June 31 has seen in the Catholick Church the closing of the Pauline Year and on July 1st the fiscal year begins. On the 19th of June, the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Year of Priests began. So this time should be full of opportunity.
[I proceed to disrupt this series for clearing up an idiom] August 20, 2008
When I refer to someone as a “cafeteria Catholick,” I do not mean “someone who picks and chooses aspects of Catholicity” to believe. (For that I prefer “salad-bar Catholick” to label.) Rather I mean “cafeteria Catholick” as someone who goes into the dining hall to talk and discuss Catholicism aplenty but then does nothing for the Catholick Church outside such an establishment. All chat and none of action; but then not a true hypocrite since they may believe some articles of faith. Now back to what I was leading up towards on this website.
…Two Parishes, One Church… August 18, 2008
Some months ago I attended a meeting about the future renovation of my parish set for 2009. Our pastor gave the talk and then took all questions. I caught him off guard with a query about the 1989 renovation when Immaculate Conception was first changed. You see the second renovation means restoring high altar plus moving the tabernacle back to the middle of the sanctuary. Besides stone floors, this renovation undoes the 1989 renovation. (Though one should add that IHM fared worse in the renovation department. Monsignor Connors ((may he rest in peace)) did far more to change that ekklesia for the worse when he refurbished that interior, according to Mary Wolff. Oh, and Monsignor Connors also briefly had liturgical dancing in tony Scarsdale’s Catholick sanctuary. Yup.) The current altar—really just an old adult baptismal font with a thin slab of stone atop it—will be moved further back into the presbyterium so that more pews can be put in and also straightened. So twenty years later, those parishioners who fought the renovation all the way to Cardinall O’Connor, can smile. And New York’s Archbishop actually agreed with the congregation but did not dare to contradict a fellow priest who was the Monsignor pastor. For my part so long as bispecies Communion continues I shall attend when in Eastchester. (Thence the reason I usually do not attend mass at Immaculate Heart of Mary.) As for sources, consult the privately published history of my parish. Should you require more photographic documentation, my christening, done by a priest famous in my parish, was in the pre-rennovated Immaculate Conception.
A note about my life… August 18, 2008
Several months ago, a friend commented that this website–he knowing I hold the Catholick faith–referred to this website as a “nice little confessional,” but then seeing the look of irritation, thought I was offended, thereupon saying he was sorry. But it was not my supposed piety that was hurt, rather the perpetuation of a fallacy about my spiritual upbringing, which leads me to this clarification; namely, that I have never truly seen a confessional’s inside.
I was raised in Immaculate Conception in Eastchester/Tuckahoe, New York. We had altar girls years before they were legally permitted. At least once–at a mass to which a friend and I served–a layperson gave the homily. (Since then I have discovered that the 1983 Code of Canon Law has a loophole allowing this practice; similar to how female acolytes started arising. Though the latter’s abuse is not a matter of doctrine, unlike the former.) The priest presiding used to walk around the nave and apse with the incense. The big contrast was with Immaculate Heart of Mary, Scarsdale, NY that had no bispecies communion. Altar servers used to hold pattens under the communicants for their receiving. And of course, IHM still had confessionals. My parish was all about “reconciliation rooms” for the sacrament of Penance. All my dealings with my confessors (even through college) has been done race to face. Beyond even the sacrament of Repentance–my favorite locution–I was taught by my well-meaning catechists and clerics a watered-down “by the way Jesus loves you” spirituality. Heck, one vicar joked at my Confirmation prep mass about how none knew the meaning of the term Transubstantiation. It was not until college that I truly developed an understanding of what the Catholic Church actually teaches.
Looking back one might actually call me, with some accuracy, a kind of Protestant during mine adolescence. I never prayed towards any saints before my time at Hobart. (My “Hail Marys” were automatic and to this day I struggle with the hyperdulia for the blessed Mother.) I was given an award for knowledge of the Bible, which I loved reading; but not for the catechism that I never–those distant days ago– would even have known existed. So please, do not ever presume that I have some ultra-Traditionalist, Tridentine past. My life is one of the modern Christian.
