This is a continuation from Parts I & II.

An outcome of so much of the Vatican II fallout, says Davies, is that mass is no longer an experience of peaceful reverence for many Catholics, but instead "going to Mass has become a misery for them, they come away disturbed and distressed." For many it is a chore rather than a joy. Naturally many of us have witnessed this fact. Still worse, many thinking Catholics find themselves in situations in which they "quite reasonably wonder whether the sacraments they are receiving are valid." In retrospect, I wonder the same thing about some places I have visited.

Davies believes that we are living through a period in Catholic history not dissimilar to the time of St. Athanasius in which heresy--in our age, modernism--is rampant. Even the age old mass, now known as the Tridentine mass, was unjustly outlawed until our current pope, the Lord bless him, corrected and clarified this error in his Motu Proprio only a few years ago. And so we find ourselves at a crossroads in American Catholic history, a time in which tradition is roundly and summarily dismsissed, our "church buildings" not far behind.

Never before in the entire history of the Church has there been such an abrupt and violent breach with Tradition and established custom. We can say with St. Thomas: "It is absurd and a detestable shame that we should suffer those traditions to be changed which we have received from the fathers of old."

I believe that the forcible closing of our churches in favor of what can be reasonably looked upon as "the new church" both physically and spiritually may fall under the heading of "an absurd and detestable shame." The very structure of a traditional Catholic church is under attack. In a "traditional" Catholic church we all face forward, not in a circle or semi-circle so that we may stare at our "community" during "the liturgy" (even the term, "mass" is apparently, by many, considered a relic of the past). We have kneelers, holy water fonts, stations of the cross, and, typically, stained glass and other art that educates and illuminates the faithful, as well as many other things. Perhaps most importantly, the tabernacle containing Our Lord's precious body is front and center, where it should be, for the purpose of proper dignity and worship!

In the case of St. Mary's, we are also blessed with an altar rail which clearly delineates the space where the Holy Sacrifice takes place. In addition, the choir loft an organ are in the rear of church, where they belong. In a traditional Catholic church, the mass is not a show, therefore we need not see the musicians. The music is meant to elevate our souls to God, who comes to us body, blood, soul, and divinity via the priest who stands in persona christi.

To be continued in Part IV.

The essential parts of the Divine Mercy devotion are (1) the Chaplet, (2) the Portrait, and (3) the Feast of Divine Mercy. Like all legitimate devotion, there is a daily obligation and reminder of it, similar to the devotion to Our Lady of the Rosary. The portrait enables us to keep in mind the Presence of Our Lord and His mercy flowing from the water and blood flowing from His body during his horrendous death on the cross. The Feast of Divine Mercy gives us more graces and makes our souls and hearts pure as on the day of our baptism. What wonders are in God's merciful love.

Remember, also, what we have received at St. Mary's due only to the merciful grace of God:

During the second mass, I turned to our Holy Mother, telling her that it was difficult for me to separate myself from this Congregation "which enjoys such special protection, O Mary." Then I saw the Blessed Virgin, unspeakably beautiful. She came down from the altar to my kneeler, held me close to herself and said to me, "I am Mother to you all, thanks to the unfathomable mercy of God. Most pleasing to me is that soul which faithfully carries out the will of God." She gave me to understand that I had faithfully fulfilled the will of God and had thus far found favor in His eyes. "Be courageous. Do not fear apparent obstacles, but fix your gaze upon the passion of my Son, and in this way you will be victorious." -August 5, 1935, The Feast of Our Lady of Mercy. From the Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska (or Divine Mercy In My Soul), pg. 198-199.

This revelation is given to everyone at St. Mary's because we know we are to do God's will and follow His Way because He is The Truth and the Life.

Praised be Jesus Christ!
Now and Forever!
Fr. Romanowski

"Vibrancy," as Bishop Galante defines it (a large number of paid professional lay ministers in each parish), apparently comes at a price that is simply too high to be sustained.  You may remember when Bishop Galante referred to St. John the Evangelist Church in Naples, Florida as a model for the parish vibrancy he seeks here in the Diocese of Camden.

Quoting from the Philadelphia Inquirer article, which is quoting Bishop Galante:

And all he [Bishop Galante's brother] talks about is how vibrant the local parish is: the people going to Mass, the wonderful preaching, concerts with sacred music and popular music.

The vitality and community his brother has found in Florida are what he hopes South Jersey Catholics will one day encounter in the 66 parishes that will remain.

Now, Naples is a very wealthy area.  Half of the American Fortune 500 CEOs live in Naples, FL.  And this is a huge parish, with 5,200 registered families as of last October (before a downward revision to 3,200 families by removing inactive parishioners).  And yet this vibrant parish, whose bulletin that reads like a magazine so impressed Bishop Galante, is finding this level of paid, professional lay ministry unsustainable.

St. John the Evangelist had a whopping $229,000 deficit for Quarter 1 of this past year (07/01/08 - 09/30/08).  Click here for link to bulletin with minutes for the Pastoral Council Quarterly Board Meeting.  Their March 8, 2009 bulletin showed a year-to-date income of more than $1,175,000 (in just over 9 months), but it also revealed that this was insufficient to support their paid staff: 

Consequently, four administrative support positions have been reduced into two.  We have also had to let go of one full time and two part time members of our maintenance staff.

We are sorry for those who lost their positions, especially in the difficult economy we are facing, but there is an important lesson in this.  Most of our new "mega-parishes" will be less than half the size of this church and our parishioners are certainly much less affluent, on the whole, than those from Naples, FL.  So, if St. John the Evangelist, with all its size and wealth, cannot afford the "vibrancy" desired by Bishop Galante, how can we, especially with all of the ill-will created by these mergers?

As a side note, we are glad to hear that the local bishop has requested St. John the Evangelist church install kneelers. ("[A]t St. John's we stand in joy rather than kneel in fear.")  We are also pleased to hear that they are no longer allowing VOTF to have their annual Mass at St. John the Evangelist.  Now, if they only move their tabernacle from its current location ("in the back of the church on the left side") to front and center and fix a few other problems related to their "understanding" of the Real Presence, they might be OK, despite their financial crisis!

The Baptism of Our Lord is celebrated in conjunction with the Feast of the Epiphany. In the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church we always give due honor to both feasts. The sacramental nature of Our Lord's Church is stressed by Our Lord's institution of the Sacrament of Baptism. We must do everything we can to teach the true power of the sacraments in our lives.

Preparation is necessary to see the ongoing work of the sacraments. That is why we teach the permanent character imprinted on the soul by the three sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and Holy Orders. This means that these sacraments operate in the soul constantly.

The Holy Spirit is the True Guest of our souls from the moment that water is poured on the head of the child or adult when he chooses to be baptized. How wonderful it is to recognize the gifts that God bestows on us. Recognize the total forgiveness that God gives to a newly baptized soul--total forgiveness, mercy with no punishment due to sin.

I emphasize the point that when we have faith in God's mercy in the soul of one individual, we recognize that same perfection is appealing to everyone. We see that in our daily lives how we can withstand the assaults of the devil which we always know from the depth of our being that is because of God's grace that we protect and nourish through the all powerful intercession of the Blessed Mother of God.
 

St. Faustina reminds us--no, implores us--to live in that mercy which is the Divine Life. St.Mary's Shrine Parish has been called and chosen by God to bring His mercy continuously into the world and we have the true Sign of the Blessed Mother's words given to us, imprinted on our souls because of our vocation:

Then I saw the Blessed Virgin, unspeakably beautiful. She came down from the altar to my kneeler, held me close and said to me,I am Mother to you all, thanks to the unfathomable mercy of God most pleasing to me is that soul which faithfully carries out the will of God. She gave me to understand that I had faithfully fulfilled the will of God and had thus found favor in His eyes. Be courageous. Do not fear apparent obstacles, but fix your gaze upon the Passion of my Son, and in this way you will be victorious.
--The Diary of St. Faustina

Short interpretation: Believe in the power of the sacraments and know God's Will.

Praised be Jesus Christ,
Now and Forever!
Father Jerome Charles Romanowski, Pastor 

Naples, Florida: Golf Capital of the World and Home of Bill and Mary Anne Galante's Ultra-Liberal St. John the Evangelist Church

"More holes per capita than any other community." (From Wikipedia entry on Napes, FL)

I'm referring here to golf links, of course. Naples, Florida is everything you think, and more. Half of the American Fortune 500 CEOs live in Napes, FL. Yes, little ol' Malaga, NJ: You, too, can be as authentic, spiritual, and non-materialistic as Naples, FL. Yay! Guess who lives part of the year in Napes, FL? Bishop Galante's brother and sister-in-law.

Quoting from the Philadelphia Inquirer article, which is quoting Bishop Galante:

And all he [Bishop Galante's brother] talks about is how vibrant the local parish is: the people going to Mass, the wonderful preaching, concerts with sacred music and popular music.

The vitality and community his brother has found in Florida are what he hopes South Jersey Catholics will one day encounter in the 66 parishes that will remain.

The local church his brother and sister-in-law attend, which is the model for what Bishop Galante hopes South Jersey churches will become, looks like this:

Charming, personal, quaint, and inviting, huh? And the pastor, Fr. Glackin (who in is photo doesn't even bother to wear a collar), for Mother's Day/Pentecost Sunday, quoted Erma Bombeck. Cute. Here's a link to that:
Fr. Glackin's Mother's Day Inspiration

You May Laugh, But It's A Little Scary
There are a couple of sort of humorous things on the church's site. On the RCIA website, they claim that confession is "not for the guilty." Of course, it's pretty ridiculous. It of course begs the question, if you're not guilty, then why confess? But I digress. Onto stranger things. You'll notice below (image taken from their website) that they have an image of a skinny, topless, somewhat androgynous-looking woman about to be touched by an outstretched hand. I presume this to be the primordial symbol of conversion. Kinda reminds me of an alien abduction or something, it's sort of unnerving.

 

Compared with the hefty material I will take on below, mentioning anything so minor as the music at St. John the Evangelist seems petty. Nevertheless, since the bishop wants some "vital music" injected into the South Jersey Catholic liturgical scene (read: begone traditional Catholic hymnody). I thought it would be good to include a photo of the music director of St. John the Evangelist parish. Check out his website, if you'd like to listen to some of the "vibrant music" Bishop Galante would have us integrate into our "liturgies." Paul Todd's site Mr. Todd has opened for the Pointer Sisters, Joan Rivers, the Gatlin Brothers, and others. All that and he works on a TeleTubbies-like cartoon for kids.

 

Puts us to shame over at St. May's, what with the teeny little choir loft and simple a cappella singing. The bigger the better, after all.

Pastor Promotes Group that Undermines Church Teaching
On a much more serious note, Father Glackin, pastor of St. John's, is a ringleader of the radical group, "Voice of the Faithful," Link here, which Catholic Culture assigns a "danger warning" for fidelity. Archbishop John Myers of Newark, NJ says that

VOTF...has used the current crisis in the Church as a springboard for presenting an agenda that is anti-Church and, ultimately, anti-Catholic.

(See Naples Daily News, September 19, 2003. Link here.) Glackin keeps trying to bring in speakers from Voice of the Faithful to St. John the Evangelist parish and the bishop of the Diocese of Venice keeps denying him. Instead VOTF brings speakers like the notorious Fr. Curran to a local Greek Orthodox Church. See article here. Voice of the Faithful's real goal, among many, is fairly obvious: it wants to change the character and structure of the church by "promot[ing] turning the Church into a democracy." Furthermore their conferences "feature prominent speakers who are known to support homosexuality, abortion, contraception, female priests and other dissident principles." The gist of their philosophy is to build up the laity and create an atmosphere of equality and interchangeability among the roles of the sexes and even the clergy and laity. (catholicculture.org)

Voice of the Faithful "is tied to dissident, radical, anti-Vatican groups, such as Call to Action and We Are Church, which strongly reject Catholic moral principles," according to the well regarded and orthodox catholicculture.org. Fr. Glackin, pastor of St. John the Evangelist Church in Naples, is lauded by VOTF on its website: Accollades from VOTF for Fr. Glackin. VOTF holds their monthly meetings at the Parish Life Center, so the pastor's connection with this dissident group is hardly hidden. (The meeting location is listed on the VOTF southewest Florida website.)

Parish Promotes Irreverence & Misunderstanding of the Real Presence
St.John the Evangelist Parish, which the bishop holds up as the model for Catholic churches, is a bastion of anti-Catholic and non-Catholic (well, essentially Protestant) thought. On the church website, to put it charitably, there is a very definite mixed message relayed with regard to the Real Presence, among other things. For example, kneeling during the consecration is roundly condemned as something born of fear. They claim that the early Church stood during the consecration, but provide no evidence for this assumption. From the church's RCIA program Q&A about the Eucharist (for entire article click here):

Why do people at St. Johns stand for the consecration, where at some other Catholic churches, people kneel? In the early church, people stood for the consecration as a sign of respect and joyful celebration. As the centuries progressed, people began to kneel, as a sign of sorrow and repentance, and focused so much on the Divinity of Christ that his humanity was almost forgotten. Kneeling was a sign of fear before a king. This practice still continues in some catholic churches today. But with Vatican II, the church recovered the early church's focus on joyful celebration. So, at St. John's we stand in joy rather than kneel in fear.

A little further down, the question is posed, "Who can take communion?" Here is a piece of the answer St. John the Evangelist RCIA provides potential converts:

(The church teaches that it needs to be baptized Catholics...but Christ doesn't check our ID's) Sometimes at weddings and funerals, non-Catholics may be invited to receive communion.

In other words, they come right out and say that the Church teaches one thing, but they teach another. This church actively and unabashedly flouts the teachings of the Catholic faith not only through direct affiliation with groups that undermine the faith, but also by egregiously offending Our Lord in the Holy Eucharist by allowing non-Catholic Christians to partake. They belittle those who would revere His holy presence by kneeling in adoration. It would make sense to cease kneeling if the Real Presence is not understood properly...

Most alarming of all, it is clear by reading the entry on the Eucharist that at St. John's there is a complete misunderstanding of transubstantiation. They say, "The wine is still wine, and the bread is still bread, but somehow it is also more than just bread and wine." Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that was essentially heresy. I quote the Catholic Encyclopedia here (and I'd really encourage you to read the entire entry on the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist here):

That the consequence of Transubstantiation, as a conversion of the total substance, is the transition of the entire substance of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ, is the express doctrine of the Church (Council of Trent, Sess. XIII, can. ii). Thus were condemned as contrary to faith the antiquated view of Durandus, that only the substantial form (forma substantialis) of the bread underwent conversion, while the primary matter (materia prima) remained, and, especially, Luther's doctrine of Consubstantiation, i.e. the coexistence of the substance of the bread with the true Body of Christ.

As I understand it, the Body and Blood of Our Lord maintain only the appearance of bread and wine. Again from the Catholic Encyclopedia (from this piece on consecration):

It is called transubstantiation, for in the Sacrament of the Eucharist the substance of breadand wine do not remain, but the entire substance of bread is changed into the body of Christ, and the entire substance of wine is changed into His blood, the species or outward semblance of bread and wine alone remaining.

I could go on, since there is an abundance of erronious information so readily available, but I won't. Truly frightening is the prospect that lays before us: that Bishop Galante seeks to model his new-and-improved Catholic McMegachurches after St. John the Evangelist parish, a church that so clearly propogates irreverence and error. Is this what we want the South Jersey Catholic churches to be? I don't. I want to worship God as He is, not as I wish Him to be.

A Model Church for Us Unsophisticated South Jersey Hicks
So anyhow, yes folks, this church of St. John the Evangelist is the model for what Bishop Galante sees as a "vibrant" church. I don't pretend to know what you might think of pastors who promote organizations that undermine the Faith, pop-culture references mixed into your religiosity, Yanni-esque music directors, large and impersonal McChurches, too-cool-for-you RCIA programs, hip self-improvement "confession," and "communities" that boast some of the richest people in the world. And "more holes per capita than any other community" to boot! But I for one prefer that old time religion, the faith of our fathers, "the least of these," and all that stuff. I don't want a big, fancy, modern church with larger than life "contemporary" music. I want a church that reminds me of who I am in the grand scheme of things, not a church that puts me in the center. I want a church that's real, on a human scale, leads me to God, and doesn't remind me of a country club.

The majority of the churches the bishop wants to close are authentic houses of worship with the Real Presence front and center, kneelers, and histories that predate Vatican II. They are traditional. They are characteristically Catholic, replete with the sacramentals that empower us to fight the Enemy. They are the powerhouses of prayer. And yet, according to the Inquirer article, "the scope of the closing appears to be the largest ever for any of the nation's 195 Roman Catholic dioceses." And many of the churches that stand to be closed are ones very much like St. Mary's. Should we make way for a bigger, better sort of church? A one-stop-shop like the evangelical protestants have? Will we accept compromised theology and liturgy? Or are we finally going to acknowledge that what people really want is Truth...simple and straightforward Truth, and that it's Jesus in the Holy Eucharist who offers it?

By the way, in case you want to read it, click for the Inquirer Article here