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My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love You.
I ask pardon for those who do not believe,
do not adore, do not hope, and do not love You.
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Oh brother, you can even watch it live! The video has now been removed from the parish website but it has been preserved on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lH9QpWX9G0
This is so not, Catholic.
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"And he saith to them: It is written,
My house shall be called the house of prayer,
but you have made it a den of thieves."
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UPDATED BELOW
St. Mary's Catholic (?) Church
4800 88th Street NE
Marysville, Washington
360-653-9400 ext. 109
www.stmary-stanne.org
Father Dwight Lewis
Parish Administrator
administrator@stmary-stanne.org
Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain will respond to regular mail sent to:
710 9th. Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104
The email for the Chancellor is:
mary.santi@seattlearch.org
Vicar for Clergy
gary.zender@seattlearch.org
|
St. Francis de Sales Oratory of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest in St. Louis, Missouri |
UPDATE FROM COMBOX:
A member of the parish in Marysville left a comment. It deserves to be read and answered, so I am taking the liberty of attaching it here. However, I have now removed her name and her comments from the combox. She is distressed and has no reason to apologise. This is about clarifying a bad situation and bringing people to know that the liturgy is not a game we play, like football.
May the person who put this comment know that she is loved and appreciated for her openness here and she does not need to feel bad about writing. However, I think it is important that the comment and my explanation stand in the interest of catechesis.
I am a member of this parish. Marysville is the city that just had a shooting at our high school 100 days ago. Father was trying to stir a healing, to find joy in life and show community and energy. It does not change the mass or its sacredness. We do not cover our heads, and most teens wear jeans to mass but they come! It is not right to be Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus healed on the Sabbath and ate with tax collectors and prostitutes. This priest is bringing people to Jesus and meeting them where they are. Shame on you who judge. This is a community who love Jesus and wanted to celebrate and give thanks for the good in the world as well as the good in our faith at a tough time in Marysville. Uniting and celebrating the good. If you think this was wrong than you have that right but do not judge what you do not understand. I love our priest, our church, and will defend it. This city has been through so much. Pray for us, not hate and point fingers. This same church just opened a homeless shelter! Jesus is in our Faith Formation classes, our choir, and with our saints!
Let me assure you of my respect and prayers regarding the tragedy which happened in your town. I was not aware of this sad event, just one more in a long series of tragedies in schools across America. I must say that I was probably more pre-occupied with the murders of two of our soldiers in Canada by Islamo-fascist terrorists (which our Prime Minister calls out by name) to have paid much attention to that shooting; or perhaps I am becoming as many are, immune to the situation. Regardless, it was a tragedy for those victims and their families and the community. May the dead rest in peace with Our Lord and may the perpetrators be confounded and the mourning comforted. I am sure that everyone here reading this will pause now and say a Hail Mary for those who continue to suffer from this event.
...
Now, the rest you are probably not going to like because I am going to give it to you straight. It is clear to me that you have erroneous opinions based on an ill-formed Catholic faith and catechetical upbringing and I will try answer you with charity, and clarity!
1. "Father was
trying to stir a healing, to find joy in life and show community and energy."
I am sure that you are familiar with the saying, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions?" Well, that's the road ahead if that is what he was trying to do. First, I don't know Father's real intention. However, presuming that you are correct and this was his intention, objectively speaking, he was wrong and committed an abuse of the liturgy which for a priest, can be a very serious sin. I am actually surprised -- given that he is African I would have thought that he would know better. Perhaps though, he has been infected with the poison administered by previous Archbishops of Seattle beginning with Hunthausen that your current Shepherd is trying to remedy. Seattle has not been known for more than a century now of orthodoxy and true liturgical renewal but rather of liturgical abuse and heretical influences. How are the vocations there doing? You can read it all at the archived Seattle Catholic. On your point about "healing, joy in life and community and energy," let us put energy aside because that could mean anything. If you think that NFL football and other non-purposed paraphernalia in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass provides healing and joy, then that explains more about the situation in your parish and your faith knowledge than it does about anything else. Healing is found in prayer and adoration and in the Sacraments, the first and most particular being Penance and the Holy Eucharist. Joy is found in Truth and what was done here is none of that. Given that Father -- after pronouncing the final blessing, -- put on a
Seahawks ski cap and threw a Seattle Seahawks blanket over his chasuble before the recessional, he may have known exactly what he was doing.
2. It
does not change the mass or its sacredness.
Wrong - it most certainly does! The fundamental problem is that, with all respect, you seem to have no idea what the Mass actually is and what is taking place at Mass. The word Mass comes from the Latin - missa which means "you are sent" the last words of the liturgy are, Ite missa est - Go, you are sent and that is part of our western language problem beginning with the Latin. Our ancestors knew what it meant - mission, we seem to have lost that. However, in the East, the liturgy is referred to as Divine Worship. In my own ancestors land of Lebanon in the Maronite Rite, it is Qurbono -- literally, The Sacrifice! There is a more fundamental fact seemingly poorly catechised Catholics are ignorant of and it is this: -- the Mass is the Sacrifice of Jesus on Calvary brought forward in time and re-presented on the Altar of Sacrifice in our churches. It is a propitiatory offering to God the Father by God the Son through the God the Holy Spirit of the once and final blood sacrifice of Christ in an unbloody manner for the expiation of my sins and yours and all of humanity should they come to Him to be baptised in water and washed by His blood! The problem, or so it seems, is that you were not taught this for the simple reason that many Catholic teachers, priests and bishops don't believe it. Further, the posture of the priest facing the people and the horizontal plane on which the Altar sits masks it (see the picture above from St Francis de Sales Oratory to show what I mean). Let me ask you this question -- if you were transported back in time to Calvary to witness the crucifixion of Our Blessed Lord, would you decorate the cross with Seattle Seahawks paraphernalia and jump up and dance or cheer for a sports team? Of course you would not! Therefore, what was done was, in fact, a ridicule of Divine Worship to God and a profanation of the sacred.
3. We do not cover our heads, and most
teens wear jeans to mass but they come!
Nobody asked you to cover your heads (as women) and the 1983 Code of Canon Law does not require it, though it is a worthy thing to do and Saint Paul the Apostle himself would demand it. As for "jeans" -- well, if that is all one has, then jeans are fine, but if you were going to meet the President of the United States (even the current boob in the White House), you would most certainly dress up and put on your "Sunday best" right? Why would you do any less for the King of kings and Lord of lords?
4. It is not right to be Pharisees and
Sadducees.
Ah that old canard, eh?; well, you forgot to add that I'm a "self-absorbed, promethean neo-pelagian" too! Tell me, when Jesus went to the Temple, His Father's house which is to be called "a house of prayer" but which was made into a "den of thieves" by the Pharisees and Sadducees, was he being Pharisaical when he beat them out of the Temple with whips and overturned the tables of the money-changers or was He just being a self-absorbed promethean neo-pelagian? Who then, Stacey, are the real Pharisees and Sadducees? Those who act as the ones did who defiled the Temple or your Church for last Sunday (and heaven knows what other times) or those who follow what Jesus did proclaiming that a "house of prayer has been turned into a den of thieves?"
5. Jesus healed on the Sabbath and ate with tax collectors and
prostitutes.
He most certainly did and your comment is a non-sequitur.
6. This priest is bringing people to Jesus and meeting them where
they are.
I hope that he is bringing them to Jesus but if this is where they are, they are in the wrong place. The priest must raise them to a higher level and if this is the height of expectation of the priest and the parish for your youth and people of Marysville, then he and you have a pretty low standard for yourselves and your neighbours.
7. Shame on you who judge.
I'm reporting and besides, what is wrong with judging? We do it every day, you do it. What is it that you are not to judge? I am judging the actions of people that have done wrong. I am not judging your soul or the priest's, or the motives, I have been very careful about that with the word "objectively speaking." Objectively speaking it can be a mortal sin for a priest to introduce such things into the liturgy. Did you know that Vatican II actually taught this? "Therefore no other person, even if he be a
priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own
authority." - Sacrosanctam Concilium, III. 22.3
8. This is a community who love Jesus and wanted
to celebrate and give thanks for the good in the world as well as the good in
our faith at a tough time in Marysville. Uniting and celebrating the good.
All that is good and wonderful but the party does not belong at the Mass, but rather, in the parish hall!
9. If
you think this was wrong then you have that right but do not judge what you do
not understand.
Not only do I have the God-given right as a citizen of Canada, but I have the calling as a Confirmed Catholic to preach the truth of Christ and His Church; and trust me, I fully understand what is going on.
10. I love our priest, our church, and will defend it.
Good, that is the right place to start. Now, you need to educate yourself on what was wrong with what was done.
11. This city
has been through so much. Pray for us, don't hate and point fingers. This same
church just opened a homeless shelter! Jesus is in our Faith Formation classes,
our choir, and with our saints!
I am sure all people of goodwill will hold your community up in prayer. Nobody is hating anyone here so please don't use the gay-agenda, Islamic-fascist canard of "hater" to describe me or anyone else commenting on this blog. Homeless shelters are wonderful things and good for the parish that it began one. The City of Seattle has a homeless shelter or two, I should think, but it has nothing to do with the Mass or the Catholic Church; the Church is about more than "social justice." Remember, "not everyone who cries, Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of Heaven." It is not about abominable worship to God with a homeless shelter that makes it all right; that makes it all wrong. A little bit of poison in water is still poison. It about right worship and a homeless shelter.
Fundamentally, it seems that what you have not been taught is what was described above about the Holy Mass and that we go to Mass for four reasons which are easy to remember if you think of the Book of Acts, though you touched on it in #8:
A = Adoration of God - FATHER, SON and HOLY SPIRIT.
C = Contrition for our sins.
T = Thanksgiving for all the gifts that God has given to us.
S = Supplication - asking God for our needs and the needs of others.
Nowhere is there to worship the Seattle Seahawks.
One more thing.
Deacon Greg Kandra at The Deacon's Bench picked up this story and quoted directly from two documents easily found on EWTN. Read them there and don't argue with me, take it up with Rome.