It's Funny, But Also Not

My husband's boss forwarded this "meditation" by Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM to my husband today, saying, "I think this encapsulates how you, your wife, and our parochial vicar feel."


CULTURE OF ELDERS
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Feast of the Baptism of Jesus


Today, many young people and clergy long to return to an earlier and false innocence that never existed. I understand these psychological needs. We must start with some experience of order, or we will not have the ego structure to move forward. In the first half of life, the psyche demands structure before it can possibly deal with anti-structure.

These young people want to return to a romanticized church and world of the past that they idealize from a distance. They hope that it will provide the clarity, status, and certitude that they do not enjoy and that their ego needs.

We all need some still point in the midst of the tornado of postmodernism. But the trouble is, all the biblical God ever promised us was God himself as that still point—never an institution, role, social order or country. These are human-created idols that we worship in the place of God.

Adapted from Adam’s Return, pp. 79-80 (book/audiobook)


So, my husband's boss thinks we're naive idiots? I know this is not a new criticism leveled at those of us "young people" who have an affinity for tradition. Still, I'm an academic for heaven's sake! Does he think that my dissertation research hasn't involved examining the real state of music before Vatican II as well as after? Does he think we don't know about 15-minute Low Masses and schlocky hymns? This is not to mention all the study of sacred music in earlier periods, none of which were perfect, but some of which were, perhaps, further from perfection than others. Our parochial vicar has explicitly said that he prefers the OF to the EF, although he also believes in chant, plenty of incense and "Say the Black, do the Red."

Honestly, it's a bit upsetting that my husband's boss not only thinks we're idiots and children, but has the nerve to basically tell us that to our faces. Of course, it also makes me want to laugh a little bit, because it shows how little reading he's been doing regarding who, exactly, is taking part in this revival of tradition in the Church, and what their reasoning is.

As for Fr. Richard Rohr, well, I don't have a lot of faith in the analysis of someone who's written multiple books on the Enneagram.