Teilhard de Chardin conceived the idea of Omega Point, a maximum level of complexity and consciousness to which he believed the universe was evolving. Well, if you’ve still to finish decorating the back bedroom or cleaning out the car- relax. Judging by some churchmen, this may not be for a week or two.
We’re doing this blog without having looked at the response to last week’s, but we are geared up to cope with any number of congratulations on how well we sussed out Cardinal Robert Sarah , as the comment from the Vatican showed. The expression ‘slapped down’ has been freely used. As a priest pointed out in the Tablet;’When we stopped muttering Latin over infants and over couples on their wedding day, and over corpses, we did more than make the prayers intelligible. We said we belong to the same world as the rest of you.’ He adds ’We need to ask if our notion of God is inspired by looking outside of our world and mediated by the priest who stands between God and us. That was certainly an important part of the Tridentine theology of worship, expressed by the spatial arrangement the cardinal is promoting, ‘ This point, you must agree, is most beautifully made. We borrow it with acknowledgments to the Tablet.
Spielberg’s otherwise superb ’A Bridge of Spies’ contained several scenes which we found unspielberglike. We checked on Wikipedia, to find that he was – inexplicably- assisted by the famous Coen Brothers, there apparently to pick out the humourous aspect of nuclear annihilation in 1961. Having been there at the time, we found this a demanding concept to grasp. Anyway, although the Church is functioning and no more ,due to the shortage of people permitted to provide the Eucharist, there is also a humourous- if unintentional- aspect to this. Practically the next day , a blog , that of a Catholic clergyman, leapt into action to defend the good cardinal. Apparently under the assumption that those of its readers who were not Tridentine priests needed help, it provided two drawings, in sets of two. One was a priest facing the congregation with a crucifix at his back. One was a priest with his back to the congregation facing the crucifix. We have to sympathise here with Catholic apologists who have spent years of their lives assuring non-Catholics that we don’t worship statues- even crucifixes. For particularly dense lay readers of the blog, the other pair was of a bus. In one, the driver was driving the bus and looking ahead. But in the other, he was driving the bus with his back to the road. Talk about putting your cards on the table !
The same blog if we understand it correctly- tears of laughter can so interfere with accurate comprehension- suggests that young Catholics find this attitude to Cardinal Sarah’s suggestion as ‘reactionary’. We’ll leave that with you at the moment. We simply repeat the mantra of this blog, excluding as ever the religious orders.:
Only Tridentine priests can provide the Eucharist. At the moment.
There are now practically no Tridentine priests coming up to do this.
Therefore the Flock cannot receive the Eucharist as Christ commanded.
We have no artists in the group, so we can’t provide a drawing.
But you get it, don’t you?