Sunday, June 11, 2006

Making Kneeling a "Mortal Sin" and Other Perils of Liturgical "Improvement"

On this feast of Pentecost (for we Orthodox), when the Byzantines say the beautiful "kneeling prayers" after the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, I'm reminded some Roman Catholics in Orange County, California, are now forbidden to kneel:

Kneeling “is clearly rebellion, grave disobedience, and mortal sin,” Father Martin Tran, pastor at St. Mary’s by the Sea, told his flock in a recent church bulletin. The Diocese of Orange backs Tran’s anti-kneeling edict.
You see, they were forbidden to kneel by decree, and some faithful have dared to keep their traditional practice. A friend on YF comments:

even if standing has been a practice in the Western Church, vis-a-vis RCs in its recent "developments" it is a blatant declaration of war against anything medieval. It also witnesses to the "new man" mentality that the Consilium with the late Msgr. (only later Apb) Bugnini as its General Secretary engineered into the new mass.
Alas, this is not understood by some, who insist on meddling with traditional Western ways in order to "return to the primitive church." Needlessly changing unobjectionable practices -- especially those that have been part of Western piety for centuries -- indicates, not an old spirit, but a very new one: the desire to mold the established worship of all others to one's own academic research or predilections. The result is outraged and disspirited laity persecuted for upholding their traditions.

(Hat tip: York Forum)

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