I'm pitching straight in merely because I'm here now & probably not later. I hope my perspective doesn't bewilder readers, I realise mine is unusually wide.
My family were newcomers to the RCC from an exceptionally unusual combination of prior religions, but didn't have catechesis (post First World War chaos).
I loved the English Tridentine Mass of 1962-1970 (during boyhood). (It should have had the last Gospel & the St Michael prayer tacked back on.)
Younger clergy aren't even told this had existed.
I do not agree with those who look down on either old or new (or newest) Latin form. I don't take pot shots at other people's attachment to sacraments, per se. (In my young day fully half the congregation would sit out of "communion" before it became deemed compulsory; it in fact was respectful to leave it far more to individual discretion.)
Accusation of "heresy hunting" and "heresy hunter hunting" is what the scene easily becomes, for most. Then lazy legalism posing as non-legalism.
I esteem the FSSP from what little I hear of it.
By temperament I most like a simple form of religion, and for mainly organisational reasons (which I have done no more than hint about) have lately chosen, with God's fortuitous help, an unusually sound low church, thoughtful in relationships and deep in Scripture and interceding.
I hugely value diversity among denominations as the soil of our destined mature individuality, provided we have placed Christ's core values top. Especially thoughtfulness. It is indeed honest to say that in churches, there are "odds".
For me the phrases in this piece that speak loudest of the good are:
- the rights of the faithful
- heroically virtuous individuals, however (discerningly) collaborative
- pursue noble beauty * ... , rigorous doctrinal truth, and moral heroism (especially in prayer). So far from being “selfish,” this is the natural way in God’s Providence for good things to grow organically, gain internal strength, and radiate a powerful influence ...
- where people have their heads basically screwed on
- virtues: patience, generosity, longsuffering, prudence, meekness
- one could discern at the start that the pastor is open to fullness
- lex orandi lex credendi lex vivendi
- "order of charity" - moral virtue in relationship to God's will for our spirit towards His people - duty to ourselves & dependents
- we are living flesh-and-blood creatures who must be engaged in our senses, imaginations, memories, wills, and intellects. The liturgy is done for the honor of God and for our sanctification
- to believably embody our Creed, and test our fundamental willingness to lead a life of holiness in respectfulness vis-a-vis our fellows
- St. Pius X’s strong words in Tra le Sollecitudini: “It is vain to hope that the blessing of heaven will descend abundantly upon us, when our homage to the Most High, instead of ascending in the odor of sweetness, puts into the hand of the Lord the scourges wherewith of old the Divine Redeemer drove the unworthy profaners from the Temple” (the power trip, as in another thread of today)
( * even four-square hymns to an acoustic ensemble)
And of the bad:
- villains, cowards, and compromisers (who dumb down, and inculcate wrongful servility, and destroy the serenity and mental coherence of our fellows, as a power trip)
- to think that firm teaching, and the inexhaustibly loving, are incompatible, proves small-mindedness and lack of charity
In a phrase like "attempt to accommodate" I see more an "attempt to fool oneself one will be better accommodating". It is distrust of the work of the Holy Spirit in us.
I have personally survived grave ills in almost every denomination and "style of churchmanship" except the Eastern.
Some friends unusually used the Divine Office at home to good effect. I fall back on lots of Our Fathers under my breath plus Scriptures both memorised and afreshly read.
