Tuesday, January 20, 2009

No mention of Christ in Catholic cathedral

Bob The Pious at Monroerising.com attended last night's prayer service at Sacred Heart.  He reports,

I was deeply disappointed in the event.  It was held at Sacred Heart Cathedral, a Catholic Church and the home of Bishop Clark. It was called an ecumenical interfaith service. There was no professing of the Christian faith at all.  During the event there was absolutely no reading of New Testament Scriptures by the Bishop.  The name of Jesus Christ was not mentioned once.  The blessing phrase “May Christ be with you” was changed to “May truth and beauty be with you”.  There was a program for the event, it had Barack Obama’s picture on it and again never mentions Christ in it.

As billed it was an interfaith service.  Other religious leaders were comfortable reading from holy books.  An old Testament Bible reading from Deuteronomy  was read by Rabbi Laurence A Kotok of Temple B’rith Kodesh,  We thank him for that.  Iman Muhammad Shafig of the Islamic Center of Rochester read from the Qur’an.  There was even a Sanskrit chant.  However Bishop Clark in his own church chose not to read from the Testament of Jesus Christ! There was never a mention of the sanctity of life, opposition to abortion, death penalty or war.  We might as well have been at a Democratic caucus meeting in the War Memorial. 

Most disappointing was no mention of Thursdays pro life march in Washington D.C.  where 100’s of clergies, including the Bishops from the Syracuse and Buffalo diocese  will attend. There is an estimated crowd of 200,000 people.  Bishop Clark will not attend, he has never attended in 20 years.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why is anyone surprised?

I've gone to way too many funeral Masses for practicing Catholics, with practicing Catholic family members, in a Catholic Church, with other Catholics in attendance where the priest unilaterally changes the rubrics and texts so as not to offend or confuse the non-Catholic visitors - thereby confusing and disturbing the Catholics - all when, as near as I can tell the non-Catholics fully expected a Catholic Mass in the Catholic Church for their deceased Catholic friend.

We have become such self-hating people embarrassed by our beliefs that we cannot even properly bury our dead. Why be surprised when at a specifically "ecumenical" service we are too embarrassed to be Catholic.

As for Bishop Clark - "well, dud!!!" as my 13 y/o would say!

Mike Shea said...

Anon. 4:15,

Can't say that I've had a similar experience, either at my current or former parish.

At my current parish the priests even explicitly mention that only Catholics should receive the Eucharist and point non-Catholics instead to an appropriate prayer (we used to call it a "spiritual communion" when I was a kid) in the missalette.

I actually was present at far more funerals at my old parish, as I was one of five adults who served at those Masses. While my old pastor had his own problems adhering to the words printed in the Lectionary and the Sacramentum, his departures from the expected were no more pronounced at funerals than at Sunday Mass. (Of course, those departures were one of the main reasons why he ultimately became my former pastor.)

rochester_veteran said...

Bob The Pious report is disturbing. When our Diocesan Shepherd won't invoke the name of Jesus Christ in his (and our) own Cathedral, that's cause for concern. I guess that's why I have the "Bishop Clark countdown to retirement" clock up on my blog on the left sidebar below the "categories" and "archives". :-)

Anonymous said...

Nice, Roch Veteran.

As I posted earlier, there is a compact flash widget to countdown to Bishop Clark's retirement which can be added to any website.

Link: http://eldoctork.tripod.com/

~Dr. K