On Popular Piety
US Catholic has a piece on popular piety -- you know, the Rosary, everything else you'd ever be able to find in a TAN book or within 50 feet of Tom Monaghan.
I'd like to get everyone's mind on this. The piece seems to advocate a return to basics, i.e. the liturgy -- which everything else was created to substitute, i.e. the "Hail Marys" of the Rosary taking the place of the Psalter of the Divine Office because people couldn't read in the 13th century, etc.
One thing I'm curious about is this: whatever happened to silence? Back at the parish, adoration time is so sucked up by these ridiculous devotions which are forced upon the people (Chaplet of the Holy Wounds, Litany of the Holy Face, Novena to the Holy Hands, Blessing on the Holy Handrails) that -- again -- the people seem to be missing the forest for the trees and it just sounds like a monotonous rabble of sycophants reading off cue cards.
The people who advocate popular piety are the same people who look at me like some kind of terrorist when I remind (or tell them for the first time) that the Liturgy of the Hours is actually the sanctioned prayer of the church and takes precedence over all other private devotions. This is not my own viewpoint, but I've been excoriated for it....
Welcome to the resurgent tridentine Catholicism -- povero catechesi, arroganza peggio ancora.
-30-
I'd like to get everyone's mind on this. The piece seems to advocate a return to basics, i.e. the liturgy -- which everything else was created to substitute, i.e. the "Hail Marys" of the Rosary taking the place of the Psalter of the Divine Office because people couldn't read in the 13th century, etc.
One thing I'm curious about is this: whatever happened to silence? Back at the parish, adoration time is so sucked up by these ridiculous devotions which are forced upon the people (Chaplet of the Holy Wounds, Litany of the Holy Face, Novena to the Holy Hands, Blessing on the Holy Handrails) that -- again -- the people seem to be missing the forest for the trees and it just sounds like a monotonous rabble of sycophants reading off cue cards.
The people who advocate popular piety are the same people who look at me like some kind of terrorist when I remind (or tell them for the first time) that the Liturgy of the Hours is actually the sanctioned prayer of the church and takes precedence over all other private devotions. This is not my own viewpoint, but I've been excoriated for it....
Welcome to the resurgent tridentine Catholicism -- povero catechesi, arroganza peggio ancora.
-30-
posted by Rocco Palmo at 12:17
5 Comments:
Rocco,
I don't know any traditionalist leader who believes that devotions are higher and prior to the liturgy of the hours. I would like, for once, to see those progressives who would rip rosaries out of the hands of little old ladies during mass and shutting down the miraculous medal novena to FIRST put their money where their mouth is and RESTORE a fully fledged mattins and vespers EVERY DAY. They won't, of course.
One of the cruelest cuts of the changes in the late 60s and early 70s was the elimination of all the popular devotions. People loved the devotions, the devotions brought them closer to God, and most (though not all) were perfectly orthodox and sound, if not to everybody's liking. I, for one, am not big on most popular devotions, though I do love the Litany of the Loretto and am devoted to Our Lady of Walsingham. What is so wrong with these devotions? I say: Nothing at all! More of the same, please!
I've got to agree with Patrick here, Rocco - you need to lighten up a bit. The stress is getting to you, man. If you're going to start railing again the Litany of the Holy Face....
There are always those people who multiply their "devotions" and think they are devoted; but I know people who eat too many doughnuts, and I don't insist the human race should stop frying carbohydrates, no matter how distasteful I find this. And I don't think we need to fret about the misuse of devotions because we see them misunderstood by the misguided.
You forget that the Church is here to help all of us misguided idiots to find our niche in the Kingdom. If someone is devoted to some Chaplet or other, that's fine. Patience "with those whose faith is weak" is a Pauline tenet. Relax. God wants us to be like children. Don't forget that behind what seems to you to be some archaic mindless repetition and a frantic clinging to some external sign is the true kernel of internal reality that keeps this whole thing going - personal devotion to the Truth, which is not a THING, but a PERSON. I'm sure you know His Name.
Let's not get so enlightened about what exactly constitutes true devotion that we start to disregard what feeds another's soul. We should put "no stumbling block" in another's way, after all.
And if we're too mature to pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy or we start to call the Litany of the Precious Blood "ridiculous," we're in trouble, methinks.
"Sycophants?" That's not even nice.
That's the thing about popular devotions, if they don't work for you, you don't have to do them.
By the same token, if they do work for someone else you shouldn't dismiss them simply because they don't work for you. I think the Church is big enough for all the devotions.
It's also important to remember that, while the monastics who strung beads on a string to pray 150 Our Fathers did so in imitation of the Divine Office, the Rosary as it is today serves a markedly different purpose. No one who prays the Rosary would tell you they do so as a substitute for the Office, regardless of what the first purpose of strung prayer beads was: the modern Rosary is, quite differently, a form of ritualized mental prayer.
If Lauds and Vespers were available for you to participate in, nearby in your parish church or rectory chapel, daily...
Ha!
Seriously, I live in Philadelphia, and this is the primary reason why I have remained an Anglican up to this point.
If you wish to go to Sunday vespers here (see Dies Domini) your choices are (to the best of my knowledge) the Norbertines in Paoli, the Franciscans on 13th Str (secundum quid) or the Pink Sisters in Fairmount.
But wait, surely the offices are celebrated publicly at the cathedral?
Well, some of them are... at the Episcopalian cathedral! At the Minor Basilica of Ss. Peter and Paul, not so much. In fact, my parish had a solemn mass for the feast of the Holy Apostles--across the Parkway, nada!
Sure I have my favorite devotions, but if they could just get Sunday vespers in place I'd probably sign on pretty quickly.
Until then I'll continue reciting the Breviarium Romanum in an English translation with all of my "fellow travellers," waiting for the promised day of the Lord.
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