Flip Flops And No End
Once again, It’s summer. And once again, I am confronted with the usual mess on a Novus Ordo Mass near you.
Adult men in shorts. Tattooes galore for everyone to see. And the flip-flops, the flip-flops!
Entire families, mother, father and children, all walking around the church in flip-flops. It’s like being at the beach, plus the tabernacle.
It confirms what I have thought for a while now: even a lot of churchgoers nowadays see the church not as a sacred, but purely as a social space. Worse than that: a casual social space, then they would certainly not visit the Queen or the Prime Minister in flip-flops, tattooes well in sight, and shorts. And may I remind you that the Church bans tattooes, and it is a mortal sin to wilfully get one in the knowledge of this prohibition.
The crisis of the Church is a crisis of Catholic thinking at all levels , not merely an issue of perverted Cardinals. It is the poisonous fruit of priests who, in the Seventies, demolished the sense of the Sacred even if they were, on the whole, probably more Catholic than many priests of today. It is, also, the result of the refusal to recognise that 24 years of papacy of JP II have allowed the existing infection to become gangrene.
When sanity comes back, the sacredness of the church space because of the sacredness of the tabernacle it contains should be put front and centre. It all starts knowing where you are and why.
M
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Posted on July 9, 2018, in Traditional Catholicism. Bookmark the permalink. 12 Comments.
Mundabor's Blog 
I have been to the Novus Ordo mass and to the traditional Latin Mass in several countries in the past year and a half. Before and after the Novus Ordo mass, there’s a lot of chitchatting. It’s clear that the N.O. mass is a social event.
By contrast, people who attend the TLM are silent before and after the Mass. they are praying.
Morever, in the Novus Ordo, people rush out right after the mass. Not so at the TLM. These are just my observations.
Your observations are very accurate.
Please write more about tattoos and other forms of self-mutilation such as body-piercing , which are bad enough, although not even close to the mutilation of sex-change operations which unfortunately are legal. I do recall being taught in grade-school in the 1950’s that tattooing was sinful since it is a bodily mutilation, but I do not recall it being taught as a mortal sin. Where is this documented?
You will have to look around. Other have posed me this question on this same blog, but take it from me.
Obviously, the mortal sin is there is anyone tattoes himself knowing about the church prohibition.
My wife, who is a convert, and I sit in the second pew at Mass. I have the tendency to look at the clothing that people where when they come up to receive the Eucharist. I don’t know if some folks are going to Church, the beach, the beer joint, on a date (with hopes of scoring), to the gym, etc. It is incredible what some people wear. I think what they wear may also be an indicator of their understanding of the Eucharist. A lot of Catholics and catholics have lost the belief of God’s Presence in Holy Communion. What a pity.
How does the Church ban tattoos? I’ve never heard this before.
Wow, M., I thought you had access to a sober Novus Ordo in London. But perhaps you are traveling. That’s always risky.
One phenomenon I’ve observed here in the American west are fairly well attended Novus Ordo “Spanish Masses”. The men still generally wear shirts with collars but ill-clad Latinas with ample cleavage and skin tight apparel (jeans, clingy short dresses) are ubiquitous. The music is bad! The pre-Mass atmosphere is loud and raucous. I have observed for the first time a Mass-goer clutching a Starbucks during Mass. It’s one degree away from Protestant mega-church, which has drawn millions of Mexican/Latin Americans from the One True Church.
Not a mantilla in sight.
It is a sad fact of life here in Blighty that the people are less reverent than the mass. The priests just have no guts to speak. They do what they can to keep things Catholic but are obviously terrified of their bishops.
I have a strict “no tattoo, no body piercing” policy withmy children. I see it, you’re cut out of the will and any financial aid in my life. That being said, the catechism is silent on tattoos and I can’t find anything other than passage from Leviticus to back up ban. Even priests on blogs say it’s ok. A reference would be good, although I’m the father and what i say goes. As i tell them, if you can’t do my will, how will you ever do our Fathers Will in Heaven?
To be fair, the apostles wore flip-flops.
Wrong. They wore sandals.
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