Are Eastern Catholics and traditional Catholics Orthodox in denial [CONTROVERSIAL]

Akita Suggagaki said:

It must meet us where we are to lead us on.

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why must it if it’s God at work?

JSRG said:

I need to issue a correction here: Old Catholics aren't traditionalist, and aren't even Roman Catholic. They're a group that broke away from the Roman Catholic church in the 19th century after the First Vatican Council precisely because they disagreed with its declarations regarding the power and authority of the pope.

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Which means they held fast to the traditions they had received rather than follow the innovations of Vatican I. That kind of makes them traditionalist.

Akita Suggagaki said:

It must meet us where we are to lead us on.

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It isn't leading you anywhere precisely because it has been dumbed down to the lowest level. The Divine liturgy has been served unchanged for centuries to everyone from serfs to aristocrats.

prodromos said:

Which means they held fast to the traditions they had received rather than follow the innovations of Vatican I. That kind of makes them traditionalist.

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I thought it was obvious I meant "traditionalist" in a Catholic sense, given that was the context of how it was being used. Obviously, non-Catholics are going to have different ideas on what are the the actual traditions and probably regard those who rejected Vatican I was the "real" traditionalists. But a traditionalist Catholic is obviously not one who rejects Vatican I.

The bottom line, in any event, is that Old Catholics don't have any bump to overcome when it comes to not caring about the pope than an Anglican does. They don't think the pope has special authority to begin with; they wouldn't be Old Catholics if they did.

ArmyMatt said:

why must it if it’s God at work?

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Does not God meet us where we are. Did nor Christ come in the flesh?

prodromos said:

It isn't leading you anywhere precisely because it has been dumbed down to the lowest level. The Divine liturgy has been served unchanged for centuries to everyone from serfs to aristocrats.

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How has it been "dumbed down to the lowest level"?

Akita Suggagaki said:

Does not God meet us where we are. Did nor Christ come in the flesh?

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He does and He did, not sure what your point is

Akita Suggagaki said:

How has it been "dumbed down to the lowest level"?

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the fact that the clown mass is a thing.
the fact that the puppet mass is a thing.
the fact that Pope JPII would allow the Dalai Lama to put his idols on Catholic altars.

ArmyMatt said:

the fact that the clown mass is a thing.
the fact that the puppet mass is a thing.
the fact that Pope JPII would allow the Dalai Lama to put his idols on Catholic altars.

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There is not a "thing" that is a clown Mass or a puppet Mass. Both would be completely outside the rubrics of the celebration of the Mass. Because individual priests may desecrate the Mass does not make it a "thing" or acceptable within the Catholic Church.

Is it true that Pope John Paul II allowed a Buddha statue to be put on top of the tabernacle?
No.

In the first World Day of Prayer for peace, in 1986, at an interreligious gathering in Assisi including the pope, the dalai lama, and other world religion leaders, various religious groups were assigned to various churches and other spaces for prayer or meeting space throughout the city.

At one of the churches the Buddhists were using for meeting, a Buddhist participant placed a statue of the Buddha on a shelf of the high altar behind and above the tabernacle (which had been emptied), not realizing the sensitivity of the placement. Once informed, they moved it, and it has never been an issue at subsequent events.

It was not something planned or permitted by the pope or any other church authority, and the Buddhists were receptive to being informed about the significance of the tabernacle once explained - which is the whole point of interreligious dialogue, after all, to learn.

First and foremost any dialog should be rooted in truth, not false accusations. True?

narnia59 said:

There is not a "thing" that is a clown Mass or a puppet Mass. Both would be completely outside the rubrics of the celebration of the Mass. Because individual priests may desecrate the Mass does not make it a "thing" or acceptable within the Catholic Church.

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it might not be official, but it is a thing in that it is something done and done on more than one occasion. the fact that priests have been bold enough to do such things in the first place is evidence of the watering down.

narnia59 said:

No.

In the first World Day of Prayer for peace, in 1986, at an interreligious gathering in Assisi including the pope, the dalai lama, and other world religion leaders, various religious groups were assigned to various churches and other spaces for prayer or meeting space throughout the city.

At one of the churches the Buddhists were using for meeting, a Buddhist participant placed a statue of the Buddha on a shelf of the high altar behind and above the tabernacle (which had been emptied), not realizing the sensitivity of the placement. Once informed, they moved it, and it has never been an issue at subsequent events.

It was not something planned or permitted by the pope or any other church authority, and the Buddhists were receptive to being informed about the significance of the tabernacle once explained - which is the whole point of interreligious dialogue, after all, to learn.

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if it wasn’t permitted, I stand corrected and take your word for it. however, pagans shouldn’t be using Christian churches at all for prayers. so, while not as bad as I initially said, it’s still evidence of a watering down.

narnia59 said:

First and foremost any dialog should be rooted in truth, not false accusations. True?

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true.

By gar, it's been a while since I've seen an iteration of the 'Orthodox in union with Rome' question! This is giving me major CAF flashbacks...

Anyway, that idea was bunkum then, and it's bunkum now, and it will be bunkum forever into the future. To say that Eastern Rite Catholics would have anything to do with Orthodoxy outside of their outer pretentions in seeking to preserve what their actual fathers in the faith had before they joined Rome is just ridiculous. You can't divorce and still claim to be 'Married to the first love, but actively living with a new partner' (~ 'Orthodox in denial', or as they'd prefer it, 'Orthodox in union with Rome'). Things do not work that way. That is fornication. Ask the woman at the well how that worked out. We are not supposed to fornicate, whether physically or spiritually.

ArmyMatt said:

the fact that the clown mass is a thing.
the fact that the puppet mass is a thing.
the fact that Pope JPII would allow the Dalai Lama to put his idols on Catholic altars.

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I have never seen either a "clown mass" nor a "puppet mass". Have you?

ArmyMatt said:

He does and He did, not sure what your point is

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My point is that God meets us where we are, comes to lift us. That is not "dumbing down".

Akita Suggagaki said:

My point is that God meets us where we are, comes to lift us. That is not "dumbing down".

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Yes, and we admit that in that sense, God meets us where we are. But what you seem to mean by the expression is that He meets you in a form that YOU choose, that is pleasing to you. We’d say that He meets us in a form that He knows best. I don’t think the burning bush was something chosen or modified by Moses, but rather, that he had to adapt himself to God’s conditions, and become less comfortable, like in taking off his sandals. Anything we choose is more dumbed down than what God chooses for us.

Akita Suggagaki said:

My point is that God meets us where we are, comes to lift us. That is not "dumbing down".

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In the words of the great philosopher of our times, Hank Hill, I'm sure Jesus is a lot of places He doesn't want to be.

That doesn't make those places spiritually healthy. Just because God can meet people at a "clown mass" doesn't mean that "clown masses" are right worship of God, according to what He Himself as established; cf. God met St. Mary of Egypt when she was still a prostitute, and St. Moses the Ethiopian when he was still a bandit and murderer. Even so, being a prostitute, bandit, or murderer is clearly not how God wants us to be. When you change your way of being, a change in your way of worship should follow, so as to not live a life out of harmony with God and with what you know to be true about what He wants for you.

Given that, what does it say about the spiritual health of the RC communion overall that such things are allowed to take place and no one is disciplined over them, and effectively nothing is done? I'm not going to pronounce any sort of judgment over a communion of more than a billion people, but I don't think it says anything good.

Just for comparison's sake about how problems can be dealt with in individual parishes where they arise, some years ago when I was still living Albuquerque, NM and attending the Coptic Orthodox Church of St. Bishoy in that city, we received a priest from Egypt as a sort of 'gift' from the diocese, as is the custom for our holy week celebrations in that parish. It's nice for the majority of the people there, I take it, because this allows them to have services in Arabic like they would have had back home in Egypt, which also has the practical effect of being pastorally sound, given that the numbers of worshippers really swells during that time, so we see a lot of people who don't show up to regular liturgies, many of which it turns out do not do so because they are not confident in their English-language abilities (I asked them and that's what they said), and our liturgies during the rest of the year are served by our regular priest, Abouna Marcus, ~80% in English (in keeping with the directive from H.E. Metropolitan Youssef that the majority of liturgies during the year be served primarily in the language of the country, so as to maintain openness to everyone and not become a stagnant ethnic museum for people from Egypt, Sudan, Libya and nowhere else).

So it happened that one year we had during Holy Week an Arabphone Egyptian priest with us whose name I thankfully do not remember. He and I couldn't really communicate very well one-on-one, because my Arabic outside of the liturgy proper or other standardized texts is very rudimentary (I only had a year of formal classes in college, which basically taught you how to read and write and almost nothing else, so my vocabulary is not great), but he seemed very nice to me. He gave me a little picture of HH Pope Shenouda III for my wallet (oh, Egyptians! ), and called me "Simsim" (Sesame) for some reason, which I thought was funny. The Egyptians didn't seem to like him, though, and I didn't understand why until one of them took me aside out of earshot so as to not cause further friction and explained that some of the people had seen him browsing on his phone inside of the altar. This is obviously completely unacceptable and scandalous, so while we suffered with him for the rest of the week due to a lack of any other option (our regular priest being understandably busy with his home parish in Arizona during that time), our most senior deacon made a point of contacting HG Bishop Youssef to explain the situation with this particular priest and make it clear that we will not be accepting him back in the future because of this vile disregard he had shown towards our holy faith and sacred spaces.

Do you notice in this story how the priority is in addressing the problem and making sure it is not repeated under any circumstance, insofar as we can ensure that by making the problem known and demanding that it never happen again? The RCC could do that too concerning its raft of liturgical abuses like these abhorrent "clown masses" and other frivolity, but alas, apparently it is enough of a salve to say "Well I've never seen that!", which would not pass muster in an Orthodox congregation ever. If there's evidence that it's happening, and people know it shouldn't be happening, then there's nothing else to do but to put a stop to it immediately, in a way so that it doesn't come back. That anything other than this happens is a sign of the deep spiritual rot within the RCC itself, which makes it utterly impossible to imagine how anyone could take being "Orthodox in union with Rome" seriously (hence no one outside of some Eastern Catholics online seems to), or even just Rome on its own merits seriously. Rome doesn't take itself seriously, and so you have clown masses and all kinds of other nonsense that is just sort of around, and so long as you don't personally see it, apparently that means there's no problem? Nah. As far as I can recall this many years on (I've already been away from Albuquerque for nine years now, so this was at the very least about a decade ago), I didn't personally see Abouna Simsim browsing on his phone in the altar (I assume that this was seen by the deacons who served with him, given that one of them eventually told the bishop about it), but that's so obviously out of bounds that I wouldn't need to personally see it before I could agree that it shouldn't be allowed to happen.

So I think the difference in approach to things, and what it says about how the RCC and its faithful can sometimes approach the faith, is quite obvious, and quite detrimental to the RCC's stated goal of being in union with Orthodoxy at some point in the future. Would you want to be in union with clown mass parishes and the bishops who apparently love them if you didn't have to be? I wouldn't, and I can't imagine any serious Christian who would. The Church is not a stage for clown and puppet shows, and in my personal opinion, if you make it one or consent to it being one, you forfeit any right you might otherwise have to call what goes on there worshipping God. It's mocking God, and God will not be mocked endlessly without those responsible for said mockery having to answer for what they did or failed to do.

Akita Suggagaki said:

I have never seen either a "clown mass" nor a "puppet mass". Have you?

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no, but I have seen clips of them and spoken to a few Catholic priests who are friends about them.

and those Catholic priest friends are not happy it happens.

Akita Suggagaki said:

My point is that God meets us where we are, comes to lift us. That is not "dumbing down".

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no one disputes that God does that. that however doesn’t mean the Liturgy must speak to the times as they are today.

ArmyMatt said:

it might not be official, but it is a thing in that it is something done and done on more than one occasion. the fact that priests have been bold enough to do such things in the first place is evidence of the watering down.

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The fact that liturgical abuses exist is not evidence of "dumbing down" the liturgy. That's why it's considered to be an abuse after all. Rather it's evidence of a few rogue priests who have the opinion that they are smarter than the Church. It's unfortunate but it is a far cry from the norm, especially when you put it in context of the world wide Church.

ArmyMatt said:

if it wasn’t permitted, I stand corrected and take your word for it. however, pagans shouldn’t be using Christian churches at all for prayers. so, while not as bad as I initially said, it’s still evidence of a watering down.


true.

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Is it your opinion that God does not hear the prayers of pagans or in some way finds them to be evil or disgusting to Him?

What is done to stop the abuse for good, Narnia59? I don't intend to speak for Fr. Matt (or anyone), so I apologize for butting in, but having been RC myself before coming to Oriental Orthodoxy 13 years ago, I am sympathetic to the idea that these are the actions of rogues in some trouble spots (all churches have some people who 'go bad' or otherwise need to be reigned in for the good of the faithful), but it is difficult to take that as an answer to anything if we do not know what (if anything) is done to actually address the abuses and seriously discipline the abusers. Pointing out how infrequent or diocese-specific or whatever that they are certainly doesn't mean that they're somehow not happening, or that it doesn't matter that they happen, or that it's okay that nothing is done about it (which I know you didn't say in so many words, but is a conceptual hop, skip, and jump away from saying that, or least behaving as though that's the case).

ArmyMatt said:

no one disputes that God does that. that however doesn’t mean the Liturgy must speak to the times as they are today.

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I am not advocating clown masses nor any other abnormality. Vernacular was a good and important option and that was a huge change.
The Mass is otherwise quite stable as it is. I don't see" dumbing down" anywhere. Perhaps in the homily? That would be up to individual priests but I still have not experienced it. In re-presenting the divine truths the liturgy is speaking to the times of today. I don't see the concern.