08 November 2009

Iconoclasm

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Over in the valley of the River Adur, Fr Sean posted something really good about the manner in which those attached to more traditional forms of Catholic worship should celebrate. He didn't say that 1962 Missal is perfection, just that messing about with the rubrics at this time would be a really unsensible thing to do. I agree wholeheartedly with him.

The best way, perhaps, to think of what happened in the Roman Church after Vatican II and until the election of the current Pope, is to compare it with the iconoclasm which shook the East in the eighth and ninth centuries, not least because one of the arguments the iconoclasts used was that only in the Divine Liturgy itself could Christ Himself be truly seen, and Mass itself, and the manner in which it is celebrated is an icon.

Our iconoclasts have not given up: they are bent on maintaining their austere vision of a communal gathering in a whitewashed hall and will fight for it. They are tremedously powerful, and are cornered, so their victory over a disunited opponent is almost assured: their victory over a united opponent is much less so.

Let's not tryto unpick the reforms of Pius X or Pius XII just yet: let's concentrate on placing 1962 in opposition to "the spirit of Vatican II", and defeating that. Let's behave like Catholics and think in centuries: few of those of us alive today will see the way the Church rights herself after such a turbulent century as the twentieth, so let's not try to bring the Millennium about by ourselves. And let's make sure that we don't make of ourselves a focus for disunity by deciding that the rubrics are for others, and not for us.

2 comments:

Anagnostis said...

From Fr Stephen's blog (Glory to god for All Things):

Renouncing Iconoclasm
We have to renounce iconoclasm. In so doing, we inherently set ourselves against certain forces within modernity. The truth is eschatological, that is, it lies in the future, but we also believe that this eschatological reality was incarnate in Christ, the Beginning and the End, the Alpha and the Omega. We do not oppose the future in embracing the Tradition we have received. We embrace the future that is coming in Truth, rather than the false utopias of modern man’s imagination.

Mike Cliffson said...

I just don't understand.
I checked out valle adurni. It seems obvious catholic common sense, if there werent the shades of deep feeling.
I know it's important to get it as right as possible.
But there's somthing odd in a lot of blogs.
I wrote, as anon, that I was getting allergic to walls covered in crucifixes- I associate catholic trappings with anticatholic policies. I don't know if it's iconoclasm that ostracism and etc from within the church leads one into, my autodiagnosis is Donatism.
The sooner we're all wholeheartedly in communion with Rome the better, without mental reservations.
I've been teaching the kids the creed in English for part of today.
Not bcause of my lack of sins, but in spite of their number and magnitude, I do believe in the holy cathlic church, as the penny catechism says, "things revealed by
God".
God bless