So, I was at a parish outside my state today. It was nice probably 10 years old. Sat in the back enjoyed quite time for about 20 minutes. Then the church started filling up. About 500 retirees gradually start filling church. It was nice church, very nice music with a very nice alter. Everything was great until the homily started. The priest announced they had a guest priest. And then he started...that his ministry was helping the migrants in Nogales. He said how good one would feel helping. How Our Holy father stated we should help immigrants. Then he stated how a retired couple took a migrant family as their own. At first I was upset, then I wanted to yell what about saving souls. Then I wanted to turn my back. It really made me angry/sad. After mass I wanted to tell the priest what a pretty speech for social justice maybe you should add some soul saving to your pretty speech. Not sure if I’m right or wrong...but this rubbed me the wrong way. I get we must help everyone...not only migrants. But it seems they are pushing agenda/narrative over saving souls. When will they talk about prayer? When will they talk about the evils of sin? When will they talk about heaven and hell? If they want to resurrect the church they need to start preaching. My rant is done Br al
Totally agree!!! I share your pain. We just need to continue to pray for our priests. I have about 5 or 6 of them that I really pray for. My pastor gave a fairly good sermon today. I almost fell out of the pew. He asked how many remembered the Baltimore Catechism, and then he gave a homily on: God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this life and be happy with Him in the next. It was kind of generic, but based on Catholic teachings. I was very happy. I have waited a long time to hear this!
I hear you. I think, it may be good not to go to Mass for the homilies. I have heard some blatantly weird things from priests. It is sad. They are Catholic priests, not liberal Quakers. If we focus on Christ and just pray for the priest, we'll do better. It is not a Protestant church, where the focal point of the service is the preaching. No. The focal point of the Mass is Christ hidden in the Eucharist.
I know how you feel. The closest I ever came to walking out on a sermon was when a deacon preaching the homily in our church suggested that Lyndon Johnson was a Saint. That floored me!
Well I agree with you. Not that there are not priests that deliver inspiring gospel readings, but it seems on the whole they keep away from speaking in any depth about hell and sinning and how people are living today. I agree, not much soul stirring topics. Strange, you would think being a priest before a parish things like this would be natural. Well keep the faith and God bless. . Gary
We need to pray for them. There is a visiting priest who fills in from time to time at our parish and it's become so that when I see him I cringe and I know I'm not the only one. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. He is very unorthodox both in his homilies and his off the cuff prayers. Unfortunately this year for Candlemas he was filling in for our priest who was called out of town. He mumbled something as he blessed the procession and the candles all at the same time which was not what the deacon had prepared (who was trailing behind him with his prayer book looking not pleased) or how anyone in our parish is accustomed. I suppose we should have been happy that there was Holy water and a priest at all. A friend of mine had warned me on the way in with my candles but I hoped that he might just follow the deacons prompts but of course he did not. His homilies he leaves the lectern and walks the center isle between the pews like an evangelist or something prompting the congregation to respond to questions we can barely understand like a kindergarten class. His native tongue is not English which makes it a challenge to understand him plus the mike never seems to work right when he uses it so I admit that I mostly just ignore him and pray. I came from years of this sort of thing in Protestant churches so I admit that I don't have much patience for it. When I received communion from him kneeling he looked at me like I was crazy. Tolerance is not my strong suit when it comes to worship. Thank God for reverent and orthodox priests!
It is so hard to listen to the social justice homilies. The best homilies are when I attend TLM run by the FSSP priests. They preach on getting to Heaven and don't worry about political agendas. We run the Youth Choir in our parish so most of the time it's nicey nice homilies from our priests. We have often thought about leaving but both my husband and I feel we are supposed to be at this parish for some reason. I once was in a conversation with a visiting priest about the "migrant" situation. When he asked my opinion I just told him that I had worked for ICE for many years and I was the wrong person to ask about this because I knew the truth about the border and migrant situation
Almost three years ago, when I got out of the inpatient rehab hospital, we celebrated by going to visit friends in Michigan. I thought mass might be bad, but when we got there, there were no kneelers, but there was a full percussion band The sermon was straight social justice, of course. It was so bad I would have left, but there were no other mass options within miles, so I had to bear it. I had to slip out my iPhone and capture a couple seconds for posterity:
This is why I am so grateful for the Latin mass making a comeback. I don't know that I could handle it if I had no other options but this sort of thing on a weekly basis.
Yes, I hear you. Went to Mass at another church a few weeks ago and the Priest went on and on about how one of the men in his seminary admitted to being gay. And he was kicked out and this Priest thought that was so wrong. And then he said President Trump said Mexicans are rapists. I wanted to barf, but kept my mouth shut. I am known for speaking my mind. I was glad when he went back to Calif. or wherever he came from.
The mass used to be full of so much reverance and respect no matter where you went. So troubling to continue to keep hearing and seeing this from so many people. I guess we just keep praying about this, right. God bless... Gary
While traveling a few years ago I went to a “Catholic” church and upon entering I noticed there was no Tabernacle so I asked one of the many “greeters” standing at the door where the tabernacle was - His reply, “The what?” So I said to him, “Where Jesus is.” Then He said, “Oh that. That’s in the back room.” I then asked if this was a Catholic Church and he replied that it was. I immediately went to that “back room” - which it literally was, and made reparation to Our Lord. Much reparation must be made! It is so very sad !
Are you serious? That is so irreverant. Where the heck is the church going anyway. This is certainly not what Jesus intended His church to be, no way. Well maybe things may get so bad that things will only get better. We can only pray for this. God bless.. .Gary
First stage: tragic state of the Church. In the eyes of a missionary and mystic like Montfort, the state of the Church and the society of his time offered scarce consolation. Although historians agree that conditions at the close of the seventeenth century improved as a result of the intense pastoral commitment of the French clergy, Montfort would disagree. In his converging texts, he refers to the “universal failure” of contemporary Christian practice (TD 127), to the “corrupt kingdom of the world” (SM 59) and the reign of the enemies of God (PM 4). The encroaching wave of sin takes on cosmic dimensions and does not spare even the Church herself: “Your Gospel is thrown aside, torrents of inequity flood the whole earth carrying away even your servants. The whole land is desolate, ungodliness reigns supreme, your sanctuary is desecrated and the abomination of desolation has even contaminated the holy place” (PM 5; see also PM 14: “the ever-swelling flood of iniquity”). The Church herself has become a “languishing heritage,” “so weakened and besmirched by the crimes of her children” (PM 20). Behind the domination of sin, Montfort sees the work of the devil, which is “daily increasing until the advent of the reign of anti-Christ” (TD 51). Montfort is so dismayed that he invokes his own death if divine intervention does not bring a change: “Send me your help from heaven or let me die” (PM 14). Thus does he feel compelled to send up a cry of alarm when confronted with such a grave and imminent danger: “The House of God is on fire! . . . Help!” (PM 28) From the writings of St. Louis de Montfort (the four stages)
Is it just my neck of the woods, or has anyone else noticed that there seems to be a competition at some Masses to invent new ways of singing Alleluia? I'm no connoisseur when it comes to the liturgy and it doesn't matter a whole lot to me whether we have no singing, a full choir, or a small group with a guitar, but I could do without the Alleluia being turned into some kind of amateur operatic performance aimed at testing the vocal range of each singer in the choir/group. Singer 1 starts off, followed by singer 2, 3 and sometimes 4, all singing Alleluia but they aren't all in sync and they all seem to be singing in a different key. Being tone deaf, I wouldn't know whether they are all in tune but they manage to turn a simple word into an endurance test both for themselves and anyone within earshot.
