It Really Does Matter

My car is needing new brakes and new tires. I’m here at the dealership now waiting. My car will be here for a while. I’m blogging on my laptop from the dealership. The thing I hate about this is that I don’t know how much I really need what they say I need. I use the dealership because my car is still under warranty, and at least they take responsibility if they mess up.

The Commercial Appeal broke yet another “priest scandal” story. This time it is against Fr. Rick Mickey. He happens to be the former pastor of the church where the first story broke. However, unlike the former story, Fr. Mickey denies the accusations.

To be honest, I believe Fr. Mickey. Every indication that I’ve seen shows that he is a good, solid priest. He’s also one who has been known not to tolerate certain nonsense. This alone creates the potential for him to be a target of some action.

Besides, the whole story sounds, well, fishy. The twins said they suddenly recalled “repressed memories” while on a fishing trip last year. They claim that they felt that they needed to take action to protect others. Oh yeah, then why did they wait until the next year? It also turns out that, we may not have the full story, at least not from our local paper.

I haven’t been here since the weekend, but I assure you I’m alive. I’ve been rather tired, but I made it through the week. I have such an exciting weekend planned. I get to go take my car for service. It just can’t break down now, I’ve just finished paying for it.

I have started working with St. Vincent de Paul Society. The first call I really worked on turned out to be a scam. I’m not really sure yet where to find help for most of these people. It doesn’t help that my time is more limited than most. Several of the people who carry out the work are retired; I’m not.

Well, I just opened my Sunday paper to find yet another story on the aforementioned scandal. Do they have any shame? Would they be willing to ruin a man’s special day for the sake of a story that they already ran? They cornered the former pastor and the bishop. They didn’t say much that one wouldn’t expect, or at least it wasn’t reported. Most of the laity refused to comment. The one who did didn’t say much that was reported. It appears that the former pastor wasn’t named in the suit, but the bishop and the priest’s order were. This priest was a religious from Bolivia, and he was sent back there.

Lately, I’ve been listening to some audio CDs on Redemtionis Sacramentum. One audio series that I’ve used is by Fr. Peter Stravinskas. The other is one that I got by donating to the Catholic Resource Center.As I’ve said before, I hope that they enforce this one. What gives me hope is the fact that stronger language is being used in the document that in others. Certain practices are to be “reprobated.” Others are listed as graviora delicta resulting in automatic excommunication reserved to the Holy See (e.g. pouring the precious blood down the sacrarium).

It occured to me after my last post that one might argue that we wouldn’t need these documents if we went back to the Tridintine Mass. It seems there were more problems with the current rite. However, this is probably not true. There were certainly liturgical abuses in the old rite, but they were more difficult to detect because the Liturgy was celebrated in Latin. Fr. Stravinskas recalls as an altar server hearing priests leave out parts of what we now call the Eucharistic Prayer. Many of the complaints leading to this document came from laity. Now that the Mass is celebrated in the vernacular, any lay person can tell whether or not the rite is being celebrated correctly.

To make things more interesting, the document repeatedly assert the right of the faithful to a properly celebrated Mass. I wonder how many times that right has been denied us by those who would “empower” the laity and who complained that the laity had no voice in the affairs of the Church. After all, we know there are those circles in which those faithful to the Magisterium do not count as “laity.”

This evening, I spent my weekly hour at a local Perpetual Adoration chapel. While I was there, I have exercised my new tendency to open my mouth and say what I should say, but perhaps too abruptly. Being at the Defending the Faith conference really helped to instill in me that I shouldn’t be afraid to speak the truth.

A gentleman came up to me to tell me he had been to Mass this morning at the local church affiliated with the Society of St. Pius X. The first thing that came out of my mouth was that the church wasn’t approved by the diocese. I think I also mentioned schism. He told me that he needed to get something to “enlighten” me. You see, that Novus Ordo that is celebrated was instituted by some Protestant ministers and Jewish rabbis telling the Pope how to run the Church.

Oh well, I’ve heard all of this stuff before in one form or another. I have heard that it was the Masons who ran Vatican II and established the current rite. I’ve heard people say that they dummied-down the Mass to appease Protestants. Where do these people get these ideas? I think I know. Someone makes them up.

I do believe that dissentors on the right are in as much danger as dissentors on the left. They both decided that they want the Church run their way; they just differ in the actual content of that. While the left desacralizes, the right illicitly (and sometimes invalidly, depending on the Sacrament) celebrates. The only difference is that I don’t think that the dissent on the right is dying quite the way dissent on the left is. With all that is going on in the Church now, fuel is added to the fire on the right.

Get a Kerry is not Catholic bumper sticker here.

A scandal story broke in our local paper. It’s really bad because the story broke the same day as the diaconate ordination and in the same church where the ordination took place. I’m just glad that I didn’t run into the press there. I hope they weren’t there, but I can’t be for sure.

If true, I cannot find the words to describe it. Many of us throughout the diocese are a close-knit group. It amazes me that anything like this gets through without it being known widely throughout the diocese. We are a small group of Catholics mostly, but not entirely, concentrated in one relatively small metro area. We have no shortage of people who are eager to report everything they find.

Only upon the revelation of more information will we know if it is true or not. To the wags in the Church, keep in mind that there still exists the possibility that this entire episode may not be true. All I know of now are an allegation or a lawsuit. It is complicated by the fact that the priest in question has left the country. I’m sure it will be found out whether this was done before or after our diocese had a chance to act. Both the pastor of this parish at the time and the current pastor are very solid priests. I will give all involved the benefit of the doubt until there is evidence to the contrary, but I will not do so any longer than this.

Last Sunday in Frassati Society, we were fortunate to have Andy McNutt come to tell his conversion story. He held everyone’s attention. Even as a Protestant, he was aware that there was something wrong with using contraception. In fact, he brought up the Theology of the Body and how this aided his conversion.

Today, I had a totally different experience. We had an ordination to the transitional diaconate. This new deacon came to the Frassati Society during his first summer break from seminary. How blessed we are to see that he is ordained a deacon. He is scheduled to be ordained a priest next June, and I plan to be there. He is definitely one of those previously blogged about younger seminarians. He will be a great priest.

While there, I saw another seminarian and friend of mine, Dennis. He’s still got a long way to go before ordination, but he belongs in the above category as well. We talked on the phone for a few minutes before I saw him at the church during the ordination.

Things like my last blog entry can drive one to despair. Therefore, it is necessary that we remember the younger generation of priests and seminarians. My parish is blessed to have a prime example of this in one of our associates. For example, this priest spoke about the priesthood, and during his talk, one of the cradle Catholics who was sponsoring his fiancee said that his view of celibacy was totally turned around. At one time, he viewed it as a curse. After hearing this priest, he viewed it as a gift.

One of the blessings that we have is that our baby-boomer priests appear to be at least somewhat tolerant of these orthodox priests. Apparently, that doesn’t happen everywhere. There probably have been cases around here of persecutions of some form, but I have not heard much. I do know that these priests are very popular with many of the laity. They preach the truth we hunger for. Not only that, they don’t see it as some kind of unnecessary constraint but as a cause for joy.