The Harrowing of Hell (Re-Post)

I will deliver them out of the hand of death. I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy death; O hell, I will be thy bite... 

Osee (Hosea) 13:14 (Douay-Rheims translation)

Because Christ also died once for our sins, the just for the unjust: that He might offer us to God, being put to death indeed in the flesh, but enlivened in the spirit, in which also coming He preached to those spirits that were in prison: which had been some time incredulous, when they waited for the patience of God in the days of Noe, when the ark was a building: wherein a few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water. 

1 Peter 3:18-20 (Douay-Rheims translation)

...He suffered, died and was buried.  He descended into hell...

From the Apostles' Creed

In this age of modernist obfuscation and general graying out of vivid supernatural reality, the Harrowing of Hell is probably the most ignored of the creedal doctrines.  Yet as Catholics, we are bound to believe that sin shut the gates of heaven against the souls of men; that it was only Christ's Passion and Death on the Cross that opened heaven; that until then, the souls of the Just were imprisoned; and that, after His death, Christ liberated these souls.  Perhaps one reason we do not devote more time to considering this stupendous event is because it has been obscured by the modern obsession with avoiding any and all mention of Hell: its edge has been blunted by the milquetoast English rendition of the event as "He descended to the dead."  This bland, pedestrian translation fails to confront us with the startling fact of Christ in Hell; we are not inspired to inquire further into its meaning.  It seems obvious that while His Body lies in the tomb, the Son of God is among the dead, having died on the Cross; but how can He, pure and sinless, be in Hell, and why?

First of all, what is the Hell to which Christ descends?  We think primarily of the Hell of the damned, from which there is no escape, and from whose punishments there is no reprieve.  Before the coming of Christ, sin barred the gates of heaven to men.  The souls of the Just could not get into heaven until after Jesus had sacrificed Himself to pay the penalty for our sins.  As St. Thomas Aquinas says in the Summa Thelogica:

[T]hrough Christ's Passion the human race was delivered not only from sin, but also from the debt of its penalty.... Now men were held fast by the debt of punishment in two ways: first of all for actual sin which each had committed personally: secondly, for the sin of the whole human race, which each one in his origin contracts from our first parent, as stated in Romans 5 of which sin the penalty is the death of the body as well as exclusion from glory, as is evident from Genesis 2 and 3: because God cast out man from paradise after sin, having beforehand threatened him with death should he sin.

So what happened to all the good people who lived before Jesus' time, and died without ever having the opportunity to believe in Him or receive the Sacraments?  They dwelt in a place of waiting -- variously called, among other things, the Bosom of Abraham, or the Limbo of the Fathers, or the Limbo of Hell.  There they did not suffer the torments of the damned, but they did suffer privation.  Aquinas elucidates:

After death men's souls cannot find rest save by the merit of faith, because "he that cometh to God must believe" (Hebrews 11:6). Now the first example of faith was given to men in the person of Abraham, who was the first to sever himself from the body of unbelievers, and to receive a special sign of faith: for which reason "the place of rest given to men after death is called Abraham's bosom," as Augustine declares (Gen. ad lit. xii). But the souls of the saints have not at all times had the same rest after death; because, since Christ's coming they have had complete rest through enjoying the vision of God, whereas before Christ's coming they had rest through being exempt from punishment, but their desire was not set at rest by their attaining their end. Consequently the state of the saints before Christ's coming may be considered both as regards the rest it afforded, and thus it is called Abraham's bosom, and as regards its lack of rest, and thus it is called the limbo of hell. 

Aquinas goes on to explain that the Limbo of the Fathers is not qualitatively the same as the Hell of the damned, because the damned suffer eternal torment without hope of reprieve, whereas the Just before the coming of Christ suffered no sensible torments and had hope for a release from imprisonment.  On the other hand, situationally, the Limbo of the Fathers was probably the same as the Hell of the damned:  

For those who are in hell receive diverse punishments according to the diversity of their guilt, so that those who are condemned are consigned to darker and deeper parts of hell according as they have been guilty of graver sins, and consequently the holy Fathers in whom there was the least amount of sin were consigned to a higher and less darksome part than all those who were condemned to punishment.

So, as Aquinas says, 

Directly Christ died His soul went down into hell, and bestowed the fruits of His Passion on the saints detained there; although they did not go out as long as Christ remained in hell, because His presence was part of the fullness of their glory.

We come to the reasons for the Harrowing of Hell, which we have already begun to touch on.  The Angelic Doctor gives three reasons why it was fitting for Christ to descend into Hell.  Firstly, to bear the penalty for sin -- namely, death of the body and descent into Hell -- in order to free us from penalty (though we are not yet delivered from the penalty of bodily death).  Secondly, to force Hell to disgorge its righteous captives.  And thirdly, to show forth His power and glory even in the domain of the devils.

This last point is worth lingering over.  Because the wills of the damned are confirmed in evil at the moment of their deaths -- just as the wills of the righteous are confirmed in goodness and charity at the moment of their deaths -- Christ did not rescue any of the damned from Hell.  In His essence, He visited only the Limbo of the Fathers; but the effects of His power reached every part of Hell.  Aquinas:

A thing is said to be in a place in two ways. First of all, through its effect, and in this way Christ descended into each of the hells, but in different manner. For going down into the hell of the lost He wrought this effect, that by descending thither He put them to shame for their unbelief and wickedness: but to them who were detained in Purgatory He gave hope of attaining to glory: while upon the holy Fathers detained in hell solely on account of original sin, He shed the light of glory everlasting.

In another way a thing is said to be in a place through its essence: and in this way Christ's soul descended only into that part of hell wherein the just were detained. so that He visited them "in place," according to His soul, whom He visited "interiorly by grace," according to His Godhead. Accordingly, while remaining in one part of hell, He wrought this effect in a measure in every part of hell, just as while suffering in one part of the earth He delivered the whole world by His Passion.

He puts it briefly in another place thus:

When Christ descended into hell, all who were in any part of hell were visited in some respect: some to their consolation and deliverance, others, namely, the lost, to their shame and confusion.

With Christ's visitation, the spoliation of Hell was complete.  A final extract from the Angelical that is worth many hours of meditation (emphasis added): 

When Christ descended into hell He delivered the saints who were there, not by leading them out at once from the confines of hell, but by enlightening them with the light of glory in hell itself.

Think of it.  Hell is the privation of God and His glory.  For the imprisoned elect who found themselves in the presence of the living God and beheld the light of His glory, Hell, in that moment, ceased to be Hell.  Hell was overthrown.  No wonder it is written in Philippians 2:10-11 "That in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth: And that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father."

Today at Matins (Office of Readings) according to the revised Breviary, we read the following ancient, anonymous Holy Saturday sermon:

Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and He has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, He has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, He who is both God and the Son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the Cross, the weapon that had won Him the victory. At the sight of Him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “And with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

I am your God, who for your sake have become your Son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by My own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of My hands, you who were created in My image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in Me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated.

For your sake I, your God, became your Son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden. See on My Face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in My image. On My back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See My hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree. I slept on the Cross and a sword pierced My side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced Me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.

Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

Toward Better Bribes

Anybody who has ever tried self-help on a plumbing job, without any training or experience in plumbing, has learned the hard way that there are times when it just doesn't pay to cut corners.  My landlord, for instance, thought he could do some plumbing repair on his own over at my place.  At some point during the course of proceedings, something broke.  So he had to turn off my water.  Then he couldn't get a plumber over until the next day.  So the whole venture ended up costing him the plumber's fees, plus whatever extra they may have charged for being in a hurry, plus supplies, plus  whatever extra time it took to fix the problem that didn't previously exist, plus some compensation for my not having water at my place.  The moral here is that in the quest to avoid invoking the costly remedy from the outset, you run a serious risk of having it cost you more than if you had done the right thing from the outset.

Now United Airlines is learning the same lesson.  One suspects they lost sight of the fact that, by asking passengers to leave the plane once they had (a) paid for tickets, (b) boarded, and (c) plunked their butts into their assigned seats, they were breaching their contract with those passengers to get them where they needed to go, at the bargained-for times.  They also seem to have lost sight of the fact that flying is already a dehumanizing experience, from the airport -- where people get herded and handled like cattle -- to the plane itself -- where quarters are cramped, drinks come in thimble-sized cans, and the food (if any) is barely distinguishable from the styrofoam-and-cellophane containers it comes in.  We already hate flying and don't think too highly of airlines as it is.  All of this requires the airlines to cough up something more than a token consolation prize for a breach of contract.

And, United, that's what you should have done in this case.  Next time you find a need to kick paying passengers off an over-booked flight, offer better bribes.  The better the bribe, the more hands will go up.  If no hands go up, then it's too chintzy.  However much you have to pay to settle up with people with whom you are breaching a contract, it can't be anything like what this latest P.R. imbroglio is costing you.

And while you're at it, do something to improve the overall quality of the flying experience, instead of making your passengers just embrace the suck.

Palm Sunday

In other parts of the world, Christians breathe a sigh of relief when they don't get bombed by Muslim extremists while attending church.  Today, 43 people at two Coptic churches in Egypt did not live to breathe that sigh of relief, thanks to two suicide bombers who set themselves off during services.  27 people died and 78 were wounded when a bomb exploded in the front row of St. George's in Tanta during the liturgy, spraying the priests with blood.  Later, at St. Mark's Cathedral in Alexandria, 16 died and 41 were wounded, including three policemen who tried to keep the bomber out of the cathedral.  ISIS claimed responsibility for the murders.

As for me, in my well-padded, well-appointed, temperature-regulated little corner of the world, I breathe a sign of relief when I don't have gender-bending ideology shoved down my throat during the reading of the Passion.

At least I don't take my life into my hands just by attending Mass.

LOL, Episode II

I'm noticing an online petition demanding that Melania Trump either move herself and Barron into the White House forthwith or foot the bill herself for her off-premises security.

Congratulations to the left for finally warming up to the idea of economizing on taxpayer dollars -- although, after eight years of remaining silent about the Secret Service bills the Obamas must have racked up for their constant overseas vacations, the idea is late in coming to them.

But wait: didn't Donald Trump waive his presidential salary?  That's $400K a year, and Trump gets up at 5 every morning and does actual WORK.  I never heard that Barack Obama waived his presidential salary, and he spent most of his time vacationing, playing golf, and taking vacations from vacationing and playing golf.  So over the course of eight years, we the taxpayers paid him $3.2 million just to destroy the country and screw around.  And that doesn't even count the cost of running Air Force One back and forth between D.C. and Hawaii, Secret Service details, military escorts, Michelle's entourage and (ugly) wardrobe and every other damn thing, about which liberals were entirely mum.

The left continues to flail.

LOL

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the EU Commission, threatens to "promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas" if President Trump does not cut it out with his euroskeptic remarks.

The EU's top supporter of free speech also denies the EU is in any sort of crisis, and says Brexit is the beginning of something stronger and better -- all while threatening Trump over supporting it.

The left is really flailing. 

Why Practice Makes Perfect

An old dog can indeed learn new tricks.  In my forties, I have taken up two activities that would have been much easier and maybe even more beneficial if I had taken them up (or, in the case of the second one, kept up) in my twenties: strength training and guitar playing.  They have taught me some valuable lessons. 

Both of these activities are physically painful in the beginning.  Guitar requires you to press strings firmly to the fingerboard with your fingertips.  This hurts your fingertips until they callous over.  It also requires your fingerboard hand to perform feats of gymnastics that hurt until you develop the necessary strength and muscle memory to do them easily.  This is especially true if God gave you diminutive digits, like He did me. 

In the case of both strength training and guitar playing, there are only two ways to get rid of the pain: either quit, or keep practicing until the pain goes away. 

But the biggest lesson I have learned is about the nature of progress.  After I started strength training a couple of years ago, I reached a point where I felt like I just wasn't getting anywhere.  Nevertheless, I persisted.  Then, one fine day, I suddenly felt different.  I felt like my muscles, rather than my excess fat, were in charge of my movements.  So I kept on keeping on.  I have continued to run into periods where I feel like I'm falling apart, but I can't quit, even when the rewards seem minimal or non-existent, because I now know from experience that I'm a lot better off with the training than without it. 

It's the same with the guitar.  I am still far from where I want to be, and I still have some overall struggles.  I run through a piece over and over and still hit potholes, always in the same part of the road.  Sometimes I feel like I can't get my fingers to obey me on anything.  But the lesson I learned through strength training holds here, too.  The problem areas are still problem areas, but they gradually get easier if I keep practicing.  As long as I persevere, one of these days, they won't be problems anymore.

Progress, then, may be completely imperceptible.  It is the watched pot that never seems to boil.  Making progress is like crossing a wide, featureless desert, where the land looks the same from horizon to horizon and you can't tell how far you've come, until suddenly you reach the water's edge.  Sometimes progress even takes on the appearance of regression, because there are difficulties that can only be encountered and overcome once you've reached a higher level.

Infused expertise is a rare phenomenon, so if you take on strength training, or guitar playing, or the project of mastering any skill, you will make a great many mistakes.  But unless you clearly have zero ability whatsoever in your chosen area, the biggest mistake of all would be to just give up.   

About Atheism

1. It takes a greater leap of faith to be an atheist than to believe in God.  It takes a greater leap of faith to be an atheist than to believe that, at Mass, a little white piece of unleavened bread becomes God in the hands of a sinful priest.  What you're saying, if you're an atheist, is that in the beginning, there was Nothing.  Nothing turned its non-existent self into Something.  Something magically evolved into stars, planets, galaxies, dinosaurs and men.  By pure chance, these things all continue in being and do not wink out of existence.  Also by pure chance, they are governed by the laws of physics.  You believe all this nut stuff, explicitly or implicitly, but you, who claim to be a disciple of Science and Reason, think I'm the loon.

2. There is no such thing as a principled atheist.  St. Paul blasts that notion out of the water in the first chapter of his Letter to the Romans.  Some people disbelieve in God because that's what they were taught.  These have not arrived at atheism by an exercise of reason, but are merely taking what they have been given.  They have a duty to investigate the truth of what they have been taught.  Some people reject the existence of God because of some trauma they have suffered.  These have not arrived at atheism by an exercise of reason, but based on emotion.  They need prayers.  Some people choose to disbelieve in God because they are attached to some vice they don't want to give up.  These have not arrived at atheism by an exercise of reason, but because they are enslaved to their passions.  They know that to acknowledge the existence of a Creator means acknowledging their duties toward Him, and His claims on them.  This would get in the way of doing whatever they want.  I suspect these are the majority.  

3. Atheists like to argue that religion is evil because of all the people who have allegedly been killed in the name of religion.  This argument is generally trotted out without specifying a religion, and without distinguishing between aggressors and defenders.  It is easily disposed of.  The number of people killed in the name of religion is dwarfed by the number of people murdered in the name of atheism since the French Revolution.  It was the great atheistic republics of the last two and a half centuries that gave us murder and destruction on an industrial scale.  Over the course of three and a half centuries, the Spanish Inquisition may have turned between 3,000 and 5,000 people over to the secular arm to be executed.  This figure is dwarfed by the millions upon hundreds of millions slain by the governments of revolutionary France, the Soviet Union, Red China, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Cambodia -- every one materialist, totalitarian and officially atheistic.

4. Which brings us to the inescapable conclusion that atheists are far more insistent on shoving atheism down everyone else's throats than believers -- at any rate, Christian believers -- are at pushing their creeds.  Islam has always been notorious for sword-point conversions.  Atheism, which has enlisted swords, guns, bombs, spies, snitches, prisons and insane asylums in its wars against throne and altar, can hardly claim to be gentler. 

5. In the words of Bing Crosby's Father O'Malley in Going My Way: you even throw like atheists.  

The Problem of Evil

A lot of the news stories out of the U.K. about the terrorist attack at the Palace of Westminster in London this past week describe the perp in mental health terms, like "sick" and "maniac."  Despite the fact that ISIS has taken responsibility for this attack, a Telegraph story tracing the perp's path from popular, sporty schoolboy, through a life of hooliganism, to his murderous rampage at Parliament Square, suggests that racism is to blame:

Masood, may have eventually snapped because of racism in his village leading him to slash the face of a cafe owner.

It is thought he may have then been radicalised while in jail, eventually leading to his involvement in terrorism.   

Set to one side the Telegraph's failure to make clear how the young Masood (then named Adrian Ajao) could at one and the same time have been very popular and well-liked by everybody, as his old schoolmate describes him, and the victim of such racism as could reasonably be expected to provoke him to commit the crime of mayhem against a cafe owner.  The two elephants in the room here are (1) the deadly ideology of radical Islamism, to which the West has recklessly opened itself up, and (2) the responsibility of human beings, rational by nature, for their own choice to do evil.  It is with Elephant Number Two that we are primarily concerned here.

We pride ourselves, in our rationalistic age, on our "scientific" and "logical" approach to the world; but in fact, rationalism is a creed whose adherents are every bit as rigid, inflexible, unseeing and hide-bound as they accuse Christians of being.  Rationalists ignore all evidence of any realities over and above nature and stubbornly insist that such do not exist.  They also ignore all evidence contrary to their beliefs that Man is a mere intelligent chunk of meat, and that consciousness is a mere concatenation of chemical reactions, and that humanity is therefore infinitely malleable according to its own whims.  This means that there is really no such thing as evil, let alone consequences for immoral behavior.  This idea that nothing has moral significance is really useful for anyone with an attachment to a vice that they don't want to give up, but when it comes to dealing with being on the receiving end of someone else's vice, its bankruptcy is -- or should be -- apparent.
      

The reality is that there are in the world evil people, and they freely choose to do evil things.  Not everyone who commits acts of horrific violence is insane.  Many are in full possession of their faculties and have deliberately chosen to do what they are doing.  The more they do evil things, the more inured to them they become -- like, for instance, the Parliament Square perp with his history of violent crimes -- and the easier it becomes.  As long as we take the position that every evildoer is necessarily crazy, we will fail to meet reality head-on.  We will continue to fail with the clinical approach to evil, treating it as a disease.  We dehumanize villains by denying their responsibility, because we cannot do this without also denying their rational nature and their free will.  Worst of all, we help lock them into their path to damnation, giving them ready-made excuses to stay right where they are, and go on doing what they are doing, and never even think about repentance and conversion.

There is in fact a system in the world that has proven highly effective in dealing with the problem of evil -- a system founded more than two thousand years ago by a Middle Eastern carpenter's Son, building upon a fisherman.  And it's the one thing that so many are completely unwilling to try.

This Is Why

We don't yet know the identity of the human debris that mowed down innocent people with a rental car and then stabbed a policeman to death at the Palace of Westminster today, before police -- mercifully -- gunned him down.  But it is confirmed that this was a jihadist assault.

Whether this scumbag turns out to be an immigrant or home-grown, incidents like this are the reason we need to protect our borders.  The ideology that produced the Westminster attack and others like it is entirely foreign to the American ethos, as it is to that of Great Britain and the West in general.  Nations -- which are an extension of families and clans -- have a natural-law right to self-defense, and to extend citizenship only to those who have the nation's good at heart.  No duty of charity requires the importation of persons and ideologies hostile to the continued existence of a nation; indeed, for the sake of the common good, charity demands the reverse.  It is not only a dereliction of a government's duties to its citizens to let in all and sundry without vetting or in spite of known terrorist connections or even in violation of our laws; it only fans the flames of terrorism everywhere.  Bringing people who hate us in to dwell in our midst does not make them change their mind and love us.  On the contrary, it makes them think we are stupid and increases their contempt for us.  And frankly, if we adopt suicidal immigration policies, they have a point.  The majority of the country that elected Donald Trump seem to get this.  This is why Trump, the only candidate to take seriously their concerns about our present immigration policies, got elected.

Political correctness causes the death of real, flesh-and-blood human beings -- human beings with families and friends and hopes and dreams and aspirations and potential, nearly always unknown to, and callously dismissed by, the elites who champion stupid policies like open borders.  As more details emerge, we will find out to what extent the events at Westminster may be laid on the doorstep of political correctness.   

There Are Reasons People Hate Clowns

I don't know how many of the three or four people who read this blog are priests; but if you are a priest or bishop, and you think you are there to entertain your congregation at Mass, this post is addressed to you.

Some of you priest celebrants at Mass cannot resist doing a clown act on the altar.  Some of you confine this nonsense to your sermons, which is bad enough.  Others of you pepper the liturgy with stupid jokes; or you constantly halt the liturgy in order to try to warm up the crowd with "humorous" asides.  The nervous, raised-eyebrow tittering of your congregation suggests nothing to you.

You need to cut this crap out right now.

First of all, you are living, breathing proof of what a rotten idea it was (a) to turn the priest around to face the people during Mass; (b) to give him a microphone; and (c) to cobble up a liturgy where every part of the Mass has numerous different options for how it can be done, all entirely at the discretion of the priest-celebrant.  (The new Mass has so many options to it, in fact, it is next to impossible for us in the pews to follow in the missal and know whether you are using a legitimate option or just making up your own.)  No wonder you think it's all about you.  No wonder that after decades of this kind of stuff, you are now convinced that you are supposed to be the center of everything.  And having had your ego thus stoked all these years, no wonder you fight tooth and nail to resist the traditional Mass at your parishes, no matter how much your people might want it.  You have weakened and fattened your flock up for the wolves on a steady diet of liturgical junk food, until the ones who still actually believe in the content of the Catholic faith are reduced to gritting their teeth and telling themselves that at least they are getting the Eucharist.

Somewhere along the line, you clown priests convinced yourselves that you need to spice up the Mass with your own peculiar (and I do mean peculiar) brand of humor in order to be "pastoral."  Well, let me give you the perspective from the receiving end.

You have no idea who all in your congregation is dealing with what -- not even those of you who bother to find out who your parishioners are (and not all of you do).  That man sitting way in the back, in a corner, behind a pillar, has been away from the Church and the Sacraments for years and years, and is in shock over his realization that he has been leading a bad life.  That miserable-looking, unfriendly woman who doesn't want to engage in pre-Mass ice-breakers or the sign of peace has just suffered a major bereavement.  That couple off to the side with haunted expressions on their faces have no idea where their child is or whether they will ever see her again.  Those teenagers who aren't singing along with the offertory hymn have just been told that their mother has terminal cancer.  That stony-faced father with three little kids has just lost his job.

And here you come, administering blows on top of bruises with your "pastoral" method.

In the first place, you are not cheering these people up.  You are trivializing and adding to their pain.  Proverbs 25:20: He who sings songs to a heavy heart is like one who takes off a garment on a cold day, and like vinegar on a wound.

In the second place, what these people most need, in the midst of these awful changes in their lives, is something that does not change.  At one time, and until very recently, that was the liturgy, which opened up a window onto the supernatural.  But your people can't see through that window, because you are in their face, dancing around in front of them while they are trying to look at something greater and more important than yourself.  You have no idea how jarring your "improvements" to the Mass are.  You have no idea, because you never listen.  After all, you are the priest, and therefore, you know better.  Nobody can tell you anything, so they eventually give up trying.

Since so many of the changes in the liturgy over the last 60 years or so have purported to be about going back to the "purity" of the early Church, maybe we should bring back the ancient practice of the laity rioting anytime they heard changes in the wording of the Gospel.  The time has not yet passed out of living memory when it was considered a mortal sin for a priest to make changes to the liturgy sua sponte; that's another idea whose time has come again.  It has not been considered so during this extended period of experimentation; but it's time we seriously asked ourselves whether it is possible that the objective sinful character of such acts can really have changed.  The answer surely lies in the rotten fruits of experimentation, and the real pain it has caused us in the pews.

Priests, you have got to stop playing the fool at Mass.  You are driving your flocks, and yourselves, away from the True Shepherd, and you are going to have to answer for every one.  The Bread of Life is Jesus Christ, not you.  Stop giving us stones when we come to you for the Bread.