Say what?! Training in True Religion

Catholic Australia reports a very un-Catholic doing that should be undone.

https://www.catholicweekly.com.au/qa-with-fr-john-flader-a-new-sign-of-the-cross/

An excerpt from a column by Fr. John Flader at Catholic Weekly (Australia):

'A friend recently told me that in the Catholic school his son attends some teachers are now making the Sign of the Cross "In the name of the Father and of the Mother and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." I was astounded. Is this acceptable?'

When I read your question, I too was astounded. In total disbelief. Is this acceptable? Of course not.

Why would teachers at a Catholic school venture down a path taken by liberal protestants, i.e., liberal religionists that claim to know better than Jesus Christ, other than to impose a heresy that, disease it is, infects and weakens the Church? Perhaps they think they are doing some good. Perhaps they presume to know better than Holy Mother Church. The Church that, because they assume to know better than her, they hate.

We should remember where we got the Sign of the Cross in the first place. The answer, of course, is from Jesus Christ himself, when he sent the apostles out to baptise “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt 28:19).

It seems that sacramental shenanigans are alive and well Down Under.

You will recall some years back, 2004 or thereabouts, a grave concern about an Aussie priest's corruption of the formula for Baptism. The sad story of the seemingly mad Peter Kennedy, once-upon-a-time a Catholic priest behaving more like a petulant teenager in a tired anarchist's skin than a faithful disciple of Jesus Christ, is a tale that should cause any and all Christians to shudder. Mr. Kennedy decided his fiction was his truth and that he knew better than Jesus Christ. Kennedy, for ten years, pretended to baptize people by using a corrupted formula for the Sacrament of Baptism, the formula Jesus expressly commanded His disciples to use. Consequently, and far too late and cemented into his apparent madness, Kennedy led a group of people into schism, a community which persists in isolation precisely because he and they chose and continue to choose his and their fiction.

When words fail to shape understanding, ritual gesture can and does inform and correct. Throughout the Ordinariate Mass there are multiple times when priest and people make the Sign of the Cross. Divine Worship, the Mass of the Ordinariate, has us exercise our understanding, our God-given brainstuff, thus exorcising misunderstanding, when we, as a congregation gathered in the Name of the Lord, reverently make the Sign of the Cross:

1. during the Asperges/Vidi Aquam;
2. after the Introit during the Introductory Rites;
3. during the Gloria;
4. at the Holy Gospel (the Triple Sign);
5. near the conclusion of the Creed;
6. at the elevations of both the Body and Blood of Christ during the Canon of the Mass;
7. at the Domine Non Sum Dignus (Lord, I Am Not Worthy);
8. at the Blessing during the Concluding Rites;
9. at the announcement of the Last Gospel (Triple Sign).

One wonders what formula the offending community referred to in Fr. Flader's column uses at the Holy Gospel during Mass. Is the Triple Sign of the Cross replaced with another corruption?

What might seem a trivial matter to some or even many is hardly insignificant. Once one assumes the authority to make changes to the unchangeable a trickle turns into a flood of aberrant "corrections", a torrent of corruptions that slowly kill the Faith in anyone who uncritically adopts those changes. If you, dear Reader, wish to risk sampling an unsavory taste by viewing the consequences of serial defiance, click on the following linked text to witness a community's descent into syncretistic religion, the unredeemable religion of relativism.

Or, if you, dear Reader, have no wish to pollute your day with bizarre pseudo-religious website material - or is that website pseudo-religious material? - you are welcome to click on any of the videos linked to at this site to witness the truth, goodness and beauty of one of the ways to which God is calling Catholics to return to reverent worship: the Ordinariate Mass which trains in us the true religion of Jesus Christ.