Meeting of Minds?

Bishop Brown agrees, in general, to meet with the dissatisfied parishioners of St. Mary's-by-the-Sea.

Bishop Tod Brown unexpectedly celebrated the Saturday evening vigil Mass at St. Mary's by the Sea parish in Huntington Beach, California, on Saturday, June 3, 2006.

Mary Tripoli, a member of Restore the Sacred (who was dismissed from the parish council and invited to leave the parish and the diocese for kneeling and handing out fliers after Mass) approached the bishop after the Mass and asked him for a meeting at St. Mary's so that he could come and talk with parishioners there in order to heal the rupture within the parish.

Bishop Brown seemed hesitant, but did, in fact, agree to a meeting. However, nothing definite was set, and it is generally difficult for ordinary Catholics within the diocese to get in touch with Bishop Brown, so scheduling this meeting may be difficult, but perhaps Fr. Tran can arrange it, since he speaks with Bishop Brown on a regular basis.

This, of course, is the parish that's the site of the Kneeling Wars - which are about much more than kneeling. On both sides.

To catch up, if you're interested, go to this post at Jimmy Akins' blog as well as others there for analysis and extensive discussion in the comments. Closed Cafeteria has been covering it very closely. Here's an article from LA Catholic Mission.

My sense, from very far away, is that the whole situation is a mess that has been bungled badly (which is why it's a mess). In short, the previous pastor in this parish create a little niche of traditionalism and offered the Tridentine Mass. When he retired in 2004, Bishop Brown retired the Tridentine Mass along with it. Some details are here. Mass could be offered in Latin, but it would be Novus Ordo. There is still one Tridentine Mass offered in Orange County listed here. Here is an article from the Una Voce site about the loss of the Tridentine Mass at St. Mary's.

One can only guess, and guessing is probably not what we should do here. But it seems pretty clear that whatever church leaders are leading the charge here - the bishop, the "new" pastor, or whoever - wants to "break" the Traditionalist community at this parish. Perhaps that is because the community was producing a bit of bad fruit in the form of constructing a little mini-kingdom of sorts. It happens. There is a fine line between a thriving community and a mini-kingdom with its own particular magisterium, and they develop on both sides of the spectrum. Perhaps the cleric's desire to break the community comes from a hatred of what they stand for and a determination to impose SoCal Catholicism on everyone, everywhere, for the sake of diversity.

Perhaps it's a bit of both. Judging from the communiques put out from Restore the Sacred, it strikes me as quite possible. I can't get the pdf file in question to open, but this thread from Dom's links to it, and even if you can't open it, the discussion gives you a sense of what's in it - basically calling into question many things, including female altar servers and lectors. One of the points in the LACatholic Mission article concerns the man in charge of training altar servers who encouraged his servers not to obey diocesan liturgical norms in regard to kneeling. Sorry, that's not right.

So fight here about norms and various levels of authority all you like, but what I keep saying over and over again is this:

This is what happens, fellows, and by "fellows" I mean "bishops" and other clerics, but mostly "bishops."

This mess is about something local, but it's also about something bigger, as anyone who reads through the comments about this all over the blogosphere. Why do Catholics across the country give a flip about what's going on in a small parish in Huntington Beach, CA?

Because the hypocrisy has just about worn some of us out.

Various bishops across the land could only get away with this so long, and now that we can click on a mouse and see what's going on nationwide in a matter of minutes, the gig really is up. Selectively enforced liturgical directives are at the top of the list - you must obey this directive enacted at the diocesan level, but don't mind us if we disregard this mandatory directive emanating from Rome. We are going to invite you to leave a parish if you can't deal with the way things are going liturgically, but if we won't expend an ounce of energy preaching forcefully on anything that actually matters. The situation in Orange bears its own stamp of insanity, as this long, angry open letter to Bishop Brown attests.  One might not agree with the evaluation of every point in the letter, but the gist of it gives you a clear sense of the frustration. Why "tolerate" questionable behavior and dissent from the "left" but put the hammer down on those who seek a little diversity from the "right?"

Once again, the aggrieved have made their own missteps. But if there were problems at St. Mary's of one sort or another, wiping out the Traditionalist liturgy was not a good way to solve them, and was incredibly boneheaded. But at the same time, smoothing the edges of what had evolved at the place doesn't seem to have been the goal of the clerics involved - wiping it out in that frantic "Omygoodnessit'sPREVATICANII" hysteria so many are infected with does.

But perhaps what's reported from this past evening provides a bit of hope. Let's pray that it does. And let's pray that other bishops have been noting this mess as well, and taking notes.

And as Michael notes..  I might add if the priest were praying at Mass he wouldn't even notice what his parishioners are doing...