One of my American friends, who is always too kind to me, the
Blogerus Blogerorum, the redoubtably Fr Z himself, fisked my
last post, he placed it within the context of his hometown of Minnesota, and added his own comment with which I heartily agree. I am also rather touched by his compliments.
As I read that, I felt much like some American men felt as the Battle of Britain was heating up and who went to England to join the RAF’s Eagle Squadrons. My brother priests, my friends, are having a hard time of over there and I feel for them. Mind you, the fight has been joined in the USA as well and it is heating up very quickly. We here can learn from what they have been up to, or not up to, there.
Fr. Blake made a good distinction toward the end of his piece, which I want to spin out a bit.
Tepid leadership, worship and instruction has over time produced Catholics who don’t know who they are and who, when introduced to something genuinely Catholic and clear (liturgical worship, basic catechism, moral preaching) become confused, disoriented, even hostile. In turn, Catholics have little to say in the public square concerning the great questions of our day. They have little to say or, what is worse, they actively take the wrong side.
We need a renewal of our Catholic identity. If we don’t know who we are as Catholics (this is the question considered from within the Church, ad intra) then we won’t have anything of value to contribute in the public square (ad extra), which is the point of Our Lord’s great commission to Holy Church and all her members.
I am convinced that to spark, support, and sustain an effort to revitalize our Catholic identity, we must have a revitalization of our liturgical worship. If we do not have solid, clear, dignified, faithful, transcendent liturgical worship, all our efforts, in regard to raising a new generation of Catholics in our Faith or recovering those who have fallen away or who were only slightly formed to begin with, will fail.
Fr. Blake gets this. A quick look at his blog will reveal what he has been up to in restoring his parish church and organizing events for the parish’s anniversary. Take a look at what he is going.
4 comments:
The ignorance and lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the faith and morals is wide and deep. Even some of those commenting on Catholic blogs such as this one (people who are obviously interested in the Catholic faith) show a shocking lack of understanding of basic moral issues, as exemplified by the view that the CPA was morally acceptable. I was in England last weekend for a family christening and attended a couple of Masses. I was horrified by, not only the lack of reverence, but the lack of basic politeness shown in the church. People talked and laughed loudly (adults more loudly than children) both before and from end of Mass, and as for the christening - many of the attendees noisily conversed throughout the ceremony! As I mentioned to someone afterwards, these people would not behave so rudely if they were at the theatre or visiting a friend's house. The priest, who for the most part, followed the rubrics, did not tell people to be quiet. It was as if he had given up; he smiled benignly and spoke to the congregation as if the mean age were about six. If children are baptised into homes where the parents don't practise and live immorally, if when they go to church, the priest does not demand reverence for God, and preach the fundamentals of faith and morality, especially against the most widespread sins of the day, then where are people going to learn their faith, and what is good and evil? Children ought not be baptised unless at least one of the parents is practising the faith and truly committed to raising the child in the faith. Nominal Catholics have been churned out on a large scale since the sixties, and it kills the Church, and mocks God.
As well as a revival of liturgical seriousness, we also need a revival of Catholicism's philosophical and theological heritage, in particular, Thomism.
The loss of faith is addressed in this recent excellent video by Fr.Rodriguez. View at www.youtube.com/user/JMJHFPRODUCTIONS
This is good. Let's hope lots of Catholic bloggers embed it.
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