Friday 17 April 2009

Top 10 Tips for Traditonal, TLM-type Catholics



1.
If anyone asks you anything about your orientation, reply, "East! Isn't it obvious!?"

2. When you are shopping in Sainsbury's and you bump into someone else's trolley by accident say, "Mea culpa, mea culpa, no, I insist, mea maxima culpa."

3. When someone says "Good morning", reply, "Et cum spirtu tuo."

4. Fashion from your lace curtains a lacy number for your parish priest if he has not already purchased lace to go underneath his sacred vestments.

5. You are desirous that you and the whole congregation should receive Our Lord on knees and on the tongue. In a bid to ensure that the Holy Father's desire to see the Blessed Sacrament venerated is truly upheld, deliberately trip up just as you reach the front of the communion queue, exclaiming that, "This health and safety atrocity would not have occured if there were altar rails and we were all kneeling!" Threaten to sue your parish Church for damages, showing them your sprained ankle, if your initial outburst goes unheeded.

6. You are at Mass and some liberal hippies are singing 'Shine, Jesus, Shine' dragging the whole congregation into irreverent, sickening crimes against music, God and all of humanity. It's time to send in the heavies. Without causing too much of a scene, you and your traddie buddies bundle the perpetrators into the sacristy, tie them up and put duck tape over their mouths. Then dusting yourselves down, you calmly walk over to where they stood and start singing the 'Te Deum' to the Glory of God, knowing that what you have done has pleased God greatly. Show mercy to the hippies, unbind them and tell them that Gregorian Chant practise will start next Tuesday at 7.30 pm. To the men, tell them that if they don't go along with it, that pretty soon they'll, "all be alto's."

7. You are at Church and Mass is being said in the Novus Ordu. Although you are not so militant as to not appreciate Mass being said in both forms, the congregation are piping up too much and being too loud both in their hymn singing and vocal participation. Irreverance and impiety abounds. Go around the Church with your index finger on your lip, loudly saying, "Shhhhhhh! Shhhhhhh! Can't you see, I'm trying to pray here! Honestly..."

8. Your parish priest's sacred vestments are new and ghastily modern, and the priest hasn't yet realised that antique, second-hand sacred vestments are better, more beautiful and reflective of the liturgy and tradition of Holy Mother Church. By stealth, over a process of weeks, introduce a 4-litre glass jar of moths into the sacristy cupboard, and having achieved their holy mission of 'Operation Unworthy Vestment Decimation,' post an anonymously gifted voucher for ten thousand pounds for a renowned Italian supplier of sacred vestments, preferably a supplier used by the Holy Father himself.

9. Copy a key to the Church and gain access to it in the dead of night, with a 100-strong army of men wishing to re-orientate the entire Church to reflect Mass in the Extraordinary Form. Move the Altar back to its rightful place, so it is awkward for the priest not to celebrate 'ad orientem', address the need for the placement of hastily gathered relics on the Altar, a minimum of twenty-five statues of holy saints around the Church and the replacement of any English signs with the proper Latin translation, even the signs for votive candles, Peter's Pence and St Anthony's Poor. If you have enough men, even the most unspeakably vulgar 1960s interior can be restored to its true gothic heritage in just one night of blood, sweat and tears. The priest, though shocked at first, will thank you in a few weeks time, and will be saying, 'Dominus vobiscum' and 'ora pro nobis' before you can say 'unam, sanctam Catholicam, et apostolicam ecclesliam.'

10. At the Sign of Peace, say 'Pax Christi' to those around you as quickly as you can, while intimating to all around you that you have a hideous, highly contagious disease that can only be caught by the exchange of shakes of the hand and gestures of communal warmth, affection and spiritual reconcilation. Then get down on your knees and start praying fervently...in Latin!

4 comments:

pelerin said...

Loved your Top Ten Tips! Only one problem - I don't think polyester is on the diet of moths! Sadly I believe polyester is pretty indestructable - shredding is probably the only answer!

The Bones said...

Then you know what the answer is...Shred it!

Jan Baker said...

I'm gonna shred it all right . . .

Oh Lauremce these are truly hilarious. I have done them all. Or I wish I had. I recognize all the most onerous traits in myself. Admittedly, in weak moments. I wish I HAD just broken in one night and fixed everything. I think, if you re-write this, the one you have last about the Peace Sign should be higher in the order, and the one you have next to last, about re-doing the whole sacristy, should be last.

Now be fair: write one lampooning the other side too.

There is a church in Pittillal, right outside Puerto Vallarta where the cleaners and cooks for the tourist spots in PV live. The streets are dirt, the shopping is the typical Mexican market, full of junk and clones, but the largest church has been completely re-done, with a huge risen Christ, about a whole story and a half tall and looking pissed, covering the wall where the altar would face if they had one facing anything. No kneelers, of course. Everything mahagony and metal. No other statues. And the repository for the blessed sacrament is way off to the side and looks exactly like an ATM machine. Like you have your Jesus card, and you are looking for where to stick it and say, Hello? Hello?

It was so scary I actually ran out.

The Bones said...

Ha ha! Will give the liberal-type Catholic top ten tips some thought. It's late and I'm feeling mischievous.

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