@vviatrix-blog / vviatrix-blog.tumblr.com
As the full moon brightly reflects the light of the sun, You reflected the glory of the Messiah, the Light of wisdom! With Zachariah you walked in all of the Lord¹s commandments, Elizabeth, beloved by God. So as we bless you with fitting songs, We praise the Lord, the bountiful Light, who enlightens all.
kontakion of righteous elizabeth (icon)
something I like to think about: the anonymous saints in heaven happily taking up the causes of apocryphal/mythical/legendary “saints”
dozens of people once called some variation of christopher who lived quiet lives of sanctity now lovingly interceding on behalf of travelers, unknown holy men and women in the presence of god snatching up each prayer to imagined saints and making that cause their own
Mother of the World, 1924, Nicholas Roerich
Medium: canvas,tempera
self-own of the millennium
@mnkhsss replied to your post “hard for certain young catholics who never experienced the preVII...”
Is the choir supposed to not be bad?! I mean, it's just members of the congregation singing together in worship and celebration?! That one really gets me, I can't imagine worrying so much about the vocal quality of liturgical music.
it was emphasized to us in RCIA that singing is prayer and an important part of the liturgy, and you need to participate regardless of whether you “sound good” because that isn’t the point!
but some folks value the aesthetic quality of the liturgy over lay participation. not sure what parishes who don’t have access to talented chant choirs should do.
hard for certain young catholics who never experienced the preVII church to believe: people are leaving the church because people are leaving religion in general, because our societal models of community and family are changing, because religion is seen as anti-science and anti-reality, because growing acceptance of LGBTQ people means less willingness to be a part of organizations that reject them, because sexual abuse scandals and financial corruption displays a flagrant and disgusting level of moral bankruptcy many are unwilling to overlook…
easy for certain young catholics who never experienced the preVII church to believe: people are leaving the church because the priest’s clothes are ugly, they understand the words spoken in the mass, nobody talks about hell, and the volunteer choir isn’t particularly talented
Maybe the fact that people *can* dissent and leave is also a factor here. Like, having a super conforming society that resists people leaving through coercive mechanisms (like the pre V2 Church did) probably helps to keep people in the faith - meaning that the relative ‘liberalisation’ of the contemporary Church probably is a cause in some sense.
But this is bad and we shouldn’t want it.
I think you’re right!
even just having a religious/social culture where you all lived in a “catholic ghetto”, went to parochial school, patronized each other’s businesses, were in a mutual shunning relationship with nearby protestants, etc. would have made it much harder to leave. (this was how my godmother grew up.)
& on the other hand, a community where catholics were a minority and protestants were (sometimes very) hostile towards you (I actually knew a catholic girl whose grandfather had the KKK burn a cross on his lawn) can lead to a besieged mentality and the sort of “us vs. them” entrenchment that makes it nearly impossible to leave and thus become “them”.
the missionary order that currently runs our parish (due to lack of diocesan priests) is perpetually trying to “traditionalize” our regular masses. more incense, more chanting, increasingly elaborate (and expensive, and paid for by misappropriated funds) vestments, half-capes for EMs and cassocks+cottas for altar servers, revolving door of liturgical directors and choir leaders and pastoral associates as the lay leaders are bumped out for pushing back on some expenses and changes...
but interestingly the reason this order is here in the first place is to manage the newman center and “new evangelize” the university, and the VERY well attended and “on fire for Christ” student masses are all guitars, box drums, and matt maher
so.... What Is The Truth
hard for certain young catholics who never experienced the preVII church to believe: people are leaving the church because people are leaving religion in general, because our societal models of community and family are changing, because religion is seen as anti-science and anti-reality, because growing acceptance of LGBTQ people means less willingness to be a part of organizations that reject them, because sexual abuse scandals and financial corruption displays a flagrant and disgusting level of moral bankruptcy many are unwilling to overlook...
easy for certain young catholics who never experienced the preVII church to believe: people are leaving the church because the priest’s clothes are ugly, they understand the words spoken in the mass, nobody talks about hell, and the volunteer choir isn’t particularly talented
somewhere--in-between replied to your photo “imagine if we could convince people of this”
i'm still trying to figure out what this means, but there seems to be something very good here. i'm not smart enough to fully understand though because of the way this is written.
I’m not the OP, but here’s my attempt at explaining what he’s saying in less-theological terms:
“continuity of doctrine” and “preservation of the deposit of faith” have to do with the belief that the Church’s teaching authority is inspired by God. all catholics (theoretically) must believe this, and confirmed catholics profess it during their confirmation: “I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God.”
for some people, who consider themselves traditionalists, this is taken to mean that every single idea and practice ever espoused by the roman church is unchangeable and unchanging, and any alteration is heresy.
in contrast the OP uses the term “peripheral applications” to mean “stuff that isn’t dogma [absolutely true, authoritative teaching], but rather the way we apply dogma to real-world situations”.
this thread is in response to the hullabaloo over the revision of the catechism i/r/t the death penalty - in specific he’s saying that
and in a general way, OP’s saying that the “traditionalists” mentioned earlier are
hope that makes more sense (and that I’ve understood the OP correctly)! it can be tough to jump in on complex theological discussion when there are so many unfamiliar terms, so I’ve tried to lay it out more colloquially here.
@mnkhsss replied to your post “@philtippett replied to your post “soooooooo many ultra-trad converts...”
I wouldn't be surprised if there are some serial converts out there. I wonder if anyone has done academic work on that- it must be fascinating.
philtippett replied to your post “@philtippett replied to your post “soooooooo many ultra-trad converts...”
i definitely knew one serial converter in undergrad. every 3 months she was a new thing. christian, pagan, baha'i, buddhist, wiccan, etc. but fwiw she also had that behavior in her romantic relationships so there's probably a personality component to the many conversions too.
I would LOVE to read about this. I’ve seen more than a few instances of people church-hopping to progressively more hardcore/”purer” sects over short periods of time (whether low church protestant-> lutheran/episcopalian-> roman catholic-> eastern catholic-> orthodox-> ???, or mainline protestant-> evangelical-> independent baptist-> fundie homechurch-> ???)
I’d never thought about it but the personality/romantic relationships thing totally mirrors this. lots of people relationship-hop because they’re convinced that THIS time the “new relationship energy” will finally stick and make them deliriously happy forever; I know that for me there was absolutely a new-relationship-energy kinda feeling during my conversion process and it’s mellowed down to the normal ebb and flow of just...being a catholic. I suppose for some people they might be chasing that initial passion of Finally Finding It.
imagine if we could convince people of this
@philtippett replied to your post “soooooooo many ultra-trad converts are having crises of faith over the...”
your last note rings so true for converts to islam too (and probably many other faiths). so much that is truly in the spirit of islam is just dismissed as bid'ah (innovation by which they mean heresy) bc they've been lied to and led to believe that wahhabism is the original/one true islamic way even tho that's LITERALLY a reform movement from a couple hundred yrs ago that only gained popularity bc of a political power grab
I wonder if this is a common thread among converts in general. seekers who decide they’ve, at long last, “found” the capital-T-perfect-and complete-Truth and turn purity of belief/practice into an idol.
on a semi-related note, one of the young women who was in RCIA and received into the catholic church with me converted to mormonism within a year. some people are always on the lookout for a purer, realer truth.
elsewhere she responded to that same point with “is the Novus’ ordination different? Makes me wonder about the validity...”
these people are borderline-to-full-on schismatic. even the non-sedevacantists believe there’s a Novus Rite that is questionably valid and wholly separate from the roman rite
this woman ghosting her own 30-tweet thread about why laypeople distributing communion is a crime after a priest told her she was wrong about ordination to the diaconate is so funny
off the top of my head, church teaching on the eternal fate of suicide victims and unbaptized infants, the relationship of non-catholics to god, whether or not it’s right to invade the holy land and commit genocide there to reclaim it for christianity, the divine right of monarchs, the acceptability of abortion prior to the mother feeling the fetus’s movement, married priests, women deacons, and a whole host of other things has changed over the course of 2,000 years.
we’re not doing anyone a favor by leading them to believe that the church has never and must never move an inch on any and all teachings. it leads directly to the same thing that happens to evangelicals when they learn the facts about evolution - it’s a house-of-cards faith and the whole thing can collapse when you learn the truth.
soooooooo many ultra-trad converts are having crises of faith over the catechism revision saying the death penalty is inadmissible, I’m torn between extreme frustration and wanting to… laugh?
how can it be that “no, it’s not admissible to kill prisoners” is the final straw about to push so many men into sedevacantism?
honestly this is what happens when you lie to converts and tell them the church has never and will never change in any way.
they believe that changes to the liturgy, changes to the catechism, etc. are all blatant, unprecedented heresies rather than just a continuation of the normal, healthy evolution & development that’s been happening to the church from day 1
they haven’t been properly taught that the catechism is not a catalogue of dogma but a description of the teachings of the church as they have been understood up until now, first written in the 1980s and revised at least once since then.
--I specify converts because we’re especially vulnerable to this, we can be often/easily cut off from the messy reality of church history, sometimes intentionally by catechists and RCIA leaders who don’t want to risk turning someone away from the church who is coming here in part because they are desperate for neat & tidy, rock-solid certainty
