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The silliness of concelebration
I was in Liberty Townhship, Ohio, north of Cincinnati, for the party to celebrate the Confirmation of my neice and god-daughter. This was a Saturday evening, and I had an event to attend the following Sunday, so I went to the 4:30 Mass at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church, a short distance from where the party was to be held.
I'm not sure why (and didn't bother to take a bulletin to figure out why), but there were three priests who concelebrated the Mass. I have to wonder: Has any priest ever observed concelebration from the pew? If one did, hopefully he would realize how disjointed and (frankly) idiotic it looks.
Consider this: Priests are permitted to offer private Masses; for example, a traveling priest might set up a little altar and offer daily Mass privately in his room. Is there any priest out there who, when traveling with some companion priests, would say, "Hey, let's get together in one of our rooms and concelebrate Mass?" I think not, and I certainly hope not. If I'm wrong about that, then it means priests lack the sense of humor that would allow them to feel silly when doing something silly. But if I'm right, then it means the core motivation of concelebration, as a mode of offering Mass, is performant rather than worshipful - which makes it silly.
Can making a good thing be evil?
Can it be possible that the act of making something is bad (evil, sinful) even though the thing made is, in itself, good?
I contend "yes," and this can come about in several ways. The act of making the otherwise good thing could be sinful in the motive under which it was made; it could be sinful in the means by which it was made; it could be sinfully imprudent in the context in which it was made, depending on the particularities. That last point could even lead to the situation in which the thing in itself, qua the thing that it is, is good and yet its continued use and presence is evil.