Dear Bishop Barron:
I have written many Letters to the Editor in my lifetime to the New York Times and to the Wall Street Journal — bona fide credentials of my moderate and centrist persona — and now I feel compelled to write this letter to you to respond to your recent article called “The Evangelical Path of Word on Fire”. I am a Catholic priest, soon to be an octogenarian. It would seem more prudent at this time in my life to lay aside those things that threaten the peace and equanimity that one should strive for at this stage of my life. But alas, my Southern Italian genetic makeup does not make it easy to live a laid-back life at this time when I should give oneself over to contemplation and remembrance of things past.
I have followed your career in the Church for some years now, with a good deal of admiration for your stand against what you call liberal Catholicism. St. John Henry Newman, that great opponent of liberalism in religion, would approve of your battle against “beige Catholicism”. Your many instructional DVDs show clearly that you understand the important role of Beauty in the Catholic faith. You are obviously of man of real faith who loves the Church.
Your brief article refers to two types of Catholics that manifest themselves at this time and that you consider to be aberrant, for very different reasons, from your understanding of Catholicism , which you speak about as Evangelical Catholicism. The first is “liberal Catholicism”, which has predominated since the years after the Second Vatican Council. You describe this type of Catholicism as “culturally accommodating…unsure of itself..a Church that had allowed its distinctive colors to be muted and its sharp edges to be dulled.” You agree that, in the words of Cardinal George, that liberal Catholicism is “a spent project”.
You go on to criticize what Cardinal George called “Conservative Catholicism” that “takes refuge in earlier cultural forms of faith expression and absolutizes them for all times and all places”. But the main part of your article deals with a movement that has arisen in the past several years.
“In recent years, a fiercely traditionalist movement has emerged within American Catholicism, finding a home particularly in the social media space. It has come about partly, as a reaction to the same beige Catholicism that I have criticized, but its ferocity is due to the scandals that have shaken that Church the past thirty years, especially the McCarrick situation. In their anger and frustration, some of it justified, these arch-traditionalists Catholics have become nostalgic for the Church of the pre-conciliar period and antipathetic toward the Second Vatican Council itself, Pope John XXIII, Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II, and particularly our present Holy Father.”
You conclude that the attitude of these radical Traditionalists are leading to their “stepping outside the confines of the Church”. You characterize this type of Catholicism as “self-devouring”, the manifestation of which is their constant anger at anyone who dares to challenge them.
I think that you see yourself as a Via Media between Conservative and Liberal Catholics. But I must caution you about espousing any Via Media, as Cardinal Newman himself would caution you from his own experience with this way of thinking. The problem is not your espousal of a vigorous Evangelical Catholicism. The problem is that you are a child not merely of the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council, but also and more importantly you are a product of the Novus Ordo world. Your understanding of the Liturgy, “the summit toward which the activity of the church is directed,” is based on a form of the Mass that is both a radical break with the Tradition and also a product of the 1960s, a form that has relevance now only to the two generations that followed the Council. Surely one of the reasons for the precipitous decline in regular Mass attendance — in some diocese less that 15% — is that for those young men and women growing up now the Novus Ordo Mass has no relevance to what they are seeking spiritually. They are seeking the Bread and Wine of heaven, not the product of a blender that looks and tastes like baby food.
You are too young to have had any experience of the Church before the Second Vatican Council. You were six years old when the Council ended. You were a small child when the constant liturgical changes were shaking the Church, and you were only 11 when the Novus Ordo Missal of St. Paul VI was promulgated and the Traditional Roman Mass of at least 1500 years was suppressed. What little you heard about the Traditional Mass was highly filtered by those who welcomed the suppression of the Traditional Mass and the imposition of a liturgical form never seen before in the Catholic Church. I remember quite well CCD teachers who thought it their duty to suppress all reference to the Traditional Mass and to a belief in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and to deny that the Mass is a true and real Sacrifice.
Yours is the generation for which the Traditional Liturgy was “canceled”. Cancel culture, so au courant right now, was anticipated years ago in the immediate post-Conciliar age with regard to the liturgical life of the Church. But “cancellation” cannot work in a Church that is connected to eternity and the Eternal God. My own discovery of the Traditional Roman Mass was a shattering spiritual experience in my life as a priest that bore much good fruit in my ministry and that filled me with a joy that nothing can take away. The many seminarians and young priests who are attracted by the Traditional Mass are fortunate in that they are of a generation for whom the Traditional Mass was un-cancelled by authority. These men, and many women, both religious and lay, have found a pearl of great price and that makes them very happy, spiritually happy, indeed.
I deplore the negativity of so many who call themselves Traditional Catholics. Your understanding of Traditional Catholics at least in part from those whose rantings you often see on social media who seem to be living in an alternative universe and are angry at the Church and angry about everything that makes up this post-modern world in which we live. But I would suggest that these malcontents are not Traditional Catholics at all but what I call Radicals. They confuse adherence to the Traditional Roman Mass with a blanket condemnation of the present parlous condition of our society and, sadly, a condemnation of all who lead the Catholic Church today. You are right in saying that these Catholics — who yet are not to be condemned but prayed for within the charity of our Lord — are often not interested in Evangelization, which is a fundamental imperative for the Church given to her by our Lord.
But you must see — and here again your sitz im leben puts you at a real disadvantage — that much of their angst is due to the turmoil within the Church and society of the past fifty years. You did not experience, as did I, the collapse of religious education in the post-Conciliar period, the collapse of the Religious Orders, and the near collapse of the priesthood. The bringing to light — that light fought against by those chosen by Christ to lead his Church — of the gross and systemic sexual corruption of the clergy confirmed for many Catholics that something had gone terribly wrong in the years after the Second Vatican Council. In this way the distrust of the hierarchy and clergy by so many Catholics is manifest in a special way by those you call arch-traditionalist Catholics.
Yes, Evangelization is the central issue. But as Pope Benedict XVI knew, you cannot evangelize the world with a Novus Ordo Mass whose roots and rationale are locked in the 1960s. That is why he issued the Motu Proprio that un-cancelled the Traditional Roman Mass. It is indeed ironic that you who understand so well the role of beauty in the Christian faith, you who understand that one of the names of God is Beauty, refuse to acknowledge that the very heart of the Church’s liturgical life has been emptied out by the disastrous reforms after the Council that had little to do with Sacrosanctum Concilium and everything to do with those with itching ears and a puffed up sense of their own intelligence and afflicted with the mid-century hatred of the past combined with a grossly sentimental understanding of the Christian faith — they had never heard that Newman called sentimentality the acid of religion — nearly destroyed the organic whole of the Liturgy of the Catholic Church.
Now when you read that last paragraph you will be tempted to write me off as another RadTrad. But I am not. I am a happy man who loves the Catholic Church and her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I rejoice that so many young seminarians and priest are discovering for themselves the beauty and depth of the Traditional Roman Mass. I rejoice that so many Catholic families have discovered what worship of God means as they experience it in the Traditional Roman Mass. And these people are truly evangelical. They do not take the attitude that “we have found what we like and what suits us and the rest of the Church can go to hell”. Not at all. They are joyous and welcoming, and they are evangelical in the truest sense. If you met them you would like them, and you would see that they want the same thing as you do: to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ throughout a world that so needs to hear this Good News.
In today’s New York Times there is an Op-Ed called “Influencers are the New Televangelists.” It is written by a woman who describes what she and many others, especially women, have plugged into on the internet: a “gospel (that is) an accessible combination of self-care, activism and tongue in cheek Christianity (“Jesus loves me this I know, for he gave me Lexapro.”) The author describes her realization, strengthened by what she has been going through in the pandemic, how the pandemic “has opened inside me a profound yearning for reverence, humility and awe.” She ends her piece with these words: “Contrary to what you might have seen on Instagram, our purpose is not to optimize our one wild and precious life. It’s time to search for meaning beyond the electric church that keeps us addicted to our phones and alienated from our closest kin.” And she asks: “May we actually need to go to something like church?”
I would say to her that going to a typical Catholic parish Mass on Sunday is most probably not where you find reverence, humility and awe. There you will most probably see a man standing at table in funny clothes claiming to be speaking to God while facing the people to whom he is not speaking. You would find a layman or a laywoman doing readings that often mean very little to those listening. You would encounter music that is woefully mediocre and sentimental that could not possibly inspire reverence and awe. You would listen to a sermon that consists of an opening joke to get the people convinced that what else will be said is not serious, followed by a summary of the day’s gospel, and a conclusion that is summarized in “have a good day”. You would see people in the pews who are dressed not for an experience of awe and reverence but rather to go to an informal lunch after Mass. You would see little that could not be streamed and therefore has little to do with the terrible fact of reality.
Bishop Barron, I think you ought to write less and talk less and get out more and meet people. And by meeting people I do not mean leading conferences and giving important talks. I mean listening to not only your fans but to all sorts and conditions of men and women, and I would hope that you would venture even to sit “in choir” in a parish in your diocese that offers the Traditional Roman Mass and to see what you see and hear what you hear. But you must put aside your mid-century prejudices that you mistake for a new manifestation of Truth.
The big advantage of the Traditional Roman Mass is that you can relax. You don’t have to be on stage. You don’t have to deliver a brilliant sermon. You don’t have make the Mass relevant to the congregation. You just have to be willing to “play in the fields of the Lord.”
Oremus pro invicem.
Father Richard Gennaro Cipolla
The above comes from a March 10 posting on Rorate Caeli.
Reading this letter to Bishop Barron from Fr. Richard Cipolla had me in tears. Tears of joy. Fr. Cipolla states exactly how I feel, as though he knows my heart and soul. I can only say a resounding “Amen.”
Well said, Fr. Cipolla!
The liturgy at 90% or more of Novus Ordo parishes is boringly bland and unconvincing about the sincerity of faith; it’s hollow and even embarrassing. However, that doesn’t mean that returning to the TLM is the answer. Reverent novus ordo Mass is the path forward for the vast majority of the Church. That means N.O. parishes can learn from a reverent celebration of the TLM about how to celebrate Mass worthily and fittingly, but it doesn’t mean abandoning Vatican II nor the new Mass. The TLM can be celebrated poorly, too, by the way. The problem with liturgical renewal, I believe, is that it has been dominated by people who were de facto atheists and wanted to recreate the Mass in the image of the world when all that was needed were some minor accommodations and adaptations to people of the modern age. When renewal is steered and implemented by clergy and laity of sincere faith and realistic understanding of the world as it currently is and people as they are, it produces the good fruit of reverent and relevant worship, which in turn produces the good fruit of deepened conversion and holiness.
I’ve seen traditionalist N.O. parish pastors attempt to implement ad orientem and TLM visuals at N.O. Masses with disastrous results in the parish because they did so from an elitist standpoint in which they mistakenly believed they didn’t have to meet people where they are at. They believed the false narrative that if people would just experience the TLM or ad orientem they will be mesmerized and flock to the parish. Nope. It had the opposite effect. And then the disillusioned pastors felt crucified and became even more arrogant and reactionary.
Meeting people where they were at certainly wasn’t done with the Novus Ordo!
I think you miss the point. Those who imposed the new liturgy onto the laity did so without any EMPATHY for those in the pews. Like all revolutionaries, they took a to hell with you, take it or leave it attitude. Further they did not know how to create a literary better than the old one. We were given something banal not something that came not from the hand of a master of language like Luther or Cranmer, but something deliberately lacking any masters touch. American, but nothing really, really good like Leonard Bernstein’s “ West Side Story, which incorporated Europe’s music with the creole of New York City. In short, just plaIn DULL! And, on top of that, we had priests most of whom were trying to do stand-up though most of them lacked the ability to give a good sermon.
Loved reading this excellent article! I am much older, and deeply appreciate Fr. Cipolla’s point of view– same exactly, as my own! I will print this article, show it to others, and save it. A treasure!
This is a long piece. I have yet to get through it entirely. So far, it says many good things. But I had to stop at his calling the Ordinary Form “stuck in the 1960s”. It is not. It is a reclamation of a far ancient past Mass than the mass he favors. Furthermore, if one is “stuck” in 1964, said in a gratuitous and condescending way, then what can be said of those who are stuck in 1664?
I am happy for him, and for all people, who find God more present in a Mass set in those times. Even though I am not one of them, I honor those of you who are. But the only thing I’m stuck on is his description of the Mass of my Life.
YFC– why not read the whole article — you might like it a lot. As for the remarks on the Novus Ordo Missae– many people might not get what Fr. Cipolla is saying, until they really think about it… he is actually describing the strange, unusual, “1960s” circumstances surrounding what produced the Novus Ordo in 1969– if you read a lot about the history of this situation, you will see what the priest is saying… or if you are old enough to recall what happened, when the Catholic Church shockingly dumped her beautiful, holy, centuries-old, timeless Latin Mass, and replaced it with the strange new “modernized” vernacular one– very shocking, hardly a Mass at all– very “ecumenical”– (“protestantized”– and written by 6 noted Protestant clergy– mostly Lutherans)– you will see what Fr. Cipolla is saying… the Novus Ordo is a sort of modernized, ecumenical liturgy, and reflects the spirit of the 1960s, and the Church’s ecumenical Council… well, being “ecumenical,” with brotherly love, is very kind. But it was a terrible shock to me, and to many– the first, very strange day, of the Novus Ordo Missae– when Father marched silently into Mass, no altar boys, choir and organist silent, (no music until we could figure out what to do)– and Father in strange, new floor-length vestments, stood in front of a new, heavy, Protestant-type “table altar,” placed directly in front of the High Altar– Father turned around awkwardly and faced us, and gave us a typical Protestant minister’s Pauline greeting (from the Novus Ordo liturgy) … and he started Mass– and it went on, from there… this “Mass” was hardly recognizable. People then wondered if the Consecration was valid– yes, it was. But our Catholic Mass was very strangely butchered. All for ecumenism? What did the theologians make of it? What happened to Aquinas? And from then on– lots of strange new things, never before heard of, came out of Rome– some new things were claimed to be “ancient” liturgical practices, never before heard of, to try out in the new liturgy. And some of the new things to try, had sources in non-Catholic rites. Very strange. Rome never did such weird things before… and used to be so exacting and strict. Well, for myself, I just try to do my best, and go to Mass– both forms– and that’s all one can do. God is there, waiting for us– regardless.
I rarely agree with YFC. Yet, I found it unfortunate that in a letter that was thoughtful, largely accurate and thought-provoking that Father described the Ordinary Form of the Mass as “a Novus Ordo Mass whose roots and rationale are locked in the 1960s.” In some parishes, it does seem that Masses are stuck in the 60’s and 70’s. But, that is not true in many parishes. I’ve experienced beautifully, reverently celebrated Masses in the Ordinary Form. Too rarely, but they do exist.
And, YFC, can you provide any basis for your claim that the Ordinary Form Mass has a more “far ancient past” than the Extraordinary Form?
They share the same ancient past.
As in many things Catholic, this is a matter of both/and, not either/or. The Mass may be celebrated both ways. Even the Ordinary Form/”Novus Ordo” Mass can be celebrated ad orientem, with priest and people facing the same direction, (liturgical) East.
A long and interesting letter from Fr, Cipolla. Unlike Bishop Barron, I grew up in in the pre-conciliar Church and have many memories of the latin liturgy and parish life. Sadly, many now promoting the TLM, including Fr. Cipolla, appear to have not read or have forgotten Pope Benedict XVI’s motu propio, Summorum Pontificum, which permits the celebration of the TLM. Pope Benedict clearly articulated in this motu propio that neither form – ordinary or extraordinary- of the Holy Mass is better than the other. My experience with many people promoting the TLM also assert that Vatican Council II was not licit. This is simply not true and all of the Popes since the council have acknowledged its licitness, including Pope Benedict XVI. Many devout Catholics support Bishop Barron because he clearly articulates a vision of the Church which allows for both forms of the liturgy and is aligned with the teachings of the Church as promulgated by Vatican II.
“My experience with many people promoting the TLM also assert that Vatican Council II was not licit.” uh we admit that it is licit we just ask you admit it failed on a galactic level. Ask your self has the Church in the West improved by any measure since Vatican 2.
Vatican II did not fail. You’re asserting causation without demonstrating the fact. Fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc.
Obviously I cannot reason with someone who is completely blind to the destruction in the wake of that failed Council. I cannot help or reason with you.. go back to your rainbow flag and felt banner masses
Bohemond, you say that Vatican II failed. Failed at what? What do you think it was supposed to do? You are also assuming that whatever “destruction” you feel happened in the wake of Vatican II would not have occurred if Vatican Ii had not occurred. What? and Why?
I would concentrate more on how to purify the Church (through prayer, sacrifice, good example) than blaming and criticizing the Council. It makes people defensive. It makes you look unfaithful.
There is a story about a bishop who asked a priest how to improve the faith lives of those in his diocese. The priest told him the thing that would improve their faith lives was his canonization. It works the other way, too. Priests are edified by true believers who practice the faith in its totality.
Anon wasn’t the Council “the new Springtime of Evangelization;” meanwhile in the West the Church’s is on its knees. The main problem from the effects of the Council is that instead trying to convert the world, the Church now tries to get along with the world.
“I would concentrate more on how to purify the Church (through prayer, sacrifice, good example).” Well, we have been doing this for decades, those who refuse to admit the utter destruction that has happened since the Council there is nothing I can say or do.
bohemond, I never heard Vatican Council II called “the new Springtime of Evangelization”. I think that was the phrase “new Springtime” was used by St. John Paul II used about the new millennium. And “new evangelization” was used by Pope Benedict XVI to mean re-evangelizing Catholics.
I agree that our missionary fervor is not as good as it was before. i have noticed that evangelical Christians are much more fervent in evangelization because they believe that you must know the Name of Jesus to be saved. I do pray for a return to a time of missionary fervor, But I also see a lot going on compared to 20-30 years ago.
I have seen prayer, sacrifice and good example work often and well. God does not let you see the fruit of your prayer, usually. Then, like springtime, there are many buds, flowers and fruits. “God gives the growth.” See 1Cor 3:5-9
bohemond, you must be under 60. When you read books from before Vatican II or Latin Missals, you must remember that these were the ideals. I don’t think that Vatican II failed at all. Some people failed Vatican II and the Church by using it as an excuse to do things that they should not do.
You might like a return or you may just think you would like a return. I think that the Church in the West improved in many ways because of Vatican II, She lost a lot since Vatican II but not because of Vatican II. Praise to Jesus and Mary much of what was lost has returned.
I would like you to explain to me where the Church improved in the West since Vatican 2? because I really want to know. You may not blame the council but I do.
Before Vatican II: people did not pay much attention at Mass. A lot of people prayed their rosaries. (This continued after as well.)
Suicides could not be buried in a Catholic cemetery People did not look up to priests-they were gossiped about and rumors of tunnels between the rectory and the convent were told. They were considered imbibers and hypocrites. (This is not universally true.) People were also intimidated by priests. People rushed to get their babies baptized so they would not go to hell or limbo. They thought Protestants went to hell. They were told that reading the Bible was a sin. Reading Canon law was a sin. Nothing was ever explained to them. They thought they would go to hell if they ate meat on Wednesday and Fridays, eventually it was just Fridays. Books were banned, (not entirely bad). You would go to hell if you saw a bad movie or if you went to a dance and got to close to someone of the opposite sex (eventually that lessened). Everything was fear of God but not the way of the Holy Spirit but of anxiety. God was the spy in the sky who was just waiting and watching for you to forget a precept. You could not take communion if you had a morning medicine. You were always afraid of being put in hell or Purgatory. People really did not hope in the Lord.
Bohemond – you’re absolutely right to blame the Second Vatican Council. It introduced all kinds of heresies and changed Catholic teachings — as Anonymous unwittingly points out in her reply to you. It didn’t do it directly, but did so by subtly changing things without declaring them dogmatically.
For just one example, it has always been taught that there is no salvation outside the Church. This was solemnly declared and defined by ecumenical councils and ex cathedra by many Popes. So yes, it was (and still is true because dogma and infallible teaching can never change) that Protestants cannot enter heaven unless they convert. The papal bull Unam Sanctam is one such example of dogmatic ex cathedra teaching by a Pope.
Another is the ecumenical Council of Florence (1441) “The most Holy Roman Church firmly believes, professes and preaches that none of those existing outside the Catholic Church, not only pagans, but also Jews and heretics and schismatics, can have a share in life eternal; but that they will go into the ‘eternal fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels’ (Matthew 25:41), unless before death they are joined with Her; and that so important is the unity of this ecclesiastical body that only those remaining within this unity can profit by the sacraments of the Church unto salvation, and they alone can receive an eternal recompense for their fasts, their almsgivings, their other works of Christian piety and the duties of a Christian soldier. No one, let his almsgiving be as great as it may, no one, even if he pour out his blood for the Name of Christ, can be saved, unless he remain within the bosom and the unity of the Catholic Church.”
That is just one teaching that has been “changed” since V2.
When all of Catholic teaching and dogma lines up and agrees from 1965 back to the beginning of the Church, and the Church claims that it has suddenly changed, there is the schism. It is not with those who solemnly respect and maintain agreement with 1900 years of Catholic dogma.
So in way, Anon is correct about the sin of schism. It’s just that the schismatics are those who claim that what the Church taught before can somehow be superseded by a “new” dogma. It can’t.
Fred Bennet, there is no salvation outside the Church. That does not mean that Protestants cannot enter Heaven. It means exactly what it says. Do not add things to it.
It has not been changed. But a heretic and schismatic has to have at one time been Catholic.
The schism is from those who leave union with the Bishop of Rome.
Take the sedevacantists. Those who left the Catholic Church are in mortal sin. Their children who have been raised in a schismatic church, recognize the Truth of the Faith but do not know that they are in a schismatic church, are not. however, once they hear the Truth and recognize that they are in an irregular parish, they need to convert.
bohemond, I’m glad you recognize the licitness of the Second Vatican Council. Have the read the Council documents themselves?
It’s the implementation of the Council that failed catastrophically. You exaggerate to say it failed on a galactic level. It failed on a planetary level.
And, there are some measures of Church improvement since the Second Vatican Council. Catholic Church growth in Africa is just one example.
Most Catholics acknowledge massive failures after the Council. Yet, we should stop arguing among ourselves and move forward. We should point to Christ and His Church, the Catholic Faith which comes to us from Scripture and Tradition. This is especially important when so many, even clergy, have become apostate. The more than 350 priests who are publicly calling for disobedience and plan to “bless” sodomy are happy when faithful Catholics are distracted and relitigating Vatican II. Let’s pray fervently and reverently at whatever form of Mass we attend. And, work for the restoration of the Church.
“Yet, we should stop arguing among ourselves and move forward” OK but in what direction… I do think we are headed towards schism… reason? look at the Church in Germany. Maybe its necessary for it to happen in order to purify the Church, for all intents and purposes they do not believe in the same Faith I do.
I am not headed toward schism. That is a mortal sin.
Truth is not a mortal sin, tell me in all seriousness that the Church in Germany is not in a functioning schism
I can”t declare it is schism. Some may be in error.
“I am not headed toward schism. That is a mortal sin.”
What’s a “mortal sin?” Do we still have those in the Conciliar Church?
I mean other than not wearing a mask, or running the A/C too much.
Those sins will obviously send you to Hell. Oh wait … um … whatever that place is that we don’t really believe exists anymore. (It’s empty, right Bp. Barron?)
Whew! This is all so confusing.
Bishop Barron never ever said hell was empty.
There is one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Any other belief is heresy.
Most Catholic churches with the Ordinary or Extraordinary Masses, have pamphlets to examine one’s conscience, or have prayer books for sale that do. Most are pretty thorough. I do not know if this will be posted, but I just watched a you tube biography of Archbishop Marcel Lefebre, One thing it stated is that some who supposedly came from the Vatican to examine the St. Pius X seminaries scandalized some Pius X seminarians by denying the actual resurrection of the Lord Jesus and other such miracles. Whether it happened or not, I do not know, but similar things have happened to me and others.
The Vatican II Council did not cause the societal changes that have occurred mainly in Western democracies and are now spreading elsewhere in the world. The role of women, birth control, civil rights efforts and changes in sexual mores would have occurred regardless of the council. People who believe otherwise are engaging in magical thinking. God sometimes works in ways that we may not understand and certainly do not control.
I am concerned that quotes from the Catechism of the Catholic Church are not allowed here. Too long? Copyright issues?
Anne TE: Interesting. When have you met with Vatican officials and discussed the resurrection of Christ? Most lay people do not have these opportunities. If Vatican officials visiting Levbre’s seminary stated that the miracles and the Resurrection did not occur, which I highly doubt, then these officials are not truly Catholic.
Martin, I have never met with any Vatican officials. The report I mentioned was in a biography on line about Archbishop Lefebvre.
As far as some of my personal bad experiences, a Catholic priest once told me in a Bible class – when I questioned him about the Lord Jesus prophesying the fall of Jerusalem — that some theologians thought St. Luke was anti-Semitic, and that St. Luke wrote that prophecy after it happened. A Carmelite friend of mine showed me where that priest was totally wrong. I avoided that priest’s masses after that, but now he is old and a monsignor. If he has changed his mind, I don’t know
I should have said a Third Order Carmelite friend, but there is never enough space to fully explain certain things. I am really tired of all this. Got to take a break from it. Wish I did not get so much garbage in my inbox too.
This line in the post of Anonymous March 21, 2021 at 2:13 pm makes a lot of sense to me: “I think that the Church in the West improved in many ways because of Vatican II, She lost a lot since Vatican II but not because of Vatican II.” I have also enjoyed the other various perspectives in these comm-boxes.
I am not a fan of Latin. During the years I took Latin in Catholic HS, we had a saying, “Latin is dead, dead as can be; first it killed the Romans, now it’s killing me.” But even so, I was at a novus ordo Sunday Mass in my parish when everything snapped: constant talking, inappropriately dressed women cantors, banal songs, tepid sermon. Then the Eucharistic Ministers went up to the altar, high-fiving each other because after all they needed to give the sign of peace to their cohorts as they left the pews. Did they not understand what they were going to do in a few moments? I was fed up. Next Sunday I drove a ways and went to my first Traditional Latin Mass in over 50 years. I had with me my father’s small Latin/English missal from the 40’s and I could follow the Mass perfectly. The singing was angelic. No one talked–before, during or after Mass–until we were outside the sanctuary. I thought I as in heaven. That, Bishop Barron, is why you do not understand Traditionalists–we love the reverence, the worship of Our Lord in silence, the prayerful atmosphere. We can’t get that in our NO parishes. Not now anyway. And I’m too old to wait for it to happen–I’ll be dead by then.
That stuff does not go on in my parish and when I travelled I rarely saw it, unless it was Easter or Christmas when more people who don’t usually attend Mass come.
Liturgy is the highest prayer of the Church.
It is also the most powerful form of catechesis and evangelization.
If you truly wast to know the enduring Faith of the Church, there is no better way than simply attending the TLM with a good missal. Sit quietly and absorb what is happening with the Missal as your guide. Unfortunately, the Novus Ordo was a modernist product that more often than not actually obscures the true Faith.
The Novus Ordo is the ordinary form of the Mass. It is just as valid as the TLM, and it is more relatable to modern-day people.
With the Crucifix on the altar and the priest facing the people while saying Mass, I feel like I am at the Last Supper and at the foot of the Cross at the same time, which is what the Mass is; since God is not constrained by time, time collapses (Father Spitzer S.J.) around the Last Supper and the Sacrifice of the Crucifixtion at the same instant and we spiritually become actually present at both events ( the ultimate sacrifice feeling as we lay the sacrifice of our lives to God, alongside the Sacrifice of Jesus on the cross). Having been raised in the 50’s as well as the 60’s, I have experienced both forms and have been reverent under both; but having an audible, translated presentation of the Mass, with the Last Supper feel, means a lot too me.