I love soccer. But my love for soccer doesn't even come close to my love for the liturgy. It appears to me that this Dutch pastor lacks a proper understanding of the Divine Liturgy, as he attempts to make it into some sort of "World Cup" picnic event, contrary to the virtue of obedience and all that is holy.
The video below is heartbreaking, and just another reminder of the modernist heresy prevalent in the Catholic Church today. The faithful have a right to participate in the Holy Mass free from liturgical abuse. I pray that our priests understand more deeply the significance of our Divine Liturgy, and treat our liturgy with the solemn respect it deserves, with religious obedience to the liturgical norms universally binding within the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church. To do otherwise is to force upon the faithful a caricature of Catholicism, which is profoundly disrepectful.
Many non-Catholics (and perhaps many Catholics) may wonder why the pastor's actions were so disrespectful, deserving of suspension. It is comparable to comedienne Rosanne Barr's offensive rendition of our National Anthem where she ended it by spitting and grabbing her crotch. The Holy Mass is the universal "anthem" sung by the faithful to God. It is a Divine anthem sung in the same manner by Latin Rite Catholics all over the world. Pastors do not have the authority to alter that holy anthem, and the faithful have a right to participate in the liturgy as presecribed by the Church.
According to Church's teaching in Inaestimable Donum:
"The faithful have a right to a true Liturgy, which means the Liturgy desired and laid down by the Church, which has in fact indicated where adaptations may be made as called for by pastoral requirements in different places or by different groups of people. Undue experimentation, changes and creativity bewilder the faithful. The use of unauthorized texts means loss of the necessary connection between the lex orandi ['law of prayer'] and the lex credendi ['law of belief']. The Second Vatican Council's admonition in this regard must be remembered: "No person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove or change anything in the Liturgy on his own authority" [Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, nos. 22, 3].
God bless,
Dave
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