Sunday, September 10, 2017

Continuing Liturgical Chaos in the Catholic Church: Babel!

First off, let's have a bit of perspective.  In my lifetime, the Catholic church's principal liturgical celebration, the Mass, has been through five iterations.  I was trained in the pre-1962 Missal, then came the 1962.  Next was the 1965 "interim" missal, partially in English, followed by the 1970  Missal, then finally, the re-translation of 2000.

Five.

During the first 20 years after Vatican II--the period covered by the 1965/1970 Missals--the situation was chaotic.  Priests did not bother with the printed word; strange new 'rituals' were invented, discarded, and re-invented--most by pushy, ignorant, laymen and wimmins; "church music" became a sung laugh-track.  Go two parishes west, and there was a whole 'nother Mass that you'd never seen before!  Fly from Lincoln, NE. to Los Angeles and it was like the culture change when moving from Oshkosh to Peking.

It actually settled down a into The Great Mediocrity between 2000 and now.  There was little "sacred" about the space, the language, or the music, but by and large it was not completely street-theater any more.

Now comes Pp. Francis, who has decided that translations of the Roman Rite will become regionalized.  US 'english' Masses will have different 'english' than British 'english' or Australian 'english' or Canadian 'english' Masses.  The French Mass in Paris will be different from the 'french' of Senegal or Montreal.

And so forth.

Thus, Pp. Francis has done what very few thought was possible!!!  He has re-fashioned the Catholic Church into the Tower of Babel.  Who says that Pp. Francis doesn't like the past??

1 comment:

  1. Pope chaos strikes again. Next he will let us all right our own Bible.

    ReplyDelete