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Contents © 2006
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
LETTERS
March 2006
AWKWARD RELIC OF POST-CONCILIAR CONFUSION
Our Mother of Confidence parishioner Marie's sentiment that "All the renovated churches look the same" says it all. (Roamin' Catholic, February 2006). It's been a while since I've stepped into Our Mother of Confidence, one of the diocese's most awkward relics of postconciliar confusion. One reason why I seldom go there, in spite of its proximity to me, is because it is depressing. The boxy architecture represents a break with all church history and represents an age when all tradition was spurned because we suddenly knew better. Judging by the photo of the Jetson's-inspired altar and TV-studio rear-wall, it appears that the diocese is still ashamed of Catholic tradition and has no higher goal than providing everyone at Mass with that unsettled feeling. I blame the director of Liturgy and Spirituality, Mary Ann Fallon, for yet another waste of parish money just to satisfy her hunger to keep the '70s alive for another generation. If she thinks we are complaining now, she should be glad that she won't be around in 70 years when everyone who looks at these kind of churches will be laughing at her and her staff for their bad taste and liturgical psychosis. Sadly, for now, the joke's on us.
Howard Jenkins
Clairemont
ANTAGONISM TOWARD TRADITION
Christopher Zehnder's article (God, Not Mammon, February 2006) is informative and quite telling, however, the article begins: "to reform the Church....? Does the Church need reforming? If this is the case, then the Protestant reformers were right, werenthey? The answer from any real Catholic is that the Protestant reformers were no such thing; they were revolutionaries -- the Church cannot be reformed. To say that It needs reforming is to say that the spotless bride of Christ is deficient and needs something more than what Christ gave us to achieve our salvation. No. It is the human element in the Church that needs reforming.
Further, I think that two major points are missing or should I say, missed in this polemic on the reform of the Catholic clergy. For one thing, no one forces or twists the arm of any man to enter the seminary to become a priest. No one. This is a special calling from Our Lord to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, and to follow Him.
Secondly, the many problems that, unfortunately, we read about these days concerning what has happened in the past as well as what is still happening today, is the result, I feel, of two major elements not talked about much in this type of discussion: our fallen nature (briefly hinted at in the article) and the post-Vatican II ethos, the outright rejection -- in many cases -- of Tradition.
Is this an oversimplification of the problems facing, not only the clergy, but the faithful as well? Perhaps, but the statistics chronicling the devastating decline of vocations, attendance at Mass, and Catholic morality in general, are impossible to separate from those who do enter the seminary to become priests. How can this ethos not affect a generation and a half -- the last 45 years -- of males brought up in such an atmosphere?
As I see it, many bishops do not want to face this ever-growing problem, and, in some cases foster it by an attitude of tolerance of the secularization of their priesthood as well as an antagonism toward Tradition, especially toward the Traditional Latin Mass.
Most priests at one time were a respected group; looked up to, not only for spiritual guidance, but also as a cohesive ingredient in any truly Catholic community.
Are there good and holy priests out there in the hinterlands? Sure, but shouldn't all priests be good and holy? This is something that we, as Catholic faithful, must pray for constantly and pray for a return to tradition throughout the Church.
It may do many priests (and laity) well to read some of the great encyclicals of Pope St. Pius X and Pope Leo XIII to get a good handle of a not-so-new problem facing the Catholic clergy and laity as well.
Eugene De Lalla
Troy, New Hampshire