by Charlie

Overall, however, when weighing the two forms, I think the gains outweigh the losses. The 50th anniversary of the Novus Ordo’s debut is, therefore, a time to thank God for those gains.
FATHER ROGER LANDRY

I believe Father Roger Landry is a good man and a good priest with a lot of good intentions. I also think he is deluded by his own good intentions in this Register article, “Celebrating the Novus Ordo as It Ought to Be.” I always grew up hearing that old saw that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. This was my introduction to the law of unintended consequences.

When welfare programs began many decades ago, the intention was to help families in their hardships. The unintended consequences of those programs was to foster generations of unwed mothers and fatherless sons who would become savage criminals who have turned urban life into urban hell. I am crazy, but I think the solution to the problem is to end the programs. Why repeat the same mistake expecting a different result? And if the current result is worse than the problem the solution was intended to cure, you abandon the solution. This would be common sense.

The Novus Ordo Mass had many good intentions behind it at the outset. But good intentions don’t count. What we have to see are the potential unintended consequences of our actions. The unintended consequences of the Novus Ordo are plain to see. We see a decline in vocations, church attendance, and belief in the Real Presence. Liturgical abuses are common. The atmosphere of a typical Novus Ordo Mass has less reverence than what you will find at an Episcopal or Lutheran church service. And the Novus Ordo opened the doors to all sorts of innovations from the modernists in other areas. How can Father Landry seriously claim that the gains outweigh the losses?

The biggest loss is that priests like Father Landry cannot see the destruction the Novus Ordo has brought to our parishes. It’s like living in a town with a paper mill. After awhile, you don’t notice the rotten egg smell anymore. But your out of town relatives notice it when they come to visit.

There is only one upside to the Novus Ordo Mass. It makes you appreciate the real thing when you encounter it. When you attend a Latin Mass, you are struck immediately by its beauty and reverence. When you kneel at the rail and take communion, you see how much better and efficient it is than the clumsy attempt at a supermarket express lane with extraordinary ministers of holy communion. Worship is not about the utilitarian, but the utilitarian arguments against the Latin Mass are without substance.

The Novus Ordo should be totally abolished. There was and is nothing wrong with the Latin Mass except that it put restraint on bad priests in the liturgy. The Novus Ordo opened the doors wide to innovations that are ongoing even today. The changes never stop. Ultimately, those changes will invalidate the Mass altogether, and the Real Presence will vanish in an abomination of desolation. This is the ultimate destination of all these good intentions. When we reach the end of that road paved with the stones of all those good intentions, we should not be surprised to find ourselves in Hell nor claim that we weren’t warned.

by Charlie

An excessive need for admiration and praise and with this comes an equally excessive need to avoid criticism. Often this is associated with obvious attention seeking behavior. These narcissistic traits are frequently found in those who introduce and participate in liturgical innovations.
PAUL VITZ

If I had the power and the authority to change things, I would abolish the Novus Ordo from Catholic parishes and demand a return to the Tridentine Mass. I did not always feel this way or even care. Then, my parish got a narcissist for a pastor, and my views on the Novus Ordo changed dramatically and permanently. This is because the Novus Ordo allows the narcissistic excesses of priests to be on full display.

We already know this. There was the priest who rode a hoverboard into the sanctuary at the beginning of the Mass. There was the priest that offered the Super Bowl Mass. Then, there was the use of a drone to elevate a monstrance with a consecrated host through the sanctuary. I wish I was making that last one up. Like it or not, liturgical abuses are the norm and not the exception in the Novus Ordo.

The fundamental problem with the Novus Ordo is that it brings the attention and focus from the sacrifice to the celebration of the community to the final celebration of the priest himself. This is sickening stuff. Now, not every priest who celebrates the NO is a narcissist. Many of them probably hate the Novus Ordo, but they are not given the option to abandon it. But the narcissist priest loves the Novus Ordo. It becomes his time to shine.

My priest is one of those narcissists. He parks his presider’s chair directly in front of the Cranmer table altar where he sits like a king and presides over his court. His homilies are just warm ups before going into long talks about himself and what sorts of television programs he likes to watch. When this becomes boring, he will launch into song which brings applause from the idiot herd in the pews. Or, he will have a quiz show where he gives away prizes for correct answers. I am not making any of this up.

This weekly spectacle is nauseating for me. I feel physically ill when this narcissist takes the stage for his clown show spectacle. To negate the scandal, I now attend the Spanish Mass where he presides but has to tamp down his ego because of his tenth grade Spanish language skills. My own comprehension of Spanish is less than this, so his homilies and antics disappear into a gibberish I do not understand. I also sit to the side of the sanctuary where I don’t have to look at him directly.

This narcissist priest noticed that we were doing this and stopped in the middle of his Spanish homily to declare in English his displeasure at Anglos attending the Spanish Mass. He had become wise to our trick, and his ego could not let it go. We still go to the Spanish Mass, so he punished us by nixing one of the English masses and moving the Spanish Mass to that time. He does these passive-aggressive type moves constantly.

When people hear of our travails with this awful priest, they ask the obvious questions. Have you written to the bishop? Yes, I have done this. Others have done this. Have you considered attending a Latin Mass? The nearest one is a two hour trip from us. What about some other parish with a priest who isn’t a narcissistic jerk? That would be a thirty minute drive where the Novus Ordo is only marginally less offensive with a priest who turns his homilies into a social justice diatribe. I think half of our parish already goes there now.

This priest who I refer to as “Father Jerk” essentially wants his parishioners to love, adore, and worship him instead of Jesus Christ. As for his parishioners, he holds them all in disdain. Many men in my parish have expressed a desire to punch him in the face. One fellow had to go outside and get some air before losing his cool with this clown after some dreadful comments Father Jerk made to his wife.

This guy doesn’t belong in the priesthood. This is a given. Yet, what drew him to this vocation? I highly doubt he was called. I think the reason is obvious. He saw in the Novus Ordo his chance to be in the spotlight. He was drawn to it like some fat moth to a bug zapper on some redneck’s back porch. He might have made a fine lounge singer or an actor, but most people who opt for these careers become nobodies. But the Novus Ordo allowed him to receive the adulation he sought while also making use of those singing and acting talents.

Would the Latin Mass have prevented this? I think so. Narcissists aren’t attracted to tradition. They want to break the rules. The Latin Mass is about Jesus Christ. The Novus Ordo is about the priest.

The only upside I can see with Father Jerk is that he has made a traditionalist out of me. I probably wouldn’t have cared about the liturgical issues, but Father Jerk has made me care. His spiritual director recommend to Father Jerk the Litany of Humility. Father Jerk’s response to this was to assign it as penance to his parishioners who confessed that week. Apparently, pride is everyone else’s problem but his own.

Priests Tampering with the Mass

Another post by my friend Charles Broadway as posted at Smoke of Satan.

To the prophets: My heart is broken within me, all my bones tremble: I am become as a drunken man, and as a man full of wine, at the presence of the Lord, and at the presence of his holy words. Because the land is full of adulterers, because the land hath mourned by reason of cursing, the fields of the desert are dried up: and their course is become evil, and their strength unlike. For the prophet and the priest are defiled: and in my house I have found their wickedness, saith the Lord. Therefore their way shall be as a slippery way in the dark: for they shall be driven on, and fall therein: for I will bring evils upon them, the year of their visitation, saith the Lord. And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria: they prophesied in Baal, and deceived my people Israel. And I have seen the likeness of adulterers, and the way of lying in the prophets of Jerusalem: and they strengthened the hands of the wicked, that no man should return from his evil doings: they are all become unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrha.
JEREMIAH 23:9-14 DOUAY-RHEIMS

This passage from Jeremiah would aptly describe the recent meeting of the United States Council of Corrupt Bishops even down to the lines about Sodom and Gomorrah. You could have tossed a stone into that room and not failed to hit a sodomite. They are a wicked bunch of men, and you would need a fresh quarry to provide all the millstones needed for the necks of these evildoers. And the sad thing is that they are still too conservative for our heretical Bishop in White who sent his emissary with words that could have come from Harvey Weinstein on his casting couch.

These are dark days to be a Roman Catholic and many look back to church history to find some parallel to our time. Yet, none quite fit. I recommend turning to the pages of the Old Testament and the many infidelities of the Hebrews in their whorings after idols. Watching Francis and his Amazonian disciples bless and prostrate themselves before Queen Pachamama ranks as disgusting as anything perpetrated in ancient Israel. When you combine the rampant sodomy, heresy, thievery, and thuggery in the Vatican, the hierarchy of the Antichurch should prepare a place for themselves next to the prophets of Baal in Hell.

But why has this calamity of unfaithful prelates and priests befallen Catholicism? Why has God allowed this? St. John Eudes tells us why:

‘THE MOST EVIDENT MARK of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics’ who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.

Instead of nourishing those committed to their care, they rend and devour them brutally. Instead of leading their people to God, they drag Christian souls into hell in their train. Instead of being the salt of the earth and the light of the world, they are its innocuous poison and its murky darkness.

St. Gregory the Great says that priests and pastors will stand condemned before God as the murderers of any souls lost through neglect or silence. Tot occidimus, quot ad mortem ire tepidi et tacentes videmus. Elsewhere St. Gregory asserts that nothing more angers God than to see those whom He set aside for the correction of others, give bad example by a wicked and depraved life.’

Instead of preventing offenses against His Majesty, such priests become themselves the first to persecute Him, they lose their zeal for the salvation of souls and think only of following their own inclinations. Their affections go no farther than earthly things, they eagerly bask in the empty praises of men, using their sacred ministry to serve their ambitions, they abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world, and in their saintly calling of holiness, they spend their time in profane and worldly pursuits.

When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people, and is visiting His most dreadful anger upon them. That is why He cries unceasingly to Christians, “Return, 0 ye revolting children . . . and I will give you pastors according to my own heart” (Jer. 3, 14-15). Thus, irregularities in the lives of priests constitute a scourge visited upon the people in consequence of sin.’

There are approximately 1.3 billion Catholics in the world. Yet, how many of them are worth their salt? How many of them believe in the Real Presence? How many of them can be bothered to attend Mass on a weekly basis?

The sad reality of the Catholic laity hit home to me when my wife reported that one of our parishioners expressed hope that the Church was on the verge of ordaining women priests. Now, I have heard countless heresies from the mouths of both bishops, priests, and religious. But this was the first time I heard such garbage from a fellow parishioner who I considered to be a faithful Catholic. I suspect she is on the subscriber list to the National Catholic Reporter.

It is no secret to me that many Catholics are nominalists and a large number of them disagree with the Church’s teachings on things like homosexuality, divorce and remarriage, and artificial contraception. These nominalists are merely cultural Catholics raised in a faith they did not choose but which they cling to like the old silverware their grandparents bequeathed to them. They are lacking in supernatural faith and would certainly disavow all belief in our Lord should the persecutions come. But these folks do us all one great favor by staying home except for the two times per year they show up for Mass. Our priests and prelates are not directing the Church down the path of wickedness to appeal to these nominalists.

The real destroyers are the modernists in the pews who actually do attend Mass and are actually quite passionate about the Catholic Church. But this would be the Antichurch and not the One True Faith handed down from the Apostles. It is from this crowd of lay heretics that you get the likes of Michael Sean Winters, Austen Ivereigh, Stephen Colbert, and John Allen, Jr.

Faithful orthodox Catholics like to think that they are in the majority of those who attend Mass weekly. But this is not true. They are outnumbered by the insipid half-ass Catholics who gladly pull the lever for pro-abortion Democrats and have no qualms about sodomites in the priesthood and lesbo-nuns in the convents. They fully support the agenda of Francis and his fellow modernist bishops especially when it comes to “irregular relationships.”

If you are worried that you are one of these half-ass heretical Catholics, it indicates that you most certainly are not. These calamities have not come because you forgot to pray your daily rosary or need to shape up in some area of your life. The ones who have brought these calamities are the ones who have deliberately asked for them. They are robust in their sins and errors.

It would be nice to see these scandals as just a pope/prelate/priest problem. But we forget that all clergy and religious begin as laity. These errors did not begin inside the Church. They began outside in the world and infiltrated into the Church. This did not begin at the top and work its way down to the bottom. It began at the bottom and has finally worked its way to the top. If you doubt this, just look at the sorry state of our Catholic universities like Georgetown and Notre Dame where a return to Catholic orthodoxy would certainly be met by a mass revolt from the student bodies of these institutions.

The homosexualist Father James Martin of the Society of Judas does not speak to empty auditoriums and parishes as he pushes his rainbow agenda. Those venues are always filled to capacity. Catholic politicians who vote for abortion can do so in the full confidence that their membership in the Knights of Columbus will not be affected. Many parishes and universities are “gay friendly,” and this is precisely because of programs staffed and supported by Catholic laity. It was Catholic laity in Ireland who voted overwhelmingly to legalize abortion in defiance of Catholic pro-life teachings.

Some will argue that the sheep are not to blame but the shepherds. But we are not talking about children indoctrinated in a corrupted public school. Many of these are adults who were born before Vatican II and know precisely what the Church teaches on these matters. If they didn’t know, they would not labor so mightily to change the Church’s teachings. Even I knew what the Catholic Church taught on these things, and I was a Protestant. Let’s not fool ourselves with the tripe that ignorance is an excuse here. In the age of Google, people can claim they don’t know things?!

As a convert, I diligently studied on my own all that the Catholic Church taught concerning faith and morals. I think my only sticking point was the thing about indulgences which I got over. Otherwise, I knew what the Church taught and embraced it all without reservation. If I could do this, why can’t the rest of those who call themselves Catholic?

The time for punishment has come as we now have an Antichurch staffed by wolves who molest and rape our children, filch our donations, indulge in sexual perversion, and undermine our beliefs and traditions. It is sad that the innocent are condemned to suffer with the wicked. There is no doubt that the bastards in mitres are ripe for damnation. But if you want to know where the blame lies, just look next to you in the pew. You may not deserve all of this, but those people do.