Liturgical Embarrassment

Watch this video. See if it doesn’t make you absolutely embarrassed for the bishops, priests, and deacons who attend the annual dissent-fest known as the Los Angeles Religious Education Conference. Even more, I am embarrassed before God at what is offered to Him as worship but is simply liturgical abuse of the Novus Ordo. Lord, have mercy on us.

The liturgical abuses that go on at that conference are legion. This stuff goes on year after year, and even though the evidence is all over You Tube, it seems nothing is done to stop the waylaying of thousands of Catholics who think they are faithful, but can hardly know what they are faithful to with this kind of nonsense masquerading as education.

The thoughts that cross my mind could go on for thousands of words. I'll try to control myself:

First, how do bishops expect to get any respect when they condone this kind of liturgical abuse by their presence, participation, and apparent approval? Do they not know that they are responsible for the souls of the faithful in their care? Do they not realize the affront to God that such liturgical abuses represent? The videos I’ve seen of what they call Mass at the RE Congress look more like Satanic rites to me.

Second, what is the point of catering to the “faithful” who want tambourines and trumpets accompanying saccharine songs of “praise and worship” in their Protestantized liturgies? Liturgies like the ones at the LA RE Conference are ludicrous; on the other hand, the blatant showmanship and abuses should be readily apparent to many of the faithful and evoke a sense of “that’s just not right.” The liturgies at most of the parishes I’ve been to in my neck of the woods are not as ostentatious in their liturgical abuses, but that’s almost worse. It’s the “frog in boiling water” problem: If you throw a frog into boiling water, it’ll hop out as quickly as it can; but if you put the frog in water and slowly heat it, it’ll just get used to the increasing heat and let itself be cooked.

Third, I know that many priests and bishops play a “numbers game” – they are concerned to know “how many” people come to a particular Mass. The question is almost always asked about the EF Mass: “How many people come?” And the answer, especially here is Eastern Oregon, is “not very many”. But is that a reason to deny those faithful few their right to the Traditional Latin Mass? (Hint: the answer is “no”.)

Fourth, why is it that those who prefer the liturgical abuses get their way? They throw tantrums and say “Well, I just won’t come to Mass, then!” And priests and bishops act like that’s the end of the world. Many with that mentality are Catholic in name only. Many are receiving Holy Communion unworthily (having not been to Mass the week before, for example, or using contraception, or supporting homosexual “marriage”, etc.). But we don’t want to “lose” them by saying Mass according to the rubrics!!! Excuse me…but…we’ve lost them already.

Finally, and related, to number four, why is it that those who are asking for a traditional liturgy, or at least for the rubrics to be followed in the deficient Novus Ordo, are spurned time and time again? Why are priests and bishops not worried about losing them? Why aren’t priests and bishops concerned about how the liturgical abuses affect the faithful who recognize them? Oh yeah…back to number three above: the numbers game.

I could go on…and on…and on…but I’ll stop for now. My blood pressure will thank me.

UPDATE (per comments):

 

In the Vortex from yesterday (July 26), Michael Voris addresses these same issues. Watch the video (below) for the full force of his point, but here’s the introduction: 

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a quiet scuttling job going on inside the Church of Nice – which, by the way, isn’t so nice.

Faithful orthodox Catholics – those who accept everything the Church teaches and are in full support of the Pope and the Magisterium – are under attack. And these attacks are coming from their “TOLERANT” brothers and sisters who will be tolerant of anything and almost everything it seems…EXCEPT a traditional expression of the faith.

Cardinal Raymond Burke noted as much recently during an interview where he said in reference to the restoration of the traditional Latin Mass:

"There's no question that there remains in certain places a resistance to what the Holy Father has asked, and that's sad. It's sometimes even an expression of disagreement with the Holy Father's discipline and even an expression that this is harmful for the church."

And there it is: in one brief statement, His Eminence summed up the crux of the problem.