The Injustice of an Irreverent Mass
Note: The full essay may read freely at Crisis Magazine. Be aware that this article is about Catholic liturgies, and therefore might not be interesting to other readers (and may be a bit confusing at times).
Some recent summertime travel caused me to venture into another diocese. As a daily Mass goer, I was thrilled to be in a rental only a block from the basilica. On a Friday afternoon, we entered a beautiful church. We sat in a pew, three of us wearing veils, and were suddenly aware of how disparate we were from the aging parishioners around us. The population of the parish was exclusively elderly, which forewarned us of the liturgy that we could expect. There’s an undeniable association between an overwhelmingly elderly parishioner class and the style of celebration of the Mass that either attracted them or drove everyone else away.
Soon, the priest appeared, singing a vaguely religious song a capella. During and after the consecration, we were heartbroken by the manner in which he treated Our Lord. There was, within myself and my companions, an overwhelming desire to make reparations to Christ and to protect Him from the one whose duty it is to do so. We watched as the priest held the host one-handed, announcing “The Body of Christ” like a living contradiction, as his mannerisms belied a lesser recognition of whom he held in his hand.
Keep reading at Crisis Magazine.
Thank you for this, Miss Cain. I think we have become de-sensitized to the overall tragedy of irreverent Masses because of how widespread they are these days. When one take time to think about it more in depth, however, one realizes that the irreverence is not just something that makes you uncomfortable while you are at Mass, but something evil at its root.
(May I take this opportunity to thank you for having a Substack? I always looked forward to reading your articles at Crisis Magazine, so it was a great delight to me to discover you run a Substack where you write quite frequently. Thank you!)
To be fair I am forced to attend a Church largely consisting of Gray heads in The Villages Florida, as I live near there. But the masses are authentically Catholic and reverent. No one-handed, irreverent Christ holding and with a 24-7 Eucharistic adoration chapel I thank God (and the Parishioners) for quite often. The Orlando diocese. So, Sarah, I encourage you not to pre-judge a Church filled with grayheads. The fallen liturgies are due to the errors of the moderns of past generations but that virus did not affect all and as you know correction has and is taking place, which we must be very careful does not get spun by infiltrators. I encourage all to be genuine Christian Catholic.