We've had a few of these traveling groups of uber-conservative "Catholic" priests and/or religious come to our village. They ask to use the church for a Mass, which we always agree to. But when the service starts we realize these fellows are using all their own altar ware, using a mix of languages and liturgics none of us "regular" worshipers has ever seen. We the Parishioners are not welcome to help set up the altar or read the scriptures; we are ushered out of the sacristy. and when we go to "pass the peace" to one another we find they've rushed past that part of the service. It's all about them, and the performance they're putting on up there for one another with their backs to us so we cannot see or hear. When we receive communion, we are forced to use their methods -- it is embarrassing and confusing to all of us.
hmmmm, if none of you "regular" worshippers have seen it, then it doesn't sound like simply the Traditional Latin Mass that some, at least, in Moratinos would have known in their youth or childhood, and more among the pilgrims might know in more recent times.
BTW, given certain internal Church arguments, your "It's all about them, and the performance they're putting on up there for one another" is highly ironic.
"and when we go to "pass the peace" to one another we find they've rushed past that part of the service" -- it's not part of the 1962 Missal, and it's not really a required part of the New Mass either. But it's not really a novelty either, I've seen several references to the "kiss of peace" in mediaeval, Renaissance, and early modern literature.
I am not the Church Police, but if you're going to celebrate a Mass in a Catholic church, and you present yourself as a Catholic priest, it is disingenuous to produce something otherwise to the unsuspecting parishioners. We are not experts in which liturgy is legitimate or illegitimate. We shouldn't have to be. The Chicago-based priest who pulled this on us this summer came under some close questioning afterward, and appalled a couple of elderly communicants when he admitted the pope considers him a "heretic!"
Using a local church, altar, utilities, etc. to do your own sorta-Catholic thing is rude and presumptuous in the least, and sacrilege at worst.
Most of the neighbors are sanguine about it. "It's God's business, let him sort them out," Modesto says.
If " he admitted the pope considers him a "heretic" ", then he had absolutely no right to make use of your church, and he knows it ; only your Bishop has the right to grant such faculties (though broad faculties likely exist for foot pilgrim priests on the Camino), not the locals of Moratinos, and it's likely that service in particular wasn't just illicit, but actually invalid. Condemned heretics are suspended
a divinis, which means that they may not provide the Sacraments, one of which is the Mass. None of which is of any incidence at all upon you innocent inhabitants of Moratinos, as you were clearly misled by a Chicago man having no rights to give a service at your local church, nor indeed most likely in any church anywhere.
But this is not true of all traditionalist groups, a few of which are in full Communion with Rome and so would have such faculties, so that your habit in Moratinos of welcoming such groups shouldn't change just because of a small number of defrocked or pseudo-clergy etc. abusing your trust -- I could say a LOT more, but then that would devolve into discussing the Catholic religion as such rather than reacting to certain real circumstances and situations in Moratinos and generally on the Camino.
