Francis serves up another heresy sandwich with Desiderio Desideravi.
The documents of Vatican II are often likened to a cake to which a teaspoon of poison has been added, rendering the whole thing unfit to eat. Our present Pope has taken that to a new level with his regular offerings of heresy sandwich: two wholesome slices of brown bread (sound doctrine) with a thick layer of heresy sandwiched between them.
His Apostolic letter, Desiderio Desideravi, is a prime example of this. With its calls for more reverent celebration of the Mass, and for congregants to be better educated about the nature of the Mass, most of its content is as solid as the homemade loaves baked by grandma on her woodstove.
Then we hear from Giovanni Zaccaria, professor at the Pontifical University of Santa Croce who really knows how to draw attention to that soul-snatching poison found lurking in the sandwich. (“Wait!” I hear you say. “The Pope didn’t say this.” To which my response is: this is how he operates; this is “his style”, as he is so fond of saying. Bergoglio’s “style” is to get a mouthpiece to explain what is really going on in his mind.) Back to Zaccaria:
“The first need is to understand the priestly dimension of the baptized. That all the baptized are priests, they participate in the priesthood, through the common priesthood of the faithful, they participate in the priesthood of Christ. Therefore, in that celebration, they are also protagonists”.
Well, not really.
In the Mass, there is ONE priest, a ordained man who gave up the promise of comfort and family life for the sake of Jesus Christ. But even HE is not the “protagonist” of the Mass: the protagonist in the Mass is Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, offering His Sacrifice of Himself to the First Person of the Trinity, God the Father, through the action of the Third Person, the Holy Ghost. A priest simply acts in persona Christi.
There is no human protagonist in the Mass.
Of course, the Modernists always make a fuss of this ‘Royal Priesthood” thing, and of course, they have Scripture to back them. up. 1 Peter 2:9 is a favourite reference; a look at the second part of that verse gives a clue as to why this verse is so beloved of the modern Church: “But you are a chosen generation, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a purchased people: that you may declare his virtues, who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.“
It’s a handy little verse that can easily be co-opted by lodge-attending Modernists. They just LOVE Masonic-sounding Bible references.
Now, some might think that Fr Zaccaria is applying St Peter’s exhortation to the faithful in order to make them more appreciative of their baptismal graces and ultimately more attentive at Mass. However, reading more of his comments makes it quite clear, that this man’s intention – if not that of the original document – is to encourage the “clericalisation of the laity and the laicisation of clerics.”
The laity don’t kneel in Mass because they are a lesser form of priest, the laity (and priest) kneel as a sign of humility before the awe-inspiring sacrifice of Jesus Christ, before the grandeur of the Trinity, before the miracle of Transubstantiation.
We kneel because we deserve hell but also have a chance of avoiding it.
We kneel out of love and reverence – not because we want to be – or are, in some mysterious way – priests.
By the way, this final phrase could be taken to suggest that traditionalists, who are known for doing a lot of kneeling during a Latin Mass, simply do so because that it their personal preference – their “party.”
“When you kneel it is also a sign of the priestly dimension of everything you are doing. The gestures already exist, but they need to be understood, explained better, because if not, they become our party and the Mass is not our party”.
So what at first seems like grandma’s good and wholesome bread may in fact leave the recipient with a rather nasty taste in his mouth – if not a case of indigestion.
If only the reality was as insignificant as the analogy, since a heresy sandwich is something that harms not the body, but the soul.