Discover Top Posts Tagged with #attwater

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Attwater knows, I repeat Attwater knows!!. Or at very least he suspects somethings up between them. Rewatch, pause and you will catch it too👀

#upstead #attwater

An American correspondent recently wrote that “I fear that Eastern rites are becoming vogue [in this country], and therefore many people are missing the main points. Too many Latin Catholics believe that we are merely tolerating these beautiful and ancient rites of the Church.” To whatever extent this may be true of North America, it is not surprising, for it is the same in some other lands. It is perhaps to be expected that Western Catholics, being in so huge a numerical majority and generally knowing nothing of other Catholic traditions, should assume that their own ways are the only “really Catholic ways,” that they are necessarily superior, and that other ways are merely tolerated. This is especially so when the other ways are not only different from Western practice but contrary of it, e.g., communion in both kinds (species) or the ordination of married men to the priesthood. But such an attitude is grievously mistaken. It was Pope Leo XIII, in Orientalium dignitas, who particularly emphasized that all rites are equal; it was Pope Pius XII who again assured Eastern Christians, whether Catholic or other, that “they will never have to exchange their own legitimate rites and ancient institutions for Latin rites and institutions; both are to be regarded with equal esteem and reverence . . .” (Orientalis ecclesiae, 1944).

In other words, uniformity is no part of the Catholic tradition: the Church’s faith is the same always and everywhere, the ideals of the Christian life are the same for all the faithful, always and everywhere; but in everything else there can be endless variety, for there is endless variety in human beings and peoples, in their institutions and cultures. The numerical degree of variety in the Church today is very much less than in the past, for historical reasons; it will become very much more again in the day, however far off it may be, when Catholics and non-Catholics are again united in the one Church of Jesus Christ. It is a common mistake to confuse uniformity with unity. For a number of people to have similar institutions and to do things in the same way is quite compatible with a gross state of disunity among those people, as we see all around us. But unity rises above all accidental variations, and embraces all differences that are not in themselves incompatible with unity. Uniformity merely makes people resemble on another; it is being and doing as parts of a whole that gives them unity, makes them one in the community whose governing principle is the Holy Spirit.

-Donald Attwater in the Foreword to Nicholas Liesel’s “Eastern Catholic Liturgies”

#Eastern Catholic #Attwater

Especially since Pope Leo XIII, the Holy See has been insistent that the Catholic Eastern churches should observe their proper rites and customs without modification, and has taken great trouble to publish authentic texts. But to anyone with some little knowledge of these matters, the pictures in this book are clear evidence that . . . the elimination of liturgical hybridism is far from finished yet: leavened altar-breads that approximate to unleavened wafers, Western altar-linen, such as the corporal and the pall. lacey albs instead of stikharia, stiff gestures and carriage of the hands by celebrant and ministers, and so on. Small things, apparently, and concerned with minor external matters; but they have significance for the integrity of a rite, which means more than formulas alone, as Pope Pius XII made abundantly clear. And they are part of a real obstacle to Christian understanding: non-Catholic Easterners are quick to detect and criticize such innovations.

-Donald Attwater in the Foreword to Nicholas Liesel’s “Eastern Catholic Liturgies”

#Eastern Catholic #Attwater

Probably some of my favorite Joe Attwater banjo hooks on our new album.

#joe #attwater #joe attwater #banjo #banjoe #the friendly ghost

Crested Caracara juvenile by Shelby Townsend Via Flickr: While visiting my son in Houston he took us to the Attwater Prairie Chicken refuge. It was not the right time of the year for the prairie chickens but we were treated to this beauty.

#attwater #texas #attwater prarie chicken national wildlife refuge #mexican eagle