Going Into Very Timid Reverse

Going on reverse gear

 

So, is the Church in England now reversing the wreckovation (liturgical and otherwise) of decades past?

I would not be so optimistic. Rather, it seems to me that what is happening now is getting into a 0.25 mph reverse; so that nothing is really happening but, on occasion, a claim of recovery of old customs can be made.

Let’s take the meatless Friday. Yes, meatless Friday has been reintroduced several years ago. However, it is as if it had been reintroduced with the specific desire of having this change go unnoticed. Firstly, it not under pain of sin. Secondly, and directly derived from the first, it has not even been spread among the people, because most priests have certainly felt that there more important things to talk about. In my experience, I seem to remember having the meatless Friday mentioned in a homily exactly once, and the priest was Polish. I am talking here of a temporal space of several years.

It’s not even slow reverse. It’s the reverse gear of a snail.

It’s a reverse gear meant to not reverse, but protect oneself from the accusation of not doing anything. It reminds one of Paul VI reacting to the Ottaviani intervention by decreeing that in the substance, everything the Ottaviani intervention condemned would happen anyway, but a tad later.

In the meantime (that is: since the re-introduction of the Meatless Friday) this country has approved legislation concerning so-called “gay marriage”, and the allegedly “reversing” people have done, in the substance, zippo to prevent it.

So much for reversing, then.

The reality on the ground is that the UK hierarchy will only stage micro-movements in the right direction, as they willingly accompany the country every step of the way in the wrong one. 

M