Confession Of A Former Diocesan Catholic

Bishop Lopes celebrating Divine Worship: Elevation of the Host, the Body of Christ.

In this former diocesan Catholic blogger's experience—shared and suffered—there is frequently an unwillingness (dare one say a hard-heartedness?) among too many diocesan Catholics to invest in their own identity, an identity measured by faithfulness to Jesus Christ and His Church, the degree to which one keeps Jesus' commandments.

1. Shared. I confess that I was once biased against our more conservative brethren in ways that are difficult to justify for a Catholic, a Christian who should by definition be well-schooled in history and in the art of appreciating the timeless and timely movements of the Holy Spirit.
2. Suffered. Having awakened to my arrogance by acknowledging my debt to history as a trained musician, my "second" conversion to the Faith meant defending the legacy we have inherited. The facts also speak for themselves: the renewal sought by the Second Vatican Council was superseded to a large degree by ill-conceived experiments which have become entrenched replacements for the modest changes mandated by the Council. When one becomes an advocate for history, one encounters opposition from so-called progressive elements who imagine themselves to be both the sole judges of history and the ordained guarantors (prophets) of change with little more than their feelings to justify, to their minds, changes that resemble socialism and liberal protestantism more than Catholicism.

When progressive-minded diocesan Catholics encounter the humble (enthusiastic) confidence of Tradition-minded Catholics, there is a tendency for those with shallow roots to react in a hostile manner toward that which threatens their, how does one say, "slim" commitment.

Deprived of adequate formation from the pulpit, most (diocesan) Catholics too often react in an allergic way toward their own story, that is, Apostolic Tradition. Their aggressive response or practiced indifference simultaneously exposes a false confidence in their ideology: liberal religion. If conformity to worldly norms determines allegiance, the religion of many diocesan Catholics is, to a greater or lesser degree, merely liberal religion, or a religious liberalism.

Having been received into a parish in the 1980s that could make even the most bizarre contemporary communities seem tame by comparison, this former diocesan Catholic once stained with the juice of sour progressive grapes has, since the early-1990s, come to appreciate the truth, goodness and beauty of Traditional Catholicism, which is to say the Catholicism of the Apostles, of the Early Church Fathers, of the medieval Spanish mystics, of the English Martyrs, of Blessed (soon Saint?) John Henry Newman, of The Little Flower, of the Fatima children, and of those who, long isolated from Holy Mother Church but having preserved the Apostolic Faith in their Anglican experience, have returned home and brought with them "a treasure to be shared" through and in the Personal Ordinariates.

A digression. Several years ago I was asked to become part of the music team at the parish where I was originally received into the Church. The parish, progressive and militantly so, was divided over the issue of the dismissal of an employee who was living a lifestyle hardly compatible with Church teaching. Parishioners chose sides. Lay leaders, some on the parish council, involved the media to pressure the bishop and pastor to acquiesce and rehire the former employee. The pastor caved in to pressure; the bishop did not. The pastor was relieved of his position; many laity left the parish. A new pastor was placed in the parish, the same priest who asked me to become part of the music ministry, a ministry similarly polarized by allegiances to opposing sides. On one occasion, after several weeks of serving with a college music student keyboardist to provide music for alternating Sunday morning Masses, I was approached by two individuals.

1. The first, someone with whom I had worked in youth ministry for years, commented, "What happened?! What happened to all the dancey music? You used to be so joyful!" I explained that I am still joyful, but that I had grown up. As a trained musician, I could no longer advocate for nor present the "adult contemporary" froth and "praise and worship" style of compositions that failed the test of authentic sacred music suitable for Catholic worship. That critic, whose tastes fit the liberal religionist bill of approval, left the conversation disappointed. Unable or unwilling to accept the restoration of musical integrity, she soon left for another parish more attuned to her liberal religionist tastes. One can hardly blame her for rejecting Catholic music when for decades she had been formed to accept heterodox texts set to saccharine melodies. The reason many Catholics develop a misguided understanding of the Faith is that they acquire their understanding from songs that simply do not and cannot bear the orthodox theology that should be contributing to the formation of Catholics.
2. The second visitor, an older gentleman, commented, "Thank you for giving us music we can sing." All I and my accompanist had offered was hymns and decent English settings of the Ordinary texts: Kyrie, Gloria, (sadly, the Credo was spoken), Sanctus and Agnus Dei. For all the talk of active participation, strangely absent were the voices of the liberal religionists remaining in the congregation. So many of the Mass settings were awkward, to say the least. By simply rotating hymns on a three week cycle, the congregation came alive. Sadly, one of the other music ministers left after a few months for a more "progressive" parish. I may have omitted the fact that part of the reason I was asked to be part of the music ministry was to provide a counterweight to that particular individual's ideological leanings.

That many if not most diocesan Catholics do not realize they are more protestant than Catholic for insisting, perhaps in ignorance, that their opinions must command their allegiance above God's revealed Truth, the divinely founded legacy of Apostolic Tradition and the Spirit-guided Magisterium, has become an obstacle to the mission of the Church, which is the propagation of the Gospel, i.e., the Truth, for the salvation of souls.

Conditioned by a puerile religious liberalism that shapes people to accept a false independence, an independence rooted in a disdain for any and all authority other than one's own, which serves to preserve one's absolute autonomy, the opposition to anything Tradition-oriented demonstrated by many in the Church is more about opposition to faithfulness, an opposition to dying to self to embrace the Way of Christ, which is absolute selflessness (St. Luke 9:23; St. John 12:24) attainable by disposing oneself to the grace of God.

Devotion to the commandments of Jesus Christ threatens the progressive's quirky assumptions about reality, and provokes awareness of the eternal consequences of our actions. It is one thing to strive to live the Faith, to struggle and to fall, to repent and request absolution. It is quite another to live in open and willful defiance of God's Law without acknowledging any need to repent or any need for God's forgiveness. A person who has cemented the latter orientation in his or her soul risks despair in this life and, in the next life, eternal alienation. Even if one is in the constant company of demons and the damned, hell is surely the loneliest of places. One is in the constant company of those who have pushed God out of their souls. It is difficult to imagine a soul so desolate, but such isolation is possible. That possibility should shake us loose from the tight grip of ideologies that constrict the heart and mind in the false god of isolating autonomy.

Misguided attempts by liberal religionists—it is inappropriate to refer to said religionists as 'liberal Catholics', for to do so would be to legitimize their heterodoxy in part by attaching the name 'Catholic' to those who would deny the Catholic Faith and the authority of Tradition—to enact their revisionist doctrines among faithful Catholics require that faithful Catholics enact an agenda of renewal beginning decisively with the true, good and beautiful celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the "source and summit of the Christian life."

An experience this past summer reminded this former diocesan Catholic that charity can easily elude the understanding of Catholics defined more by a misguided protectionism and envy than hospitality. That a Catholic parish could treat fellow Catholics with such disdain for being Tradition-minded is puzzling, to say the least. The dislocation of a Tradition-minded Catholic community hosted by a parish whose members felt threatened by that relatively small (but steadily growing) group defined by faithfulness to Tradition was quite the eyeopener. It is difficult to imagine that the concept of conversion finds deep enough soil to grow among members of such a hard-hearted parish. One can and should hope and pray that the former host parish institutes a process of legitimate and deep renewal—annual parish retreats, ongoing adult catechesis—before it implodes due to a lack of charity.

So then, why become a Tradition-minded Catholic who, for example, attends an Ordinariate parish? The answer is straight forward enough: Ordinariate parishes are places where the Catholic Faith is practiced by those who, having recognized the dangerous consequences of liberal religion (religious liberalism) in their former Anglican homes, know that the Catholic Church offers the unchanging teaching of Jesus Christ which gives hope and joy and love to become the generous and loving persons God wants us to be. Discover that hope and joy and love by encountering the Person of Jesus Christ in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, in the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. The Catholic Church offers the true sacraments instituted for our salvation by Jesus Christ Himself.

Where does one find Jesus, and how does one approach Him on His terms?

People who advocate for traditional liturgy aren’t doing it because it best reflects their taste in music. They’re doing it because they recognize that God is Beauty, as has always been taught, and since he is, that means that beauty is objective. Beauty exists outside and apart from yours or my subjective taste. Our taste is irrelevant. Instead of trying to enforce our preferences onto everyone else, we should be trying to allow ourselves and our tastes to be transformed so that they better correspond to the objective reality of God’s beauty.

I didn’t become Catholic because it was the most appealing to me. I became Catholic because it’s true. Likewise, I’m not trying to find a liturgical environment that suits my taste. I’m trying to find one that best reflects the objective reality of God’s beauty. My money’s on the one that first understood that it is objective and second held captive the spiritual imagination of countless generations of Christians for centuries.—Brian Holdsworth

The Mass, established by Jesus that Holy Thursday night, along with the sacred priesthood, is that sacrificial meal where souls find the grace to grow in holiness in this life in preparation for the next. Parishes of the Personal Ordinariate(s) are places where one can find the Catholic Faith taught and lived with vigour and thanksgiving for salvation in Christ. They are parishes where one finds forgiveness and the grace to become people of hope and love, saved by Jesus Christ. This is not to say that diocesan parishes are entirely without merit. Far from it. To affirm the beauty of the Ordinariate experience, which is so clearly oriented to God, is not to deny the same may be true of some or even many diocesan parishes.

For this former diocesan Catholic, the Person of Jesus is more clearly seen in the Mass of the Ordinariate, called Divine Worship, a beautiful liturgy that embodies the renewal sought by the Second Vatican Council and which faithfully embodies the timeless legacy of the Church, from the Apostles to the present.

So if you too are curious to see what Vatican II's stated ideal of the Tridentine Mass reformed — not replaced — "with new vigour to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times" (SC4) could, and on this evidence probably should, look like... then I suggest you contact your nearest Ordinariate and get yourself, and swiftly, to their Divine Worship.—Stephen Bullivant