Good Shepherd no different than Fisher More.

f bish­ops are going to exer­cise dis­ci­pline (right­ly) against abus­es that occur at the Latin Mass, then they need to exer­cise equal dis­ci­pline against those that occur at the Novus Ordo. Case in point: Good Shep­herd Catholic Church in Menomonee Falls, Wis­con­sin. The parish is under the direc­tion of Dea­con Sandy Sites. Pat Arch­bold has been fol­low­ing the sto­ry on his blog Cre­ative Minor­i­ty Report; and you can read his two pri­ma­ry posts here and here.

In case you have not heard about it, Mr. Arch­bold has all the details, but the gist is this. Dea­con Sandy put out a video (watch it on the first of the two posts at CMR) in which he details some of the “unique” aspects one can find at Good Shep­herd. The list reads like a very ency­clo­pe­dia of “Spir­it of Vat­i­can II” abus­es of the sacred nature of the Mass. They are these.

• No kneel­ers. Dea­con Sandy jus­ti­fies their absence under the log­ic that “we stand for the pres­i­dent.” But sor­ry: Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is not the same as Christ (for which we should all be grate­ful); and before Christ we kneel. When the pres­i­dent enters the room, we stand because that pre­pares us to run far away.
• Open chitchat pri­or to Mass; a time at which, accord­ing to what Sacro­sanc­tum Con­cil­i­um actu­al­ly said, there should be the silence of rec­ol­lec­tion to bring us into the pres­ence of Christ. Peo­ple can be “in com­mu­nion with each oth­er” after Mass, once they have first come into com­mu­nion with Christ. Our com­mu­nion with Christ is pri­ma­ry.
• The gross cor­rup­tion of sacred space with audio visu­al mate­r­i­al to illus­trate the homi­ly. This is not a movie the­ater or a pow­er point pre­sen­ta­tion; this is the Holy Sac­ri­fice of the Mass.
• The pres­ence (as a lat­er video shows) of car­toons on the wall where the Sta­tions of the Cross would nor­mal­ly go. The car­toons depict the para­ble of the sheep and the goats.
• A nov­el addi­tion that Dea­con Sandy refers to as a “pre-Mass,” nev­er autho­rized as a part of the litur­gy.
• Bow­ing not just to Christ in the Eucharist but also to “the assem­bly,” under the the­o­ry that one is bow­ing to the Christ that is in them. The dif­fer­ence, which Dea­con Sandy does not acknowl­edge, is that Christ is present body, blood, soul, and divin­i­ty in the Eucharist (which is why we bow). Where­as, He is not so present in peo­ple (which is why we don’t bow to them). Peo­ple are not tran­sub­stan­ti­at­ed into Christ; nor are they equal to Christ.
• Ask­ing for extra vol­un­tary prayers (by show of hands and shout-out, I guess) after the nor­mal recita­tion of the Prayers of the Faith­ful. Once more, this is a nov­el and unau­tho­rized addi­tion to the litur­gy.
• Use of bread rather than hosts, on the strange the­o­ry that min­is­ters are able to “enter more ful­ly” into the con­se­cra­tion when their hands have actu­al­ly baked the bread. I’m not sure what the­o­log­i­cal school sup­ports this notion that a priest enters the con­se­cra­tion more ful­ly when his hands have baked the bread as well as mere­ly con­fect­ed it. Just turn­ing it into the body and blood of Christ is not enough, it seems.

Dea­con Sandy was embar­rassed enough by the neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty this video got on Cre­ative Minor­i­ty Report that he asked Mr. Arch­bold to take it down so that he could enter a time of deep­er prayer, reflec­tion, and repen­tance.

But the dea­con is now back from his penance. What good has it done him? Well, in the video to your left, he can be seen using those same audio-visu­al mate­ri­als to show the sparse crowd a pic­ture of Pope Bene­dict XVI. The pope is wear­ing red shoes and—imagine this!—Deacon Sandy actu­al­ly mocks the pope emer­i­tus for being more con­cerned about flair of vest­ments than char­i­ty toward the poor. The “crowd” duti­ful­ly laughs at the pope.

It was a shame­less dis­play of dis­re­spect to Bene­dict. But Dea­con Sandy’s excuse to Mr. Arch­bold was that he was entire­ly inno­cent and did not know that the man in the red shoes and cas­sock was the pope. (Who else could it have been? Dorothy? Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood?) Dea­con Sandy says he just did a Google search for “fine vest­ments” and found that pic­ture with no indi­ca­tion at all of who it could be.

But a friend of mine on Face­book ran that very same Google search and found the same pic­ture used by Dea­con Sandy.

You’ll need to click on the image to enlarge it, but you can clear­ly see that the pic­ture indi­cates that the man in ques­tion is Pope Bene­dict. One would not like to accuse a dea­con of lying, but lying does very much come to one’s mind.

Keep in mind: Dea­con Sandy also told Mr. Arch­bold that he sim­ply can­not afford kneel­ers; although, the video says that the kneel­ers were removed pre­cise­ly so that one could stand to hon­or Christ. The two sto­ries are at odds.

If tra­di­tion­al­ly-mind­ed Catholics have it in their mind that this is what a Novus Ordo parish is like, it is no sur­prise that they seek refuge in the Extra­or­di­nary Form. It is no sur­prise they have the pas­sion they do. This is the kind of—excuse me for being blunt—crap that bish­ops need to stamp down, imme­di­ate­ly and clear­ly and with no apol­o­gy. The bish­op should inves­ti­gate, and dis­ci­pline Dea­con Sandy Sites, and ensure that no more out­rages and abus­es occur at Good Shep­herd. Repair­ing the litur­gy there would be the right first step.

You can reach Dea­con Sandy Sites at sitess@archmil.org, or by call­ing 1–262-255‑2035.

You can also con­tact the Arch­bish­op:

Most Rev. Jerome E. Lis­tec­ki
Arch­bish­op of Mil­wau­kee
archbishoplistecki@archmil.org.