When will Bishops lighten this Cross of today`s English speaking Catholics.
If you have the time {especially if you are a religious} PLEASE clink the link for entire article.
The suffering people experience in trying to find an orthodox presentation of the Faith is immense……..
especially in this Diocese, which is, strangely enough, somewhat on the liberal side of the spectrum as such things go. Which fact is very odd, considering the overwhelming political (if not cultural, which is so much more critical) conservativism of this area.
A commenter and fellow blogger of this Diocese of Dallas has a post up that describes experiences I think many faithful souls suffer through. Trying to find a parish home that provides the spiritual sustenance many so desperately need can be a very daunting prospect. The vast majority of spiritual “product” out there is unnourishing pablum, as offensive to the aesthetic sense as it is to the sensus fidei, the sense of faith.
This blogger relates her own experience as a protestant convert to the Faith who left protestantism behind due to its internal contradictions and flight from reason in its theology. This blogger noted how barren and devoid of sign and symbol the protestant experience is, at least in most of the US. Expecting to find a much more enriching experience in the Church, she instead found almost exactly the same thing: casual, barren liturgies, ugly buildings, insipid music, and an appalling lack of an appropriate sense of reverence as beings in the Presence of God Incarnate. While her experience has varied, she has f0und only one parish in the Richardson/Plano/Allen/McKinney area acceptable, and with rest being inhibited by the same litany of deficiencies so many of the rest of us have lamented and, ultimately, fled:
So I’ve tried three parishes close to my home, and here is a partial list, in random order, of horrible things I have experienced:
Protestant style “worship music” with a full band, lead singer, and backup singers. Even the liturgical music is in this style, so that I am listening to a guitar and drums and a woman wailing like Christina Aguilera while the priest prepares the altar and I approach to receive Communion. This has been the case at 2 of the 3 churches I’ve attended, and at one of those the band included – I am not making this up – bongo drums. In one of them, the band blocked 1/4 of the congregation from being able to view the altar. In another, the woman – in a tight, low-cut tank top – canted the psalm Christina Aguilera-style, replete with making “I’m hitting a high note right now” faces. [Heh. Pretty apt description. Choirs were put in a loft at the back for a reason. It's not a performance, it's an act of service and, yes, worship.]
People wearing t-shirts, yoga pants, shorts, flip-flops, and baseball caps to Mass. [Well I've literally seen women in a tank top over a bikini during the summer]
In one church, there was a bathroom right off the sanctuary, and people constantly came and went – yes, throughout the liturgy of the Eucharist and even during the blessing of the Body and Blood. I glanced up from prayer at one point during this and saw someone standing there right outside a bathroom door pumping hand sanitizer onto his hands and thought Where am I?
A priest looking at a cell phone in the confessional. [Just horrible. Abomination of desolation, indeed.]
A priest, after giving announcements before Mass, asking all the visitors to stand up and be welcomed. (I did not stand up.) When a few stood, everyone clapped. I do not go to Mass to be singled out and clapped for, or clap for other people – not even Christina Aguilera. I am here to receive Christ. That is the kind of crap I hated about the Baptist churches of my youth, and I was totally bummed that it happened at a Catholic church. [And this blogger noted that it was the lack of reverence and way over developed focus on me, ME, ME! that drove her from the protestants. Expecting to find much better, she has been disappointed. Unfortunately, I know far more than a handful of Catholics who have fled the other direction for the exact same reasons. They may find some relatively reverent small protestant community and it gives them at least some saccharine, if not the D5W they need in their state of spiritual emergency. When you're spiritually starved, you'll take anything. And that is the condition far too many souls find themselves in. The NO Mass in most parishes is a thin spiritual gruel that neither nourishes nor appeals to the taste, when it should be the smorgasbord of the TLM with the finest in fare and 5 star execution. How's that for beating a metaphor to death!]
People letting their children act like they are in a doctor’s office waiting room: taking off their shoes, digging around in Mom’s purse for gum, etc. [how about video games complete with sound!]
A marked lack of reverence: hardly anyone genuflects; hardly anyone receives on the tongue; hardly anyone even seems to care that they are in the presence of Christ. They don’t sing (although young people seem to love singing along loudly to the horrific “worship music,” probably because they know it from the radio.) I’ve seen only two other women in veils throughout all these visits, and we get stared at like museum curiosities.[A woman walked up to my wife after Mass in Bandera, TX at a pretty little parish run by Polish priests that was actually pretty orthodox - at least for San Antonio diocese. Anyway, she walks up to my wife and says "Are you Byzantines?" And I turn around with a great big s---eating grin and say "NO, WE'RE TRADDIES!" She had no idea what I meant.]
Spaces that are at best modern and Protestant-looking, even if beautiful (St. Joseph is a good example) and at worst resemble converted gyms or community centers.
link for the rest veneremurcernui.wordpress.com/…/the-suffering-p…