Importance of Laughter Against Progressive Persecution: a reply to Brian!

This is a comment I replied with to BrianW at OnePeterFive about how we ought to laugh at our ecclesiastical persecutors. BrianW pointed out that those who are stuck in a region w/o the TLM are not in a laughing mood. He's quite right, of course. Here's my response:

Raghn Crow Brian W • an hour ago

Oh, I agree, Brian W. I spent what was it? Thirty years in Purgatory, otherwise known as the modern N.O. Mass. That no doubt sounds wicked to many but it WAS a purgatory. A misery. Suffering. (Only in Purgatory your suffering is part of your cleansing. So perhaps to some extent I've been a bit cleansed myself.)

And I remember, my friend, when the priest at that parish I grew up in stopped using the beautiful marble altar rail. Like it was yesterday. He must have told people to line up instead of using the rail, and receive standing. But this one family kept going to the rail. Others did at first but they fell away and this one family stayed. I could tell you their names (wasn't me; I kept losing myself in the beautiful windows of that church, which I wandered in since I first noticed them in childhood; but after what happened, I was ashamed that I didn't protest).

So this family, they kept going to the rail and the priest – I assume the moderators wouldn't like me using his name, but this occurred in the Columbus, Ohio, diocese – kept this family till last: he wouldn't give them Holy Communion till everyone else had theirs. And finally, I remember the day the priest just stopped giving them Holy Communion. He left them at the altar rail. Yes, he did.

He ended up rewarded for his services by getting a plum assignment in Columbus itself, (in a ritzy suburb) and the next priest, who acted the gay blade (whether he was or not) tore out the altar rail.

I grew up with that altar rail. It was a beautiful, subtle mottled grey-greenish (the Irish word is "glas" as in Dubhglas, the name) marble with sweet, humble, really, highlights of various colors. The new priest remodeled the entire sanctuary area, in fact, Tore out the side altars (same marble as the rail) and either used pieces of the rail or the old altars to make a new Vat2 altar. When people complained, he'd say, "Talk to the bishop! Talk to bishop!" We should have revolted. Pitchforks. Tar. Feathers. For the bishop and his "queen". Actually, this guy was accused after all this was done with having an affair with a woman! He got shunted off into oblivion and the bishop retired back to Cleveland or from wherever he came.

I left that church. I took my mother to the old school gym to Mass until the church was open again, and that was it. My brothers thereafter had to take her. (Mother and one brother now have died, and the remaining brothers no longer go to Mass at all.) It was a church in a county seat about a half an hour from Columbus, and my drive to Columbus was only 45-some minutes (too long for my mother). There in "the big city" I hung out at a conservative parish (which I formally joined) but spent my time with the Melkites in their heavenly liturgy. (I wish, I wish, I wish I were rich, for I'd have built them a proper church.) Then a TLM started up at an old downtown parish, started by a truly orthodox priest who saved that parish from extinction. The TLM was full every Sunday. I would have transferred to it but ended up leaving for Europe, where I've been living since. (The priest was not allowed to stay at the parish he saved, but the TLM continues there, at 8:30 a.m., though, an awkward time for a number of people, the older ones and families.)

So, you are right, my good sir. Nothing to laugh about.

Then again, what would have happened it we all had laughed out loud at the priest insisting on everyone lining up like lemmings? We should have stopped that then and there. Just sat there and laughed, and then all of us go to the rail! But we didn't. It might seem cruel to laugh but it would have been cruel, far more so, to show what we really felt.

I don't normally (as in never) watch Michael Voris but a good friend insisted I observe this one episode he liked. i did, and Voris was talking about the coming collapse of the Church in the U.S., population-wise, and how not only parishes but entire dioceses will be closing, with archdiocese becoming mere dioceses, and so on.

From my own experiences in the Vat2 Church, I know why that is happening. Exactly why.

You know your own situation, of course, and I'm sure you've tried to organize a TLM in your area. Keep at it. The Vat2 Church is doing us the favor of burying itself. "Far-stretching, endless time reveals all hidden things and buries that which once did shine," as Sophocles wrote long ago. (The Greeks knew everything.)

RC/An Préachán