered faith and uninterrupted and living tradition"--because they say so. Arguments from authority are the only arguments that matter in the Latin Church.

Besides, Sacred Heart is part of that continuity because the vigilant bishop says so, too. And you ad orientem types are not--also because the vigilant bishop says so. All the seal of approval you dare to ask for.

A cynic might think that the old rite has to be crushed to destroy the evidence of the before time. The Listening Church does not enjoy questions that suggest it is anything short of omni-competent.

La la la can't hear you!

Anyway, schismo, the bishop's annual appeal is coming up: open that wallet.

 

The interesting background to a word I use--but probably not enough.

Dagnabbit, true names and taboo deformations--linguistic journeys are some of mankind's most fascinating.

“Taboo deformation is one possible way for a word to change its meaning,” says Andrew Byrd, a professor of linguistics at the University of Kentucky who specializes in Indo-European languages. Basically, we are scared of the true names of certain beings or concepts, because to use them might mean we summon them, which we don’t want, or anger them, which we definitely don’t want, or simply make other humans mad at us, which is slightly less bad but still not ideal. The true name is powerful, and we normal humans can’t handle that power. So we avoid using the true name, but sometimes we still need to communicate with each other about those beings or concepts. That means we have to figure out a way to talk about something without using the actual word for it.

Very much related--and discussed in the article--is how Jews and Christians have roped off the true name of the Lord. Which should not be used--least of all in deeply cringe-y hymns.

It's OK to admit failure. Sometimes it's a necessity.

And now for something completely-different:
 

It was only sixteen months ago--but it seems like a lifetime, doesn't it?

Remember the newsworthy joint declaration from the pontiff and the Sunni head of the Al Azhar University in Cairo? That bit about the Almighty willing religious diversity the same way He willed us to be male and female?

In defending that heretofore-unrevealed spin on Catholic teaching, the pontiff was adamant: "From the Catholic point of view, the document does not pull away one millimeter from Vatican II."

Interpreting what Vatican II said or what the footnotes supposedly help it say is an exercise reminiscent of late-stage scholasticism: a lot of ink spilled over puzzling/ambiguous minutiae to no benefit at all. Except for the publishing prospects or feuds of a ring of clerics or clericalized-laity who have the parchment license to use the cant of the initiated.

No, for the purposes here, the important thing is that, once again, Vatican II is invoked. In my snarkier moments I call it "Vatican Too," because like "too," the council is inserted into an embarrassing number of church contexts.

No ecumenical council insists upon itself quite like the 21st.

But why do we let our thinking be dominated by a failed enterprise?

FAILED ENTERPRISE?!

How can you say any such thing about an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church?

Well, why don't we do a couple of things before we flee to our fainting couches? First, let's consider the stated intent of that council.

Back in 1963 Pope Paul VI identified the goals of the Second Vatican Council as follows:

  

"You know the purpose of this council, which has more participants than any other: As it was expressed by our illustrious predecessor [Pope John XXIII], the Church must appear in its perennial vigor, the instrument of salvation for all; to her Our Lord Jesus Christ has entrusted the deposit of the Faith, to be guarded faithfully and in an apt and convenient way. This energetic vigor of the Church, which illuminates, attracts, moves souls, can take new strength from the council, which meets at the tomb of St. Peter.”

And how has that worked out for us, three generations later? The Church is dead in Western Europe, moribund in Latin America, withering or barely holding its own in Asia and well on the way to irrelevance in North America.

Only sub-Saharan Africa is a place of consistent growth, but that can hardly be taken for granted.

Thus, according the stated goals as set forth by Paul VI, one of the presiding popes of that council, Vatican II has failed. 

Some of you are mentally recoiling in horror right now (or haven't stopped)--but why? 

The second thing you have to remember is that the long history of the Church tells you you should not be freaked out. A searching look back across the centuries demonstrates that a failed ecumenical council is Just One of Those Things. 

Councils have failed before and will fail in the future. Is anyone still talking about the Spirit of Vienne, or asking about Lateran IV?

I hear the sputtering "Butbutbut--it's *you* who aren't taking the long view. Everyone knows it takes a century for a council to take effect!!!”

And where is that written? That’s just one of the popular apologetics slogans, right alongside the no True Scotsman-y "hasn't been implemented properly," "it's not in the actual documents" and "bad translation." It's spin--pure ahistorical, corporate spin.

And it’s especially laughable if you peruse Church history. Lateran V closed in 1517, but by 1545 it had been justly forgotten after half of Europe had become Protestant. Certainly, there was no one in the Catholic world dumb enough to suggest that Lateran V just needed some more time to leaven the dough of faith, or some similar happy metaphor defending the downward trajectory.

Unfortunately for our time, the one thing that unites the entire leadership of the Church, regardless of label, is that Vatican II Was Just Fine, no matter what the statistics say about the disintegration of Catholic observance across three continents.

So instead of accepting the fact that VToo was, by virtue of its pastoral mindset and focus on the moment, reaching out to the world of the 1960s, it had a built-in sell-by date...it is turned into a platonic Form. It is a super-council, "a language event" unconstrained by time or place, a totally unique episode in the Church untethered from her past.

While the “hermeneutic of continuity” scholastics would argue against the last clause, it really has been treated like that, even by the 'conservative' popes. Both of whom unswervingly took the Council as the unalterable touchstone and functional super-event in one way or another. And they agreed that, of course, “these things take time.”

The only difference with the current pontiff is that he takes the gestalt of the council to its logical end. He’s a true believer in singing a new church and has not the slightest qualms. Forward, forward, always forward! The only problems he sees in the Church are with those who object—rigidly, of course—to another half-century of giddy autodemolition praised as a fruit of the spirit.

When you consider the undeniable ambiguity of the conciliar documents, the wholesale re-constitution of the liturgy which followed and the declarations of independence from the magisterium which were only occasionally and half-heartedly reined in, the much-derided “spirit of the council” is usually the council itself on laughing gas.

And the fact that 'conservatives' and 'liberals' alike insist on using "*the* council" as *the* polestar in the face of disintegration….well, that makes Vatican II the wordiest suicide note in history.

Vatican II spoke to the 'New Frontier' era, albeit dishonestly in spots (e.g., no mention of communism). And for that, it probably did a decent-enough job. But the problem is that the New Frontier Man died in 1968, both his children are divorced, none of his grandchildren go to church and the lot of them are happy with the straitjacket of bourgeois Western leftism so long as their streaming services and WiFi are up.

Fast forward from 1963 to 2020: The perennial vigor of the Church has almost entirely dissipated. The deposit of the Faith, far from being faithfully guarded, is presented as a grab-bag of implicit novelties, the latest of which now includes God willing other religions. Far from illuminating and attracting souls, the Church’s tired, debilitated voice suggests that people are just as well off looking elsewhere for their own truths. 

If that’s not failure, I'd hate to see what actual failure looks like.

It is past time to move on. Honesty requires no less.

The Archiving of Benedict.

Or, a defense of Pope Benedict XVI.

Be warned--I'm having a bad Lent. This post will display some of that.

I have passed my breaking point with the derogatory comparisons of Pope Francis with Pope Benedict. Even those that aren't intended as derogatory can be, by omission. "Pope Francis is so humble! He cares so much for the poor! He's celebrating Mass at a youth prison!" etc.

Fine. You know what? So did Benedict. All of them. How quickly we forget--or never bothered to notice in the first place. I understand the joy of a new pontiff, and trying to get to know someone who wasn't on any of our radars a month ago. I get that. But--if we don't modulate our reactions, we are, however unknowingly, feeding into a nasty narrative that seeks to pit the new Pope against the Emeritus.

And for some Catholics, the nasty motivation is clear. Behold this stink-bomblet, snarking at ermine and ring-kissing. Something tells me she snaps to in the courtroom (hint--she'd better). But the Pope can't throw her in jail, so she discerns that Christ wanted no earthly signs of respect apart from "How ya doin', Yer Popeship?"

"Anonymous commenters with garbled memories of catechism and glitter aren't representative," you might say. Fine.

How about ordained clerics? Consider this example from one of Roger "RICO" Mahony's (the disgraced Cardinal's own tweets merit no further discussion) ordinands, Deacon Eric Stoltz (no, not the guy from Pulp Fiction).

It was posted as a compare and contrast rebuke, obviously. More humility, less attention toward the cleric. Jay Anderson took a righteous swing at this bit of posturing on Facebook, and smacked it soundly.

While we're at it, Reverend: before leading the Humility Brigades into spiritual battle, you might want to tone down the number of references to yourself on the Saint Brendan's website . On the first page, there's a note that the website was designed by...Eric Stoltz! With a link to www.ericstoltz.com!

But wait--there's more! On the "Presider/Preacher [sic] Schedule page, there's a link to "Deacon Eric's Homilies"! Where you can e-mail Deacon Eric! And there's an "About The Deacon" Page (sorry, under construction)!

Do not despair, however: you can hop on over to the Photo Albums page and...eureka! A photo album dedicated to Deacon Eric's ordination nearly nine years ago--and it's the one with the largest number of files! Ah, that I must decrease and Him increase....

Irony: it's a mean bastard sometimes.

Moving on to less tempting targets...

 Unfortunately, I have to call a foul on First Things for this line:

What seems to be on the heart of Pope Francis—the Vicar of Christ and the pastor of the universal Church on earth—is a desire to move out from under a stifling, dull, and technical rubricism toward the Paschal light of Christ’s redemptive charitable love.

No. No. No. Ten thousand times, no. This is slander. Period. It may be inadvertent, but it is slander nonetheless. It indicates that the writer had no idea of what Benedict was saying or doing with the office of Pope and with the liturgy during his pontificate.

Look, Pope John Paul II was a unique, outsized figure in the history of the Papacy. He had a stage actor's ability to magnify his reach and effect. The odds of his successor replicating that charismatic effect were zero. So Benedict didn't try. Instead, he let the office speak more loudly through historical and liturgical symbolism than he ever could as a stage presence. If the previous papacy was Pope John Paul II, his successor was Pope Benedict XVI. As Amy Welborn brilliantly pointed out, it wasn't because Benedict was a vain monarchical clotheshorse, it was because he was a teacher in an office that was bigger than he was, and he was pointing to a profound historical reality embodied in the Papacy. Likewise, in the liturgy, rubrics were emphasized because it wasn't about the priest--even if he happened to be a Pope--but because the rubrics point to a greater, supernatural reality which is dependent upon God.

So, please, stop pitting RIGHT NOW against LAST MONTH, and engaging in what strongly hints at a washing of one's hands of the previous pontificate. The Body of Christ deserves better.