I was told about it in a Comment by someone called Andrew, he said, "You'll be interested to know that Fr. Tim Finnigan has recently reported on the turnout to protest against the SOR regulations act last night (Wed 21st March) outside pariliament. The Catholic groups that turned out were: Latin Mass Society, Faith Movement (who on the whole are supportive of the old rite) and SPUC (which has a lot of members who attend the old rite). Now I could go on and say, "Where were the Catholic Charismatics or Youth 2000?!!" but I won't........."
We are all, as Catholics, supposed to be deeply committed to Justice issues but there does seem to be a worrying trend of one either being committed to Justice regarding the family or freedom of religion issues or else one is committed to Justice concerning third world issues. So often it almost seems that never the twain shall meet. I know that when we have a collection for Cafod (no comments on Cafod's ABC policy, please, I support the organisation because my bishop does, and yes, it feeds the hungry) people are generous but they are different people who are generous to Life issue collection.
11 comments:
Perhaps they don't blog or link everything they do to the Tridentine rite.
Surprising comment about Faith, as all their conferences I have been to are in the Paul VI rite?
Sorry,
read your second paragraph again. You make a good point about how we should all be together. My sad experience is that we Priests seem to use many issues, Liturgy, CAFOD, Contraception as outpourings of our desire to be loved by some section.
We either accept the whole teaching of the Church or not.
Is one of ther problems that we do not teach about Life issues. I am a maths teacher, I don't think the RE department "do" Family issues but they do "do" Cafod. Then they "do" Abortion but don't "do" contraception.
How many of the Catholic organisations who were not present at the rally on Wednesday even knew about it? As far as I understand, it was a Protestant Evangelical demonstration to which a few Catholic organisations who share a similar fundamentalist view tacked on.
3rd Anonymous, or should you be 2nd? (please, if the designation "anonymous" is taken I wish people have the imagination to find another name or even number or barcode for that matter),
grrrrrrr,
I didn't advertise it precisely because I understood it to be what you suggest. Call me un-ecumenical if you must.
The Faith Movement, as I understand it, is neither pro nor anti the Classical Rite.
What it is in favour of is celebrating the Mass with reverence, and fidelity to the Magisterium.
This is why the Masses celebrated at Faith events are so very uplifting. There's no mucking about with the liturgy.
Damien Thompson's recent comments about the Catholic Communications Centre (or whatever they are now called) lead me to wonder why in this ecumenical age there was no networking with the Lawyers Christian Fellowship or Christian Concern for our Nation. It seems to me that this is precisely the sort of "ecumenism" that is worth doing. The trads there were all bloggers or blog readers. That's why they knew about it.
We said the Rosary while the Evos were gabbling "alleluias" etc. They didn't seem to mind or to be too worried when we struck up "Christus Vincit" at the end.
anon #3 - If opposition to the homosexual state is "fundamentalist" then count me as one by all means.
(BTW Mac is right about Faith and the old rite - I'm a maverick member in that respect :-))
There doesn't seem to be much respect between these demonstrative fringe groups. The Evangelicals might well have written 'While we were proclaiming alleluias the Catholics werr gabbling the rosary'. In the end this performance proved futile. It's interesting, too, that the 'trads' present were all bloggers; I suspect that the rest of the Church doesn't have spare time for this all-consuming obsession.
What a lost opportunity for the Catholic Church as a whole in London, and possibly elsewhere, to come out in force to protest against this measure. The Catholic bodies represented are all very well but they are not representative of the Church at large. As Anonymous 4 wrote, they are fringe groups and I expect were seen as such by the greater body of Evangelicals. I suspect that the last crossed denominational boundaries. I am not at all happy for these people to represent the Catholic Church as a whole because their views are, with the exception of SPUC, narrowly factious.
I, together with one of my parishioners, was there. (Didn't see Father Tim or others whom I heard later had been there.) I couldn't really go along with the mode of prayer that the evangelicals engaged in but was bowled over by their courage. I, too, ended up with a small group (a young priest of the Brentwood diocese, a lay women from Bury St Edmunds, the president of the NACF) of people who said decades of the Rosary while others prayed spontaneously. We were even joined by an anglican who pulled out a massive Rosary beads and said a lovely spontaneous prayer invoking the intercession of Our Lady of Walsingham. Shame there was no 'official' Catholic presence and, as Fr Tim says, no networking. Anyone who wanted to know knew. It was important to be there. It was not primarily an ecumenical occasion, but an occasion to keep vigil.
Just to answer anon #4. There's plenty of respect between evos and trad Catholics. But we don't pretend to agree where we differ. I'm sure they would say that we were just gabbling Hail Marys and we could have a good natured bit of banter about forms of prayer while agreeing on the basics of Christian morality.
Not sure which is meant to be the "all consuming obsession", proclaiming the faith through new means of communication or resisting the dictatorship of relativism. Put me down as an obsessive for either by all means.
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