Thread by @stevenpmillies

To comprehend fully the gross folly into which our US bishops have led the #Catholic Church, sit on the Feast of #ChristTheKing in a mostly empty sanctuary listening to the embarrassingly flowery language of the 2011 Roman Missal.

The absurd collision of the...

...triumphally sacral vernacular with so many empty pews, the energy level that rivals chair aerobics at Casa Tranquila while we 'glory in obedience to the commands of Christ, the King of the universe,' is a lot of dissonance to process.

This is a result of choices, mostly...

...choices like the Missal that stepped back from renewing the #Catholic church after #Vatican2 and deliberately took the church out of our lived experience (except when it's time to remember our true King insists we vote GOP).

We have clarified that we should refrain from...

...calling lay ministers "ministers" as we have certainly made sure that options for Sunday worship without a priest will be postponed for as long as possible.

In every way we have sought to freeze the clock in 1965, insist everything is fine and nothing needs to...

..change—not even the things that the Council changed.

But sit and listen and look around the sanctuary.

It's infuriating, what is and what could have been.

Douthat is wrong. A church alienated from the world, deliberately resisting the fact that it has a foot planted...

...firmly in the world where we live, among us, is a church for aesthetes and antiquarians.

Not only is that not most people, but it's surely not enough people. There's very little to give life to most of us.

And if I seem stewed abt it tonight, it's because I am.