I’m a doctor, and most of my career was about saving limbs, thus saving lives, but I refuse to enter into such juvenile word play.
From: https://liturgyguy.com/2018/07/04/france-traditional-priests-account-for-20-of-2018-ordinations/ France: Traditional Priests Account for 20% of 2018 Ordinations JUL 4 Posted by Brian Williams Tradition is the future. Authenticity continues to bear fruit wherever it is permitted to take root and grow. While many within the Church still seek to limit (or in some cases even suppress) the Traditional Roman Rite and its accompanying spirituality and formative influence, it’s growth in recent years is having immediate and measurable success throughout the world. The most recent example of this is France. As reported today by the Catholic Herald U.K. (from a La Croix article), French ordinations in 2018 paint a very clear picture as to where vocations are booming, and where they are a bust. Not surprisingly the trend is consistent with what we’ve seen elsewhere. Tradition (authenticity) is literally the future of the Church. According to the Herald, 20 percent of the 114 men ordained to the priesthood in France this year belong to traditional or classical orders or societies. One out of five. These include three ordinations for the Institute of the Good Shepherd, two for the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter (FSSP) and two for the Institute of Christ the King. Compare this with the diocesan parishes, firmly grounded in the Novus Ordo Mass and post-conciliarism, where approximately 60% of the country’s 96 dioceses have zero ordinations this year. Zero. In 58 French dioceses. Zero. As we have touched upon repeatedly here, the truth, beauty, and goodness of our Catholic faith attracts. It attracts men to hear the call to the priesthood, giving their lives in service to The Lord and Holy Mother Church. Young women also hear the call to the religious life in traditional parishes and chapels. Despite the resistance of many within the heirarchy, even to the point of active suppression of traditional orders, the momentum is on the side of recovering authenticity. Restoring the Sacred is a movement of the Spirit. Thankfully more are beginning to discern this and are cooperating with the Holy Ghost. Let us pray that those slow to rediscover authenticity begin to recognize what is happening. With humility and true charity may more of our shepherds support the resurgence of tradition by providing greater availability to the Traditional Mass and those orders and priests who offer it. And with this support we will begin to see an increase in ordinations, in Masses offered, confessions heard, orthodox formation, and a fighting chance for western civilization to rebuild its Catholic foundation.
Why Africa Is The Future For The Catholic Church Posted on 09/04/2019 Pope Francis begins a three-nation visit to Africa later on Wednesday. It will be his fourth visit to the continent since he became the head of the Roman Catholic Church in 2013, compared to the two his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, made during his eight-year papacy. The importance of Africa to the Catholic Church can be summed up in a word – growth. Africa has the fastest growing Catholic population in the world, while Western Europe, once regarded as the heartland of Christianity, has become one of the world’s most secular regions, according to the US-based Pew Research Center. And many of those who do identify themselves as Christian in Western Europe do not regularly attend church. In contrast, Christianity, in its different denominations, is growing across Africa. The Pew Research Center predicts that by 2060 more than four in 10 Christians will be in sub-Saharan Africa. And a study published by the US-based Center for Applied Research showed that in the period between 1980 and 2012 the number of Catholics in the world had increased by 57% to 1.2 bn, but growth in Europe was just 6%, compared to 283% in Africa. More: Why Africa is the future for the Catholic Church | upcoming World News That is the future of the church, imho. France with what we hear is only 10% of the Catholic population go to church, that seems to small to believe, I think it has to be higher. USA is 35% or so. Those figures were listed the other day in some article. If your getting down to brass tacks, it will be Africa and may well be other areas like the Philippines, Latin America too of course. The article continues: Building schools and hospitals The growth in Africa is partly because its overall population is increasing faster than that of any other continent. However, there are other reasons – including the fact that by being part of the Catholic Church people are part of “a social institution that provides a lot of support and security in places where precarious living is very common and widespread,” Ms Manglos-Weber says. “The Church provides hospitals, schools, [and] other social services. [These are ] things that post colonial governments in… Africa have had a difficult time providing on a widespread scale.” The role of Catholics in offering such services “far surpasses what either Protestant churches or Islamic communities have been able to”, Ms Manglos-Weber adds. Oh, but wait, I thought Vatican II is such a failure...okay to downspeak that, no problems, hear it all day long. Doesn't 20% still mean the others, 80% are still becoming regular priests? Is this the great victory? I'm glad for the ones that are but perhaps that is overblowing the stats.
I think it's wonderful that our African Catholic brethren love the Faith and that the Church there is growing quickly. Christianity in Africa has a bright future no doubt. May God bless the African people and reward them for their devotion to Him and love for His Church. But the Church in the West needs to be rebuilt too. Tradition will be a big part of that imo. The Vatican II Council Fathers had good intentions, but the "spirit of Vatican II" movement has gone dreadfully wrong, in decreasing reverence, diminishing vocations, Mass attendance etc. Take another country as a case study. Catholic Ireland. In 1958, it was sending missionaries to so many countries. Things have gone wrong in the last 60 years no doubt. In the West at least. From: https://lxoa.wordpress.com/2014/04/12/the-irish-catholic-church-in-1958-a-statistical-overview/ "In January of this year, I posted a paper by Dr. Jeremiah Newman from 1958 on Priestly Vocations in Ireland. At that Conference in Vienna where he read the paper, he also gave a statistical supplement, which is posted below: A. Priests and People in Ireland (Statistics from Irish Catholic Directory). 1. Total Catholic population of all Ireland: 3,257,400. 2. Total number of priests in Ireland (1956): 5,489. 3. Proportion of priests to people: 1 priest for every 593 Catholics. 4. Numbers of diocesan clergy and religious in Ireland: 1920 1940 1950 1956 Diocesan 3081 3354 3563 3772 Religious 754 1024 1481 1717 B. General Indications of Vocation (Priestly) Trend in Ireland. 1. Diocesan Clergy ordained — Totals for decades and averages per annum: 1920-30 1931-40 1941-50 Total 926 957 857 Average per annum 92 95 98 2. Priests ordained in Ireland for English-speaking areas — U.S.A., England, etc. (Statistics from Irish Catholic Directory): 1921-30 1931-40 1941-50 Total 797 835 874 Average per annum 79 83 87 3. Departures (for the first time) of Irish priests to territories under Propaganda (Statistics from Pagan Missions): 1935 1950 1956 Total 66 185 161 4. Total number of ordinations to the priesthood in Ireland during the year 1957 (Statistics from Irish Catholic Directory): 334. 5. Number of seminarians per 100,000 Catholics (Statistics from Herder Korrespondenz, May 1955): Germany – 14 Holland – 18 Italy – 20 France – 22 U.S.A. – 26 Ireland – 75" I believe Padraig, the forum owner, and member Garabandal, among others, are from Ireland. They will know better than me the state of Catholicism in their country today, but I found these articles online from the Irish times about the State of the Church in Ireland today. Just the titles of the articles says it all. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/soc...ering-st-patrick-s-college-maynooth-1.3653247 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/soc...priests-at-maynooth-hits-record-low-1.3233625 Tradition has great potential to help rebuild Church in my view, especially in the West and in former Catholic countries, including Ireland and the France, in the US and Britain etc. God Bless.
One thing that is being forgotten about by some is the fact that the liturgy is divine work, it is a gift given us whereby the Church can render the worship owed almighty God. It is not a concoction put together by a committee or a plaything of experts. Sadly this is precisely what has happaned this past 50 odd years.
And how old is the Latin Mass? It's far from 2,000 years old. I thought it was only 1,000 itself. So, to label it the mass of the ages may not be the most accurate portrayal. Bishop Athanasius Schneider: “An almost one thousand-year-old… liturgical treasure is not the private property of a pope, which he can freely dispose of” – Latin Mass Directory It's also beyond just talking of me, the millenials at 3 or 4 Latin Mass Churches a week out of 100. I didn't create this argument. This has not been a self-centered divisive argument I've used. Slam the Pope, slam Vatican II. Thumb my nose about it. How many Roman Catholics are there in the world? - BBC News Latin America accounts for 483 million Catholics, or 41.3% of the total Catholic population. Of the 10 countries in the world with the most Catholics, four are in Latin America. Brazil has the highest Catholic population of any country. The figure was put at 123 million in the last Brazilian census and as high as 150 million in 2010 figures compiled by the World Christian Database. Italy has the most Catholics in Europe, with 57 million, while DR Congo has the biggest Catholic population in Africa, ranking ninth in the world with almost 36 million. Global shift Since 1970, Catholicism has seen a global shift southwards - the proportion of Catholics living in Europe has declined, while Africa has seen a growth in the number of Catholics - from 45 million in 1970 to 176 million in 2012. Asia has also seen a growth in Catholicism and now represents almost 12% of the total Catholic population in the world, or 137 million people. I'd think, even in spite of persecution, the overall number of Catholics has grown. More: Forty percent (40%) of all priests and religious convicted of abuse in the United States were ordained before Vatican II, or were let into the seminaries before its close. Many were ordained in the 1950's and were in seminary in the 1940's. This includes Cardinal McCarrick, the most senior official to be disciplined. Did Vatican II cause the priest sexual abuse crisis? (catholicbridge.com) Not sure of the timeline here, but it presents useful info.
https://onepeterfive.com/busting-myth-tridentine-mass/ Busting the Myth of the “Tridentine” Mass Brian Williams July 25, 2017 123 Comments Mass of Saint Gregory the Great by Master of Portillo (1520-1525). Far too often these days liturgical discussions pertaining to the Roman Rite start with the popular myth that the Traditional Latin Mass only dates back to the sixteenth century and the Council of Trent (1545-1563). While some make this claim simply due to a lack of catechesis, there are unfortunately others who perpetuate the myth to diminish the very antiquity of the ancient rite. Let us remedy this by busting the myth of the “Tridentine” Mass. First a note on terminology. The Tridentine Mass is simply another name for the Traditional Latin Mass, also called the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite since Summorum Pontificum was issued by Pope Benedict XVI in 2007. Now for the history. Following the Council of Trent, Pope St. Pius V issued the papal Bull Quo Primum regarding the Mass. It is important to note that Pius V did not promulgate a new Mass (as Paul VI did in 1970), but rather consolidated and codified the Roman Rite already in existence. He also extended its use throughout the Latin Church, granting exception only to those rites demonstrating continuous usage of more than 200 years, such as the Ambrosian Rite found in Milan. Since the 1570 Missal of Pius V was issued in the wake of the Council of Trent, the ancient rite has often been referred to as the Tridentine Mass. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this term, it can (and has) been used by some seeking to diminish the ancient rite by implying that it only dates back to 1570. This, of course, is a myth. Writing 50 years before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the promulgation of the new Mass of Paul VI (1970), Father Adrian Fortescue discussed the very antiquity of the Roman Rite in his classic, The Mass: A Study of the Roman Liturgy (1912): Essentially the Missal of St. Pius V is the Gregorian Sacramentary; that again is formed from the Gelasian book which depends on the Leonine collection. We find the prayers of our Canon in the treatise de Sacramentisand allusions to it in the IV century. So our Mass goes back, without essential change, to the age when it first developed out of the oldest liturgy of all. It is still redolent of that liturgy, of the days when Caesar ruled the world and thought he could stamp out the faith of Christ, when our fathers met together before dawn and sang a hymn to Christ as to a God. The final result of our enquiry is that, in spite of unsolved problems, in spite of later changes, there is not in Christendom another rite so venerable as ours. And this of course is the point. Not that the Mass didn’t develop organically, because it had. Nor that there were no further revisions to it, since the Missal of 1962 used in the Extraordinary Form today incorporates (as one example) the Holy Week revisions of 1955. But rather, that the Traditional Mass dates back to the oldest liturgy of all “without essential change”, to use Fr. Fortescue’s phrase. When referencing this Mass, we are speaking in terms of millennia, not centuries. Indeed, some have referred to the traditional liturgy as the Gregorian Rite, or the Gregorian Mass, in deference to the ancient sacramentary bearing the name of that sixth century saint; a pope and liturgy which preceded Trent by one thousand years. As liturgical discussions move forward within the Church, and both forms of the Roman Rite are studied and considered, let us hope that (at a minimum) we can finally bust the myth that the Traditional Mass is a product of the 16th century. If we are truly to restore all that has been lost for so many, we must first begin with correct information and intellectual honesty. Originally published at LiturgyGuy.com. Reprinted with permission. (Emphasis added)
This thread is about the continuing war on the Traditional Latin Mass. It’s a discussion of the Vatican’s baseless attacks on the TLM. It is NOT an invitation to continue the attacks on the TLM, so take your nonsense elsewhere. This is NOT the thread for it. We had such great hopes…
I know I said I wouldn’t post here but I just want to say that if they alter the words of consecration the bread will remain bread and everyone participating would be participating in idolatry. It’s crazy how everything is going according to prophecy. Now if the Catholic media will try to normalize this as “just okay”, billions of Catholics would be participating in what I suspect to be the abomination of desolation without the slightest clue that anything is wrong. Like people are told the crazy weather is due to climate change, so no one suspects we are in the book of the apocalypse. People will be expecting nuclear bombs, volcanoes and stuff, so they won’t recognize that changing the consecration prayers is an abomination.
So, from my reading, Pope Benedict allowed any Priest to say the Latin Mass, Pope Francis pushed back on this. Only certain priests. Now, on a different topic, to the Middle Ages: There is no evidence that we've been able to find that indicates that anyone was forced into castration by the Church or that there was a Catholic office or entity doing the castrations. There is a subtle difference between allowing castrato singers into the choir and actually going out and castrating people. But nevertheless, it was not a good thing to foster the castrations by allowing them to join the choir. Perhaps the middle ages can claim ignorance for their inhumanity during a brutal period of history, like slave traders who misinterpreted Scripture in order to serve their selfish ends. Those who wanted beautiful music misinterpreted this Scripture: What about the Catholic castration of choir boys in the Middle Ages? (catholicbridge.com) The Church allowed Castrati to sing in the choirs but we always hear Pope Francis is the worse. That above was much before Vatican II and lasted for 300 years. If I defend the faith and Holy Pontiff and am insulted for it, so be it.
I always found this an interesting statistic considering WWII and the fact that the Axis nations were overwhelmingly Catholic. Amazing that in such a short period of time afterward that European Catholics would decline so markedly.
Yes exactly and since Lutherans believe that the bread and wine are taken simply in remembrance then how exactly does one adopt a liturgy that suits both without violating the consecration or requiring belief in something Lutherans have long refused to believe. I hope that there is a way forward in all of this that brings us together without causing either a schism or further divide.
Technically they teach consubstantiation as opposed to transubstantiation. But few if any practicing Lutherans still believe even that. Of course, transubstantiation requires a sacred priesthood, something our “separated brethren” universally lack, a distinction which drives these ecumeniacs nutz. Including many of those inside the Vatican. (The Orthodox are not “separated brethren” but fellow Churches. Their sacred priesthood, and thus transubstantiation, remains intact.)