During Lent a few years ago, our associate pastor gave a presentation on the history of the church. He handed out a sheet that diagrammed all the splits including the Eastern Orthodox church. The whole presentation was excellent.
The part that caught my wife and I of guard was one off the senior deacons asked Father if priests were still required to take an oath against modernity. It was a rhetorical question. The kernel of our parishes leadership was there (about the only people who did show up besides my wife and I), including some of our more experienced deacons, their wives and the liturgist/adult formation person and her husband. They all burst out in sardonic laughter. Father did not answer. I wanted to get up and take over the class, do a little Jedi formation right on the spot. Modernity is funny? Fighting one of the heresy that is all heresies in one is funny? We are so much smarter in the bleakness of post modern age of enlightenment. It's more than ironic that we call one the richest times in our history, the Dark Ages.
Why is it now the people who are most faithful to the teaching of the Catholic Church are seen as divisive, schismatic? How did that ever come about? It's smacks of the diabolical if you ask me. It's sheer evil genius.
I wish I had the gifts of the likes of St. John Vianney. That is what our parish seems to need. My wife and I started sending our oldest kids to this parish's school twelve years ago because the two other Catholic grade schools that were closer, were full. I've thought about going to a less protestant influenced parish, and just when I was really going to do it, I was asked to serve on the parish council - a 3 year commitment. I took it as God saying not yet, wait and see. My main point I stressed in my biography for the election was adult formation. I feel like a failure.
Feelings are deceptive. Things could be brewing unseen, at least that is what I am hoping and praying for. It's a delicate situation to say the least. Just before our family joined the parish, the members were feuding over whether the altar should be in the middle of the church or not, and I heard it was moved around a few times. Over the years the people who would be a bit more enlightened er I mean formed (knew what the heck was going on) have been weeded out. I know a deacon at a nearby parish who used to attend our parish and was asked to leave because he made a comment on the wrongness of what was going on (about the time the location of the altar was being fought over).
The one big improvement we have had is we have a few hours we can come into the church on Tuesday evenings and pray before the tabernacle. We keep Jesus safely closed up in this tabernacle so it's not the adoration I experienced in another parish where the maverick associate priest at the time held covert adoration (the pastor there was against adoration if you can believe that). We had benediction and the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance that was Father's own. We prayed and we sang. It was awesome. Anyway, my next suggestion will be to upgrade our adoration time to actually letting Jesus come out with benediction.
If after my term is up, we might stay, or not. It's up to God.
