Just a bit of chronological context: 'INTRODUCTION TO CHRISTIANITY', which became an almost-instant theological classic, was published one year before Jorge Bergoglio was ordained a priest.
ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI
Sorry... I did not realize that I am unable to modify with the necessary enhancements a post by someone who is not registered with the forum, so my page heading has to come in here...
Peter Kwasniewski has, in the last few days, written two articles on the essentials of Catholicism that have tended to become less and less essential and more inconsequential
in the decades since Vatican II - and are likely to become even more so, given the anti-Catholic hubris of Pope Francis and those who, with him, control the infrastructures and
institutions of the Catholic Church because he is the pope... Kwasniewski first wrote about the Eucharist, but I will start out with the later article on the Four Last Things,
especially Hell..
The reality of hell and the fear of God -
banished from current Catholic awareness
by Peter Kwasniewski
January 17, 2018
In my article “The Fifty-Year Descent to Footnote 351: Our Progressive Desensitization to the Most Holy Eucharist,” I spoke of how the liturgical reform’s many sudden and drastic changes in ritual and ceremonial have contributed to a continual erosion of belief in the Mass as a true and proper Sacrifice and in the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
In the present article, I wish to look at a closely related topic, namely, how the holy fear of God, which begins in the dreading of His just punishments for sin and matures into love of Him for His own sake and a desire to dwell with Him forever in heaven, has been
undermined by the systematic removal of texts from the liturgy concerning the reality of hell and our need for vigilance and self-denial in order to steer clear of it.
There are many articles that show how radically the prayers were altered in the missal of the Novus Ordo, whether to downplay the subordination of earthly to heavenly things (as, for instance, with St. Albert), or to “purge the mythical element” (as with St. Catherine), or to avoid addressing Christ directly as God (as occurred in Advent), or to downplay the kingship of Christ over societies and governments (as with the reinvention of Christ the King).
The list goes on and on, as Lauren Pristas, Anthony Cekada, and other authors have shown. Here, my purpose is more modest: I will focus on texts that mention hell, and we will see how they have fared in the time between the 1962 Missale Romanum and its intended replacement of less than a decade later.
The most obvious and eloquent testimony to the Church’s doctrine about the Four Last Things (death, judgment, heaven, and hell, as well as their adjunct, purgatory) is the traditional Requiem Mass, which was prayed in the Latin Rite for so many centuries unchanged and is still used wherever the Latin Mass flourishes.
The Requiem Mass organically developed in such a way that there is a balance in its texts between, on the one hand, consolation and confidence in heaven, and, on the other hand, the fear of punishment with prayers for the rescuing of the soul from hell. It is simply catholic in this regard, taking into account the fullness of Gospel teaching about the afterlife.
Needless to say, all of these texts must be recited or sung at every Requiem Mass — nothing is “optional,” just as neither are death, judgment, and an eternal destiny of bliss or pain.
The Requiem is certainly not lacking in consoling or confident prayers. Look at the Introit, the Epistle
(1 Thess 4:13–18), the Gradual
(Ps 111:7), the Gospel
(John 11:21–27), the Secret, the Communion, and the Postcommunion: all of these ask for a merciful pardon and eternal rest, and express confidence that the soul with faith in Christ “will be in everlasting remembrance” and “not fear the evil hearing” (Gradual). The Tract seems to waver between light and darkness:
Absolve, O Lord, the souls of all the faithful departed from every bond of sin: and by the help of Thy grace, may they be enabled to escape the avenging judgment and enjoy the happiness of light eternal.
The Sequence, the famous “Dies Irae,” gives free rein to terrifying and trembling truths:
The day of wrath, that awful day, shall reduce the world to ashes, as David and the Sibyl prophesied. How great will be the terror, when the Judge shall come to examine all things rigorously! … The written book shall be brought forth, containing all for which the world must be judged.
When, therefore, the Judge shall be seated, whatsoever is hidden shall be brought to light, naught shall remain unpunished. What then shall I, unhappy man, allege? Whom shall I invoke as protector, when even the just shall hardly be secure? O King of awful majesty, who of Thy free gift savest them that are to be saved, save me, O fount of mercy! …
My prayers are not worthy, but Thou who art good, grant in Thy kindness that I may not burn in the everlasting fire. Give me a place among Thy sheep and separate me from the goats, setting me on Thy right side. When the reprobate, covered with confusion, shall have been sentenced to the cruel flames, call me with the blessed.
The Offertory continues in a similar vein:
O Lord Jesus Christ, King of glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell and the bottomless pit. Deliver them from the jaws of the lion, that hell not swallow them up, that they be not plunged into darkness. but let the holy standard-bearer Michael lead them into that holy light,
R. which once Thou didst promise to Abraham and to his seed.
V. Lord, we offer unto Thee sacrifices of praise and prayers; accept them on behalf of those whom we remember this day: Lord, make them pass from death to life,
R. which Thou once promised to Abraham and to his seed.[1]
Perhaps most telling of all is the Collect appointed for the day of death or burial:
O God, whose property is ever to have mercy and to spare, we humbly entreat Thee on behalf of thy servant N., whom Thou hast bidden this day to pass out of this world, that Thou wouldst not deliver him into the hands of the enemy, nor forget him forever, but command that he be taken up by Thy holy angels and borne to the fatherland of paradise; that as he put his hope and faith in Thee, he will not suffer the pains of hell, but may possess everlasting joys.
These are strong prayers that deal unabashedly with the gaping jaws of hell and the possibility that we may be consumed by them for unrepented sins.
The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church; but they may very well prevail against you or me. Such a liturgy presents the whole of the Catholic Faith. Once again: lex orandi, lex credendi. We believe as we pray. And what we do not pray, we will sooner or later cease to believe — it will be replaced by ersatz doctrine of dubious pedigree.
A wholesome recognition of eternal consequences may be seen in any number of places in the traditional Roman missal. Here is the Collect for the feast of St. Nicholas on December 6:
O God, who didst adorn the blessed Bishop Nicholas with countless miracles: grant, we beseech Thee, that by his merits and prayers we may be delivered from the flames of hell.
(In the Novus Ordo, this has been tamed into: “We humbly implore your mercy, Lord: protect us in all dangers through the prayers of the Bishop Saint Nicholas, that the way of salvation may lie open before us.”)
The Friday of Passion Week includes this galvanizing Collect:
Mercifully pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts: that we who restrain ourselves from sin by voluntary chastisement may rather suffer for a time than be condemned to eternal punishment.
The Collect for the Mass of Maundy Thursday speaks with clarity about the fate of Judas:
O God, from whom Judas received the punishment of his guilt, and the thief the reward of his confession: grant unto us the full fruit of Thy clemency; that even as in His Passion our Lord Jesus Christ gave to each retribution according to his merits, so having cleared away our former guilt, he may bestow on us the grace of His resurrection.
The Second Sunday after Easter prays in its Collect:
O God, who, by the humility of Thy Son, hast lifted up a fallen world, grant unending joy to Thy faithful; that those whom Thou hast snatched from the perils of endless death, Thou mayest cause to enjoy never-ending delights.
The Third Sunday after Pentecost offers one of those magnificent Collects that says so much in so few words, and can be prayed with fervor by anyone who has the slightest self-knowledge:
O God, the protector of all that trust in Thee, without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy, multiply Thy mercies upon us: that having Thee for our ruler and guide, we may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not those which are eternal.
Of course, the only Eucharistic Prayer ever used in the
usus antiquior is the 6th-century Roman Canon, which forthrightly implores the Divine Majesty:
We beseech Thee, O Lord, to be appeased and accept this oblation of our service, as also of Thy whole family, and to dispose our days in Thy peace, snatch us from eternal damnation, and count us in the flock of Thine elect.
In addition, one could cite pertinent verses from the Sequences Stabat Mater and Lauda Sion, which, while still given as options in the Novus Ordo, are generally skipped over, due to length; they are, as usual, required in the old Latin Mass on certain days of the year.
Gentle reader, would you believe me if I said that
none of the foregoing liturgical texts have survived the liturgical reform? But it is true.
In some cases, the texts were removed altogether and can be found nowhere in the new books. In other cases, certain texts (such as the Offertory of the Requiem) can be found in a recondite and rarely-used book like the Graduale Romanum, or tucked away as a fourteenth option somewhere, but in practice they have disappeared from the life of the Church. The only place they thrive is where they are front and center as a required part of her public worship, namely, in communities that avail themselves of the traditional liturgy.
Beyond such prayers, hell is mentioned many times each year in the Gospel readings of the traditional Latin Mass, which, thankfully, retains the ancient one-year cycle of readings, rather than the gargantuan off-rhythm two- and three-year cycles of the Novus Ordo.
In the
usus antiquior, the solemn pronouncement of Our Lord in chapter 12 of the Gospel of St. Luke —
“I say to you, my friends: Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will shew you whom you shall fear: fear ye him, who after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say to you, fear him” — is read at least four times in the year, namely, for the feast of St. Justin Martyr (April 14), SS. John and Paul (June 26), the Holy Maccabees (August 1), and SS. Tiburtius and Susanna (August 11), as well as any other time the common of several martyrs might be used.
In comparison, this passage is read once every other year in the Novus Ordo.
The parallel passage in chapter 10 of the Gospel of St. Matthew —
“And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell” — is read for four feasts, those of St. Polycarp (January 26), St. Cyril of Jerusalem (March 18), St. Athanasius (May 2), and St. Irenaeus (July 3). In the Novus Ordo, it is read on one Saturday each year, and one Sunday every third year.
Matthew 5:22,
“Whosoever shall say, Thou Fool, shall be in danger of hell fire,” is part of the Gospel on the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost. In the Novus Ordo, this fortunately appears two weekdays per year, and one Sunday every third year.
The pericope of Matthew 18:1–10, which includes these haunting words—
Woe to the world because of scandals. For it must needs be that scandals come: but nevertheless woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh. And if thy hand, or thy foot scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee to go into life maimed or lame, than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thy eye scandalize thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. It is better for thee having one eye to enter into life, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.
— is read at least twice each year in the
usus antiquior, namely, for the Dedication of St. Michael Archangel (September 29) and the Holy Guardian Angels (October 2).
In the Novus Ordo, astonishingly, these verses are never read at all: the “friendly” verses 1–5, 10, and 12–14 are read a number of times, but the above-cited verses about hell-fire are excised. Too scary, I guess.
If I have done the math correctly, over a three-year period, one who attends the traditional Latin Mass daily will hear these particular hell-mentioning Gospels 33 times, while one who attends the Novus Ordo will hear them 13 times.[2] Obviously, there are a lot of other factors one would need to take into account for a full comparison of the presentation of the four last things in both forms of the Roman Rite, a project that exceeds the purpose of this article.
Nevertheless, the comparison just given already exposes the kind of deep differences in
lex orandi that I am claiming are relevant for understanding the confusion of our times in doctrine (
lex credendi) and morals (
lex vivendi).[3]
We have seen that the traditional liturgy prays for the living and the dead in a realistic manner and instructs us accordingly,
emphasizing the mercy of God and the attainability of eternal life but not neglecting the Lord’s “avenging judgment” and the real possibility of damnation.
Traditional liturgy inculcates in us a lively awareness of our weakness and dependency on grace, the gravity of sin, the need for penance and asceticism, and the fundamental role that fear of the Lord must play in our interior life. The basic attitude of the worshiper is the one praised by the Psalmist:
“Serve ye the Lord in fear, and rejoice before Him with trembling” (Ps 2:11).[4]
Instructed by the Mass of the Ages and other liturgical texts,[5] we believe that
(a) not everyone automatically goes to heaven,
(b) there is an almighty, all-knowing, all-just Judge who will scrutinize our works and give us what we ourselves have sought in our choices — whether glory or shame, beatitude or damnation;
(c) the departed soul desperately needs our prayers because we wish them to be released from the agonies of purgatory, and one of the ways that happens is when members of the Church Militant offer prayers and penances for the dead.
Our actions in this life have eternal consequences, for good or for ill. One of those actions we must discern is whether we are living right now in accordance with the commandments of God, especially the Ten Commandments. This is not an optional examination of conscience for the extra-pious but a required examination for every human being who has reached the use of reason.
In other words, no one may excuse himself before the Judge by saying: “I didn’t know I was supposed to examine my conscience on whether or not I was adhering to the Ten Commandments.” There are some things no one can be blamed for not knowing if they were never told, but there are other things — the natural moral law, in particular — that we are obliged to know and are capable of knowing.
Moreover, the Catholic, having examined his conscience in this manner, must make a discernment about whether he is in a state of sanctifying grace, that he may approach the heavenly Banquet to receive the wounded and glorified Flesh of the Savior. This, after all, is the teaching of no less an authority that the Apostle St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:27–29:
Whosoever shall eat this bread, or drink of the chalice of the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the Body and of the Blood of the Lord. But let a man prove himself; and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of the chalice. For he that eatheth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself, not discerning the Body of the Lord.
But these verses, too, have been entirely omitted from the Novus Ordo. One begins to detect a pattern in all of this. The frightening fact, ladies and gentlemen, is that the Novus Ordo systematically downplays the reality of hell.[6]
The virtual disappearance of certain liturgical prayers and readings, and the significant reduction of others, is surely part of the reason, arguably the principal reason, that today’s Catholics are inclined to hold both universal salvation AND an “everyone is welcome” attitude about who may receive Holy Communion. The one view fits the other hand-in-glove.
The Amoris Laetitia debacle can be solved only when there is a broad return to traditional (i.e., Catholic) teaching on all of these subjects. The restoration of this teaching depends for its penetration, efficacy, and longevity on zealous adherence to traditional liturgies (Eastern and Western) where they already flourish, and their complete restoration wherever they do not. As far away as this goal seems, we must never tire of pursuing it, for the bond that unites the lex orandi, the lex credendi, and the lex vivendi is intrinsic, indissoluble, and inevitable.
NOTES
[1] Incidentally, the great antiquity of this Offertory is evident in a number of features. First, it preserves the form of a responsory, which was the original form of all the offertory antiphons. As time went on, the other offertory chants were shortened, but this one always remained in full. (The original verses for other Offertory chants are available in the Offertoriale published by Solesmes.) Second, its Old Testament resonances are characteristic of the classic prayer of the Roman Church, in particular the mention of the promise to Abraham and to his seed (i.e., Christ, as St. Paul teaches in Galatians), and the use of the phrase “sacrifice of praise,” which is how the 6th-century Roman Canon describes the Eucharistic oblation. We are peering here into the very heart of the Roman Catholic liturgy.
[2] The numbers I am adding together are (4+4+4)+(4+4+4)+(1+1+1)+(2+2+2) for the usus antiquior Gospels, and (1+0+1)+(1+1+2)+(2+2+3)+(0+0+0) for the Novus Ordo.
[3] The ideal study aid for this question is Matthew P. Hazell’s Index Lectionum: A Comparative Table of Readings for the Ordinary and Extraordinary Forms of the Roman Rite (Lectionary Study Press, 2016). My Foreword to this volume goes into a number of other disturbing aspects of the revised lectionary. Recently I wrote about the significance of the fact that the Gospel of the wedding feast at Cana is read every year in the traditional Mass (Second Sunday after Epiphany) but only once every three years in the Novus Ordo (Second Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C).
[4] St. Augustine comments on this verse: “Serve the Lord with fear", lest what is said, You kings and judges of the earth, turn into pride. "nd rejoice with trembling" - Very excellently is rejoice added, lest serve the Lord with fear should seem to tend to misery. But again, lest this same rejoicing should run on to unrestrained inconsiderateness, there is added with trembling, that it might avail for a warning, and for the careful guarding of holiness.”
[5] Such as the Athanasian Creed Quicumque vult, whose opening words are like a throwing-down of the gauntlet to indifferentism and universalism: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.”
[6] We often see the same thing in the dumbed-down versions of traditional prayers that are used in many catechism classes today. I came across an Act of Contrition in a CCD classroom that read more or less as follows: “My Lord, I am sorry for my sins. Help me to live like Jesus and to love everyone I meet. Amen.” A prayer of this sort does not adequately express either perfect or imperfect contrition. Contrast it with one of the traditional versions of the Act of Contrition: “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all of my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because these sins have offended Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace, to do penance, to sin no more, and to amend my life. Amen.”
The 50-year descent to Footnote 351:
Our progressive desensitization
to the Most Holy Eucharist
by Peter Kwasniewski
January 10, 2018
We did not wake up one fine day in 2017 to find ourselves suddenly confronted with Eucharistic sacrilege being promoted from on high. There was a long, slow process that led to this moment.
It consisted in the gradual dilution of the sacredness of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and of the Blessed Sacrament at its heart, with institutionally tolerated sacrilege along the way. Fifty years of desacralization has ended in the temerity of contradicting the entire Catholic tradition about the most holy of all the Church’s mysteries.
The first major step was the allowance of communion in the hand while standing — a sharp break from the deeply-ingrained practice of many centuries of kneeling in adoration at the altar rail and receiving on the tongue, like a baby bird being fed by its parent (as we see in countless medieval depictions of the pelican that has wounded her breast in order to feed her chicks).
This change had the obvious effect of making people think the Holy Eucharist wasn’t so mysterious and holy after all. If you can just take it in your hand like ordinary food, it might as well be a potato chip distributed at a party.[1]
The feeling of awe and reverence towards the Blessed Sacrament was systematically diminished and undermined through this modernist re-introduction of an ancient practice that had long since been discontinued by the Church in her pastoral wisdom. Nor, as has been well documented, did the faithful themselves request the abolition of the custom of receiving on the tongue while kneeling; it was imposed by the self-styled “experts.”[2]
The second major step was the allowance of lay ministers of communion. This reinforced the perception that the Church had given up all that stuff about the priest being essentially different from the laity, about the Mass as a divine sacrifice and the Eucharist as the Bread of Angels that only anointed hands are fit to handle. True, a priest still had to say the magic words, but after that, Jack and Jill could come up, take bowls and cups, and hand out the tokens of club membership.
The effect of these “reforms” and others like them (the replacement of majestic and mysterious Latin with everyday vernacular; the substitution of guitar and piano ditties for pipe organ and chant; the turning around of the priest to face the people like a talkshow ;host; the removal of altar rails, the de-centering
[more like a displacement or banishment] of tabernacle,; the uglification of vestments and vessels, and more) was to weaken and corrupt the faith of the people in the Mass as a true and proper sacrifice and in the Eucharist as the true Body and Blood of Jesus.
No wonder that after this, the idea of the Eucharistic fast, and of preparing oneself for communion by going to confession, went right out the window for the vast majority of people.
The Church’s own pastors didn’t act as if they really believed these things anymore, so why should their flocks?
In short, we have lived through, and suffered under, half a century of ritual diminishment and symbolic contradiction of the Church’s faith in the sublime mysteries of the Body and Blood of Christ. As John Paul II and Benedict XVI lamented, there is
scant evidence in our communities of any awareness of the distinction between worthy and unworthy communions — one of the most basic lessons children used to be taught in their catechism class.
Children in those primitive “pre-Vatican II days” were taught to practice virtue and avoid mortal sin because they should desire to be able to receive the Lord and be ever more perfectly united to Him, until they reached the glory of heaven where they would possess Him forever.
- They were taught that if one received the Lord in a state of mortal sin, one committed a further and a worse sin.
- They were taught that making a good confession, with sorrow for sin and an intention to avoid it in future, was enough to put this bad situation right and restore them to God’s friendship.
Who could seriously assert that most Catholics believe any of this today, or that they would even recognize, much less understand, the concepts?[3]
Today, at least in certain Western countries, nearly everyone goes up for communion when the time comes. It’s just “what you do at Mass.” Hardly anyone goes to confession; hardly anyone refrains from receiving, out of a consciousness of sin; and rare is the priest who ever preaches about having the right dispositions for communion. (Contrast this with St. John Vianney, who preached relentlessly about these things, and greatly intensified his parish’s commitment to the sacrament of confession and to frequent communion. It’s not for nothing that he’s the patron saint of parish priests. Patrons are meant to be imitated.)
Thus was the ground devilishly prepared for the final stage, in which any impediments to communion are theoretically and practically dissolved. In a general situation where the few Catholics who still attend Mass all receive, it would seem cruel and unusual punishment to single out a handful of so-called “divorced and remarried” people for special treatment: “You are not allowed to go to communion, but meanwhile, the self-abusing and fornicating teens, the contracepting couples, the families who sometimes skip Sunday Mass for sports events — all are welcome to come forward, as usual!”
This is the big picture that explains, to my mind,
why the liberals or progressives in the Church are totally incapable of seeing why anyone would object to chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia with its nuclear footnote.[4]
- They do not really believe that the Mass is a true and proper sacrifice of Jesus Christ to the Most Holy Trinity;
- they do not really believe in transubstantiation and the Real Presence;
- they do not believe that one is eating and drinking the flesh and blood of God;
- they do not believe that one who eats and drinks unworthily is eating and drinking his own condemnation, just as those who eat worthily are seeding their souls and bodies for a glorious resurrection.
The Amorites, as we might call them, see “the Eucharist” as a fraternal gathering, a social event, an affirmation of human worth, a “celebration” of God’s “unconditional love,” and whatever other Hallmark slogans come to mind.
Within the confines of this horizontal and superficial theology, there is no room for any requirements or prohibitions: everyone is welcome, and anything goes! Since the Eucharist is a meal symbolizing God’s welcome of the sinner, there is no reason to exclude anyone, for any reason, from partaking of the “table of plenty.”
Amoris Laetitia fits into this larger historical trajectory whereby the Mass has been stripped of its transcendent, mysterious, fearful and challenging sacrificial realism and pushed continually in the direction of an ordinary meal with ordinary folks doing ordinary things for a this-worldly end,[5]
with a forced spontaneity and embarrassing banality that has failed to attract the overflow crowds predicted by Paul VI.
At such a Mass, is there anything to do but receive communion?
Who would ever think of going just for the sake of adoring God and contemplating His beauty? Opportunities and incentives for adoration are practically non-existent in the Novus Ordo, and beauty has fared no better, or rather much worse. In such circumstances, to place a barrier between a free meal and a guest who thinks well of himself for being there is unthinkable.[6]
In truth, the Mass is the unbloody sacrifice of the Cross, made present in our midst; it is simultaneously the heavenly life-giving wedding feast of the now-glorified Christ. The Eucharist is the sacrament of the one-flesh union of a bride adorned with grace and a Bridegroom who is her sole happiness.
I am not surprised to find that, at traditional Latin Masses around the world, including in the United States, one sees two related phenomena: a large number of the faithful availing themselves of confession, before and during Mass; and a fair number of the faithful who remain in the pews and do not go forward for communion. The interior triumphs of the one, the interior trials of the other, are known to God alone.
But this much is obvious: they all came to worship Him. They came in response to His majesty. They came to fulfill a solemn obligation of the virtue of religion. Whether they are personally disposed to receive or not is a question at a different level. This is the sanity that prevails in the realm of tradition; it is the sanity that paves the way for sanctity.
NOTES
[1] In a moving scene in Robert Hugh Benson’s novel By What Authority?, we read the following about the character Isabel’s experience of a Calvinist communion service: “The mahogany table had been brought down from the eastern wall to beneath the cupola, and stood there with a large white cloth, descending almost to the ground on every side; and a row of silver vessels, flat plates and tall new Communion cups and flagons, shone upon it. … The three ministers had communicated by now; and there was a rustle and clatter of feet as the empty seats in front, hung with houselling cloths, began to be filled.” Isabel sees some people receive kneeling, others standing. And all this at a ceremony of Protestants who expressly denied the Real Presence and the sacrificial nature of the Mass".
[2] There is an obvious difference between an original practice, such as early Christians receiving in the hand, and a later re-introduction of such a practice when it has long since become obsolete. In the former case, the practice is innocent. In the latter case, it amounts to a repudiation and a symbolic contradiction of the values represented by kneeling before the host and not handling it oneself.
[3] Msgr. Benson wrote this about his Anglican days: “I was an official in a church that did not seem to know her own mind, even in matters directly connected with the salvation of the soul.… Might I, or might I not, tell my penitents that they are bound to confess their mortal sins before Communion? … The smallest Roman Catholic child knew precisely how to be reconciled to God, and to receive His grace…” (A City Set on a Hill). Does not this Anglican’s description of the problem in his own communion sound frightfully close to what may be found today in the Roman Catholic Church?
[4] Or perhaps we should say footnotes, since there are several that are severely problematic.
[5] It is consistent with the love-blind embrace of the United Nations and the “Greenpeace” environmentalism of Laudato Si’.
[6] We can begin to see the magnitude of the sea change if we imagine what it would have been like had the Kasper Proposal been floated in 1965 —the last year in which we can arguably say that we still had an integral and authentic Roman Rite throughout the entire Church (albeit already orphaned of its opening and closing prayers).
There would have been stunned incredulity and righteous indignation. The proposal wouldn’t have lasted longer than a lit match. No churchman in his right mind would have countenanced it. Progressives today attack traditionalists equally for our love of the traditional liturgy, our dogmatic intransigence, and our commitment to objective morality. They are right see a deep and abiding connection between these things — a connection neatly summed up as lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. [We pray as we believe and as we live.]
The following reflection by Aldo Maria Valli extends the scope of Kwasniewski's essays to the general situation in the Church today. As I have consistently done since 2005, all Biblical translations in English come from the USCCB's New American Bible, revised edition.
'The time will come when people
will no longer tolerate sound doctrine...'
Translated from
January 15, 2018
For various reasons, these days I have been re-reading the Second Letter of Paul to Timothy and I must say that I was surprised by the actuality of its contents. I would even say the surprise was lightning-like. Besides the problems of attribution, into which I shall not enter,
the letter is striking for how it succeeds to describe the sufferings faced by the authentic followers of Jesus and for the clarity with which it indicates the duty to fight against present errors of the faith and prepare to fight those in the future.
There are two passages usually most cited from the Second Letter to Timothy: that in which Paul underscores the importance of transmitting the faith in the family, thanks to the women, above all (“I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and that I am confident lives also in you” and that in which the apostle, in the sunset of his life, strikes a balance sheet that every Christian would wish to share: “I have competed well; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith."
These two passages alone justify reading and rereading this epistle. But here is yet another passage which, in a few strokes, paints a picture in which we can recognie the situation of the faith today:
"For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths”.
And what ought to be done with false teachers and their myths?
“Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard this rich trust with the help of the holy Spirit that dwells within us.”
So you see, there is a confrontation here. On the one hand, false words, peddled as true by those who are really peddling myths to please their listeners. On the other hand, there are the authentic words that must be taken as a model because they come from the teachings of the masters who speak because they have found the truth and have experienced it.
One must get into this confrontation with courage, without being conditioned by questions of opportunity or fear.
“God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control. So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me, a prisoner for his sake; but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” Confrontation brings suffering – that is inevitable. But we are not alone.
I was also struck by the pairing of love and power. The Spirit of Power and the Spirit of Love are one and the same. And it has nothing to do with a saccharine and sentimental idea of love, to which current preaching exhorting to solidariltiy and mass brotherhood has accustomed us.
St Paul writes from prison, as so often happens to those who defend the truth aganst the assaults of the sophisticated. He is therefore ‘in chains’, like a criminal, because those who serve lies and falsehood overturn reality.
“But the word of God is unchained”. No one can silence the word of God. And what is this word we may be sure of? It is that “Jesus Christ, descendant of David, arose from the dead! Such is my gospel, for which I am suffering, even to the point of chains, like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained”. This is the central mystery of our faith, which is never sufficiently believed nor announced enough.
It is certain that
“If we have died with him, we shall also live with him; if we persevere, we shall also reign with him.
But if we deny him, he will deny us. If we are unfaithful, he remains faithful, for he cannot deny himself”.
Here we have everything that matters. And that is why we are also urged to remember ‘these things’:
“Stop disputing about words. This serves no useful purpose since it harms those who listen.”
It is an invitation to essentiality, to concentrate on that which is truly fundamental. And what could be more important than divine judgment?
“Be eager to present yourself as acceptable to God, a workman who causes no disgrace, imparting the word of truth without deviation. Avoid profane, idle talk, for such people will become more and more godless” but not forgetting that “their teaching [false teachers] will spread like gangrene”.
So the task is quite clear. But there is also a strategy to respect, and it is clearly described:
“A slave of the Lord should not quarrel, but should be gentle with everyone, able to teach, tolerant, correcting opponents with kindness. It may be that God will grant them repentance that leads to knowledge of the truth, and that they may return to their senses out of the devil’s snare, where they are entrapped by him, for his will.”
What is there to add to that? Any poor comment I make will only spoil those statements.
“But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days,” St. Paul warns at one point.
“People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power. Reject them!”
I am not an exegete and I apologzie to the experts in Sacred Scripture. I only wished to share some of the feelings and houghts elicited in me by the Second etter to Timothy.
Before I close, allow me to quote from the homily of Benedict XVI on June 28, 2008, at the first Vespers for the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul at the opening of the Pauline Year:
In a world in which falsehood is powerful, the truth is paid for with suffering. The one who desires to avoid suffering, to keep it at bay, keeps life itself and its greatness at bay; he cannot be a servant of truth and thus a servant of faith. There is no love without suffering - without the suffering of renouncing oneself, of the transformation and purification of self for true freedom.
[I take the liberty of adding the statements that follow, which are the conclusion of the homily:
Where there is nothing worth suffering for, even life loses its value. The Eucharist - the center of our Christian being - is founded on Jesus's sacrifice for us; it is born from the suffering of love which culminated in the Cross. We live by this love that gives itself. It gives us the courage and strength to suffer with Christ and for him in this world, knowing that in this very way our life becomes great and mature and true.
In the light of all St Paul's Letters, we see how the prophecy made to Ananias at the time of Paul's call came true in the process of teaching the Gentiles: "I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name". His suffering made him credible as a teacher of truth who did not seek his own advantage, his own glory or his personal satisfaction, but applied himself for the sake of the One who loved us and has given himself for us all.
I have remarked on it before, but I note with gratitude and satisfaction everytime it happens, that Valli, since he came to face the truth about Pope Francis after Amoris Laetitia, has been very consistent in quoting Benedict XVI as sort of his final word to close any essay he writes with a primarily spiritual or religious theme.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/01/2018 02:39]