Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi in the News... Again
I recently posted the shenanigans of an anti-traditionalist Roman Catholic bishop who gets it: if you want to change the church’s doctrine, it is necessary to change the church’s worship.
It seems that the new Roman pope is at least more permissive of the traditionalist Divine Services than his predecessor. But it also looks like the cold worship war is about to emerge into an open and hot conflagration. At very least, this month of June creates a “flaming” situation of challenge that their new bishop will have to deal with one way or another.
Will he confess the church’s doctrine and enforce discipline on those who rebel against their own confession of the Sixth Commandment (not to mention the First)? Or will the new presider of the Roman communion bend to popular will and try to keep an uneasy peace between doctrines (and practices) that are irreconcilable? Will the new pope demonstrate that he understands Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi at least as much as the perverted subversives under his oversight do? Or will he just pretend not to see it?
Here is a video of excerpts from what purports to be a Mass in the Roman Catholic All Saints parish in Syracuse, NY (here is the entire video). Get your heresy bingo cards ready. From the opening Hindu greeting of “Namaste,” (and the banner of the same), the politically-correct confession of being on stolen land, screens in the chancel, the homosexual flags, the “immigrants welcome” banner, the “sermon” by the sexually-confused Episcopalian woman (who admits that she is mentally-ill) , the lady lector, the changing of the gender of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures to the feminine, “mother earth,” the bid prayer for “LGBTQIA+ pride month,” the blessing (given on Trinity Sunday, no less) that shuns the name of the Father the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, coupled with the terrible campfire praise songs and irreverent boomerific Vatican II Woodstockery - we see all of the modernist garbage (that one does not see in the traditional Latin Mass) on full display - not to mention the effeminate, irreverent, clapping, laughing, unserious, folksy, missional pastor, and the obvious age cohort that is dominating this “welcoming” dumpster fire.
The easy response will be for those in authority to just “not see” it - the same way that the new pope pretended to not see the homosexual banner when he was walking past. While some saw the passive snub as a breath of fresh air, wouldn’t it have been a true moment of courage and confession had he stopped, told them to give it to him, and then telling them right then and there that this is sinful, contrary to the Christian faith, and that they must repent? That would have been a powerful exercise of pastoral and episcopal leadership and love rather than literally just looking the other way - right out of our Lord’s damning parable - and saying nothing to those who are inviting damnation upon themselves?
Something tells me that if the flag were a swastika instead of a rainbow, the bishop would not have been so passive about it.
But at any rate, those who want change in doctrine always want change in the liturgy. They understand the ancient principle that how we pray feeds into how we confess - and vice versa. And while subverts and perverts could well push the traditional liturgy as nothing more than a spectacle, a show of beauty, the gritty reality is that those who want radical change in doctrine want radical change in ceremonies. They seek to lower the gaze of the participants away from the heavenly to the worldly - as they are indeed Utopian worldly idealists, millennialists, who immanentize the eschaton. It is also overwhelmingly the case that those who are serious about their faith and life and confession - especially in the eschatological context of the miraculous Presence of our Lord in the Mass, the Gottesdienst of Word and Sacrament - will be reverent, and will not be looking to introduce new ceremonies driven by the world, its entertainments, and its perversions. Jesus is not broken. We do not need to fix Him.
Lex orandi, Lex credendi may not always be in the news, but it is always in the church, and will be even unto eternity.