Mass at an Anglican church (not a Catholic church with Anglican Usage, but a straight, full-blooded, Anglican church)
I recently had a conversation with a local poet, a very entertaining woman whose only perceivable flaw is a sort of jaggedness in her tone whenever Roman Catholicism comes up in conversation. There’s never anything malicious – the most she’s ever said is that some Catholics can be “melodramatic.” I actually thought she may be an Agnostic or maybe even an Atheist, but today she told me that she is actually an Episcopalian. My first thought was “Great. What kind of hippie-dippie nonsense is she going to come out with now?” But God gave me a little verbal smack-down. This is what she said:
A Roman Catholic Mass
“I was raised Episcopalian. When I was a little girl, my parish even did things in Latin, with all that wonderful High-Church stuff. Great theatrics! Swinging that incense around and, oh my God, those vestments! Nothing was like it! So I decided to try out a Catholic parish when I was a little older, and when I got there, I just couldn’t get past the lunacy! I mean, really? Shaking hands and chatting up your friends before communion? That’s kind of sick . . . And all that guitar-strumming hymn-singing bull-s***. Come on! But yeah. The Catholics I talked to in the 60’s and 70’s were insane, and that’s why I’m an Episcopalian.”
Liberal Catholics – losing souls to the Protestants since 1969.
Tags: Liturgy, Protestant
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Prophetic words.
The kind of Anglican you show in the first picture is rapidly becoming extinct in the Episcopalian world. The last hold outs that carry the Anglo-Catholic tradition in TEC are entering the Ordinariate. i.e. Mount Calvary in Baltimore:
http://www.mountcalvary.com/index.php
The entire denomination is either going extinct or turning Catholic.
I heard a similar account of a Protestant attend the old Mass and being horrified at what he considered idolatry of the Eucharist. Years later he went to a modern service. He said it didn’t bother him any more; it was obvious no one believed what the Church teaches about the Eucharist.
I only hope there will be an episcopal parish that will come into the Catholic faith in Rochester. It probably won’t happen on this bishop’s watch. If he does to the Episcopalians as he did to the Latin Mass, he will create road block after road block to discourage and prevent them from entering the Church. But once they are in, then Catholics can see the rich heritage they have.
It is my understanding that there is one considering the conversion, but Bishop Clark could indeed prove to be a roadblock.
actually I believe they would be outside of Bishop Clark’s jurisdiction.
Boy, Would that eat his craw!
Permit me to grind an axe. In the almost two millenia since the Ascension of Our Lord and the birth of the Church at Pentecost, we are still in the very early stages of the electronic age, lo these few decades, but if there is a satanic “gateway drug” that the Catholics have swallowed hook, line and sinker, it is the microphone in the mouths of the “leaders of song”. As I have heard, this is THE one aberration that would make otherwise eager Anglican converts-to-be wonder if old slewfoot has taken over. It is also the main reason many young men leave. If it sounds like hell, it probably is, they reason. (How do you argue with that logic?) A wise old Army Colonel commented once at our parish Rosary Crusade at which the music was not amplified, “This is the first time in 20 years I’ve been able to hear myself sing!”
Think Cain and Abel, if our young people can’t hear their praise going up to God at Mass when they try to sing, what will their reaction be if they haven’t yet learned to use it as an opportunity to offer up a suffering? So I am talking the survival, or not, of the Catholic Church. If we take away the mikes, everything else is possible. Let’s get on our knees and begin with a prayer for guidance and strength. Yes, we’ll be martyred, but then we go to Heaven…