Reddit is scary, but I’ll have to check that out at some point, if only for my own amusement.
Another sticking point for that crowd is receiving the Eucharist directly on the tongue vs. in a hand-throne for Christ. I wasn’t there, but based on the description of the Last Supper in the Gospels, it doesn’t seem likely that Christ lovingly fed the bread he broke directly to the disciples’ mouths. (Plus I’m always afraid I’m gonna drop Him if I try to receive on tongue.)
Senior year High School GF was a member of some odd Pre-V2 Catholic sect.
I remember going to a Latin Mass in some random basement lead by a Monk that had been defrocked for being “too traditional.”
That was a weird time.
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Was it the Society of St. Pius X (“SSPX”) or the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (“FSSP”), per chance?
That teenage brain…
I think it was Society of St. Pius.
For some reason calling yourself “pius” seemed very antithetical too my understanding of Christ’s teachings at that point in my life. It seemed like bragging about being the must humble or something. So, the name stuck with me despite it being almost 30 years ago.
There’s definitely a gospel reading about the importance of not flaunting your faith
And a whole commandment against not having other gods before you. The TLM is at the level of an idol for this crowd. Combined with their disdain for anything that isn’t that, they’re basically Catholic Pharisees.
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It’s fun to speculate how it makes a kind of sense.
Protestants stress the written Bible. Conservatives bewildered by the rapidly changing modern world try to find stability in a “literal” reading of the Bible. For them, it gives clear rules, even if those rules are hard to follow. And it connects them to God. For the rest of us, it seems like they are using one reading among many as an excuse to justify what they want.
Why wouldn’t Roman Catholics stress the liturgy? They stake a claim in a ceremony that also connects them to God. And they see that ceremony as at least quasi-eternal. The rest of us note that this particular service goes back only to the counter-reformation, and that the Bible is written in Hebrew and Greek instead of Latin.
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They also get severely irritated when you refer to their staked ceremony claim as merely a liturgical preference.
SSPX are effectively (if not officially, been a while since I paid close attention) schismatics. They don’t hold that current popes are valid, so they wouldn’t have a problem with a defrocked priest saying Mass.
FSSP are newer, and (last I heard) maintain fidelity to the Church. They do promote the Latin Mass (I forget how to properly refer to it, assume it’s the one OK’d as an alternative to what is called the Novus Ordo), but realize that it is a matter of papal authority to set the externals of the liturgy. I think there are only a few things that are considered integral to the sacrament of Eucharist, and stuff other than that can change (language, prayers, music or no). J is totally right that some people go way overboard in making things more important than they are. But, FWIW, some of my kids’ contemporaries who prefer the Latin Mass seem to have a good grip on the fact it is a personal preference. They say they like the quieter, more contemplative nature of the experience.
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Should call themselves the people’s front of judea imo.
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Judean peoples front or GTFO imo
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SPLITTERS!
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I’m not super keen on the custom that women have to wear head coverings and men don’t
There is something in the Bible about that though, so it’s not like some arbitrary thing the Roman Catholics made up. (It’s some arbitrary thing that the apostle Paul made up. Completely different.)
“Every man who prays or prophesies with his head covered dishonors his head. But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head—it is the same as having her head shaved.”
1 Corinthians 11:4-5 NIV
I don’t think that this is quite true. IIRC, it’s a Jewish custom for women to cover their heads in the synagogue while men were to have their heads bare. Paul was thoroughly steeped in Jewish customs; and Corinth had a considerable Jewish presence as evidenced in Acts 18 by having a synagogue and the “Christian” church founded by Paul with the help of a synagogue leader.
I’ll see if I can find the OT reference for the head coverings.
I thought the head covering thing was up to the individual?
Idk, I attended a Catholic function for a friend of my daughter. Confirmation maybe? She was in high school. She had a sister and one wore the head covering and one didn’t. They were very open about their faith so we asked about it.
That’s not true. It’s a Jewish custom for men to cover their heads when they pray. The Talmud says “Cover your head in order that the fear of heaven may be upon you.” The form of that statement means it only applies to men. (it’s complicated.) But the Talmud was mostly written shortly after the time of Jesus…
The custom of covering the head to pray does not seem to be as old as the time of Jesus, however. There are apparently frescos and carvings and such showing bare-headed Israelites circa 70CE. There’s scattered evidence that the priests wore head-coverings, however.
In contrast, while married Jewish women are traditionally supposed to cover their hair in the presence of any men they aren’t related to, there is no custom of Jewish women covering their heads to pray. Some modern Jewish women do it because they are ignoring traditional gender divisions, but I don’t think there’s a long history of Jewish women covering their heads to pray, and I’d be shocked if they did it in Jesus’ day. (except to the extent married women had to cover their hair, of course.)
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I always assumed the Biblical reference to head coverings for women was a product of the culture at the time. The middle east still has head coverings. A quick google shows that ancient Rome and Greece and some sort of tradition of head coverings for women as well.
More interesting is Western Europe doesn’t seem to have that anymore. Did the germanic peoples not have it? Or is it more recent? My knowledge of fashion history is very poor.
Also interesting is why so many modern readers of the Bible give head coverings for women a pass, but not other parts, for example Paul’s statements against “sodomites”, which are also in a radically different cultural context.