Aborting the Liturgy: the US Bishop's Fall Conference
----------------Filed by Pauly Fongemie, November 21, 2005

Watching the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' annual Fall meeting was another exercise in futility and frustration. A comparison with the infamous Roe v Wade abortion decision kept intruding and I soon realized it was not without cogency.

As many of you probably know by now the Vatican has issued a document on the liturgy, LITURGICAM AUTHENTICAM, the FIFTH INSTRUCTION FOR THE RIGHT IMPLEMENTATION OF THE CONSTITUTION ON THE SACRED LITURGY. It is addressed to the ICEL [International Commission for the English in the Liturgy] and for the English-speaking Bishops]. The current head of the Bishops' Liturgy Commission is Bishop Donald Trautman, S.T.D., S.S.L., who is no friend of tradition, certainly not the Immemorial Roman Mass. A select group of like-minded bishops, without any impetus from the main body of the US bishops has made certain recommendations, to wit a wholesale rejection of the authentic translation of the Latin text, with perhaps two exceptions [and these are not definite at this time]. The rationale for public consumption is that the liturgy belongs to the people, that is "they own it now" and that after so many years, although the present translation is "inaccurate and sometimes banal" it would be unwise "to disturb the laity". I am paraphrasing somewhat as I did not take notes, but I am certain I am so close to the verbatim quotes that I am taking no liberties. It is difficult to forget descriptions that include inaccurate and banal, for instance.

Of all the irony, the crushing bitter irony and sheer hypocrisy! Back about 1970 the Bishops had no concerns about disturbing the faith of the laity, foisting disastrous change upon change at a heady pace, so much so that millions of Catholics simply walked away and a good number of them lost their faith. One bishop was afraid to make corrections because the churches were emptying. In other words he would rather his few people "perish for a lack of knowledge" rather than save their souls and perhaps gain many more. The truth is its own appeal since our "hearts are restless until they rest in Thee", O God, Who art all Truth.

At the time that the US Supreme Court abrogated the natural law when it ruled in Roe v Wade that women had a right to an abortion based on the Constitution's "penumbras" of privacy, it broke with precedent and all reason. Now we are told that to overturn Roe as Dred Scott was overturned over a century ago would be to "break with precedent" and thus unwise. This same irony and hypocrisy! Even liberals who welcomed the right to abortion in case law recognized that the reasoning of the majority was faulty, including a current Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Later the Court had an opportunity to revisit Roe, in fact more than once: the Casey and Webster cases. Finally it decided that although Roe was badly decided the right to abortion was established and it would be too much for society to accept, and that individuals have a right to decide reality and the meaning of life on their own.

Four of the Bishops stood to object to the proposed guidelines that in effect contravene the Vatican, saying that whenever they have taken the time to explain necessary changes the people have been receptive; two of them recognized that the select committee was violating the first principle, that translations must be accurate, and urged that the ICEL representative's recommendations [he favors the Vatican's document] be adopted. The other two had similarly worded objections.

One bishop, who was not identified by Bishop Trautman loud enough for me to hear his name, noted that one of the footnotes in the US Bishop's proposal admitted that the body of bishops had not requested going against the Vatican. A spokesman for the Trautman clique and who was on the dais gave some double talk to quell further discussion of this aspect. I did not comprehend his all-too glib phrasing. I cannot even repeat it here with any coherence. Marginalization, spin and denial are the hallmarks of the liberal's modus operandi when committing crimes against the Faith.

Afterwards Raymond Arroyo of EWTN and Father Jerry Pokorsky of ADOREMUS discussed the conference highlights, specifically the liturgy and the LEMS [see later]. They both noted that the present translation is "debased and banal" as Mr. Arroyo pointed out, including mentioning the irony as noted above. I got the idea that in the end the US Bishops will be 'coerced' by the minority because so few have any courage left and that Rome will back down, as it did with the admission of homosexuals to the priesthood and so many other disciplinary actions that went nowhere fast. One of the Vatican changes involves the translation of "pro multis" in the Consecration as "for many" the correct wording, rather than "for all". Bishop Trautman said that 125 of the bishops favor keeping the incorrect translation but did not say how many favor "for many" or were non responsive. The number is less than a half of the bishops so I suspect this may be a factor in his not elaborating further. For the bishops the full breakdown of responses was posted but not available for viewing by the television audience.

I recall that when this deliberate disorientation from the Canon of the Mass codified by the Council of Trent, a doctrinal council, as opposed to the merely pastoral council of Vatican II, was made, we were told that there is no actual word for many as such in the Aramaic, which was a form of spin since the Missale Romanum is always in Latin, first and foremost. The Council of Trent, which had the full protection of the Holy Ghost, had no problem deciphering the Scriptural intent of Christ. And neither did Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ. And, too, this retort completely ignored that Scripture translations in the Douay-Rheims version, at least, had no problem with "many are called, but few are chosen . . ." and "the way to perdition is wide and many are there who find it . . ." etc. At the time I wondered if this means that women and children [included because many means all to the English-speaking bishops] are called to the ordained priesthood and that all souls go to Hell, rather than the many [Ibid.]. I still do. I suppose the liberals hope we are not cognizant of their deception. They simply cannot have it both ways. Of course all of this is totally unnecessary, if the bishops were true shepherds following tradition, simply because no Bishops'conference------a recent concoction------can substitute for the rightful authority of the bishop over his own see. It occurs to me, as a long time observer on the scene and as a victim of Newchurch tactics that many of the bishops prefer not to take this disciplinary fact of the Faith into account because it lets them "off the hook" when controversy arises------they just refer back to the conference as if the decisions made there were binding under pain of sin. And do they hope we do not notice? Imagine if you and are acted as mothers and fathers by committee? Our particular judgment involves us as individual persons, with no committee to assist us in our defense. As parents we are all too aware of the terrible thing it is to "fall into the hands of the living God." It would behoove us all, if our shepherds were more mindful, lest Christ say to each of them who failed in his duty because of the misguidance of some committee, "get behind me, Satan."

Now for the problem of the LEMS, an acronym for Lay Ecclesiastical Ministers, an entire new bureaucracy being formulated to run parishes in the wake of the closing down of hundreds and hundreds of parishes throughout the country. As Fr. Pokorsky observed, the laity, accustomed to their own way of doing things, might be reluctant to accept a priest who may be predisposed to actual tradition. No more be said except to add that we have already seen the diminution of the sacred and the ordained ministry through the witless and tyrannical administration of the laity as it is. Imagine what they will accomplish in furthering the destruction of the Church in America! First the spineless, almost clueless bishops endorse a solution that is part of the problem, then they enshrine it with its own name and structure, like injecting a cancer patient with more cancerous cells rather than eradicate the tumor if at all possible. In medicine this would be considered not only malpractice but attempted murder. In the "American" Church it ought to be called assisted suicide on the installment plan by a committee of seeming incompetents with no faith left, except it is known as a "structure", a new "role" and anything but what it in truth and consequences is . . . meanwhile the bishops by and large are reluctant to clean out their seminaries to purge the homosexual dominion within, are reducing Eucharistic Adoration where possible, and then they claim to bewail the decline in vocations. Instead of planning for the "inevitable" as a fait accompli, why do they not put their efforts into avoiding what is avoidable and planning for a rise in vocations by following tradition? Traditional seminaries everywhere are turning away applicants for a lack of space and enough faculty to accommodate those answering the call. Two of the bishops who have taken charge of the seminaries they inherited have no shortage of vocations according to an account on EWTN. The others just don't see or do not care to see, like the lemmings going over the cliff into the sea with their LEMS leading them. More than one liberal mentioned that the laity are reluctant to follow their lead if they were to be more traditional.

And whose doing is this? To ask the question is to answer it . . .




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