Gerald Augustinus, of The Cafeteria is Closed, made me aware of the following:

The Bishop of Linz (Austria) didn’t give Communion to a Lutheran pastor present at Mass. News? Apparently.

Said the Lutheran pastor:

I was not surprised, because the bishop cannot act differently, if he wants to follow canon law. Personally, he might have been able to act differently, but in order to do that he would have had to ‘jump over his shadow’ [roughly, ‘get over himself’]. It was painful to see what the situation is like when push comes to shove.

And the local newspaper wrote:

Of course the bishop acted correctly, when he denied the host. But faith is much more than rules of conduct. Love of one’s neighbor, tolerance, understanding, tact. Bishop Schwarz lacked all that. He could have performed an act of humanity, instead he came out for faithfulness to Rome. Between that lie worlds.

Sigh. Ignorance — regarding the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist — is rampant, but it is far from bliss!

According to the doctrine of the Faith, only Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox are allowed to receive Communion in a Catholic Mass because they are the only ones who continuously believe in the Transubstantiation and the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Congrats to the Bishop of Linz for sticking to his guns!

Recently, a news report highlighted the growing surge in religious vocations — specifically, Catholic nuns.

This is a small but important sign that the pendulum is starting to swing back. The past forty years are now appreciated for what they were: a period of disorientation and uninspired experimentation that has predominantly been injurious to the Church. Now, under the direction of our venerable pope Benedict XVI, we are headed back to orthodoxy and tradition.

May God bless all the religious. May He keep them holy, keep them firmly rooted in the Faith and true to her great Traditions. May He inspire more people to serve as priests, monks, nuns or in other vocations. And may He fill the seminaries and the ranks of bishops with orthodox traditionalists who will protect our Church and effectively share the glory of her treasures with all the world. Amen.

For more information about religious vocations and discernment, click here.

As mentioned in a previous post, conservatives in the worldwide Anglican church have protested some of the immorality and unorthodoxy pervasive in the Anglican church, and in particular, in the American Episcopal branch. Specific debate surrounded the issues of women priests, homosexual priests and gay marriage. The feud resulted in many Anglican provinces (especially in Africa) threatening expulsion of the Episcopal church from the Anglican communion, or possibly a return of the orthodox Anglican church to Rome.

After much heated debate, the Anglican church decided to ‘work things out’ internally, by way of an international congress.

First Things now reports that the American Episcopal Church’s House of Bishops released a logorrheic statement of several thousand words, which for all intents and purposes, tells the worldwide Anglican church to go to… well, to go to Hell. In defiance of all threats that their actions would lead to schism within the Anglican order, the Episcopalian bishops flatly rejected participating in a ‘Pastoral Council’ that would be designed to reestablish orthodoxy within the church — or at least create a ‘church within a church’ for conservatives. With breathtaking arrogance, they effectively announced that “what it means to be Anglican, what it means to be in communion with Canterbury, what it means to be a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church and hold to the historic Christian faith — that all of this is to be decided solely by the democratic vote of clergy and laypeople once every two years in a Marriott hotel convention room, with reference to nothing and nobody”.

After telling the rest of the world off, the Episcopalian bishops then have the audacity to say it’s everyone else’s fault:

The bishops’ third resolution is a long, churlish, and supercilious explanation of their actions, nominally addressed as a statement to their own American church but really meant as a jab at the rest of the Anglican world. With an assumed innocence that by this time ought to convince no one, the bishops proclaim the “deep longing of their hearts” to remain within the Anglican Communion, while feigning surprise at the notion that their continued defiance of the rest of that communion might somehow be a problem.

Stunningly, rather than admit that the Episcopal Church’s actions may perhaps have had something to do with the crisis that has nearly driven the entire communion off a cliff, the bishops actually point the finger of blame at the primates, who, the bishops allege, in their attempt to set boundaries and work with the Episcopal Church to provide a safe space for conservatives, are in fact encouraging “one of the worst tendencies of our Western culture, which is to break relationships when we find them difficult instead of doing the hard work necessary to repair them.”

And so we see that arrogance — the root of all evil — is not limited to the American bishops of the Catholic Church, but shared in full force by their Episcopalian brothers, too.

What is to come of this has yet to be seen: Despite its harsh words, the Episcopal church has not exactly declared its independence from the Anglican church; to the contrary, it is refusing to be expelled. Will the African provinces secede? Will the orthodox remnant return to Rome?

From Reuters, 25 March 2007:

Vatican City (Reuters) — Pope Benedict, speaking as the European Union marked its 50th anniversary without a mention of its religious heritage, said a society that lacks a Christian conscience will end up failing.

The Pope’s comments came a day after he lambasted the European Union for not mentioning God and Europe’s Christian roots in declarations marking its founding.

“A society in which the Christian conscience does not live anymore loses direction, does not know anymore where to go, ends up empty and bankrupt,” the Pope told parish elders on Sunday.

Such a conscience was needed to promote justice and a sense of responsibility among one another, he said.

The remarks came as the European Union celebrated its 50th birthday in a Berlin ceremony that included unveiling a broad, aspirational “Berlin Declaration” that left out mention of religion or the continent’s Christian roots.

But EU leaders like German Chancellor Angela Merkel — who unveiled Sunday’s declaration — as well as Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, reaffirmed their support for its inclusion in a new EU treaty they want adopted by 2009.

Prodi told reporters on Sunday that he had unsuccessfully fought for the inclusion of Christian roots in an amendment that he hoped would be accepted by countries like France that have historically opposed the move. But positions on the matter have not changed, and were unlikely to do so in the future, he said.

Merkel appeared equally pessimistic that any reference would be included in a new treaty, but said people should be allowed to express their personal views on the matter.

“What the result will be, I can’t say,” Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant pastor, told a news conference. “I am realistic and that means not so optimistic.”

The Pope made his displeasure over the matter clear in a strongly worded speech on Saturday, saying excluding values that helped forge its very soul meant Europe was committing a form of apostasy — a total desertion of one’s religion — and doubting its own identity.

The Pope, like his predecessor John Paul, often calls for including God and Christianity in the European Constitution. Plans to put a reference to Europe’s Christian roots in a previous EU constitutional treaty were blocked by French
President Jacques Chirac.

Christ fell three times beneath the cross. He also got up three times. We fall all the time. The whole human race fell in its first generation. The Fall of Man is misery writ large. What matters for our eternal happiness is that we get up again. So a great saint said, oblivious to his own sanctity: “Not all the saints started well, but they finished well.”

The Fourth Sunday of Lent is a chance to reflect on progress and stumbles, to make an inventory of body and soul, and to get up again and start again. We are not the ones to judge if we are making progress. Only God can judge that. But it is sufficient to say that we don’t stay down. Discouragement is a chief strategy of the Prince of Lies. He plays on human pride in two ways, alternating between the presumptuous posture that thinks we are doing fine and the defeatest posture that assumes we are hopeless. The fable of the tortoise and the hare is a pleasant pagan analogy of this. Aesop told it some six centuries before St. Paul spoke of enduring the race, and the word he uses for the race, agonizomai, is the Greek word for contest which we dramatize into our term agony. St. Paul is quite cheerful about it, really, and what he emphasizes is that there is hope of a great victory, provided we realize that the spiritual journey is more like a marathon than a sprint. In fact, people who only sprint in life’s journey will enjoy an occasional spiritual “rush,” but they will be disappointed in time of trial.

The Four Sunday is called Lætare because, like Gaudete Sunday in Advent, it is provided to encourage the runner not to give up. “Rejoice, Jerusalem.” The penitential tone is lessened, and a hint of the Resurrection seeps in. As Abelard wrote,

Now, in the meanwhile, with hearts raised on high,
We for that country must yearn and must sigh,
Seeking Jerusalem, dear native land,
Through our long exile on Babylon’s strand.

One recently read of a television personality who deals with bouts of depression by hanging upside down. Sometimes the same people who do that sort of thing mock the Church’s precepts for mortifying the senses. Hanging upside down may actually be helpful for the bones and the brain — I do not know. But it seems to me more fitting for bats than for saints. St. Peter was crucified upside down, but not because he was depressed. His was a joy that is promised to all those who follow the Lord.

Wherefore seeing we are also compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily besets us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. (Hebrews 12:1)

Rumor has it that Pope Benedict XVI — against the opposition of many — is preparing to release a motu proprio allowing wider celebration of the traditional (Tridentine) Mass. (Note: A motu proprio, literally “by his own decision”, is a papal document that is released not on the advice of cardinals or advisors, but by the pope himself for reasons which he personally deems sufficient.)

Over the past 40 years, there has been much opposition to the preservation (in the 1960s) and restoration (today, in the wake of Vatican II deconstruction) of the traditional Mass on all fronts: from poor, misled souls who thought the changes might help the Church; from the modern generation which has been deprived of the beauty of the traditional Mass and thus doesn’t know any better; and by Satan and the devils who have infiltrated the ranks of priests, bishops and cardinals.

Truly, the state of the post-conciliar Church has been a dismal one — The timeless poetry of the traditional liturgy was replaced with insipid modernist prose, political correctness and inclusive language. Ethereal and inspiring sacred music has been supplanted by hippie music and top-40, popular anthems. The priest has been demasculated, and his role degraded from holy intermediary to mere master of ceremony. Churches were eviscerated — their gorgeous altars ripped out and substituted with tables; carpeting covering marble floors; modern art replacing the treasures of the Renaissance. Tabernacles have been removed from their central place of worship and hidden in side altars, or even in different rooms. With the tabernacles went people’s belief in Transubstantiation and the true presence of Christ in the eucharist, altogether. Consequently, Communion rails have been removed, and people now line-up in processions to receive Communion in the hand instead of in genuflection. (Mother Teresa said that, of all the things she encountered in the world, what made her the saddest was watching people take Communion in the hand!) As respect for the Eucharist and belief in the True Presence faded, less than 10% of Catholics ‘feel the need’ to go to Confession, although 90% in attendance receive Communion (usually from some lay ‘Eucharistic ministers’). And the changes continue… Altar girls outnumber altar boys. An ‘alternative’ doctrine (”God is motherly,” anyone?) became the norm at many Catholic seminaries, which chose liberal and homosexual (or homosexuality-tolerant) candidates over any traditionalist. The Church today continues to reap what it has sown: ‘Cafeteria Catholicism’, pedophilia, homosexuality, lawsuits, closing of churches, abuses of the liturgy, irreverence during the Mass and in the sacred space of the Church, decline in Mass attendance, increasing divorce rates (the rate of divorce among Catholics is equal to that of non-Catholics) and unjustified ‘annulments’, rampant abortion, etc., etc., etc.

Recently, Archbishop Ranjith Patabendige, the present secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship, has called for a candid acknowledgment that liturgical changes since Vatican II have not achieved expected goals of the Fathers of the Council: “Undoubtedly, there have been positive results… but the negative effects seem to have been greater, causing much disorientation in our ranks.”

But even as early as 1972, Pope Paul VI, face-to-face with the dire consequences of the second Vatican council, admitted (speaking in the stylistic third-person),

Riferendosi alla situazione della Chiesa di oggi, il Santo Padre afferma di avere la sensazione che « da qualche fessura sia entrato il fumo di Satana nel tempio di Dio ». C’è il dubbio, l’incertezza, la problematica, l’inquietudine, l’insoddisfazione, il confronto. Non ci si fida più della Chiesa; […] Si credeva che dopo il Concilio sarebbe venuta una giornata di sole per la storia della Chiesa. È venuta invece una giornata di nuvole, di tempesta, di buio, di ricerca, di incertezza. […] Come è avvenuto questo? Il Papa confida ai presenti un suo pensiero: che ci sia stato l’intervento di un potere avverso. Il suo nome è il diavolo[.]

Referring to the Church’s situation today, the Holy Father affirms that he has the sensation that “from some crevice, the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God”. We don’t trust the Church anymore; […] We believed that after the Council would come a day of sunshine in the history of the Church. But instead there has come a day of clouds and storms, of darkness, of searching and uncertainty. […] And how did this come about? The Pope will confide to you his belief: that there has been the intervention of an adversary power. Let us call him by his name: the devil.

Source: Pope Paul VI, Homily, 29 June 1978

Since the beginning, this has been a spiritual battleground — not only between soldiers of Christ and servants of the devil, but also much ‘closer to home’, pitting even brother against brother (e.g., consider the two brothers, editors of the the traditionalist The Remnant and liberal The Wanderer newspapers).

‘The Remnant’, as a title, is a propos for the struggle of traditionalists. It derives from Romans 11:5, “At the present time, there is a remnant left, selected out of grace and truth.” Many traditionalists consider this the motto of their arms, viewing themselves as the remaining few who have clung to authenticity and the ‘Fullness of Truth’ found in Tradition. This martyr-like sentiment is, perhaps, well-deserved, as many traditionalists have faced tremendous opposition since Vatican II. Consider, for example, that the Vatican, even today, expressly forbids the use of the traditional liturgy except by special approval; and consider in particular the struggles of Archbishop LeFebvre, who founded the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (which refused to celebrate the new order [novus ordo] Mass), only to be excommunicated as a result of it. (Amazing how homosexual priests who are openly members of ‘man-boy love associations’ don’t get excommunicated, but priests who defend Tradition get excommunicated!)

Some priests fared better than poor LeFebvre. The well-loved St. Padre Pio, for example, received special permission to continue saying the Tridentine Mass to the end of his days. (Although we must ask, Why not all priests?) And various churches have received bishops’ indults that allow (limited) use of the traditional liturgy. One such church is St. Agnes, near Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Recently, NPR included St. Agnes in a report on the upcoming motu proprio, the release of which is rumored to be imminent: streaming MediaPlayer format. (Alternatively, see NPR site for more listening options.)

So, what will happen after the release of the motu proprio? That remains to be seen. Pope John Paul II was notorious for releasing sentimental but ineffectual statements that were neither here-nor-there. Example:

To all those Catholic faithful who feel attached to some previous liturgical and disciplinary forms of the Latin tradition I wish to manifest my will to facilitate their ecclesial communion by means of the necessary measures to guarantee respect for their rightful aspirations. In this matter I ask for the support of the bishops and of all those engaged in the pastoral ministry in the Church.

Source: John Paul II, ‘Ecclesia Dei adflicta’ (motu proprio), July 2, 1988

That is, while he agrees that all Catholics had the right to worship according to the Missal of 1962 (the last official missal that featured the Tridentine liturgy), he did not repeal the limitation that it needed to be by episcopal approval. Thus, with many liberal bishops (many with ulterior motives for suppressing tradition) in office in the United States and Europe, these statements amounted to nothing.

When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected pope, traditionalists were elated at the prospect of a true theologian and guardian of tradition who would now be in the position to liberate the Mass of the Ages. When nothing happened over these past three years, traditionalists were bewildered. But in my opinion, this makes sense: The Holy Father is nobody’s fool. He knows that a rapid return of the pendulum would be as catastrophic as the original Vatican II, throwing the Church into disarray and divisive discord, especially if he were met by opposition of cardinals and bishops.

Perhaps now the time is ripe. The hints are already there: The secretary of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship already conceded that the Pope is fully aware of the crisis in the liturgy and that he has long called attention to it in his many books and essays, stating that it is time “with the help of the Lord to make the necessary corrections”. According to Fr. George Rutler, “the self-absorbed banality [of the post-Conciliar Church] … has imposed a suburban mediocrity on the Church’s vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem.” Moreover, “the fundamental challenge is to stop ‘freewheeling’ liturgical innovation and to recover the sense of the sacred. While secularization of culture has diminished worship, the decline in Mass attendance also stems from liturgical abuses.” Archbishop Patabendige concurs: “A deep crisis of faith coupled with a drive for meaningless liturgical experimentation and novelty have had their own impact in the [failings of Vatican II].”

Personally, I feel that a motu proprio issuing a universal indult will be met with wide acclaim and a huge sigh of relief by many — As Fr. Rutler eloquently surmises, “the noble instructions of our new Pope will be an inestimable inspiration.” But this ‘Reform of the Reform’ will only be a beginning — and it comes with very important challenges: As the Archbishop warns, “in the interaction of the two Roman traditions [i.e., the novus ordo and the old Tridentine rites], it is possible that one may influence the other eventually”. It is our duty, if the traditional Latin Mass is allowed, to protect and preserve the old rite from new abuses by a generation of priests who has not experienced it, who may not know Latin and who may still suffer from an arrogance and a sentimentality for ‘novelty’ that was nurtured by 40 years of the ‘Spirit of Vatican II’.

Be that as it may, let us look forward — yes, with honesty about past failures — but also with joyful confidence in Providence.

Courtesy of Reuters (1-22-07) via News of the Weird (2-5-07):

Ms. Pan Alying, a school teacher in China’s Shandong province, had her purse snatched in January (containing her mobile phone, bank cards, and cash) and decided to try pleading with the thief by sending text messages to her stolen phone.

According to Xinhua news agency, she patiently send 21 sympathetic notes to the man, with no answer, but the day after the last one, she found a package at her door containing her purse and all its contents intact, with a note, “I’m sorry… I’ll correct my ways and be an upright person.”