Archangel Radio

A bit more can be read on the blog “Whispers in the Loggia,” but the schismatic traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (who reject not only the “new” Mass of the Missal of Pope Paul VI but virtually the entirety of the Second Vatican Council) is dead-set against World Youth Day, and not just in Sydney.

In a sharp rebuke of World Youth Day festivities in Sydney, Holy Cross [Society of St. Pius X Seminary] Rector Father Peter Scott said World Youth Day did nothing to help prepare the way for Catholics to reach heaven.”The reason I’m not in favour of World Youth Day is because of what happens and what has consistently happened since it was initiated by Pope John Paul II,” Father Scott told AM.

“It has become an occasion for a very secular approach to religion, it’s become just a happy party - a week of partying and concerts and world activities with very little that is truly holy and sacred and prayerful and Catholic for that matter,”

he said.

“They’ll have a few masses, a few experiences, but they’ll be very liberal, easy-going, secular unsacred kinds of things.”

The depth of ignorance reflected in these comments is remarkable and disappointing.  I am personally a veteran of the World Youth Day in Rome in 2000; I was personally involved in the celebration of Reconciliation in locales as diverse as a hotel room, a coffee bar, walking on the street, in St. Peter’s Basilica, and at the Circus Maximus.  Masses celebrated daily by our Archdiocesan group were marked by love and reverence; the experience of a combination of Praise & Worship music, catechesis, and Eucharistic Adoration in the Piazza di Spagna was one that cannot be forgotten.  To call 7,000 pilgrims kneeling on cobblestones in Adoration “liberal, easy-going, secular unsacred kinds of things” marks the speaker out clearly as ostrich-like in what verges on willful ignorance of the youthful devotion fostered in these encounters of youth and the Pope with the Lord Jesus.

I was also privileged to work on the organization and execution of what was in effect the 1^st World Youth Day, in 1984 in Rome.  To think that catechesis from people like Mother Teresa (for the English speakers) and Br. Roger Schutz (for the French) would somehow be dismissed as “just a happy party” is very sad. 

I know there are some of you who have been to a World Youth Day celebration—probably in Denver, possibly in other parts of the world.  Or perhaps your children have attended.  I know you can also relate first-hand who misinformed these comments are.  But then, when one is in a schismatic movement, one tends to see the “opposition” as a body that can do no right, while they tends to see themselves as a body that can do no wrong.  It’s very sad.  But this is in part, I believe, a reaction to the offer of reconciliation offered this Society in June—an offer ignored (surely in part because they believe it would involve their capitulation or surrender). 

For myself, I would rather celebrate World Youth Day and feel the spiritual and theological embrace of the Holy Father than stand off to the side, left out (by my own choice) and hurling insults in a fit of temper.  This is not a new thing in the Church’s history.  In the 4^th century the Donatists held pretty well to the same outlook:  they were the only truly faithful ones, therefore they were the only true Church.  The group of the Donatists has disappeared, but their viewpoint has not, tragically.

Here is where our prayer and the intervention of the Holy Spirit are crucial.  The Catholic Church craves unity, but on one side are those who think that the Church is hopelessly backward-looking and fossilized; on the other side are those who are convinced it has sold out the Faith to secularism.  Our prayers for the intentions of the Pope should surely include prayers that he keep his sanity in the face of such tension.  So:  Oremus (Let us pray)…