Cleansing Fire

Defending Truth and Tradition in the Roman Catholic Church

Fr. Murphy Defends Liturgical Abuse

September 14th, 2010, Promulgated by Dr. K

From the St. Louis in Pittsford bulletin:

I’m amazed that progressives continue to defend their liturgical abuses. To violate liturgical law is to take away from the solemnity and respect due to the Holy Mass. When you violate the liturgical norms, you are putting yourself above the authority of the Catholic Church (incl. Rome and the local ordinary) to regulate it. Do these free spirits ever stop to think that their deviations from liturgical law are driving away the people in the pews?

Previous posts concerning St. Louis/Fr. Murphy: here, here, and here.

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12 Responses to “Fr. Murphy Defends Liturgical Abuse”

  1. Monk says:

    The only enslavement that goes on in the DoR, is the enslavement of congregations that have heretical liturgy heaped upon them by misguided liturgy committees and heretical liturgists that come from St. Bernard’s Institute. The only recourse is to flee from the pews and try to find a proper liturgy in the dwindling number of parishes that adhere to true Catholic liturgical norms.

  2. Gretchen says:

    Fr. Murphy seems to be a bit confused. Who exactly are the “idiosyncratic few” here? (Or when did Catholicism become a democracy?)

  3. Mike says:

    The Novus Ordo Mass is how old now? 40 some odd years? It looks like the bloom is now off the rose and the NO is no longer novel enough for Fr. Murphy.

    There may be a decline in the number of vocations to the priesthood in this country, but vocations to the papacy are booming.

  4. benanderson says:

    of all the NOs I’ve been to in the area, OLV is by far the most “by the book” (following the liturgical laws). If there is a correlation to the focus on love and worship of God and adherence to liturgical laws, I’d suggest someone attend mass there and decide which end of the spectrum aids in the love and worship of God.

    @Mike – LOL! “vocations to the papacy are booming” 🙂

  5. Scott W. says:

    Depends on what he means. If priests or laity are doing something wrong out of ignorance or plain honest mistakes, then yes, getting in knot about it can interfere with worship of God. However, given a brief look at another of the Fr’s quotes, it’s pretty clear this is oblique defense of the Monkeys-in-the-Sanctuary approach to liturgy.

    But it doesn’t really bother me, because quotes like this sound like a dead ideology circling the drain.

  6. TD says:

    Am I the only one who doesn’t see anything wrong with this blurb? The statement by itself seems spot-on to me.

  7. md0852 says:

    From the article it appears that people are actually questioning Father as to his deviations from the liturgical norms. I think that is a great thing! He needs to be challenged. The abuses I see when he presides at Mass are very frustrating. To list them I would have to start a blog of my own! I often wonder why he remains a Catholic priest when he always appears to be in rebellion to what the church teaches. The funny thing is the 3 retired priests, who live at St Louis, seem to have no problem with going “by the book” during mass….I wonder why that is? Please pray for him.

  8. Bernie says:

    Liturgical rules prevent hijacking of the Liturgy by any one person (e.g. the priest) or group (e.g. a social class or committee). They also, of course, insure orthodox prayer/doctrine.

    What father wants is freedom to enslave the congregation to his own interpretations. In his mind, it’s his show. (These fellows love to say that in the TLM it is all about the priest. How ironic.)

  9. Dr. K says:

    The funny thing is the 3 retired priests, who live at St Louis, seem to have no problem with going “by the book” during mass

    I share the same observation, Md. The retired priests at St. Louis are very holy and orthodox men.

  10. Mike says:

    Ben,

    I “borrowed” that line from John Martignone, who admits he got it from someone else:

    If you want to call yourself Catholic, but you want to pick and choose for yourself which of the Church’s teachings to accept and which to reject, you give everyone else who calls themselves Catholic the right to do the same thing.

    For example, you believe women should be priests…in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1577 states, “Only a baptized man validly receives ordination…For this reason the ordination of women is not possible!” You don’t believe that…well, that’s fine…[RIP] just tear that page out of your Catechism…you just made it a Catechism of your Catholic Church…not mine.

    But remember, if you can throw doctrines out, so can everyone else who calls themselves Catholic. That gives Joe Parishioner over at St. Doubting Thomas Catholic Church the right to throw out the Church’s social justice teachings…he doesn’t feel like feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, and all that other “bleeding heart” stuff – Paragraphs 2401 -2463 [RIP]…he just made it a Catechism of his Catholic Church…not mine and not yours.

    You believe contraception is okay? Paragraph 2370 says contraception is intrinsically evil! [RIP] Joe Parishioner doesn’t like what the Church teaches on the death penalty – Paragraphs 2266-2267[RIP]. You don’t like what it teaches on pages 55-60 [RIP]. He doesn’t like what it teaches on pages 128-140 [RIP]

    Can you see what’s happening? I heard it said once that there is a shortage of vocations to the priesthood in the United States, but no shortage of vocations to the Papacy! If we don’t believe in all of it, if we each appoint ourselves Pope and throw out a doctrine here or a doctrine there, then our faith is no longer Catholic.

  11. Scott W. says:

    Am I the only one who doesn’t see anything wrong with this blurb? The statement by itself seems spot-on to me.

    On it’s own, yes, it is unoffensive because if priests or laity violate liturgical norms out of ignorance or by honest mistake, then yes, getting in a knot about it to the detriment of worshiping God the best one can in the situation is bad.

    Deliberate violations however are another kettle of fish, and even a quick glance at the Fr’s other quotes are enough to reasonably take this quote as an oblique defense of the Monkeys-in-the-Sanctuary approach to liturgy.

  12. From the article it appears that people are actually questioning Father as to his deviations from the liturgical norms. I think that is a great thing!

    That was the same impression I got.

    Padre, it’s never, ever going to be 1978 again.

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