How the Best Attacks against the Traditional Latin Mass Fail

Submitted by LocutusOP on Sat, 02/09/2019 - 22:33
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LB236

 

 

 

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Saturday, February 9, 2019 - 22:00
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How the Best Attacks against the Traditional Latin Mass Fail

 

 

 

 

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    LB236 • a month ago

    In my experience, one of the stumbling blocks many Catholics of good will who will defend the new rite to the death have yet to overcome is that, at some level, an honest appraisal of the new rite's flaws is a damning indictment of the narrative the "conservative/orthodox" Catholic apologetics industry has spun for the past 30 or so years. Namely, that JP2 rescued the Church from those dastardly liberals, set the Church back on the right track, and Benedict/Ratzinger swooped in behind him to mark the triumph of the "correct" interpretation of the Council. "If we would all just do want the documents of the Council actually said, and if we would just listen to what JP2 and Benedict have told us the Council meant, everything would be fine."

    Granted, this is a lovely narrative to want to believe, and I myself once believed it as recently as five years ago. But unfortunately, it is a chimera, an illusion, and simply divorced from reality. For all his personal holiness, it is undeniable that JP2 made many, many blunders as an administrator and as the Vicar of Christ, from horrific episcopal appointments, to Assisi, to taking a "big tent/anything goes" approach to his own papal liturgies. Unfortunately, so many "conservative" Catholics still to this day define their own sense of the Faith as adhering to whatever JP2 did during his lifetime. He had, for all practical purposes according to this mindset, the Midas Touch, and don't you dare forget it!

    For all the talk from "conservatives" of the George Weigel/Karl Keating school of how traditionalists have enshrined the 1950s as the "golden age" of Catholicism, those of their ilk have done precisely the same with the late 1980s and the 1990s. I can't remember, for example, the last time I read a piece by Weigel in which he didn't take the time to remind us all that he was friends with JP2, or that he "understood" what JP2 really meant in his teachings. It is as it is perpetually 1998 for these people, and if we can just wait out the Francis/Bergoglio papacy, surely, surely, a saner man will become pope and steer us back to the JP2 era and the "new springtime" can blossom once again.

    It is a bitter pill to swallow, I will admit, to have to look back on everything you were told to believe during the last 30 years and realize that, no, the current crisis in the Church wasn't caused by Francis, but instead had its roots decades earlier, with JP2 and Benedict merely doing their best to paper over the problems in the name of avoiding schism. However uncomfortable this realization makes us, we must acknowledge it and stop looking to Rome to intervene every time liturgical anarchy is allowed to reign supreme; it is clear that liturgy really isn't a priority in Rome and hasn't been in decades.

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    cs LB236 • a month ago

    " My heart tells me this", or " My heart likes this parish Mass better than this one", or " Do what your heart is saying."

    I cannot tell you how many times I heard these statements from well meaning Catholic religious, and Catholic laity.

    One of the main reasons we attend TLM is because at the TLM, is because there is pure Truth found at this holiest of holy Masses. It is not about, what do I get from the Mass, or " Let me count the ways to assist in a lay function at the Mass."

    So many N.O. church goers, talk about the need for the littleness of St. Theresa when I offer my disquieted soul after having attend a N.O. Mass. " Just offer it up", they say.
    But doesn't one require to be spiritually fed? I know I do. With what I have to deal with, and it pails to many others:
    I can easily ' go off the rails', to those lines at the top of my post.

    Poor JP ll. His life saw so much sadness, so much injustice. I'd like to think he realized the gravity of his errors, gave the Church the FSSP, and spoke of the importance of sacrifice/ The Cross, was firm on issues of faith and morals. The fear of disunity in the Church was probably a major temptation into his lack of firmness for Tradition. Who knows?
    But, I agree, we had better recognize ' a few things' here, because I don't think the Church could take another JP 11 or Benedict XVl.

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    LB236 cs • a month ago

    So many N.O. church goers, talk about the need for the littleness of St. Theresa when I offer my disquieted soul after having attend a N.O. Mass. " Just offer it up", they say.

    In my experience, cs, "offer it up" is code for "accept whatever pablum we give you without complaining, because actually fixing the problem requires work and/or p*ssing off the big money members of the parish".

    It's a ludicrous, lazy response. What father in his right mind would accept from his son's pediatrician the response "just tell the boy to offer it up" if he's coughing up blood and in serious danger of death? Yet countless Catholics in the pews of the average new rite parish are being spiritually killed by mediocrity and irreverence, and the response of far too many within the Church is simply "meh". Unacceptable.

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    cs LB236 • a month ago

    Thank you so much! I really needed to hear that. I never leave a conversation regarding this topic very well. I Think people believe as long as “Jesus comes to me at Mass” what difference does this all make? In fact one gal told me her priest said during the homily, “. As long as you show up, Jesus shows up.” ???????? She does “loves” this priest.

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    SENDTHYHOLYANGELS cs • a month ago

    “As long as you show up, Jesus shows up.”

    Oh my gosh, comments like this from a priest just drive me
    insane. That's how you feed your sheep? How does that do
    anything for their soul? I was talking to someone at my
    daughter's wake who had lost his wife due to a massive heart
    attack. He said that their minister (Protestant) told him
    "Well, you can go fast or you can go slow."
    That's about on par with that statement that you quoted above.
    Are these priests (some) just so "modernized" and/or Protestant now that they do not even know/understand their "sheep" NEED some spiritual food?
    The last NO Mass I went to the priest talked about birthday
    parties in his homily. It could have literally been given by a
    10 year old boy with no spiritual formation at all. It makes me
    just want to SCREAM!

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    Julie in the Desert SENDTHYHOLYANGELS • a month ago

    "Are these priests (some) just so "modernized" and/or Protestant now that they do not even know/understand their "sheep" NEED some spiritual food?"

    Unfortunately, its all about "accompaniment" now.

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    Tip Top Julie in the Desert • 22 days ago

    This is the thing...the novus ordo make you Protestant as well as lazy and stupid. And all the while, they don't even know it....like the frog in water slowing being boiled.

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    SENDTHYHOLYANGELS Julie in the Desert • a month ago

    Yep! Just walking up that wide road with all their followers and
    plunging right off the cliff. :(

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    More Tea Vicar? cs • a month ago

    Priests - such as the one you described - are more like unrequited, frustrated TV presenters who love keeping the refrigerator door open longer because the light stays on and the milk goes off - LOL! There is one such priest in my Parish who comes out with plenty of stodgy crud-muffins during a Homily and then some during the Mass.

    Whenever his clip mic ain't working, he just has to say something or other, no matter how random it is or sounds, instead of keeping calm, keeping quiet and carrying on! Sheesh!

    When it comes to Traditional Latin Mass (which I truly love and miss attending, and haven't been able to since my fiancé died in 2016), I too never leave a conversation regarding this topic very well. You get some elderly know-it-all Church of Nice types who think that it is a 'novelty'; our maturity as adults is questioned condescendingly and - here's the stinker - when I say that there are young children, teenagers and young adults who make up the most part of attending TLM, they say 'oh, they are only there for curiosity.'

    The last remark made might be true to a certain extent BUT their curiosity has brought them back to TLM week after week with little effort on the part of parents (as far as the children are concerned) or the teenagers and young adults who don't fidget or look like pork sausages on an Imam's frying pan (like they do at a Novus Ordo).

    I whispered to my sister before Mass began (recently) that the TLM is far less stressful and more quiet and it would be great if she came with me to one… she immediately shot back at me and said she didn't like it when she was at Oxford and that the Dominicans celebrated Mass with no *ahem!* ''fripperies'' - what I took from the mention of that word ''fripperies'' was what she (allegedly) observed at TLM with the priest making the Sign of the Cross several times over the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ etc.

    LOL! I thought to myself that she must have X Ray vision because those sacred gestures (fripperies, in her SJW vocabulary) take place whilst the celebrant faces Ad Orientem - which, on her personal planet, is the priest turning his back on the people!

    I shot back at her and said, in a hissed whisper ''They are NOT fripperies! They are part of worship!'' She reiterated her preference for the Dominicans and I again hissed: 'I. DON'T CARE!'

    At long last, I got the last word because she never said another word about it.

    Heck, if there was a word to describe the shoddy train wreck and freeway pile-up that is the Novus Ordo and the decades of priests who thought they were at BBC Television Centre and not worshiping Almighty God at Mass - it is 'FRIPPERIES'! Boy, the fripperies! They are legion.

    I have sent countless prayer petitions have been posted to shrines that I will be able to once more regularly attend TLM. It is not only important to my faith but it is an essential means of levelling out the often-overwhelming 'sensory overload' out there … and availing of the much-needed tranquility and stress-free time with something 'God-centred' that is currently woefully deficient. Time at the TLM had always helped me manage my ASD (Autistic Spectrum Disorder). Maybe I have been asked by God to 'offer up' this suffering and longing for this prayer to be answered for a greater good in the meantime. It does not stop my determination, though.

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      cs More Tea Vicar? • a month ago

      Well hello there More Tea Vicar! Good to hear from you. I always appreciated your posts.

      Not to long ago, a very well intended priest told me I must go to Rome, it is beautiful, etc.
      I wrinkled my nose and shook my head, no'. I much prefere to go straight away and see the Face of God at Manepello and then on to England for a pilgrimage of the English Catholic Martyrs, I told him.

      The crosses offered up to God by and many are such an act of humility, an act of great love for our Lord.
      Your two last sentences are so heart rendering. Perhaps a quiet moment in the beatuiful English countryside
      with a rosary in hand shall provide that tranquilty. God knows and hears you.

      My prayers for you and for your dear sis.

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      More Tea Vicar? cs • 25 days ago

      Hello to you, cs! It's great to hear from you, too, and I am really encouraged and strengthened by your reply. God bless you!

      It's always good to know that those (like yourself) who are either regulars (or, like me, banished) from CM are fighting the good fight on other independent Catholic Media com boxes. This is what it should be about: helping one another to find manageable ways to bear our crosses in these crazy times in the Church.

      I read about Manopello and saw pictures of Pope Benedict XVI pray there before the Face of God. That would surely be a sight for sore eyes.

      The best I can manage at the moment is the local park where I take my dog, from time to time, and manage a decade or two of the Holy Rosary when it is quiet at certain times of the day. My High Functioning Autism plus other chronic medical conditions drives up the anxiety levels and makes the prospect of travelling on public transport by myself nearly impossible as well as that overwhelming frustration. My late beloved was helping me with this until his untimely death and … back to square one.

      One year, when his car was out of order, he went to a vehicle hire company near the Airport to hire a car but was told that only small white vans were available for the Easter Weekend. It didn't put him off one bit because he went ahead and hired one to drive us to the Easter Triduum at the Manchester Oratory!

      Those memories are far more precious than any jewel.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Own comment: 

    Any defence of the Novus Ordo Missae, no matter how well camouflaged, is at its heart an attack on authentic Catholicism.

    I have yet to come across an argument in favour of the Novus Ordo which is not in and on itself an attack on the doctrines of the Church or the practice of Her Holy Faith.