Upon publication of the new spiritual guide last weekend, Pope Benedict XVI ordered that an extra 10,000 copies of the missals be “launched” for shipment by air to the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah.
“This new Mass is the bomb,” the Pope was overheard as saying. “I want our Mormon brethren to experience it immediately.”
Full report here.
Oh, that’s good!
Someone who desires only the EF form of the Mass might have written the same thing! Not I though, as I love the new Mass! 🙂
Oh there’s a new Mass? I thought The Mass was the same . . . .
I’m one of the few Catholic professors here at BYU and the volunteer liturgy coordinator at my parish, so I’ve followed the Missal implementation closely. I’ve passed this on to my Mormon and Catholic friends. Do you think the Pope could also send along 20,000 seminarians or other trained folks to help proselytize the Missal as well? We’re a bit short on Catholics here in the state.
The current Pope is something of an expert on the, er, “new missal” – having been given a beautifully leather-bound gold-on-white copy some months back by the members and staff of Vox Clara at lunch in the Vatican on 28 April 2010 when the translation had not yet been concluded . . . and then another similar beautifully leather-bound gold-on-white copy by the head of ICEL (who hadn’t been invited to the lunch) on 19 October 2011.
The Vatican’s ICBM program has long been hidden in plain sight, disguised as obelisks outside St Peter’s and St John Lateran!
Julie, I was just reading this morning that seminarians are on the increase. Amazing what a different a more orthodox climate makes.
Yes indeed: more seminarians – no doubt the, er, “first fruits” of the new translation!
How would the corrected translation have affected admissions completed months if not years ago, whether positively or negatively? If any single liturgical change is responsible, which I must tell you that I doubt, the most plausible candidate is probably Summorum Pontificum.
Yup, after 33 yrs of two conservative popes the seminaries are just busting at the seams. LOL.
Dale,
Even given the difficulty of applying political labels to ecclesiastical topics, we must have very different definitions of “conservative” for this to make sense. If we’re going to use political labels, I would put JP2 very much in the Clintonian centrist camp. Benedict? A moderate traditionalist conservative—more centrist, interestingly, than Joseph Card. Ratzinger seemed. Remember, if you’re a Howard Zinn or a Barney Frank, Barack Obama looks like a centrist if not a moderate conservative! The further from the middle you are, the harder it gets to accurately judge where the center lies—that’s as true of me as of anyone else—and to the extremist, everyone else looks close to the center if they aren’t way off on the other side! Maybe you’ve seen that poster with a model and the legend “no matter how good she looks, someone somewhere is tired of her”? Well, same thing. You may think she’s a reactionary cryptofascist, but someone somewhere thinks she’s the reincarnation of Mikhail Suslov.
It’s a no brainer Simon. It’s all about populations.
Considering that most Catholics fall in the middle under the bell curve, and speaking as a moderate, both JPII and B16 fall far to the right. I prefer to state they are conservative rather than right wing. I don’t consider conservative to be a dirty word, whereas right wing has some unpopular connotations.
Any normal distribution of a population can be converted to a Standard Dristribution and they are probably at the right tail of the curve, around 13.5%, several standard distributions off. If you label B16 a “moderate traditionalist conservative- more centrist” then to have that view point I would say you have to be way over at the right tail of curve. It may look that way from there but that side of the curve represents about 13.5% of the population far from the mean. In other words a minority opinion in my opinion 🙂
Dale,
Everyone thinks that they’re a moderate. It’s the spartacus problem (yes, I realize that’s not a perfect analogy): I think I’m a moderate, and speaking as a moderate, both JPII and B16 fall to the left. If you think that JP2 was a conservative pope, I would say you have to be way over at the left tail of curve. It may look that way from there but that side of the curve represents about 13.5% of the population far from the mean. In other words a minority opinion, in my opinion. We can’t both be correct, which means that one (or more likely both) of us has mistaken our position on the scale. Again, everyone thinks that they’re a moderate because no one likes to think of themselves as an extremist.
Ironically, liberal society would consider both you and I to be way off to the right. I infer that you’re a Catholic since you’re posting here; tell a lefty that you’re for against abortion, the death penalty, contraception, and euthanasia, and for traditional marriage, and see where on the scale they put you!
Ah, not quite my friend.
That would be true only if you didn’t have a sample standard distribution, which is a common error that many people make. It’s not what each person thinks but rather what the population thinks taken from a random sampling. And if I’m correct, and I know I am, in this case the vast majority of Catholics in the Catholic population taken randomly would place JPII and B16 toward the right tail.
Well, but as you surely realize, that’s pure ipse dixit. By your own admission, you believe that “both JPII and B16 fall far to the right,” a position in which—”jus’ like tha'” as Tommy Cooper would say—by sheer coincidence, you believe yourself to be joined by “the vast majority of Catholics in the Catholic population….” Would that the world were so convenient!
Lookit: The tea party is certain that it speaks for “we the people”; the OWS people are convinced that they speak for “the 99%.” Both claims are preposterous, but it’s easy to see why each sincerely believe their claim. Everyone thinks that they’re a moderate, and so it stands to reason that the “vast majority” of the population (save a few leftards and wingnuts) is with them. And our self-segregation into likeminded communities reinforces this perception; the internet didn’t invent the Pauline Kael effect, but it makes it much worse. It’s easy to believe that “everyone thinks” the corrected translation is a huge success / total disaster (delete to taste) if the only people to whom one talks concluded that it was a huge success / total disaster (delete to taste) months ago. “How could I possibly be an extremist when just about every commenter at WDTPRS agrees with me?”
I don’t dispute that Benedict’s far to your right, or even that he’s to the right of center (whatever that may mean in ecclesiastical terms; cf. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/12/the-pontificate-of-continuity/rr-reno). I’m just saying that his perceived distance from each of us has a great deal more to do with where we stand than where he does.
Sorry Simon, lots of opinion but short on statistics. Once again, It’s not what you perceive or where you stand. It’s not what you think, it’s what the group, the standard population perceives. That’s the difference. And in the Catholic population JPII and B16 statistically fall to the right.
It’s a gutsy play to say that my comments are “lots of opinion but short on statistics” when yours have have stated lots of opinions without citing a single study. If there are valid statistics to support your claim that “in the Catholic population JPII and B16 statistically fall to the right” then you have yet to cite them—which leaves you as adrift in opinionland as you say that I am.
My such Hubris!
You produce statistics to prove that JPII and B16 are not to the right. I can’t believe I am having this discussion!
Your obfuscating the issue w/ opinion and bosh.
Perhaps in an untutored way one might see it your way but it is incorrect and you are attempting to adumbrate the facts. Let’s leave it as is because you are unfamiliar with statistical analysis. Statistics is based on numbers, not opinion.
Interesting. More statements of opinion, still no numbers. Hubris? Projection.
tsk, tsk.
For once, Ratzinger has it right; The New Mass IS indeed a BOMB!
John, best reply on this site!
Simon Dodd :
How would the corrected translation have affected admissions completed months if not years ago, whether positively or negatively? If any single liturgical change is responsible, which I must tell you that I doubt, the most plausible candidate is probably Summorum Pontificum.
Quod scripsi scripsi.
More negative comments on the new trans here: http://fathergeofffarrow.blogspot.com/2011/12/mass-deception.html
by
Tags:
Please leave a reply.