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Thursday, August 31, 2017

Table Altars and Crayons: Catholic Church Goes Back to Kindergarden Featured

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Thefederalist.com knows something about lex orandi, lex credendi:

If the grand altars, with all their gold and statues and size, are at their core outward signs of inward devotion, what does it say about plain altars that more resemble a table than a temple.

For most of the Catholic Church’s 2,000-year history, it has been known for its magnificent churches. In the popular psyche, the stereotypical Catholic church has high, arched ceilings, statues of saints, massive crucifixes, incense that seems to pour from the walls, and gilded, beautiful, and (sometimes) obnoxious altars.

There is perhaps no better example of this than St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, the Vatican itself, which fulfills every Catholic stereotype to the highest degree. If any building could embody the very essence of Catholicism, it would be the Vatican.

But those stereotypical churches are fading into the pre-Vatican II past and being replaced with churches that are, simply, bland. Statues of saints have been removed, the incense is gone, the ceilings and walls have a color palette comparable to Starbucks, and the Great Altars have been replaced with simple blocks of marble, or sometimes even wood. These losses may be aesthetic, but they reveal something deeper about the changes in the Catholic Church following the tumult and fallout of the Second Vatican Council.  READ MORE HERE

old vs new

REMNANT COMMENT: So, let's review: For one thousand, nine hundred and sixty-five years the Catholic Church had been developing the most magnificent cathedrals, altars and religious art the world has ever seen. Our Church was the uncontested greatest sponsor of the arts ever known to man.  To this day, Catholic cathedrals are the glory of Europe, a millennium after they were built by artists and craftsmen who didn’t even sign their names to the work they did for God.

Even the modern world stands back in awe in front of Our Lady of Chartres, for example, as they crane their necks to gaze up from their collective navels to the heights of her soaring spires, where even they might manage to catch a glimpse of the Creator of the Universe.  

Orson Welles—no 'rad trad', stuck in the past, blinded by crippling nostalgia—had something to say about that once, while contemplating the Chartres Cathedral:

And still our Neo-Catholic friends just don't get it. They like the way things are, and so they join the modern world in heaping opprobrium on the old altars and liturgies of Christendom. Why? Well, they struggle with Latin, for starters. My 7-year-old has no problem following the Traditional Latin Mass, and yet our Neo-Catholic friends expect us to accept their “argument” that, after nearly 2000 years of Catholics—mostly peasants without formal education, mind you—worshipping God in the glorious Roman Rite, the Neo-Catholic struggle with Latin is reason enough to abandon the restoration effort of our glorious Catholic patrimony.

Nope!  And our Neo-Catholic friends have other really weighty objections, as well: “We don't like that the priest has his back to us while facing Almighty God. We want him to connect with us by telling those funny jokes up there at the table-altar, while we sing campfire songs about Jesus! Palestrina was good for his day, but our kids really like Josh Groban.” How cute. 

Modernists—the avowed mortal enemies of Catholic Tradition—destroyed the Roman Rite, crushed the altars, pounded the statues into dust, abandoned the cathedrals, silenced the Gregorian, obliterated the sanctuaries and communion rails, and made a new Mass that was palatable to our Protestant friends—and the Neo-Catholics see no problem with this because, after all, “We don’t know Latin.”

Many of them don't bother kneeling for the consecration anymore, they can't even be troubled to genuflect before the tabernacle, and then they take God in their hands not on their tongues, because, evidently, they’re somehow more evolved than the benighted Catholics of the past, e.g., St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Thomas More, St. Edmund Campion, St. Isaac Jogues, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, St. Maximilian Kolbe, etc. The Neo-Catholics have evolved to such an extent that they don't even need altars and cathedrals. And why settle for organs when guitars will do just fine?  

And when it comes to the 'most beautiful thing this side of heaven'—the mighty Roman Rite, the Mass of Christendom’s doctors, scholars, popes and martyrs—rooted in the apostolic tradition and organically developed over millennia by saints and the most gifted theologians the Church has ever produced—well, the Neo-Catholics aren't having any. They want to a liturgy that makes them feel good. They want to wave their arms around and hug each other—you know, sing pop songs! They want their liturgy to match the kindergarten theology they’ve been spoon-fed since before they can remember.

And so this kind of "liturgy" makes perfect sense to them:

Pass the crayons—it's Easter Sunday Mass in Neo-Catholic Land.

By the way, did you feel that emotion coursing through your veins when the ladies in white performed those synchronized dance moves to the sappy, happy, clappy music, their faces distorted by whomped up pathos? Know what that was? It was grace! Just ask the Neo-Catholics. They know all about that “grace”. It's positively palpable at World Youth Days, it animates praise and worship liturgies from east coast to west, and the Neo-Catholics are hooked on it. The fact that the same "grace" is felt by fifty thousand kids at a Justin Bieber concert when he belts out one of their favorite little ditties doesn't seem to bother them in the least. It's all about that feeling. It's all about human emotion. It's all about us.
 
Please, Neo-Catholic brothers and sisters: It’s not your fault, but you’ve been had. Your Church has been under siege since long before you were born. As much as you don’t like to hear it, the reality is that Pope Francis's teaching about atheists going to heaven and divorced and remarried Catholics going to Communion, would have been denounced by every saint you hold dear.  The further terrible reality is that, whether you like it or not, the martyrs of England and Wales gave their lives rather than settle for a Mass that looks frighteningly similar to the one you attend every Sunday.

Doesn't this concern you? What if you're ceasing to be Catholic, and you don't even know it? What if this really is all part of an elaborate Modernist attack on the Catholic Church we all love to cause us to lose our faith—an attack warned against by Pope St. Pius X, Pius XI, Pius XII...and attack that began with a full frontal assault on the Catholic Mass? It's not a conspiracy theory. It's history!  Please, go read it.
And ask God for the grace to understand what’s happened to our Church. 

We Catholics need to stop being manipulated by people who hate the traditions of our Church. We need to work together so that we take back our Church, save our souls, and pass on to our children that which our grandparents passed down to us—the Catholic Faith, whole and entire.

Time is running out...you must sense this is true. We need to become Catholic again.

 

 

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Last modified on Friday, September 1, 2017
Michael J. Matt | Editor

Michael J. Matt has been an editor of The Remnant since 1990. Since 1994, he has been the newspaper's editor. A graduate of Christendom College, Michael Matt has written hundreds of articles on the state of the Church and the modern world. He is the host of The Remnant Underground and Remnant TV's The Remnant Forum. He's been U.S. Coordinator for Notre Dame de Chrétienté in Paris--the organization responsible for the Pentecost Pilgrimage to Chartres, France--since 2000.  Mr. Matt has led the U.S. contingent on the Pilgrimage to Chartres for the last 24 years. He is a lecturer for the Roman Forum's Summer Symposium in Gardone Riviera, Italy. He is the author of Christian Fables, Legends of Christmas and Gods of Wasteland (Fifty Years of Rock ‘n’ Roll) and regularly delivers addresses and conferences to Catholic groups about the Mass, home-schooling, and the culture question. Together with his wife, Carol Lynn and their seven children, Mr. Matt currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.