Innovations

Priests are often very nice; and that is a major problem in the Church. Yes, you read that right. Nice priests (which are not always the same as faithful priests) want to make people happy, so they often try to come up with really nice things to do during Mass to make people feel good. The reason that is a major problem is twofold. First, priests are absolutely forbidden (numerous times, in various places, and from multiple sources) to be innovative in the Mass; they are never supposed to "make stuff up" in the Mass. Second, it is not the goal or duty of priests to make people feel good. It is their goal and duty to keep them out of Hell (and sometimes doing that does not feel good).

I heard a story about another liturgical abuse recently, and it saddened me because I am pretty sure I know the intent of the priest, which is a good intent: to help the faithful to know the love of God. The issue, however, is that in doing so the priest was breaking a firm rule of the Church, as well as teaching his people to do things that cause spiritual harm to themselves and others. Statistically alone, it should be obvious that the "feel-goodism" of much of the modern Catholic Church is not working. The faithful may keep coming to Church and tithing, but their children are still falling away from the faith, their marriages are breaking down, and their lives are empty. How is this supposed to be faithful Catholicism? It certainly does not look like the Catholicism that produced so many Saints in past ages.

I know I have said it many times before, but it bears repeating: The Church did fine before modernism, and though it is true that we need to "respond" to modernism, compromising with it is never for our good. All too often Catholics (including clergy) have worked very hard to compromise with modernism (and justified it with phrases like, "what's wrong with it?"--as though that is an argument!). Compromise is actually a response; it says "tell us what to do" and that is not a faithful response.