The Odour of Desperation

Most of the anglophone Church has settled into the use of the revised English missal. Priests are getting to grips with sentences more than a few words long and containing some commas and subordinate clauses, and are doing what we always should have been doing (though sadly some didn’t), namely reading ahead and preparing those parts we have to say. This development has allowed many more people to relax with the new missal, as the mis-readings die off in light of clerical comfort and familiarity with the new, more accurate texts. No doubt most can see that, notwithstanding a few areas that could be improved, this missal is vastly superior to the previous paraphrased one, and brings the verbal content and meaning of our liturgical texts into closer and more obvious unity with the rest of the Church.

However, some people will not give up. Though the mountains may fall and the hills turn to dust, they will never accept the revised missal. So they change the texts to suit their own understanding of liturgy, manifesting at the very least sheer disobedience, and perhaps even an attempt at a type of social engineering. As they get more desperate that they cause is not prospering, they resort to subterfuge to foster the appearance that it is prospering.

The latest instance is the reporting of yet another survey of priests and their opinion of the revised missal. Leaving aside the whole issue of church governance by opinion poll, a little light delving into the reporting of the survey reveals that the dissenters’ emperor has no clothes. The worst offender is the National Catholic Reporter (NCR), which headlines its article “Study indicates wide rejection of new translations by US clergy”. Oh my goodness! How ominous. Patrick Archbold has done what many readers will not do, and read all the way to the end of the article and taken note of what is passed over in silence.

The NCR reporting is alarmist in the impression it gives, though observant readers will see what is going on. An example:

 … 75 percent of respondents said they either “agree” or “strongly agree” that “some of the language of the new text is awkward and distracting.” Forty-seven percent answered “strongly agree” to that statement.

Likewise, an even 50 percent of those answering said they “agree” or “strongly agree” that “the new translation urgently needs to be revised.” 33 percent answered “strongly agree” on that statement.

Now someone who is not reading carefully will not take in the full significance of the word respondent. In light of the misleading headline, they might have the immediate impression that pretty much 75% of US clergy are of the opinion that the missal’s language is “awkward and distracting”, to take one example.

But Pat has read through and discovered the most salient fact of all: 6000 parishes were surveyed, only 539 responded. That is a response rate of less than 9%! So the 75% who do not like the linguistic register of the missal represent only 6.7% of the 6000 actually surveyed. “Wide rejection”?

However Pat seems to have missed one further point. Only 444 of the 539 respondents were actually “US clergy”; the other 75 were “lay leaders”. So it is not even 9% of clergy that is the real survey pool; it is actually only 7.4%. Alas, there is no breakdown on how many clergy responded negatively as distinct form the “lay leaders”, who are likely to have been predominately negative. So, allowing the dissenters their best case scenario, the highest possible percentage for clergy dissatisfaction they can claim on the basis of their survey is 7.4%.

Somehow a 7.4% negative response rate equates to “wide rejection”.

The active opponents of the revised missal may be very loud but they are very few in number. They shout loudly and often, to make one think they are many. They are not many, but their sly fudging of their own statistics reveals that they are increasingly desperate.

The Pray Tell blog, which is partly responsible for the survey, did not even bother to include reference to the dismal response rate to the survey, and thus the tiny portion of clergy it represents, and posted an even more misleading headline. Desperate indeed.

 

 

Diaconal Cheap Shot

Pat Archbold over at Creative Minority Report (CMR) has a knack for tracking down the best and the worst in ecclesial life, usually in his homeland, the USA. Recently he re-blogged a video put up by Deacon Sandy of Good Shepherd parish,  Menomonee Falls, in the diocese of Milwaukee. In one of the cruel twists of this fallen world’s disorder, he has been appointed to lead this parish. In this video Deacon Sandy provided an introduction to the parish, and despite his PC enthusiasm it was a depressing experience. He was upset when his video gained negative attention, not least on CMR. Having conceded that he would need to rethink his approach Pat agreed to take down the video, taking Sandy at his word. That appeared to have led to a resolution that looked positive for both parties.

So now Pat at CMR, with the help of Ben Yanke, has found a homily from only 10 days ago in which Deacon Sandy gratuitously insults Benedict XVI. And I mean gratuitously. It is the zenith of the genre of the cheap shot, focusing (as all these people do) on the papal red shoes (as if Benedict was the only pope ever to have worn them). He gets a fact wrong too – they were not Prada. So it is a cheap shot with a seasoning of untruth and lashing of injustice gravy. The video from Ben via Pat is below – the relevant bit starts at 9 minutes 55 seconds (in case the embedding code does not work!):

The egregious Sandy clearly implies to his co-religionists that Benedict XVI is not one of the tolerable clerics who dresses finely “for good reasons” but some, like Benedict XVI, wear “finery” because, “unlike us secular folks”, for him it is an “issue of self-esteem”.

Sandy got one thing very much right – he, and those who joined him in snide and mocking laughter, are certainly “secular folks”. I can only hope that others sitting in that church were equally as appalled as Pat, myself and others at Sandy’s abuse of the pulpit and his mandate to preach God’s word. He, and his co-religionist mockers, show themselves to be the smug, self-righteous little crew that has ever been a danger in the history of Christianity. Oh, how insightful they are, these wise ones. Yet I wonder if that Powerpoint projection system is really necessary, or just an extravagant (and ugly) way of camouflaging the vacuity of Sandy’s preaching? After all, he told Pat that the parish cannot afford kneelers (and thus they never kneel. What a surprise.)

Mockery is rarely appropriate. Unjust mockery, the cheap shot – never. In fact, I doubt it is ever just to mock any pope, even the ones who were personally or morally flawed, even the ones we just do not like. Their office demands they be given a level of respect since they act as Christ’s Vicar. However, since Sandy has revealed his true colours Pat has re-posted the original video (also found on Ben’s page with other Sandy horrors). If you look at it, it would be no injustice or cheap shot to mock Sandy and the perversion of Catholicism he espouses. Given his abuse of his preaching office, such mockery would be just indeed. What a nasty little man. What on earth is he doing running a parish?

One might suspect that any self-esteem issues lie more with Sandy than they ever would with Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI was humble enough in his own self-assessment to step down from an office, the gravest and most solemn office, which he felt unable to continue to fulfill. While I am not convinced that Benedict XVI was totally accurate in his self-assessment, yet Sandy would do well to imitate the pope he mocks and step down. His parish deserves better than it seems to be getting.

Sorry if anything above sounds intemperate. This Sandy appalls me. Immensely.