A CATHEDRA OUTSIDE OF THE CATHEDRAL FOR THE BISHOP WHO VISITS A PARISH CHURCH FOR MASS

In the old days, when the bishop visited one of his parishes for any sacrament or to celebrate the Mass, a throne was prepared for him. This custom has passed but not at St. Joseph Church, for the first time since the 1970's.

The back to the priest's presiding chair has a taller backing it to it, just for the bishop. (The faux back is easily removed when the bishop isn't here and stored away). In fact this morning I made sure the "cathedra" was moved and set to the side so that I would not sit in it pretending to be a bishop which could get me suspended. So I presided at morning Mass on one of the blue side chairs.

The bishop is here for Wednesday night's Sacrament of Confirmation with the three Macon parishes, St. Joseph, St. Peter Claver and Holy Spirit Churches.

Tomorrow night Bishop Gregory Hartmayer celebrates Mt. de Sales Academy's Baccalaureate Mass here.

SEPARATING MEN AND WOMEN IN THE CHURCH DURING THE CELEBRATION OF MASS--HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED IT?

Saint Andrew's RC Church, Judique, Cape Breton (Nova Scotia)

On another post, someone commented in light of the SSPX school that wouldn't play ball with another team who had a girl on it, if they (SSPX) would start making women and girls sit at the back of the Church (similar to what the old south use to do to African Americans who boarded public buses, which I witnessed quite frequently as a child as my mother didn't drive and we took the bus everywhere in Atlanta and Augusta between 1957 to 1967.) The implication of course is that the SSPX and perhaps even the Catholic Church discriminates against women which is equal to the situation of African Americans during segregationist period of southern history.

But that is not really the point of this post. This person's comments brought back vivid memories for me when my Dad drove the family in the hottest part of July, 1962, when I was 8 years old, from Augusta, Georgia to Judique, Cape Breton, his birth place and where the majority of his family still lived at that time.

It was a great vacation and I had the best fun on my father's farm (his brother, my Uncle Allan, then owned). The home was the very house in which my father and his siblings were born. My father was the youngest but born in that house in 1910. His mother, my grandmother, died in that house in 1912 during childbirth. But the farm experience, making hay and the fresh air was wonderful and at that time I wanted to live there.

But there were some traumatic experiences too, that have left a lasting impression. I'll count them down in order of occurrence:

1. We drove in the hottest part of July to Judique from Augusta in a small 1962 Chevy Nova without air-conditioning with five people in that car and it took us four days to get there! I remember my father saying a prayer for safety before we left home and sprinkling us with holy water, all of which really freaked me out as an 8 year old. Little did I know what was in store!

2. We stayed at all the finest motels that US 1 had to offer all the way up to Holton, Maine--I think I saw some signs at these motels that said you could rent them by the hour. I thought, how neat. I suspect my father like that as we would arrive at the motel around 6:00 PM and then depart the next morning around 1:00 AM!

3. As soon as we got into New Brunswick, Canada, things became magical and surreal for me. I was no longer in America and my father warned us children that we were not to mock the monarchy or England and that the Queen was very important in the eyes of his Canadian family and they would be offended by America's derision of the monarchy of England. And sure enough the paper money we got had the queen's image on it, the same Queen of England as the one of today, but quite young of course. I've always admired the queen since that day my father warned us.

4. I loved the Trans Canada Highway until we crossed over into Nova Scotia, when all of a sudden it turned into a gravel road, practically all the way to Cape Breton about 200 miles! That slowed us down. And on top of that a rock pierced one of our tires and we had to take all the luggage for five people out of the small trunk of that Chevy II in order to change that tire in the middle of no where. I really though big foot would attack us!

5. But the most traumatic experience for me was our first gasoline fill-up somewhere in Nova Scotia off that gravel road when I told my dad I needed to go to the bathroom and I could not find it in the normal place that filling stations in America usually had them. He pointed to a shack behind the filling station and told me that was the restroom, without further comment. Like a lamb led to the slaughter I went to that shack by myself, opened the door to the most horrendous stench I have ever smelled, saw what looked like a toilet seat on a shabby wooden box like structure with a hole leading to the ground with the droppings of how many people I don't know. Horrified and traumatized, I ran out of that outhouse panicked that I would not be able to hold going to the bathroom until we arrive at my dad's home. Of course he was laughing and told me to go and pee behind the filling station, which I happily did.

6. Thank God, my uncle's home, my father's birthplace had indoor plumbing but installed I think in the 1950's. My father's sister, my aunt, at the time had six children and lived in a very small house about two blocks away and they did not have an indoor bathroom, only an outhouse. She was very poor and her husband had died the winter before leaving her with 6 small children. But they made do and never complained about the outhouse--it was a way of life for them at that time. Today I realize that "so go I if not for the grace of God!"

7. Then on the three Sundays we were there the Mass was just like the one in Augusta, the pre-Vatican II Mass in Latin. They had a very lovely Church built around 1917 after the original one had been burned down and they had imported a very beautiful altar (similar to the one in the SSPX church in Atlanta) which was the pride of that little village. But the traumatic thing for me as an 8 year old was that the men and boys sat on one side of the Church and the women and girls on the other side (hence the reason for this post in terms of segregation). I was 8 year's old, just finished the second grade and did not want to be separated from my mother and sister who were on the other side as I had to sit with my father and older brother. I never figured out why they did this in Judique. My father only said, that's what they do up here. That ceased after Vatican II when the post Vatican II pastor gave Saint Andrews a post-Vatican II face lift and dismantled that beautiful, pride of Juidque, pre-Vatican II altar and modernized the church to 1960's sensibilities. When we returned to Judique in 1968, I was happy that I could sit with our family together but traumatized by what that priest did to that Church as was the whole of the Judique community.

HOW PROTESTANTS REDEFINED MARRIAGE AND WHY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH SHOULD FORBID HER PRIESTS AND DEACONS FROM SIGNING MARRIAGE LICENSES FOR STATE RECOGNITION OF THE SACRAMENT OF MARRIAGE

Saint Joseph Church's first wedding at a normal Sunday anticipated Mass on February 14, 2009

My comments first: The Protestant Reformation, for the most part, reduced the number of the Sacraments from seven to two, Baptism and Holy Communion. Martin Luther believed marriage to be a "worldly thing..that belonged to the realm of government." The more government interferes with marriage, the more I feel that the Church should simply say to the government, we'll define what the Sacrament of Marriage is, you define what the legal benefits are. Of course, the Church needs a "state's" recognition of something so essential for not only the state but for the Church, so the Church so simply require that before a Catholic marries in the Church, they present a legal document for the pre-nuptial file stating they have taken care of the "state requirements" for the state's legal recognition of their union so that the Church might then witness Church's Sacrament of Matrimony or "Sacred Union" if a non-baptized person is involved by way of dispensation.

Keep in mind the Church also requires a civil divorce before an annulment procedure in the Church can begin. In terms of ecumenism, the Catholic Church should only recognize those Protestant marriages that take place in a Protestant Church between two baptized Christians as a Sacrament, just so long as that Protestant Communion teaches that marriage is a Sacrament, meaning for a lifetime, between one man and one women and an "image of the relationship of Christ the Bridegroom to His bride the Church". If the Protestant Church does not teach that, the Catholic Church should not recognize those marriages as a Sacrament. This would certainly reduce the number of formal annulment procedures needed for Protestants who are divorced and remarried who seek full communion with the Catholic Church and those divorced Protestants who desire to marry a Catholic in the Church. One would only need to prove that the Christian Communion does not teach that in their denomination marriage is for one man and one woman and for a lifetime. The Catholic Church's "annulment procedure" could then be simplified to what we require of Catholics who marry outside the Church, similar to the "Lack of Form" cases that are so simple to resolve.

How Protestantism Redefined Marriage

Bethany Blankley
Religion and Politics Analyst (Huffington Post, May 16th)


It's important to trace the history of marriage within the Western Christian tradition to understand the ironic conundrum with which Americans find themselves today.

Early Christians in the first through third century understood marriage to be a union between one man and one woman created by God as a consummated partnership described in Genesis 2. Early Christian leaders, such as the Apostle Paul, explained that marriage was more than just a union between two people. It was an act of worship that pointed to Christ's sacrificial relationship with the church (Ephesians 5). Therefore, marriage was not about a contract or a financial engagement as had been the custom for centuries prior, but a sacred union that should reflect God's love. Christ turned the accepted cultural norms about marriage on its head.

Later, in the fourth century, Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, instituted Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire. This act formalized Christian customs and grew the responsibility of the Roman church, which over time became formally responsible for performing weddings.

It wasn't until the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century that the recording of marriages and establishing of rules for marriage became a function of the state. Martin Luther, the Catholic priest who initiated the Reformation in Germany said that marriage was a "worldly thing ... that belongs to the realm of government." A similar opinion was expressed by John Calvin, his Swiss counterpart. Calvin and his colleagues reformulated Christian marriage by enacting the Marriage Ordinance of Geneva, which imposed "The dual requirements of state registration and church consecration to constitute marriage" as valid.

By the 17th century, many of the Protestant European countries' governments were responsible for instituting marriage.

English Puritans who rejected the Church of England's view of marriage and immigrated to America in the early 1600s, believed that marriage was a civil contract, not a religious ceremony. The law they instituted required that marriage be "agreed" or "executed" (not "performed" or "solemnized") before a magistrate, not a minister. They also legalized divorce if the terms of the marriage covenant were broken. These customs became the model for marriage throughout New England. Other parts of colonial America followed different traditions -- Virginians followed the Anglican view of marriage, Quakers brought their own version to Delaware, and Catholics instituted their belief in Maryland and other states.

Unlike its European counterparts, which instituted civil marriage in the 18th and 19th centuries, the United States left the issue of marriage to the states. Marriage was not codified until 1996 through the Defense of Marriage Act. In fact, marriage today resembles a mélange of western Christian marriage traditions within a federalist system.

Since 2004, six states have granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples (Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire New York, Vermont and Washington, D.C.). Washington and Maryland recently passed laws to grant same-sex marriage licenses, which voters may overturn in November. In California, same-sex marriage could be legally performed between June 16 and Nov. 4, 2008, until voters passed Proposition 8, which prohibited it. As of May 8, North Carolina voters passed a gay marriage ban. To date, 12 states prohibit same-sex marriage by statute and 30 by state constitution. On May 9, President Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to express his support for the legalization of same-sex marriage.

How did we get in this quagmire?

Were it not for the Protestant Reformation, marriage would not be considered a civil institution today. Had Christians followed the early church's example, marriage would never have been thrust into the realm of the government at all.

In light of this, Christians find themselves in an ironic and divided situation. As citizens of a secular country they must be licensed by the state to validate a practice that is rooted in a religious belief. Should this be the case? Should a practice rooted in a Judeo-Christian faith even be under the auspices of government? If marriage had been left to the church, the church could marry those who practice and follow its beliefs. Civil unions among same-sex couples could be left to the government, providing the full range of civil liberties citizens in a democracy expect. The fact that marriage is governed by the state, defies its purpose intended by God for heterosexuals and prevents civil liberties from being granted to same-sex couples.

Granted, 17th century Puritans viewed the government as agents of God's authority, but they never could have foreseen how non-Christians would want to use a Christian practice as a political right.

The sanctity of marriage, as defined in Genesis 2, would be best preserved if marriage were left to the authority of the church. Instead, most Bible-believing Christians find themselves defending a religious practice that was never designed to be governed by a secular institution.

CATHOLICS WHO HATE BEING CATHOLIC SHOULD USE THE REVOLVING DOOR OF THE CHURCH THAT IS PLACED THERE FOR THEM TO TAKE AND ANYONE WHO FINDS JESUS TEACHINGS ALTOGETHER TOO MUCH TO TAKE! THERE IS A GREAT LIBERATION FROM CHRIST IN THAT REVOLVING DOOR

James Joyce’s defined the Roman Catholic Church as "here comes everybody." Indeed the Church is universal and is meant for everyone but not all accept what it means to be Catholic thus placing themselves outside of the full communion of the Church.

I can't say that I know of any truly sinless people in my congregation. I think all of them in one way or the other break all 10 Commandments. Yet, for the most part, they acknowledge their sins, unlike the unrepentant thief, and like the woman caught in adultery, they accept Jesus' including them, instead of condemning them, and try to go and sin no more, making recourse to the Sacrament of Penance if they do.

This is a laundry list of my parishioner's sins:

1. They worship false gods, such as materialism, horoscopes and the like.
2. Many of them take the Lord's name in vain.
3. I hate to admit it, but a goodly number don't go to Mass every Sunday and sometimes do work rather than rest.
4. All of them at one time or another dishonored their parents.
5. I've known of only a few killers but a number have been pro-choice, had abortions or been complicit in it.
6. I think sexual sins and thoughts, alone or with others, is rather common
7. Almost everyone has taken something that doesn't belong to them, like reputations, paperclips and the like
8. Most of us in our lives have lied, gossiped and belittled people.
9. How many of my parishioners have wanted the spouse of someone else and idealized them from a distance?
10. And wow, keeping up with the Jones' is a biggy and we all want what others have

I don't think anyone is excluded from the Church when they sin by breaking any of the Ten Commandments. Jesus just says, go and sin no more. If the sin, though, is a mortal sin in the classical way of understanding what constitutes mortal sin, they have broken Communion with Christ and the Church and must repent, go to Confession, do penance before they can "worthily" receive or Lord in Holy Communion, the ultimate sign of being in full communion with Him and His Church.

I think where the problem with "here comes everybody" as it concerns the Church is when some of the everybody start lobbying to change the 10 Commandments so that everybody doesn't feel guilty for being human, that is, born in Original Sin and prone to sin and experiences of shame and embarrassment because of it.

I think where the other problem with "here comes everybody" is when some of the everybody want to change the Church even in areas of doctrine and dogma that cannot be changed, such as who get ordained, who gets married and what sexual sins constitute mortal sin. In fact when it comes to sex, they want to eliminate any thing that is sexual from the list of sins because these go to the core of who we are and what we want, whether good or evil.

So, if everyone in a parish or region of the country advocates the following, what should be done?

1. False gods, no problem, to each his own.
2. Taking the Lord's name in vain, no problem, cuss up a storm in Church and without guilt.
3. Missing Mass on Sunday and make it an ordinary day--cool!
4. Treat your mom and dad in their old age as though they are truly a burden and let them know how burdensome they are--great!
5. Be pro-choice and work at Planned Parenthood, how progressive is that in helping women and the men who cause women to need it.
6. Sex is always good, no matter what the Bible teaches and no matter the context, no guilt, no shame, shamelessness is a virtue!
7. If no one knows you're taking it, why not, Robin Hood had it right!
8. It is no one's business what things I tell to others true or not, God made me a liar as I have an orientation toward it.
9. Steal someone's spouse, no problem, let the thief beware of what he has taken.
10. I'll just borrowed what doesn't belong to me and forget to give it back--this is morally acceptable.

Answer from the following choices:

A. God should smite those people using a whip of cords and turning over their materialistic tables
B. The bishop should place an interdict against those people
C. The bishop should excommunicate those people
D. These people should found their own church
E. These people aren't Catholic and haven't come to the Church except in their own minds
G. All of the above

Jesus did not bend over backwards to keep His followers in the fold, in fact He let them go when His followers found Him altogether to much for them--these were prideful sinners who saw no need for repentance and wanted Jesus to change His teachings to make it more appealing to them! Jesus gave His answer with out a word that in a non verbal way said, "Hell no!"

However, He welcomed everyone who was a humble sinner, who recognized their state in life and that the only way out of their sin was to admit it, confess it and sin no more and the only one who could invite them into the Kingdom of Heaven is Jesus who gladly does so for the humble, miserable sinner who knows his/her state in life. These were the tax collectors, public sinners, prostitutes and the man at the back of the temple who simply said, O God, have mercy on me a sinner. The proud and haughty of heart who feel no need for Jesus or personal conversion in their lives were the ones most derided by Jesus.

"Many are called, few are chosen!" Matthew 22:14

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven." Matthew 7:21

"You can enter God's Kingdom only through the narrow gate. The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way." Matthew 7:13

I suspect that those who want to change everything about the Catholic Church and the exclusivity it teaches in terms of accepting Christ and His teachings would like to eliminate the Gospel of Matthew from the Canon of the New Testament because it really is quite exclusive.

Just as not everyone can be included in the Church, protest as they may, not everyone will be included in the Kingdom of God, especially if they actively pervert the Church's and God's teachings in the most prideful ways possible. When Jesus told the adulterer that He did not condemn her, he did condemn her sin when He told her to go and sin no more. How much clearer does Jesus have to be about loving the sinner and hating the sin? Those who love their sins and hate the Church's teaching to "go and sin no more" have a big lesson to learn about God and redemption!

OF COURSE I POSTED THE FULL VIDEO ON MAY 3RD, BUT AD ORIENTEM AND KNEELING FOR HOLY COMMUNION SEEMS TO BE PROMOTED IN THE HIGHEST OF PLACES AND NOT JUST THIS BLOG

Yes, Virginia, this is an Ordinary Form Mass and recently celebrated!

From the United Kingdom's Tablet:

Liturgy head calls for ‘more reverence'
14 May 2012

A leading liturgist has made the case for priests to celebrate Mass facing east and for communicants to kneel when they receive communion.

Mgr Andrew Wadsworth, executive director of ICEL (the International Commission on English in the Liturgy), said that reviving both practices would assist in the "widespread cultivation of a dignified and reverent liturgy".

Speaking at St Mary Magdalen Church, Brighton, on 1 May, he listed criticisms of the liturgical reform following the Second Vatican Council claiming that the "casual disregard in the manner, distribution and appropriate reception of Holy Communion" had resulted in a lessening in the sense of its importance.

Mgr Wadsworth, a former Latin teacher, also encouraged a "recovery of the Latin tradition of the Roman Rite".

My comment: Well, Duh! Am I clairvoyant or not? The fact that the Holy Father does it and this liturgist suggests it tells us how far we have come. This would have been unheard of even 8 years ago. Is a mandate coming, I am not clairvoyant, but I would bet on it if I were a betting man which I am not!

THE CULTURE WARS AND SSPX, O ME, TALK ABOUT CIRCLING THE WAGONS

This is from NBC Sports report! My comments at the end!

Catholic high school in Arizona forfeits baseball championship game rather than play against a team with a girl on it
Rick Chandler
updated 1:29 pm. EDT May. 10, 2012

Our Lady of Sorrows is a fundamentalist Catholic School in Phoenix, Ariz., which adheres strictly to God’s word. And so, when OLS made it to the state baseball championship game against Mesa Prep, they immediately chose to forfeit. That’s because Mesa Prep has a female player (gasp!) — second baseman Paige Sultzbach.

Ned Flanders: “It’s right there in the Bible, people! Thou shalt not mingle with the girl who got that single.”

Mesa had beaten OLS twice during the regular season in games that Sultzbach sat out in respect of the other team’s religious objections. But when the state championship rolled around, Mesa Prep was no longer willing to turn the other cheek.

Our Lady of Sorrows school officials would not comment, but Sultzbach’s mother, Pamela Sultzbach, said her daughter and the rest of the team received the news after Wednesday afternoon’s practice.

“This is not a contact sport, it shouldn’t be an issue,” Pamela said. “It wasn’t that they were afraid they were going to hurt or injure her, it’s that (they believe) that a girl’s place is not on a field.”

Paige played softball and volleyball in junior high, but because Mesa Prep does not have a girls softball team, she decided to try out for the boys baseball team, with the coach’s encouragement.

But wait a minute, hold on. Take a look at this inspiration Jesus statue from Catholic Supply, Inc. Look at the catcher’s hair — that’s clearly a girl.

Anyway:

Our Lady of Sorrows is run by the U.S. branch of the Society of Saint Pius X, a group of conservative, traditionalist priests who disagree with the reforms of the Vatican II Council in the 1960s and broke with the Catholic Church in the 1980s.

“I respect their views, but it’s a bit out of the 18th century,” said Mesa Prep athletic director Amy Arnold, who is the only woman now coaching a boys high-school football team in Arizona.

Calls to OLS officials by the Arizona Republic were not returned.

MY COMMENTS: This is making a mountain out of a mole hill but it is rather fascinating given all the culture wars now and the marginalization of the Catholic Church in whatever "fundamentalistic" form it takes.

Of course, I don't think there is any prohibition in Scripture or Tradition in either the Full Communion of the Catholic Church and the SSPX group that is not quite in full communion but could be soon, but I'm not clairvoyant.

I was listening to a comment by an irate caller from the Northeast on the Catholic Channel this morning. She bragged about how liberal and forward thinking people are in the northeast and how ridiculous this decision by the SSPX school was. Then she said and I loosely quote, "If they are receiving any government funds, they should be mandated to play a team with a girl on it!" She wasn't being ironic or stoking the fires of the culture war through sarcasm, she was being honest about her opinion, which God bless her, she has a right to have.

I've come to the conclusion that liberal democrats are really a new form of Puritanism and it makes since that they are isolated primarily in the northeast that has such a strong puritanical heritage. The Puritans outlawed Catholicism because Catholicism wasn't pure. Secularists of the liberal bent want to use law against the Catholic Church for their new form of Secular Puritanism, which isn't your father's conservative Puritanism, but your neighbors ultra liberal form of it, but nonetheless want to use law to have their way and outlaw the Catholic Church.

But if there is anything that Progressives hate in the Catholic Church besides Patriarchy and Monarchy it is Fundamentalism.

Those three things, keep an eye out on the use of these terms to denigrate the Catholic Church or those who are striving to be faithful to Holy Mother Church. And that is another thing they hate, the use of feminine terms for Church and masculine terms for God, unless one uses feminine terms for God too, or masculine terms for Church and God--then that would be politically correct.

HORIZONTAL AND VERTICAL WORSHIP, CAN'T WE JUST BE FRIENDS WITH GOD AND EACH OTHER?

Are hospitality and solemnity mutually exclusive? No! Our elegant parish Church has no vestibule. People are quiet and reverent before Mass, although friendly--we are your typical Catholic Church in this regard.

But after Mass, there is a great deal of talking in the Church as we have no narthex and no real good place to go and talk conveniently. I have looked the other way in all of this and I think our parish is typical.

However, many newer churches while building modern structures that in no way compare with mine, have narthexes that cause me narthex envy. Sacred Heart Church in Warner Robins, Georgia has a magnificent narthex!

If I were a pastor in a narthexed church, I would insist on silence in the nave of the Church before and afterward. Hospitality and conversation, but muted of course and non-gossipy, should be in the narthex.

You can also have coffee and donuts there (after Mass, please, not before)and really show off the "sacrament" of hospitality in that venue. Certainly the narthex is the place to greet people in the most friendly way, coddle seekers and be a great assistance to them like a concierge in a hotel.

The horizontal aspect of our worship should be in the narthex. Even the SSPX parish in Roswell, in their glorified "Butler" building have all their educational and social hall in the same building and I presume they are quite friendly in that part of the building which is in fact an extension of their nave.

But in the nave of the Church, the vertical aspect of our relationship with God is emphasized to the nth degree. I suspect people entering the nave of a very traditional Catholic Church who are not familiar with the ultra-traditional approach to being in the nave would think the SSPX and other traditional Catholic people are quite cold and aloof. This might turn them off as well as Catholics who are more accustomed to just the horizontal in their narthexes and naves.

But my point is that you could have an exclusively EF parish and still be quite friendly. The two forms of being "Church" the horizontal and the vertical are not mutually exclusive but really need their own spaces to experience both.