arjie
2 days ago
In a sense, Sunday mass is just an all-hands where you're told the CEO's vision and you get to think about how aligned you are with the vision.
FearNotDaniel
a day ago
In no sense is that true of a Catholic Mass. Nor, from what I hear, of an Orthodox liturgy though I’m no expert there. It might be true of some Evangelical Sunday worship services but they cannot be called a “Mass”
disgruntledphd2
a day ago
> In no sense is that true of a Catholic Mass.
Sorry, can you help me understand what you mean here?
I attended a Catholic mass from 1-18 (and occasionally since then), and there was definitely a bunch of moral reflection from the readings, gospels and the sermons.
So I'm struggling to understand how this would differ across other Christian denominations, so I'd really appreciate a better awareness of what you mean here.
throw0101c
a day ago
> I attended a Catholic mass from 1-18 (and occasionally since then), and there was definitely a bunch of moral reflection from the readings, gospels and the sermons.
Have you ever gone to a mass on random Thursday? There is often no sermon during daily, non-Sunday mass. Yes, there are readings, but the central part of the mass is the Eucharist, which the Catechism (¶1324) calls the "source and summit of the Christian life".
disgruntledphd2
a day ago
> Yes, there are readings, but the central part of the mass is the Eucharist, which the Catechism (¶1324) calls the "source and summit of the Christian life".
Again, super confused. Like yeah the Eucharist is clearly the most important part for many Catholics, but the notion that the readings don't contain moral teachings is very strange to me.
Am I missing something in your point?
watwut
a day ago
The mass and the preaching are two separate things. The mass is the ritual liturgy part and can be performed without the preaching. It is not some kind of rare thing either.
Yes, they tend to be combined on Sundays, because that is practical and many believers want both on Sunday anyway. But that does not make them the same thing.
sfpk
20 hours ago
[dead]
disgruntledphd2
7 hours ago
> You seemingly attended the invalid new "mass" of antipope Paul VI which is a protestant service (was designed by protestants at vatican II), that's probably why you can't tell the difference.
My brother in Christ, I recommend against calling people anti-popes based on theological difference.
God basically doesn't care about this, and it's just an example of humans being humans and nitpicking around pointless abstractions.
I suppose that if one accepts that only the Catholic church is the path to salvation, and that the pope is supreme within the church, then one might get very upset.
Don't get me wrong, the Tridentine mass is a phenomenal spectacle, but mass in the vernacular has it's own benefits which I think that you're under-rating.
Ultimately, many paths, one mountain.
sfpk
2 hours ago
no.
Pope Eugene IV, Council of Florence, “Cantate Domino,” 1441, ex cathedra: “The Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that all those who are outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans but also Jews or heretics and schismatics, cannot share in eternal life and will go into the everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels, unless they are joined to the Church before the end of their lives; that the unity of this ecclesiastical body is of such importance that only those who abide in it do the Church’s sacraments contribute to salvation and do fasts, almsgiving and other works of piety and practices of the Christian militia productive of eternal rewards; and that nobody can be saved, no matter how much he has given away in alms and even if he has shed blood in the name of Christ, unless he has persevered in the bosom and unity of the Catholic Church.
You have imbibed heresy and must course-correct.
harpersealtako
17 hours ago
In the same way that all conspiracy theories are all slightly different in their own unique interpretations, making them fun to learn about, I am fascinated by the fractal nature of religious heresies and schisms. I had to look up this one because it's pretty damn obscure and I ended up spending all afternoon trying to figure out exactly what flavor of crazy the "Most Holy Family Monastery" are.
TLDR: they are a fringe group of sedevacantists who think all other sedevacantists and catholics are heretics and promote lots of insane infowars-tier conspiracy theories, run by two brothers living in an isolated compound in upstate New York. SPLC lists them as a hate group for being holocaust deniers.
So, the background context: in the 1960s the Roman Catholic Church held a big reform council (Vatican II) where, among other things, they decided to switch from the old Latin Mass to the modern one which celebrates mass in the vernacular, which is what nearly all of the world's 1.4 billion Catholic attend today.
A small fringe, called "sedevacantists", hated Vatican II so much they declared it was heresy, and that every pope since then is fake and there hasn't been a real pope since the 1950s. Hence the name: sede (chair) vacante (empty). Wordlwide, sedevacantists probably number around 30,000 (maybe as many as 200,000) and include all sorts of groups with various wacky beliefs.
Another small fringe is "Feeneyism", the belief that only baptized Catholics can go to heaven, with no exceptions for e.g. good people who never heard of the Church or who died before they could be officially baptized. The Catholic Church rejected this view in 1949 and the founder was excommunicated for disobedience. There are a few thousand of them left, mostly in rural New England. Some of them are still in communion with the mainstream Church, which quietly tolerates them.
This brings us to Most Holy Family Monastery (MHFM), currently run by brothers Michael and Peter Dimond in New York (which the above poster linked extensively). Neither of them is ordained, and no bishop recognizes them. The MHFM was founded by a guy named Joseph Natale in the 60s. He was a benedictine drop-out who broke away from the Catholic Church. Natale started an unofficial traditional latin catholic monastery in New Jersey which preached that Vatican II was a secret plot by the freemasons and the communists to destroy the Church, and predicted the world would end in 1999.
Weirdly, despite believing that Vatican II was a Communist Freemason conspiracy, the MHFM weren't sedevacantists under Natale; Natale just believed the pope was real, just a puppet controlled by the conspiracy. when Natale died in 1995, Michael Dimond took over with his brother Peter. They moved the operation to a rural hamlet in western New York and promptly declared that actually, the Pope wasn't just a puppet, he was a fake pope. Under them, MHFM became sedevacantist (which by their own logic makes their founder a heretic). But they also decided to become Feeneyites! So, being sedevacantists puts them outside the Catholic Church. Being Feeneyites means they consider every other sedevacantist group heretical, and vice versa. And being Sedevacantist makes them heretical to other Feeneyites, who mostly still accept the pope.
Some of their actual beliefs, as far as I can tell:
- Most everybody is going to hell except for them and and maybe some of their youtube followers
- Stage magicians use real magic, not illusions, which they get from demons
- UFOs are real and actually they're demons
- The covid vaccine was a cover-up
- John Paul II was the antichrist
- Holocaust denial. (if I had a nickel for every time I look up a sedevacantist group and find out they are holocaust deniers...)
The Southern Poverty Law Center lists them as a hate group due to that last point.
Thanks for the links btw, I have no idea if your comment was a joke or not but I had never heard of them before and I had a fun time going down this rabbit hole
sfpk
2 hours ago
My comment is no joke, watch some videos.
disgruntledphd2
7 hours ago
> - John Paul II was the antichrist
This is the wildest part to me, JP2 was a super, super conservative pope potentially put in to avoid the potential ructions associated with some of the more liberal beliefs of JP1.
Like, I'd have expected a group like this to be much more upset by Francis rather than John Paul.
harpersealtako
3 minutes ago
Well, I imagine they aren't fans of Francis either, and the Gospel of John does say "many antichrists have come", so it's entirely possible Pope Francis is also the antichrist.
That said: while he was conservative in many ways, Pope John Paul II was well-known for his ecumenicism, especially mending relations with Jews and Muslims, which might ruffle the feathers of the sort of sedevacantist whose problem with post-Vatican-2 Catholicism is that they got rid of the antisemitism.
plastic-enjoyer
a day ago
The American mind can't comprehend European Catholicism
watwut
a day ago
This is downvoted ... and absolutely true.
probably_wrong
a day ago
I have down voted that comment because HN is not Reddit and that comment is nothing but a cheap shot with no substance. If the commenter had explained why they feel that way then the comment would have been just fine.
watwut
a day ago
Considering it responded to cheap incorrect analogy and was actually correct, I find it ok. Disagreeing with one liner low effort comment should not require whole essay. It should require exact same effort as was put into the original comment.
OP did not explained why they think it is the same either. They just fired something.
probably_wrong
a day ago
I disagree with the idea that it was "actually correct". I suspect there is a cultural miscommunication regarding the word "Catholic" (as another commenter suggests). And because I disagree I would love to engage with their criticism, but I can't because the entire counter-argument was "no".
The original comment may be short but it's also thought-provoking. The reply, on the other hand, is not (per the FAQ) "a good critical comment [that] teaches us something".
watwut
a day ago
> I suspect there is a cultural miscommunication regarding the word "Catholic
I meant Catholic as in Catholic Church - the huge hierarchical organization lead by Pope. The mass is the ritual part, the bread, wine and the ceremony. Then there is the preaching which is separate thing. You can have mass only, the preaching only or the combination of the two. Catholicism is really big on rituals and tradition, they have meaning by themselves.
The Midnight Mass for example does not have much preaching. That is not the point of going there. The point is to celebrate.
fellowniusmonk
a day ago
Among the moderns really only the Quakers could be said to follow The Way in who they follow, all the rest follow some different teacher of their choosing.
disgruntledphd2
a day ago
> Among the moderns really only the Quakers could be said to follow The Way
I feel that there's a lot of truth to this, except that there are lots of actual Christians amongst the various denominations.
Sadly, they're not the majority, but living this way is pretty hard so it's not that surprising.
throw0101c
a day ago
>> Among the moderns really only the Quakers could be said to follow The Way […]
> I feel that there's a lot of truth to this, except that there are lots of actual Christians amongst the various denominations.
I don't think this is a good take. I think C. S. Lewis got in better in Mere Christianity:
> We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts xi. 26) to “the disciples,” to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some refined, spiritual, inward fashion were “far closer to the spirit of Christ” than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere_Christianity
A "Christian" is someone who believes certain things (e.g., Nicene Creed), and that he should do (or not do) certain things. The inability to live up to one's ideals does mean you reject those ideals (or make them invalid).
disgruntledphd2
a day ago
> When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.
Much as I dislike disagreeing with C.S. Lewis, my personal nomenclature is to reserve the term Christian for those who live the values promoted by the Gospels. This is clearly non standard though, so I see the potential for confusion.
throw0101c
a day ago
Built into the very concept of Christianity is the idea that no human can perfectly live the life espoused by Christ. It is why Jesus gave The Twelve (and their successors?) the authority to forgive sins:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_20:23
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacrament_of_Penance
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confession_(religion)
There was an early Christian heresy what believed that clergy must be faultless for their ministry to be effective and their prayers and sacraments to be valid:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
And another belief that humans can be saved by their own efforts, without the need for God's grace:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelagianism
In some ways your idea would be contrary to scripture (?): since no one can (fully/perfectly?) live those values, then no one can (fully/perfectly?) be Christian. Whereas is in the 'Lewis model' every one can be a Christian, but just a better or worse 'instantiation' of one.
disgruntledphd2
a day ago
> In some ways your idea would be contrary to scripture (?): since no one can (fully/perfectly?) live those values, then no one can (fully/perfectly?) be Christian. Whereas is in the 'Lewis model' every one can be a Christian, but just a better or worse 'instantiation' of one.
Yeah, I definitely take that point.
That being said, I don't have a better term for the small number of people who actually try to live the teachings of the Gospels, as opposed to those who mumble along to the Nicene Creed, take the Eucharist and go right back to robbing their fellow humanity.
So that's the term I picked.
Like, to be fair, I am almost certainly a heretic from the perspective of the Catholic Church, but if the Source of All judges me based on that, then I guess we have very different priorities.
For context, I grew up in an Ireland where literally everyone was a practicing Catholic, but very few actually lived it in their lives, hence why this annoys me. As Jesus (did not) say, blessed be the hypocrites etc.
user
9 hours ago
user
9 hours ago
rexpop
a day ago
Yikes! Way to raise mammon up to the altar of God.
CEOs are psychopaths.