A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Catholic school turns the Pater Noster at Mass into paean to gaia earth mother worship March 2, 2012

This is so bad it smacks of idolatry, to me.  This school, as reported by a student that had to suffer through this disaster at her school Ash Wednesday Mass prayer serviceto the blog Acts of the Apostasy, has completely lost the trail:

Life’s Source and Sustainer, beyond all yet close
You are Father and Mother [fail #1!]– life’s sacred to us. [This life is not the point of our creation.  The next life is.]
We seek now to shape this your world as a home.
To share in the mystery of your holy name.
Our Father in heaven, holy be your name.

We hope and we work for your promised new world. [The next world will be perfect, this world never will be, in spite of all the hippie utopian fantasies – fail #2]
Where your vision of love reigns
Where peace-talk is heard,
Where compassion alone is the weapon we wield,
Sharing life with all creatures, to their needs we yield.
May your kingdom come quickly, your kingdom of love.

We long for your will to be done on the earth,
for you’ve shown us our world has heavenly worth; [??????]
You call every human your image to bear,
And in likeness to you for all creatures to care.
May your will now be done on the earth as in heaven.

As we labour on earth, You, who give all life’s good.
Help us share earth’s nurture, earth’s life-giving food. [All these gifts come from God.  The earth is an instrument we should care for and manage, but this is coming close to earth-worship.  Fail #3]
We can gain nothing good by our violent ways;
To the gentle come earth’s blessings, as by your grace. [??????]
Give us this day our bread, daily bread for our need.

We’re indebted to you for each gift in our life;
You have shared so much with us, we ask you, forgive
Our abusing of all that sustains life around [Everything in this prayer is pointed at environmentalism]
Help us mend what is broken, give us all a new mind.
Forgive each one’s debts, just as we too forgive.

Do not lead us to testing in which we must fall;
Save us from earth-destruction, this can’t be your will; [As I said, this is all about earth-worship.  Fail #4]
Save from all that is evil, without and within;
Grant commitment to wholeness, death to all selfish sin.
Yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Amen.

What a disaster.  I believe that seemingly innocent things like this reveal a very disordered approach to the Faith. [Fixed text based on input from source link] And so we get people like this.  And this.  And situations like this. 

There are so many things that desperately need reform in the Church.  The Liturgy, focus on the Sacraments (especially Confession), enforcement of discipline, immensely stronger catechesis, the list goes on.  But fixing problematic Catholic schools – where ther are so many examples of a focus on the cult of man, the teaching of error as truth, the deconstruction of Doctrine and replacement with a worldly ethos, etc – has got to be one of the top priorities. 

There has been a conscious decision among leaders in Catholic education to focus on academic excellence and a willing embrace of the mores of the sad, decaying culture.  The Faith, when taught, is either an after-thougth or is actively opposed on many fronts through heterodox teachings.  This has got to stop.  Yes, the above may be an extreme example, but we see so many other examples where kids emerge from Catholic schools not knowing a whit about their Faith.  Many go on to Catholic colleges where the Faith is attacked even more strongly, where the willing embrace of sexual promiscuity and contraception and abortion and so many other evils is devastatingly widespread.  And then we read reports, wondering why so many kids leave the Church when the go to college, especially even Catholic colleges.  It’s no mystery.  If you teach apostasy, if you teach that the Faith is a human construct, a social do-good society, or make fun of its cherished beliefs – people so formed are going to leave. 

Or even if they don’t leave, formally, their malformed mindset will often work against the good of the Church. And, of course, their own souls.  It’s so difficult to overcome what one is formed in as a child.  It takes a special grace.