Tuesday 19th March 2024

Home » Our Catholic Faith » Currently Reading:

Future Bleak for Vatican II Mass

September 22, 2022 Our Catholic Faith No Comments

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

My parish is forced back into compliance with the “unique liturgical expression of the Roman rite” this month, as expressed by Pope Francis in Traditionis custodes, with the banning of the traditional Latin Mass in my as well as in other parish churches. This in order to open us to the full experience of the wonders of Vatican II and its sole expression of public prayer in the Novus Ordo or Mass of Paul VI.
Pope Francis’ vision of the full flowering of the 1960’s revolution is now realized only through compliance with dictatorial edicts. Gone is the individual freedom of expression promised by the peace and love movement. Instead we now have something more akin to fascist conformity with a kick of the jackboot for the rebellious.
The survey results are in after 60 years of experimentation. And it doesn’t look good. The viral videos of priests in Italy offering the new Mass on a raft at the beach, or in bike shorts adorned with rainbow stole at a picnic table, or using a guitar to bless the people, or dancing around the sanctuary to a trendy beat, reinforce the fact that the new liturgy does not have a fixed identity. It is not “one” rite for the entire Church. It is different nearly everywhere. As such it is incapable of serving as a source of unity.
But, you may say, my parish has a “reverent novus ordo” and you may strenuously oppose my characterization of the new Mass as “formless” and perpetually changing. The very fact that you must affix the adjective “reverent” to the description of the Mass at your parish offered by a no doubt sincere and good priest merely proves my point.
When in the history of the Church did we ever feel the necessity of describing any Mass as “reverent”? We didn’t. That was because the old Mass or TLM was dummy-proof: an inattentive or unfortunately careless priest could offer it in a nearly identical way to the manner of the holiest and most punctilious of clerics.
There are many good priests who are doing the very best they can with the hand which they have been dealt, deploying all of their skills and talents to draw people back to church. One local priest has taken to conducting catechesis outdoors on the parish lawn in full view of the promenading tourists visiting his waterfront town.
Let’s take an unscientific survey of the Catholic landscape, sampling the experience of some parishes that are committed exclusively to this wonderful gift to the Church of a new and improved liturgy which, we were told, promised a perpetual Springtime of active participation.
To begin with, in order to actively participate you have to be physically present. But the numbers of those who are no longer taking that first step over the church threshold are increasing.
Let’s take a look at the Wall Street Journal of November 12, 2021:
“The number of churchgoers has steadily dropped in the U.S. over the past few decades. But Covid-19 and its lockdown restrictions accelerated that fall. In-person church attendance is roughly 30% to 50% lower than it was before the pandemic, estimates Barna Group, a research firm that studies faith in the U.S.
“While religious leaders expect some rebound once the pandemic recedes, many don’t expect attendance to return to previous levels. That has left churches looking for different approaches to connect with existing members and attract new ones.”
Part of the drop is due to the long-term disassociation from churches and religion in general that has been at work for years. As noted in the WSJ article, the Archdiocese of Boston reports that lower attendance is a steady downward trend of 2.5% annually. That accelerated with COVID. Many started watching Sunday Mass at home and have not returned to the parish, further deepening the spiral.
Local pastors continue to experiment with various ways of offering the new Mass to encourage greater attendance. One approach is to appeal to a particular age group often missing at the typical parish Mass experience: teens. A neighboring pastor will soon begin a Sunday afternoon “Life Teen” Mass. But will it encourage long-term faith commitment after the program ends or when the teens move on to adult education or work experience? Perhaps the answer is another “program” geared to each age of the spectrum?
But isn’t that what the new Mass was supposed to be? A one-size fits all approach? Shouldn’t unity be a basic characteristic of any Mass, at which all are welcome? In the past that was a given with the traditional Latin Mass. There weren’t any “teen TLMs” in 1950.
Now, with the Balkanization of the Church into different language groups following Vatican II, and with Masses available in nearly any language except Latin, there is yet another reason for not attending. In my own experience, a Spanish-speaker will sometimes refuse to attend an English or Latin Mass because they don’t with little effort readily understand it. How is the language in which the Mass is prayed more important than the fact that our Lord is truly present in the Eucharist at every Mass? Is this another improvement of Vatican II?
Pope Francis certainly made a point about unity when he issued Traditionis custodes with the purpose of forcing everyone, even the unwilling, back into the novus ordo. It was given as the reason for the cruel and draconian edict. The TLM must go, we are told, so that everyone can pray together as one in the novus ordo. Even those who don’t go to the TLM, it appears, do not want the novus ordo when they aren’t going to Mass at all, leaving pastors grasping at straws to get them to return.
Parishes with schools offer a discount for students who attend Sunday Mass, as those should who say they are Catholic and who purportedly value a Catholic education. But for years priests have struggled to enforce Sunday Mass attendance upon unwilling families who just want to get the eighth-grade graduation and move on.
A recent email from a pastor with a parish school shows that we are in fact reduced to using tuition discounts to force the unwilling to comply with the commandment to keep the Lord’s Day holy:
“I would like to discuss the new ‘active parishioner scholarships’ for Catholic school families.  As I’m sure you will appreciate, we need our fellow pastors who have parishioners in our in schools to hold those parents accountable for bringing their children to Mass and supporting their local parish in order to receive an endorsement as an active parishioner.  Otherwise, some people will game the system by going to parishes where they will not be held accountable by the pastor.”
This pastor is now reduced to a spiritual “cop”, spending his time policing people who are getting reduced tuition who “game the system” by avoiding Sunday Mass while getting credit as an “active parishioner”. Not exactly a “new Springtime” of active participation. More akin to a Fall presaging a long, cold winter of pastoral discontent.
Another pastor with a parish thought to be large enough to warrant a second priest, a nearly endangered clerical species, is concerned about his upcoming October headcount numbers. Every year a headcount is taken at all Masses in the month of October and averages are reported to the diocese. The statistics affect everything from subsidizing the diocesan newspaper to annual financial appeal pledge thresholds. Attendance at weekend Masses has visibly fallen off for this pastor, potentially putting his hard-won status as a “two-priest” parish at risk.
Every parish that previously enjoyed increased attendance on the part of the willing by offering a traditional Latin Mass is back to begging, pleading and “bribing” with tuition discounts to fill the pews with the unwilling.
But Pope Francis says the new Mass is all you get. A future bleak indeed.
Thank you for reading and praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever.
apriestlife.blogspot.com
@TruthSocialPadre

Share Button

2019 The Wanderer Printing Co.

Vatican and USCCB leave transgender policy texts unpublished

While U.S. bishops have made headlines for releasing policies addressing gender identity and pastoral ministry, guidelines on the subject have been drafted but not published by both the U.S. bishops’ conference and the Vatican’s doctrinal office, leaving diocesan bishops to…Continue Reading

Biden says Pope Francis told him to continue receiving communion, amid scrutiny over pro-abortion policies

President Biden said that Pope Francis, during their meeting Friday in Vatican City, told him that he should continue to receive communion, amid heightened scrutiny of the Catholic president’s pro-abortion policies.  The president, following the approximately 90-minute-long meeting, a key…Continue Reading

Federal judge rules in favor of Gov. DeSantis’ mask mandate ban

MIAMI (LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge this week handed Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis another legal victory on his mask mandate ban for schools. On Wednesday, Judge K. Michael Moore of the Southern District of Florida denied a petition from…Continue Reading

The Eucharist should not be received unworthily, says Nigerian cardinal

Priests have a duty to remind Catholics not to receive the Eucharist in a state of serious sin and to make confession easily available, a Nigerian cardinal said at the International Eucharistic Congress on Thursday. “It is still the doctrine…Continue Reading

Donald Trump takes a swipe at Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him

Donald Trump complained about Catholics and Jews who did not vote for him in 2020. The former president made the comments in a conference call featuring religious leaders. The move could be seen to shore up his religious conservative base…Continue Reading

Y Gov. Kathy Hochul Admits Andrew Cuomo Covered Up COVID Deaths, 12,000 More Died Than Reported

When it comes to protecting people from COVID, Andrew Cuomo is already the worst governor in America. New York has the second highest death rate per capita, in part because he signed an executive order putting COVID patients in nursing…Continue Reading

Prayers For Cardinal Burke . . . U.S. Cardinal Burke says he has tested positive for COVID-19

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — U.S. Cardinal Raymond L. Burke said he has tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. In an Aug. 10 tweet, he wrote: “Praised be Jesus Christ! I wish to inform you that I have recently…Continue Reading

Democrats Block Amendment Banning Late-Term Abortions, Stopping Abortions Up to Birth

Senate Democrats have blocked an amendment that would ban abortions on babies older than 20 weeks. During consideration of the multi-trillion spending package, pro-life Louisiana Senator John Kennedy filed an amendment to ban late-term abortions, but Democrats steadfastly support killing…Continue Reading

Transgender student wins as U.S. Supreme Court rebuffs bathroom appeal

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday handed a victory to a transgender former public high school student who waged a six-year legal battle against a Virginia county school board that had barred him from using the bathroom corresponding…Continue Reading

New York priest accused by security guard of assault confirms charges have now been dropped

NEW YORK, June 17, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — A New York priest has made his first public statement regarding the dismissal of charges against him.  Today Father George W. Rutler reached out to LifeSiteNews and other media today with the following…Continue Reading

21,000 sign petition protesting US Catholic bishops vote on Biden, abortion

More than 21,000 people have signed a letter calling for U.S. Catholic bishops to cancel a planned vote on whether President Biden should receive communion.  Biden, a Catholic, supports abortion rights and has long come under attack from some Catholics over that…Continue Reading

Bishop Gorman seeks candidates to fill two full time AP level teaching positions for the 2021-2022 school year in the subject areas of Calculus/Statistics and Physics

Bishop Thomas K. Gorman Regional Catholic School is a college preparatory school located in Tyler, Texas. It is an educational ministry of the Catholic Diocese of Tyler led by Bishop Joseph Strickland. The sixth through twelfth grade school provides a…Continue Reading

Untitled 5 Untitled 2

Attention Readers:

  Welcome to our website. Readers who are familiar with The Wanderer know we have been providing Catholic news and orthodox commentary for 150 years in our weekly print edition.


  Our daily version offers only some of what we publish weekly in print. To take advantage of everything The Wanderer publishes, we encourage you to su
bscribe to our flagship weekly print edition, which is mailed every Friday or, if you want to view it in its entirety online, you can subscribe to the E-edition, which is a replica of the print edition.
 
  Our daily edition includes: a selection of material from recent issues of our print edition, news stories updated daily from renowned news sources, access to archives from The Wanderer from the past 10 years, available at a minimum charge (this will be expanded as time goes on). Also: regularly updated features where we go back in time and highlight various columns and news items covered in The Wanderer over the past 150 years. And: a comments section in which your remarks are encouraged, both good and bad, including suggestions.
 
  We encourage you to become a daily visitor to our site. If you appreciate our site, tell your friends. As Catholics we must band together to rediscover our faith and share it with the world if we are to effectively counter a society whose moral culture seems to have no boundaries and a government whose rapidly extending reach threatens to extinguish the rights of people of faith to practice their religion (witness the HHS mandate). Now more than ever, vehicles like The Wanderer are needed for clarification and guidance on the issues of the day.

Catholic, conservative, orthodox, and loyal to the Magisterium have been this journal’s hallmarks for five generations. God willing, our message will continue well into this century and beyond.

Joseph Matt
President, The Wanderer Printing Co.

Untitled 1

Catechism

Today . . .

Wisconsin Supreme Court says Catholic charity group cannot claim religious tax exemption

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a major Catholic charity group’s activities were not “primarily” religious under state law, stripping the group of a key tax break and ordering it to pay into the state unemployment system. Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) last year argued that the state had improperly removed its designation as a religious organization.  The charity filed a lawsuit after the state said it did not qualify to be considered as an organization…Continue Reading

Walgreens and CVS Will Start Selling Abortion Pills That Kill Babies

The two largest pharmacies in America will start selling abortion pills this month that end the lives of unborn children by starting them to death. Walgreens and CVS will both sell the abortion pills despite the fact that they kill a developing human being and have killed at least dozens of women and injured tens of thousands more. They plan to initially roll out abortion drug sales in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, California…Continue Reading

Cardinal Burke announces novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe for ‘crises of our age’

VATICAN CITY (PerMariam) — Raymond Cardinal Burke has announced the start of a global, nine-month novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe, calling on Catholics to beseech Mary’s intercession on the Church and the world in the face of the “crises of our age.” In a new endeavour published online over the weekend, Cardinal Burke announced a novena beginning in March, and culminating on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe on December 12.

Texas attorney general targets Catholic nonprofit, alleges it facilitates illegal immigration

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 21, 2024 / 21:15 pm Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to shut down a Catholic nonprofit organization in El Paso based on allegations that the group may be facilitating illegal immigration, harboring immigrants who entered the country illegally, and engaging in human smuggling.  Paxton filed a lawsuit against the nonprofit Annunciation House, which has operated in the state for nearly 50 years. The lawsuit asks the District Court of El Paso…Continue Reading

Irreverent funeral service at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for trans activist sparks outcry

A raucous funeral liturgy for a high-profile trans activist and sex-worker advocate was held Thursday in New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, sparking an outcry on social media that the iconic church was misused to advance an ideological agenda at odds with Catholic teaching. The Manhattan cathedral hosted the Feb. 15 funeral service for Cecilia Gentili, an activist who helped to decriminalize sex work in New York, lobbied for “gender identity” to be added as…Continue Reading

The King of Kings

Cindy Paslawski We are at the end of the Church year. We began with Advent a year ago, commemorating the time awaiting the coming of the Christ and we are ending these weeks later with a vision of the future, a vision of Christ the King of the Universe on His throne before us all.…Continue Reading

7,000 Pro-Lifers March In London

By STEVEN ERTELT LONDON (LifeNews) — Over the weekend, some seven thousand pro-life people in the UK participated in the March for Life in London to protest abortion.They marched to Parliament Square on Saturday, September 2 under the banner of “Freedom to Live” and had to deal with a handful of radical abortion activists.During the…Continue Reading

An Appeal For Prayer For The Armenian People

By RAYMOND LEO CARDINAL BURKE (Editor’s Note: His Eminence Raymond Cardinal Burke on August 29, 2023, issued this prayer for the Armenian people, noting their unceasing love for Christ, even in the face of persecution.) + + On the Feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, having a few days ago celebrated the…Continue Reading

Robert Hickson, Founding Member Of Christendom College, Dies At 80

By MAIKE HICKSON FRONT ROYAL, Va. (LifeSiteNews) — Robert David Hickson, Jr., of Front Royal, Va., died at his home on September 2, 2023, at 21:29 p.m. after several months of suffering and after having received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church. He was surrounded by friends and family.Robert is survived by me —…Continue Reading

The Real Hero Of “Sound of Freedom”… Says The Film Has Strengthened The Fight Against Child Trafficking

By ANA PAULA MORALES (CNA) —Tim Ballard, a former U.S. Homeland Security agent who risked his life to fight child trafficking, discussed the impact of the movie Sound of Freedom, which is based on his work, in an August 29 interview with ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. “I’ve spent more than 20 years helping…Continue Reading

Advertisement

Our Catholic Faith (Section B of print edition)

Catholic Replies

Editor’s Note: This lesson on medical-moral issues is taken from the book Catholicism & Ethics. Please feel free to use the series for high schoolers or adults. We will continue to welcome your questions for the column as well. The email and postal addresses are given at the end of this column. Special Course On Catholicism And Ethics (Pages 53-59)…Continue Reading

Color Politics An Impediment To Faith

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK The USCCB is rightly concerned about racism, as they should be about any sin. In the 2018 statement Open Wide Our Hearts, they affirm the dignity of every human person: “But racism still profoundly affects our culture, and it has no place in the Christian heart. This evil causes great harm to its victims, and…Continue Reading

Trademarks Of The True Messiah

By MSGR. CHARLES POPE (Editor’s Note: Msgr. Charles Pope posted this essay on September 2, and it is reprinted here with permission.) + + In Sunday’s Gospel the Lord firmly sets before us the need for the cross, not as an end in itself, but as the way to glory. Let’s consider the Gospel in three stages.First: The Pattern That…Continue Reading

A Beacon Of Light… The Holy Cross And Jesus’ Unconditional Love

By FR. RICHARD D. BRETON Each year on September 14 the Church celebrates the Feast Day of the Exultation of the Holy Cross. The Feast Day of the Triumph of the Holy Cross commemorates the day St. Helen found the True Cross. It is fitting then, that today we should focus on the final moments of Jesus’ life on the…Continue Reading

Our Ways Must Become More Like God’s Ways

By FR. ROBERT ALTIER Twenty-Fifth Sunday In Ordinary Time (YR A) Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9Phil. 1:20c-24, 27aMatt. 20:1-16a In the first reading today, God tells us through the Prophet Isaiah that His thoughts are not our thoughts and His ways are not our ways. This should not come as a surprise to anyone, especially when we look at what the Lord…Continue Reading

The Devil And The Democrats

By FR. DENIS WILDE, OSA States such as Minnesota, California, Maryland, and others, in all cases with Democrat-controlled legislatures, are on a fast track to not only allow unborn babies to be murdered on demand as a woman’s “constitutional right” but also to allow infanticide.Our nation has gotten so used to the moral evil of killing in the womb that…Continue Reading

Crushed But Unbroken . . . The Martyrdom Of St. Margaret Clitherow

By RAY CAVANAUGH The late-1500s were a tough time for Catholics in England, where the Reformation was in full gear. A 1581 law prohibited Catholic religious ceremonies. And a 1584 Act of Parliament mandated that all Catholic priests leave the country or else face execution. Some chose to remain, however, so they could continue serving the faithful.Also taking huge risks…Continue Reading

Advertisement(2)