The Vatican announced a few days ago that it will toss out some of the godawful cutesy verbiage that it adopted in 1964 when it tossed out the traditional, centuries-old Tridentine Rite Latin Mass.
For instance, the Tridentine "Dominus Vobiscum" response: "Et cum spiritu tuo," became: "The Lord be with you." response: "And with you too."
Now it will revert to the more precise English translation "The Lord be with you." response: "And with your Spirit."
But it will still be in English.
And a bunch of other changes will be adopted when the Romans get around to implementing them in 2011. For one, the Priest will no longer be permitted to run around hugging everybody at the part of the newish Mass where they do such things.
This is, no doubt, a great relief to Catholic communicants with young boys.
Also they seem to be clamping down on the use of such trendy innovations as altar girls and "extraordinary ministers of communion," whereby just about any Bozo can play priest and distribute communion.
Hopefully, for Catholics with any sense of aesthetics, this will mean an end to guitar Masses and that absurd "Kumbayah," song. (Do they still belt out that musical atrocity?)
All of this is very nice, but frankly it is way too little, way too late, for those of us, who, as little children were imbued with traditional Catholicism only to have it casually tossed aside like so much meaningless flotsam and jetsam.
About the time the Church of Rome was adopting its disasterous, institutionally suicidal changes, Jack Brickhouse was the TV and radio announcer for the Chicago Cubs.
The Cubs really stunk back then. And when they would be down something like 9 to 2 in the bottom of the ninth, occasionally they would show a little glimmer of life.
Their woeful shortstop, Andre Rodgers might somehow draw a walk and their fat catcher, Dick Bertell, might get hit by a pitch and Ron Santo would then come up and belt a 3 run homer. The next three Cubs would whiff harmlessly and the Cubs would end up losing 9 to 5.
And the ever optimistic, Brickhouse would bellow, "OH Boy! A day late and a dollar short!!
My sentiments precisely at the Roman Catholic Church's latest attempts at damage control.
It's not my fight anymore.
And Tom Lehrer's "Vatican Rag" satire of the 1964 Second Vatican Council's idiotic iconoclasm makes me laugh today.
Excellent missive on the Catholic church's
ReplyDeletelatest attempt to counter the losses it sustained in the wake of the pedophile priests
reports.
No you got it all wrong. The losses the Catholic Church sustained were as a result of jettisoning its centuries-old traditions in 1964. Then it began hemmorhaging communicants, priests and nuns like mad.
ReplyDeleteInto the void moved the lavendar homosexual priestly mafia -- only after serious men ceased to embrace the Church as a vocation in the wake of the Vatican II attempt to "liberalize" and "modernize" and Protestantize" the Church.
The homosexual scandals of the Church were a consequence of its idiotic attempts to liberalize in the 60's.
So ... is this like a tiny attempt to backtrack on some of the stuff they implemented in V2? Not Catholic so some things are a bit hazy to me, sorry!
ReplyDeleteVanessa - It definitely is just that. This new German Pope seems to be recognizing the essential idiocy of the changes that they made in the 1960s and is trying to restore some of the dignified tradition of the "One True Roman Holy and Apostolic Church."
ReplyDeleteI think you told me that your husband had been raised a Catholic. It is a hard thing for non-Catholics to understand, but, try as you might, it never quite leaves you. I have flirted with various flavors of Protestantism, but never quite felt at home with them -- probably a result of my childhood RC indoctrination.
Yet, I know the Protestants make sense. I read a 60s vintage biography of Martin Luther while at the beach this summer. I really liked the unvarnished way he told the corrupt Pope of his era to just go piss off.
Still, I remain oddly haunted by Catholicism.
It's hard to explain, but almost daily I say a prayer that my (faithfully departed) mom taught me when I was a little boy.
It goes:
Angel of God
My Guardian Dear
To whom God's love
Commits me here
Ever this day
Be at my side
To light
To guard
To Rule
To Guide.
Amen.
To a protestant that would perhaps seem like so much idolatry -- one isn't supposed, after all, to pray to saints or guardian angels.
But it was part of my tradition. Latin: tradeo, tradere -- (defn)to hand down.
Well hell, Martin Luther himself was a Catholic monk, who became a Catholic priest and who married a Catholic nun and who ended up telling the Pope to piss off and thereby purifying Christianity.
Isn't life strange?
LOL Stranger than fiction!
ReplyDeleteYes, my husband was raised a Catholic but left it in his 20s when he discovered Dispensationalism. :)
OK, you've stumped me. What in heaven's name is "dispensationalism.?"
ReplyDeleteWell, huh. It's not a religion in and of itself. It's a method of Scriptural study, rightly dividing the Word of Truth, and believing that the Bible is divided into different "eras" or dispensations, as it were. We were still in the "Kingdom" era when Christ walked the earth, but since the setting aside of Israel, we are in the Grace era, or dispensation, wherein one does not have to convert to Judaism to be saved.
ReplyDeleteIt's a doctrinal study of the Bible, hermeneutics, and exegesis all rolled up together. :)