By BRIAN CLOWES
Part 3
(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For an electronic copy of the book Call to Action or Call to Apostasy, consisting of a detailed description of the current forms of dissent and how to fight them, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)
+ + +
As we have seen, the first of three primary strategies that dissenters are using to reconstruct the Holy Mass is what they call a “fully inclusive liturgy,” whereby language is altered to coddle various self-appointed victim groups.
Strategy #2: New Traditions and Symbols. The second strategy is, as Diann Neu of WATER says, “Reclaiming religious tradition and symbols.”
Neu ignores the parameters for the Holy Mass set by our Lord at the Last Supper, saying that she often uses grape juice instead of wine because she does not want to exclude alcoholics from “eucharist.” This single act reduces the Real Presence of our Lord to a mere symbolic gesture, thereby depriving the Mass of its very sacramentality — and thereby its saving power.
But Neu goes far beyond grape juice, claiming that every group of people should be represented by the form of food and drink used at the “mass.” Among her recommendations are harvest bread (“for the harvest season”), cranberry bread, walnut raisin bread, tortillas (“to celebrate Latin Americans”), nut bread (“for dreamers and prophets”), champagne (“celebrating festivity”), corn bread (“Native Americans and African Americans”), apple juice (“to reclaim women as holy — Eve got a bad rap”), rice cakes (for Asian culture), milk (to celebrate nursing mothers), shortbread (for children), water (“women’s life-giving powers”), and saltines (for the “salty elders” among us).
Now I was born in Germany, and I am deeply offended at being excluded by Neu, who did not mention beer and pretzels as elements of the “eucharist” in her talk.
Strategy #3: New Ceremonies. After the language and the symbols of the Mass have been transformed, the third and final strategy completing the process of desacralization is to “create new ceremonies.”
Neu says that liturgists must “[create] new ceremonies that express the spiritual experiences that are absent from the liturgies that you and I know.” Under this definition, any significant event in a person’s life can be used as an occasion to “celebrate.”
Feminist “liturgists” can create “Life Cycle Liturgies,” which are rituals for a number of life changes, including menarche (first menstruation), miscarriage or stillbirth, self-insemination or in vitro fertilization (IVF), birth, menopause, and “becoming a crone.” According to Neu and her New Age “cron-ies,” a woman becomes a crone when she is 56 years old, because “the moon of Saturn turns a seventh time.”
Liturgists can also replace the funeral Mass with a death liturgy, because, as Neu alleges, “The Catholic priests don’t know what to do with death and dying.”
We must wonder if she is serious. Any experienced priest has spent hundreds or even thousands of hours at the bedsides of dying people, and has spent even more time counseling those who are dying, along with their relatives. The average priest has forgotten more about death and dying than Neu will ever know.
Significantly, feminist “liturgists” also celebrate abortion. Neu emphasizes: “When women make a very difficult choice, the community needs to support that choice. We don’t have to make judgment on [whether] the choice is right or wrong. We need to support any one of us who makes the choice for whatever reason.”
“Catholics” for [a free] Choice (CFFC) in 1991 helped found the umbrella dissenting group Catholic Organizations for Renewal (COR). Its members often say: “If men became pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Not content with mere chant, CFFC has already made abortion into a witchcraft-like “sacrament.” A 2015 CFFC brochure entitled “You Are Not Alone: Catholic Women and the Abortion Decision” includes two “liturgies” for women who intend to kill their preborn children.
The first ritual, entitled “Meditation in Search of Wisdom,” is nothing of the sort. It is specifically is designed to make a woman feel good about her inevitable decision to abort (and there is no question that she will abort — none whatsoever). She is to play some soothing background music and “light a candle, absorb its power, and pray.” Then she must imagine herself in ten years a) with a child and b) without a child. Then she might talk about her feelings with an assistant and say a short prayer to “Holy Wisdom.” Finally, she chooses some music to complete the “meditation.”
Then, of course, there is a “liturgy” for all of those Good Catholic Women who decide that abortion is the Most Moral Thing for Them to Do. The “Affirmation of Choice” “affirms that you have made a good decision [to abort].” Then the “celebrant” and her friends chant the following prayer; “Praised be you, God, that you have given your people the power of choice. We are here to support the choice that [Name] has made about her pregnancy. Such a choice is never simple, but she has come to this conclusion with integrity and strength.”
The “celebrant” [aborting woman] at the “liturgy” may then “feel free to make a gesture, such as lighting a candle, sprinkling flower petals, or sharing dried flowers to express your feelings.”
It is significant indeed that CFFC has never developed a “liturgy” for women who decide to keep their babies. This is the essence of “pro-choice” — there is really only one acceptable choice, and that is to abort.
According to Diann Neu and other liturgical revisionists, feminist “liturgists” may also fashion any of a number of “transition liturgies” which mark significant changes in a person’s life. These may include rituals that commemorate career changes and moving, loss of friendship, divorce, leave taking, children leaving home, entering a nursing home, and abandoning a religious vocation (a perennial favorite of the members of dissenting organizations).
Another type of ritual favored by dissenters is “healing liturgies” which include the marking of the survival of rape, incest, domestic violence, hysterectomies, mastectomies, addictions, HIV, AIDS, and other misfortunes.
Finally, the “liturgist” may custom design a “seasonal liturgy” closely patterned after pagan celebrations, to include ceremonies to honor the harvest, ancestors, or witches (Neu asks, “Witches really have gotten as bad a press as Eve has. How do we restore witches at Halloween time?”)
The primary symbols of these “liturgies” are circles, fire, candles, water, earth and compost, massage oil, the four cardinal directions, and any other symbol that the “liturgist” sees fit to use.
Significantly, these are primary elements in rituals used by New Age practitioners and paganists who worship Gaia, the “Earth goddess,” and celebrate “her” progression to divinity, a process they call “theagenesis.”
One popular ritual used by “New Age” dissenters is a version of the “Celebration of the Four Directions,” which has been used by aborigines, Maoris, druids, and Celts in their rituals all over the world. Matthew Fox writes in his book Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth that “The backbone of creation spirituality tradition is in the naming of the spiritual journey for the four paths.” Fox’s “four paths” correspond to the cardinal directions — North, West, East, and South.
Conclusion. Dissenters know that the most dangerous threats to any organization are its traitors. They cannot defeat the Church from outside, so they burrow away at its structure like termites. As Sr. Maureen Fiedler of the Quixote Center says, “Feminists need people with chisels inside, chiseling away at that institution.” They know that, in order to destroy the Church, they must attack her four marks — one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.
The most effective and efficient way to attack the universality of the Church is to alter the Mass beyond recognition by destroying its sacramental nature.
Unfortunately, the dissenters have covered a lot of ground toward accomplishing this objective in North America and Europe.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress