Responses to liberals – Part 2

Continued from Part 1;

It’s been far-left-wing liberals who’ve taken legitimate Church practices and taken them far beyond what is prescribed in Church Law, taking advantage of vaguely written rubrics, administrative procedures, and guidelines, and twisting them to suit their own agendas. For example, I was involved in three different retreat programs in my teens and young adulthood. In our Masses there were lots of liturgical abuses, the most common being holding hands during The Lord’s Prayer. Other liturgical abuses included the priest inviting everyone to join him around the altar during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, and self-communicating from the chalice on the altar at Communion time. The Sign of Peace was usually a disorganized mess, with everyone going around hugging as many people as possible! But since these were “private Masses” (officially, there’s no such thing), no one ever questioned these abuses, mostly because no one knew they were abuses (ah, the ignorance thing).

Along the way, I saw far-left-wing liberals believe and promote lots of weird stuff, and make demands of the Church it couldn’t possibly do; allow women to be priests, for example. During the papacy of St. John Paul II, these liberals lamented the “rigidness” of the Church in not even discussing doctrinal issues that couldn’t be changed anyway. They kept saying to themselves “things will change with the next Pope”. As history as shown, the Church is still the Church, with the same unchanging doctrinal teaching handed down to us from Christ and the Apostles. None of the post-Vatican II popes have changed any doctrines, so which “next pope” are you referring to?

And please, stop changing the words of our prayers and the Sacred Texts of the Mass in favor of inclusive language!

Fortunately, I’ve noticed over the past 10-20 years that the Church in the U.S. is swinging back to its moral and spiritual center, and sticking to what the Church prescribes in doctrine and practice; no more, no less. The publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in the 1990’s, as well as a new translation of the words and prayers we use during Mass that was instituted in 2011, have been key in this swing back to the center.

The vast majority of far-left-wing liberals in the Church are now elderly seniors whose direct influence at the parish and diocesan level is negligible in many places now, though fixing many parishes and dioceses they’ve left in their wake may take hard work and many years. Many of the priests (most of whom were ordained in the 1960’s and 1970’s) who were in cahoots with the liberals in their parishes are now retiring or have passed away! I’ve been told catechesis of children has gotten better since I was young, though we still have a long way to go!

I look forward to the day when the Church finally returns back to its theological and ideological center, and stays there!

Ok liberals, have at me!