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What popular piety?

The last remaining shreds which are grasped yet, despite all odds. Honestly, you don't seem to know what you're talking about here. If your argument is that the whole thing is now so far gone that it's time to toss the bath water, baby, and all, and start again, well, I understand. I did just that myself. But the faithful of the Latin Church just can't take much more top-down wounding.

I agree with this point, which was where my original quibble about corrective liturgical suppressions was coming from.

Thank you, Pastor Thomas.

Actually, the book of Psalms seems to be divided (more or less evenly) into three genres:

• Speaking of God in the third person
• Speaking to God in the second person
• God speaking

It is the genre of God speaking that sounds foreign to Catholic ears--so much so that many are inclined to reject it outright (outside the context of the unmodified Psalm).

For my part, I tend to prefer worship that sounds ancient, and therefore timeless and transcendent. However, I will also never forget the experience I had singing with a choir whose repertoire was very contemporary/charismatic--and yet they were some of the most prayerful and God-centered people I've ever worked with.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

Excellent. If then we consider the liturgy, which of these three genres has the Church included in the liturgy most, which less, and which almost not at all?

desertman posts:

There was an anecdote on this board some time ago about this problem with a young Ukrainian CAtholic priest who was assigned by his bishop to serve the DL each day after his ordination. He asked his bishop what he was to do in this area since he was newly married. The bishop was reported to have said that that was what afternoons were for.

I think the bigger issue is the false assumption that marriage is less than celibate life. and the equally false assumption that sex is somehow some dirty thing that makes one unfit for Eucharistic communion. I think Pope John Paul II's "Theology fo the Body" ought to be a new prism through which to view both mandatory celibacy and the idea of marital relations overall.

Bob

I had another thought after I posted. For all the Latins that I know who don't even keep the one hour Eucharistic fast anymore, I have to ask why such a big issue should be made over what a mariried priest needs to do. Certainly we can't expect the clergy to adhere to some strict ascetic lifestyle when the laity ignore even the most minimal effort to stop the treadmill of life and focus for a very short time on meeting and receiving the Lord.

If the midnight fast were reintroduced, we'd probably have no more adherence to it than we do to the one hour fast now. People would just ignore it: nothing to east, drink, smoke, or sex. Funny that when people are told to do this type of thing for a medical procedure, they never raise a fuss but ask them to do that for the Lord and you'd think they were being pressed into slavery. The general attitude I have had expressed to me when this topic is discussed is that "we don't have to do that anymore" and "no one can tell me what to do." It's breathtaking.

Bob

I just want to note that the attitudes about sex and marriage Bob referenced aren't limited to Catholics. Over in the "orthosphere" we hear the same erroneous arguments all of the time on forums and blogs.

More than a decade ago, Rome held an international
Synod of Bishops. On the agenda was the topic of opening the priesthood in the Latin Church to "second career" men: married men who had their children raised and would think about shifting from some other career and becoming priests. Seems the overwhelming attitude of the bishops present was that they were against the idea. So there really is no excuse for a priest shortage IMHO.

Bob

The problem is one of a lack of faith, so on the one hand, you have a point. On the other, if the Church stopped treating sacred things trivially, people would have an easier time believing they were serious.

Well, even before the Second Vatican Council, I think it was a three hour fast, if I'm not mistaken... Not sure if I've learned my history right, but that might have been the case.

The three-hour fast was introduced in the 1950s. My mother and grandmother had trouble adjusting to my coming back from catechism with that news. My First Communion was made in May of 1957.

Bob

Roman Catholics appear to celebrate their liturgies like Protestants.

One of the complaints / observations / views of the Eastern Orthodox toward Latin Catholics - they really are of the same vane as Protestantism.

*** note these are not my views but what I have ascertained by reading how the Orthodox view Catholicism.

What the next Pope should really do is to do away with Roman Catholic Ecclesiology revert back to the One True Faith of Orthodoxy and shock the world.

it would be the most Christian act the Catholic church has ever done - to come back into communion with Orthodoxy In a massive gesture of humility. I know this is impossible with human beings in charge.

Then we could all forget about obeying the rules and start living like Christians. (actually we could probably start doing that right now)

The Orthodox have plenty of little inane rules also - so ...

I am really tired of the appeal to men for the priesthood when even our own Eastern Catholic Bishops won't accept married men.

We are dying and we are causing our own death.