
Denver, Colo., Apr 25, 2019 / 03:51 am (CNA).- Do you remember the last poem you read, or heard?
Statistics suggest it has probably been since high school that the average American took the time (or was forced by a teacher) to read a piece of poetry. The rise of the internet and the correlating decline in the number of people who say they’ve read a poem in the past year has fueled an ongoing debate among those who still care: is poetry dead? Whether it is dead, or dying, or not, should Catholics care?
“Yes, emphatically they should,” said Joseph Pearce, the director of book publishing at the Augustine Institute in Denver, and editor of The Austin Review and of the Faith & Culture website.
“Up until relatively recently in the history of Christendom, poetry was the main form of literature that people enjoyed and read,” Pearce said. “The best-selling works of literature up until Shakespeare’s time were poetry…so you can’t talk about the legacy or the heritage of Christian literature and leave poetry out of the equation without doing violence to what Christian literature is.”
What happened to poetry?
Poetry used to be memorized in schools and was a central, normal part of people’s literary lives – something they would just “bump into” on a regular basis.
“I can remember growing up…we would get Reader’s Digest at home and it would have poetry in it, so would the newspapers, and The Christian Science Monitor…there were a lot of places where you would just bump into it,” said Tim Bete, who serves as poetry editor for the website Integrated Catholic Life (ICL). ICL is a website that provides articles, spiritual reflections, blogs and resources that strive to help Catholics better live lives of faith, according to its description.
So what, exactly, has contributed to its decline?
Pearce blames the so-called “death” of poetry on the “rather pathetic culture in which we find ourselves,” with decreased standards of literacy and decreased attention spans brought on by technology.
“The thing about our modern culture is that most of us spend most of our time wasting it in the dust storm and the desert of modern secular social media,” he added.
Dana Gioia is a Catholic by faith and a poet by trade, and has served as the Poet Laureate of California since 2015.
Gioia spent much of his career as a poet in the secular world, but told CNA that he has become an increasingly vocal Catholic, as it has become harder to be a Catholic in the world of poetry and literature.
The decline of Catholic poetry in the United States, for example, is in part because of Catholicism’s “very complicated position” in American literature since the beginning of the country, he said.
“Catholics were initially banned from coming to the U.S., and then they enjoyed very little rights where they were allowed at all for a long time,” he told CNA. “And there persisted to be – persists to this day – a kind of anti-Catholic prejudice in the U.S. for a variety of religious, cultural, economic and political reasons.”
“American Catholics largely represent poor, immigrant communities from Europe, Latin America and Asia, and to this day if you go to most Catholic Churches you are sitting among the poor,” he added.
For these reasons, there was no “significant” Catholic American poetry (that is still being read today) until the 20th century, Gioia said. Then suddenly, around the 1950s, there is an explosion of Catholic literature in the United States, he said.
Writers such as Robert Lowell, Flannery O’Connor, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walker Percy, William Tate and Brother Antonitus were leading the way (many of them converts from Protestantism), Gioia said, and Catholicism was being taken seriously for the first time in American cultural life.
“You have a huge list of these really significant thinkers who reshaped American intellectual life…a moment in the 1950s when Catholicism is part of the conversation of American literature,” he said.
But by the early 2000s, that was already gone.
“By 2000 it had fallen apart. In 2010, Catholics are marginalized in American literary lives,” he said.
The reasons for this were several, Gioia suggested: firstly, as Catholics became accepted into American society, they became increasingly secularized. Secondly, the world of art became increasingly anti-Christian, and finally, Vatican II caused “schisms” in the Catholic Church in America, turning her focus to internal debate rather than to an external, unified identity.
“I’m the uncomfortable truth-teller in the room,” Gioia added as an aside. “The contemporary Catholic Church in America, and everywhere, lost its connection with art and beauty.”
“For centuries, millennia really, the Church was a patron of the arts, and understood that beauty was an essential medium for its message,” he said.
“Now the Church is so caught up with practical necessities, that it considers beauty an unaffordable luxury. But beauty is not a luxury, it is a central and essential element of the Catholic faith. And we know this, because if we have anything at all to say about creation, it is that it is beautiful – nature is beautiful, the world is beautiful, our bodies are beautiful. So we’ve lost this essential connection because we’re so busy funding the parish school, keeping the homeless center running, and paying the mortgage on the church – all good things, but useless if the message of the Church is not heard among its own congregations and secondly in the modern world,” he said.
It’s a problem that has been identified by many in the Catholic Church who are concerned with the New Evangelization – Fyodor Dostoevsky’s maxim “beauty will save the world” has become the battle cry of many Catholics who want to reconnect the Church and the arts.
But “healthy” Catholic culture has two cultural conversations going at once, Gioia said – one internally, and one that reaches out to the world – “and both of those conversations have become greatly diminished in the last half-century.”
What poetry has to say to Catholics
The thing about being Catholic, Bete noted, is that if you’re going to Mass and reading the Bible, you are probably are more immersed in poetry than you realize.
“About 30% of all scripture is poetry,” Bete said. “Even (Catholics) that say oh, I never read poetry, well, if you’re praying the Divine Office (a Catholic form of prayer centered on the Psalms), it’s almost all poetry.”
“We’re hearing poetry preached at Mass every week,” he added, and so becoming familiar with all kinds of poetry “helps you understand scripture better because it gets you in tune and trains you to think about metaphor.”
“So much of (scripture) is poetry but I think we kind of race through it sometimes and we don’t really kind of appreciate it for being poetry,” he said.
“In my mind, one of the reasons that there’s so much poetry in there is it’s so difficult to define who God is, and God is so much greater than any author can put down on paper, but poetry…it provides a different type of truth.”
Bete added that poetry is often the fruit of silence and prayer, and vice versa – one can lead into the other. An example of this in scripture, he said, is the Canticle of Mary, when the pregnant Blessed Virgin Mary is visiting her cousin Elizabeth and bursts into poetic song about how God has blessed her by calling her to be the mother of Jesus.
“When Mary really has to explain to Elizabeth what is going on, what does she do? She speaks in poetry. It’s very powerful…and so one of my hopes is that if people read current poetry, it trains them to look at things differently and will translate back to scripture and really help to bring the scripture alive for them,” Bete said.
Pearce said another reason Catholics should engage with poetry is because God himself is a poet.
“The word ‘poet’ comes from the word ‘poesis’ which means to make or to create,” he said.
“So when we are being poets in that broader sense of the word of being creative…it’s God’s creative presence in us, so we’re actually partaking in the divine when we write poetry or read it and appreciate it.”
Many great works of literature, from Beowulf to The Divine Comedy to The Canterbury Tales and the works of Shakespeare, are works of Christian and Catholic poetry, Pearce said.
Many saints, too, have written great works of poetry, Pearce said, such as St. Patrick’s breastplate poem or St. Francis of Assissi’s Canticle of Brother Sun.
Bete, a secular Carmelite, said he loves to read poetry by Carmelite saints – “it’s actually hard to find one who was not a poet,” he said.
“Elizabeth of the Trinity, Therese the Little Flower, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, they all wrote poetry,” Bete said, including some that was prayerful and some that was more lighthearted.
“Almost always it came out of their prayer life,” Bete added. “I think it has to do with the closer that you get to God, especially if you’re a writer, I think it just comes out.”
“I would say poetry is like going to Mass or saying your prayers,” Pearce said. “The writing of it and the reading of it is time taken and not time wasted, its something which is worth doing in its own right, as is prayer.”
Poetry 101: How can Catholics start a poetry habit?
Pearce has made it easy for Catholics who are looking for an introduction to Catholic poetry, with his book “Poems Every Catholic Should Know.”
“That book is very popular, and I think it’s popular because people are very aware that they don’t know poetry very well, because they haven’t really been taught it, and they are perhaps intimidated by it or they have misconceptions about it,” he said.
“So they see a book called ‘Poems Every Catholic Should Know’ and they think well, I should at least own one book of poetry and perhaps this is it,” he added.
The book goes through 1,000 years of Christian poetry, from the year 1,000-2,000, Pearce said, from both well-known and lesser-known poets, and it includes short biographies of each poet and how they fit into the broader context of the Christian poetry and literary world.
“A personal favorite of mine is a 20th century war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, who was a convert to the Catholic faith, so we published some of his post-conversion poetry in the book which I’m very fond of,” Pearce noted.
It was because of the sharp decline in the reading and writing of poetry that Bete pitched the idea for Integrated Catholic Life to start publishing poetry, to provide a new opportunity for visitors to the site to once again “bump into” poetry.
“The response has been great,” he said. “I think it just goes to show that when people see…beauty, and they see something that is of interest to them,” they respond, he said. “It doesn’t take a huge time commitment. It’s not like reading War and Peace or anything.”
Bete said he thinks it’s important for Catholics to come up with new and creative ways to reintroduce people to Catholic poetry.
“On Instagram where you’re seeing some of these Instagram poets who are up and coming, and I haven’t seen any Catholic ones yet, but I think what they’re doing is they’re putting poetry where people already are,” Bete said.
Another innovative concept that brings poetry to the people is the “Raining Poetry” project in Boston, Bete said, which paints poetry on the sidewalk with clear paint so that it only shows up when it rains.
“And I love that as a concept. Where are people, and then how do we find ways to get poetry in front of them? And I don’t think we’ve been very good or innovative at that.”
Gioia said the most important thing Catholic creatives can do is to create communities for Catholic artists.
“This country is full of Catholic writers and artists who feel isolated,” Gioia said. “If we can create communities for them, they will understand their own art and its possibilities much better. We are stronger together than we are alone.”
Pearce, Bete and Gioia all said they have been heartened by what seems to be the start of a Catholic cultural revival, in which Catholics are talking more about the need for the Church to reconnect with beauty and the arts and to create great Catholic art again.
“I find this very encouraging,” Pearce said. “One of the things I’m doing with ‘Faith and Culture’ at the Augustine Institute and with the magazine The Austin Review…is to try to engage this new Catholic revival in the arts that we see going on. Certainly there’s a Catholic literary revival going on, so there’s an increase not just in the quantity, but more importantly in the quality with Catholic literature written today in the 21st century.”
Gioia said that while he’s encouraged by these movements, he would also caution against the notion of “homemade” culture.
“I worry that they sometimes have a kind of homemade version of culture that needs a shot of energy and perspective you only get by studying masterpieces, especially contemporary masterpieces,” he said. “Any serious writer must engage with the broader literary culture.”
“So I think one of the things to do is we need to identify the very best contemporary writers. What that doesn’t mean is saying here’s a list of 65 writers. It’s – who are the three or four best fiction writers? Who are the three or four best poets?”
“If we had a (Catholic literary) community, we’d invite everyone in, because that’s the right thing to do,” he said. “But when we write about literature we have to be ruthlessly discriminating, because the best work is what will speak most loudly. That’s what a critic does, that’s what an editor does, that’s what an anthologist does. Right now we do not have enough anthologies, or magazines; we do not have enough Catholic writers conferences. We need to build the infrastructure.”
Gioia started the first Catholic Imagination Conference for this reason – to bring together serious Catholic writers as a community.
“Four hundred people came, and they looked around and they were astonished and heartened by how many serious writers they saw in the same room,” he said. “Each one is bigger than the one before, and some of the people who came to the first conference created magazines, book clubs, discussion groups, and so once again, we’re stronger as a community than we are separately.”
The third such conference will be held at Loyola University this fall.
Ultimately, Gioia said, while he is concerned about the state of Catholic poetry and literature in the U.S., he has hope.
“I believe that our Church and our tradition embodies in it a great central truth of existence. And so if you believe that, how could you not be optimistic?”
[…]
Its long been thought that people leave the Catholic church because it is too demanding. In reality, is is because there is not enough emphasis on moral standards and practical applications of being a Catholic. The church is not asking too much of its members, it is asking too little. And with each capitulation to secular society’s whim of the day ( like gay blessings) more crushed and disheartened catholics leave. The Bishops may be puzzled but the catholics in the pews are not.Where are the homilies about abortion, living together unmarried, gay unions, trans issues, etc? Bishops and priests, why did you become a priest at all if you were going to be content to follow what the New York Times wants you to do? That is NOT leading your flock. It is abandoning them. Very sad.
Sad to say that those subjects have had people leave the church… hard to believe, but true. The church wants the money and those that have spoken up (priests) have been scorned from their bishops and fellow catholic’s. I want them to speak up but when they do they get removed or go to another parish.
Excellent comment. Perfectly stated.
Where are the homilies about abortion, living together unmarried, gay unions, trans issues, etc? ”
********
Every one of those issues, plus contraception, was actually all addressed during the homily at our TLM last Sunday but Father doesn’t just save that for the TLM, his homilies are similar at his NO masses also.
But I do agree with what you say. People want to be challenged by their faith, especially young people. If the Church only offers what the world offers why bother?
And that is a rarity. I live in NY where I can “shop around” to many different parishes trying to find priests giving non-mundane homilies, and it is still very difficult. Fortunately, I have a car, and there are some good priests. It shouldn’t be a struggle.
So do you want to hear homilies about other peoples sins or do you want to hear homilies that convict you of your own sins and encourage you to change your behaviour. Unless you are tempted to homosexuality, what is the point of hearing a homily about that? Would it not be better to have a homily about pride or how to love your enemy, things that are really difficult and most people need to work on.
A couple of years ago, it was reported in the B.C. Catholic Newspaper, published in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada that 83% of young people, both male and female, by the time they reach the age of 25, have dropped out of the Catholic Church.
It would be worthwhile to interview young people who attended a World Youth day several years ago, if they are still practicing Catholics.
The Church is dying in Western culture and there’s one very simple explanation:
The dominant, secular, atheistic culture has successfully evangelized Christians in the West including those in the Catholic Church founded by Christ.
Let’s put it plainly for those who are not inclined to abstruse theological principles: There was a family with 10 children. The father was a thorough-going narcissist who enjoyed certain pleasures and paid little attention to his wife and children and their needs. He was rarely home and so the household went undisciplined. He rarely worked and so his family ate poorly and could not afford adequate medical attention. As a result, they could not resist disease and and were prone to long periods of being bedridden. Their house was in sorry need of repair: the roof leaked and routine maintenance was neglected. The children were provided little or no education because they were either too sickly to attend or they were busy fighting among themselves because the mother was over-stressed and the father routinely absent. Given their weakened state, the family was vulnerable to all sorts of attack from the outside – especially from those who hated families with many children. One of these external threats decided to eliminate the family altogether and plotted to infuse the family home with toxic gases while they slept. The denouement of their fate has yet been written. But onlookers feared the worst for them – all except the father who was observed to be playing the fiddle at the local pub when he was not advising his confreres about how best to raise their families.
Anybody listening?
Yadayadayada. We preach what we believe.
“I love social media,” he added.
Dumbed down faith, dumbed down liturgy. It’s truly amazing to come across a young person with any degree of personal devotion, given the thin gruel we’ve all been fed this past 50 years.
Richard, lest you implicitly connect “dumbed down faith” with Vatican II, read the Bishop again. It’s clear he distinguishes the West from the rest of the world. This phenomena of declining Catholicism due to secularism is true in the West but not in the Rest. In the Rest, the Church after Vatican II has grown explosively. Notably, the reformed liturgy in the people’s languages has significantly helped in this surge.
Worse than dumbed down, our faith has been compromised. The church is growing in Africa and Asia but there are two questions.
Is it the true uncompromised Catholic faith?
Is the growth due more to persecutons Catholics face?
Nick: Examine your line of thinking. You show traces of the typical sense of Western superiority short of racism. Why do you think the non-Westerners as incapable of embracing the Catholic faith fully? What makes you think that they can only get and live it compromised and dumbed down?
While I agree that hearing the Mass in your own language is a great plus, I don’t agree all the changes after Vatican II are good. It took me a long time to feel as if I was at Mass when attending the NO. Seemed the worship, the awe was mostly gone.
Trust me, you are not looking in the right place. At a typical Parish, I always met some. But I’ve seen endless numbers in Africa, parts of Asia, FOCUS, TAMU St. Mary’s Student Center, TLM Parishes, Ordinariate Parishes and other Parishes on this list: https://reverentcatholicmass.com/map
For religious life see: https://cmswr.org/ or https://religiouslife.com/
Visit any of these. You will be encouraged and amazed.
Amen!
And tomorrow, the ambitious, weathervane Bishop will praise the extraordinary leadership of Pope Francis. Hard to take one’s eyes off that red biretta…
What the youth all need and want is a liturgy that shows the utmost of respect to God. Why do you think Islam is on the rise? They drop to their knees 5 times a day and give honor and respect to their “allah”. They show him respect. At some point, while on ones knees one comes to the realization that – not only should God be respected – but, that the respect He’s given is most appropriate. The NO Missae falls woefully short of respect for God. It’s a “celebration” of ourselves with a passive nod (if at all) to the Divine. Even this notion of “communion with one another” is way off target. ALL focus should be on the holy high altar and tabernacle. In the presence of God, we should understand ourselves to be nothing, dust at best. Let us respect our good and gracious God again by honoring Him with worship worthy of Him. Give the youth the Latin Mass, give us ALL the Latin Mass and see what happens – the full restoration of the faith and the fullest expression of Catholic life. The longer we wait, the more souls we put in jeopardy.
Absolutely correct.
This past spring, I had business in the small town of Utica, NY. The city gasps for life; infrastructure and once notable architecture stood in grave need of repair. Three beautiful churches dating back to mid 19th or early 20th Century spoke of neglect and disregard or downright abandonment. The doors of St. Joseph-St. Patrick Catholic Church were bolted shut on my visit during a sunny spring weekday morning. Its website noted hours of operation: Mon-Thu 9:00-13:00, Fri 9:00-12:00, Saturday and Sunday: Closed.
Iron rails barred what appeared to have once been an adoration chapel, accessible from street level a few steps down. Thick layers of grime and dust veiled church windows. Stairs leading to the main church entrance were crumbling or cracked concrete. No Mass schedule was posted; perhaps Mass was no longer said there.
The town’s stately Episcopal Grace Church supports a majestic 216-foot spire which is visible from the nearby expressway. The awe of the distant observer dissolved with proximity. Overgrown grass, weeds, and litter matted and marred the yard near the main entrance. Notice soliciting goods and donations for the homeless was the only -communication on an ornate free-standing and cement-posted bulletin board on guard in the yard. A few years back, the church solicited a new rector–a beautiful young woman whose son arrived with her, but no mention was made of the boy’s father or the rector’s husband.
A mere two blocks from city center, a bright, light-colored, new, clean, attractive, large, Muslim mosque stood gleaming in a newer and updated area of downtown.
Signs of life, signs of the time. Desperate to escape, I could only bow my head to pray, thanking God for sunshine.
Dear Meiron,
If you can sit down while watching this, I would recommend it. This is our future. If we don’t start respecting Him again, we will be hard-pressed to continue showing Him even the disrespect we currently show Him. Who can blame Him?
https://truthsocial.com/@CitizenFreePress/posts/110900051624582246
Yes.
Sign of hope: My parish priest (FSSP) informs that the Maui Catholic Church spared destruction was where the TLM was said.
I don’t have any experience in Utica, NY but one of my children has traveled through NY State quite a bit for work and they’ve shared that there seems to be quite a lot decline in towns like Syracuse, etc.
Ive noticed that immigrants often take advantage of opportunities in places like Syracuse or towns in Appalachia. Communities that don’t attract upwardly mobile Americans. Perhaps that’s part of the reason behind the new mosque in Utica?
Meanwhile, another “Prince of the church” is engaged in this:
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-cupich-to-appear-at-ecumenical-conference-coordinated-by-wiccan-priestess/
The kind of cognitive dissonance the faithful today are required to suffer for their allegiance to Christ through the church brings one to tears, not only tears of sorrow, but tears of pain at the migraine that arises from attempting to reconcile such absurd extremes. Can we all just go back to ACTUAL CATHOLICISM, PLEASE? When is enough, enough?
AMEN!!!!!
The link makes reference to the First World Parliament of Religions in 1893, also in Chicago….While we are repeatedly reassured that an internally synodal Church is not simply a “parliament,” now are we to learn from His Eminence that the non-parliament Church is only part of an external and composite—PARLIAMENT? A seat at the table!
Or, will we hear something at least remotely like what has heard in 1893, when religions were not so inclusive as to welcome anti-religions? Of the 111 papers delivered in 1893, seven (7) were from Catholic clerics, and one was from (the also mentioned) CARDINAL GIBBONS. Here’s part of what this Catholic Cardinal had to offer:
“The Gospel of Christ imparts to us not only a sublime conception of God, but also a rational idea of man and of his relations to his Creator. Before the coming of Christ man was a riddle and a mystery to himself. He knew not whence he came nor whither he was going. He was groping in the dark [….] The Gospel of Christ, as propounded by the Catholic church, has brought not only light to the intellect, but comfort also to the heart. It has given us ‘that peace of God which surpasseth all understanding’–the peace which springs from the conscious possession of truth […]– peace with God by the observance of His commandments, peace with our neighbor by the exercise of charity and justice toward him, and peace with ourselves by repressing our inordinate appetites and keeping our passions subject to the law of reason and our reason illumined and controlled by the law of God.
[later follows several pages of not-so-new concrete benefits of the Faith]…
“To sum up: The Catholic church has taught man the knowledge of God and of himself; she has brought comfort to his heart by instructing him to bear the ills of life with Christian philosophy; she has sanctified the marriage bond; she has proclaimed the sanctity and inviolability of huma life from the moment that the body is animated by the spark of life till it is extinguished; she has founded asylums for the training of children of both sexes and for the support of the aged poor; she has established hospitals for the sick and homes for the redemption of fallen women; she has exerted her influence toward the mitigation and abolition of human slavery; she has been an unwavering friend of the sons of toil. These are some the blessings which the Catholic Church has conferred on society” (Gibbons, in “The World’s Congress of Religions,” Chicago: Mammoth Publishing Co., 1894, pp. 810-816).
TODAY, will Cupich berate the “backwards” Gibbons’ for mentioning abortion, today a “rabbit hole” superseded now by care for our “common home”—and our global amniotic sac?
Will he exchange the shepherd’s staff for a Wiccan stang as Pope Francis did at the World Youth Synod in 2018? https://novusordowatch.org/2018/10/stang-francis-synod-sorcerers-staff/
Or!!!, instead, will he seize the moment (Carpe Deim, that’s Latin!), and seize the mic (!) from the Wiccans (as he did from Cardinal DiNardo at a recent USCCB annual meeting)?
What a great opportunity, in crime-capital Chicago, for the Church and Cardinal Cupich to speak gently but clearly (1 Peter 3:15) about the self-disclosing Word of God. Like St. Paul did at Corinth—proclaiming the Contradiction of the Cross—after having been rejected in Athens by the indifferent and inclusive “pluralism” of the Areopagus.
Amen.
Letter CWR synod 2023 WYD 08-17-23
Yes to WYD, but is there a larger scheme by some in positions of power? How much does WYD (and even the Eucharistic Revival?) serve a more dialectical or only decorative function? Worse than simply “dumbing down”…
The Hegelian ploy of positioning the “backward” flock (of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church) as simply one pole within a larger, dialectical and synodal “tension” on the move? A backward pole now to be expertly harmonized within a more inclusive “synthesis” more concretely in step with the revelatory arc of history—the “never-ending journey”! Contradictions? What contradictions?
Yes, a worthy challenge, this—in season and out of season (!)—how to announce the Contradiction of the Cross to a deaf and unwelcoming world? And how, too, to call out the false shepherds? How to tell the truth AND nothing but the truth?
So, back to Bishop Barron. Here’s a meditation on the relatively innocent “dumbing down”: a meditation on a bookmark from way backward in the early 1980s:
“Adults,
discovering their spiritual emptiness,
look to the Church
not for a breezy bon mot,
but for the hard truths of
mystical life, fasting and prayer.
Lapsed Catholics,
tiptoeing back into the Church
on Sunday Morning,
look not for a communal meal
and a handshake,
but for a holy Sacrifice
and the promise of redemption.
Our faith is like a strong drink,
or a plate of hearty food.
We can make it easier to accept,
by watering it down
and taking out the spices.
But who wants a watery drink,
or a tasteless dish? (“If the salt
has lost its savor…”)
Our society is begging for red meat.
If we offer a thin soup, instead,
we shall rightly
be rejected.”
Yes, he does seem to be oblivious to the syncretistic theme of WYD. an attitude that is not exactly new in the dumbing down process of several decades. Like the layperson George Weigel, whom several of us just criticized for not identifying the source, Bishop Barron can be too obsequious to the high episcopate when the chips are down.
Many salient points here. I thought I’d just mention one we’re all familiar with, Niebuhr’s famous lament of liberal Protestantism clearly applies to our current crisis, which might have been useful for Bishop Barron to describe contemporary ecclesial reality in one sentence:
“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a Kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross.”
I agree, but it’s more words in a sea of words until physical change is manifested. Make the liturgy more reverent. The Church elite removed the beauty and reverence from the old Rite claiming it was only relevant to the past. Replacing it, in arrogance, with ‘good ideas’ from the 1960s and 70s – the era where music, art, architecture etc all nose dived from order and beauty into the convenient and absurd. Less talk, more action.
Wish the liturgy was more reverent and the beauty and reverence you refer to wasn’t destroyed. To my astonishment, a priest told me the NO is closer to what was practiced in the early church and that the TLM was stupid sition. Wow. He also said a lot of other weird things.
I don’t think Bishop Barron has a grasp on the fundamental problem.
His theme of “dumbing down the faith” is a way (intentionally or unintentionally) of avoiding the main issue, which is the “preference” of the contemporary Church establishment to “re-invent” Jesus, and exchange “the Lion of Judah” for “buddy-Jesus,” the Church’s preference to evade the high moral demands that Jesus said he expects of us, and the preference of the Church establishment to substitute “themselves” as the head of the Church, and offer to us instead (as so insightfully stated by Fr. Robert Imbelli) a “Decapitated Body of Christ.”
I think Bishop Barron just pulls his punches, because he doesn’t want to go there…
“We’ve dumbed down the faith too much for too long.” Who is the “We”?
I think we know who the “We” is. But they do not wish to acknowledge their responsibility.
I agree, of course. Who could disagree?
But, as The Mass is “the point” where all Catholics receive, give, live…well, as The Mass is The High Point of everything, the “Sum and Summary of The Faith,” a Thing always Beyond Description, and as bishops are responsible for how poorly It is celebrated, how poorly It is offered, how poorly It is understood, how poorly reverence is “done,” etc., I can only say that this man, this bishop (while most likely sincere and well-intentioned) nonetheless shows just how blind he himself is, just like the vast, vast majority of his (mentally effeminate) brother bishops are. The apostles were men, authentic, ardent, deep (in accordance with their gifts), lovers of God and of our Lord and Savior, obedient to Him and to His Word in all Its depths. These (mentally effeminate) men who “lead” us today are, as the great and ardent lover of Our Lord Archbishop Sheen prophesied, these men today are politicians: he prophesied, “Theology will become politics.” We do not hear the term “political correctness” any more, but that is because is has taken root and borne its fruit.
I am no Traddie — going “backwards” is not the answer. I can understand (and also vigorously support) those who desire the Extraordinary Form, but I also believe in Vatican II and the hermeneutic of continuity (the only authentic and real hermeneutic). Vatican II was hijacked — and “men” such as this need to finally face up to that fact and work against that force.
The Mass of Vatican II — the Real One — whenever It is finally promulgated (perhaps not until The Era of Peace prophesied by Our Lady) will be obviously a growth/fruition of what is known as The Extraordinary Form, ORGANICALLY grown from It, ie, from that very same “organism.”
This man, one of the very few “good” bishops, shows he is just a blind as the rest of them, and, sadly, is not credible to me.
World Youth Day where consecrated Hosts were stored in cheap plastic boxes.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/a-look-behind-the-wyd-eucharist-controversy
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is complete in itself. Has the Holy Catholic Church forgotten that?
There is no need to dish out the Holy Eucharist to seemingly all and sundry, whether «shriven» or not, like M&Ms on every grand occasion such the above. That the celebrant and his ministers, no concelebrants required, partake of the Sacred Element/s is sufficient as is an act of Spiritual Communion.
Truly, familiarity has given rise to a mood of indifference to the Real Presence, and possibly worse. This «candy store» outlook to Holy Communion needs «fixing».
Dear Virginia, that’s an often repeated falsehood. In reality, the church in Africa *used to grow*, explosively, even, right up to Vatican II. Then the growth leveled out and now African Catholicism grows merely at the level of general population growth, i.e. it really just stagnates.
JPMA: That is because of encroaching Western secularism, but not due to Vatican II.
[“The real world is the worship of God, service of the poor, and communion with one another,” he said.]
Let’s apply this to Catholic schools which are now too expensive for the poor:
“A preferential option for the poor” should be maintained in our Catholic Schools. If we find that we cannot afford to keep our schools open to the poor, the Church should be ready to use its resources for something else which can be kept open to the poor. We cannot allow our Church to become a church primarily for the middle-class and rich while throwing a bone to the poor. The priority should be given to the poor even if we have to let the middle-class and rich fend for themselves.
Practically speaking, the Catholic Schools must give up general education in those countries where the State is providing it. The resources of the Church could then be focused on “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine” and other programs which can be kept open to the poor. These resources could then be used to help society become more human in solidarity with the poor. Remember, the Church managed without Catholic Schools for centuries. It can get along without them today. The essential factor from the Christian point of view is to cultivate enough Faith to act in the Gospel Tradition, namely, THE POOR GET PRIORITY. The rich and middle-class are welcome too. But the poor come first.
Mark: Your thinking is illogical in declaring that only the Vetus Ordo is worthy worship of God and that the Novus Ordo is not. Your thought on this is simply erroneous. I can see you think of the abuses of the NO but they are few in between and they do not constitute the full reality of NO. NO as implemented and celebrated well is worthy of the worship of God. In fact, as Pope Francis has decreed in rescinding the unrestricted celebration of the VO, the NO is the only legitimate way to worthily celebrate the Mass of the Roman Rite that is in line with the reformed liturgical laws and teachings (lex credendi, lex orandi) of the latest ecumenical council that is Vatican II. As food for your thought, read Pope Francis’ letter on the worthy worship of God in the liturgy, Desiderio Desideravi.
“…as Pope Francis has decreed in rescinding the unrestricted celebration of the VO, the NO is the only legitimate way to worthily celebrate the Mass of the Roman Rite that is in line with the reformed liturgical laws and teachings (lex credendi, lex orandi) of the latest ecumenical council that is Vatican II.” If you truly believe this nonsense, I would suggest you read Sacrosanctum Concilium. Pope Francis’s erroneous views notwithstanding, and despite the document’s occasionally contradictory language, there is there is absolutely no way you can stretch that conciliar document to derive a justification for the typical Novus Ordo celebrated throughout the world today.
There’s no doubt that the faith has been dumbed down for centuries. However, the most damaging above all is the gay network in the Church. Few, including Pope Francis, dare not mention it. Some promote it. Tens of thousands of young men lost their lives at the hands of this particular group. Millions of others have been affected by this. These are also of the peripheries, to say the least. many were led to suicide. How outrageous! Not worth mentioning and treating firmly>? I think so. We’ve heard nothing definitive on that from the Vatican but we know that the Pope has named most cardinals, archbishops, and bishops who are gay friends or gay… many haven’t even hidden it. Is a gay Pope next? It’s quite possible. When it comes to messing with my kids, no one would go near such an institution. It’s high time we had a ‘synod’ on that reality: the gay network in the Church.