kaCHING! Say da magic woid, winnahunnud dahlahsevery time certain shibboleths come up, so let's just count the pay-out for this author:
- adherents to the extraordinary rite belittled as shrill, close-minded minority? Kaching!
- alleged lack of collegiality on part of Pope who consulted with bishops worldwide for roughly a year? Kaching!
- Pope denounced as old and out of touch? Kaching!
- finding it offensive to pray for conversion of Jews --when interior conversion is what we pray for for ourselves, too, on a daily basis? Kaching!
- Discussing the old term "perfidious" Jews without explaining that the Latin means simply "unbelieving," and implies no "value judgment"? Kaching!
- concern that faithful can't understand Latin & priests can't read it? Even though the faithful follow along in a side-by-side translation missal; the Church has never been filled with Latin scholars; and anyone who can read a Romance language can make his way through the Latin, and with study can catch up? Kaching!
- It'll destroy the unity of the Church if we don't all pray the precise same way --even though liturgical liberals aren't known for following rubrics even of the ordinary rite of the Mass? Kaching!
- the expression "back to the people"? Baaaap. Aww, too bad, you missed one.
An almost perfect score. Meanwhile, all you need to know about the Pope's decision is this one line:
Let us generously open our hearts and make room for everything that the faith itself allows.
How can something that was the holiest treasure of the Church for several hundred years be tossed out? It's a matter of letting the faithful have full access to the Church's treasury --like reading the Bible, the Fathers & contemporary authors instead of only contemporary authors.
The somewhat interesting objection the author makes is that the extraordinary and ordinary forms of the Roman Rite are too different to be considered merely different uses of the same rite. I'm no liturgist, but this contention allows me to roll out a controversial idea of my own.
I came into the Church in 1987 in Rome, so my first --and still normative-- experience of the Mass was a Novus Ordo mass celebrated solemnly and according to rubric in Latin on Sundays and Italian or Spanish on weekdays. The Legionary priest who prepared me for Baptism taught me to follow the Mass --even one celebrated in English-- with a missal. The value of the missal is not simply pragmatic, enabling you to follow if you don't know the language; it's meant as a tool for full participation in the liturgy, which is the prayer of the whole Church. The old usage had it that we "assist" at Mass rather than attending, and the missal helps us to truly pray the Mass ourselves, allowing ourselves to be drawn into the liturgy rather than listening to it as a mere witness or audience (and on a day when you're distracted, focusing on the words in the missal can help you focus on God instead of on what other people have the effrontery to wear or allow their toddlers to do).
Six years after my baptism I attended my first extraordinary rite Mass at the behest of the Traditionalist Mr. W., and I must say it left me a bit flat, as the reality didn't meet up to the build-up I'd heard for years about the beauty and solemnity of the old usage. I was expecting something different, something --well, extraordinary-- and it was "just" the Mass. The same basic prayers, the same structure --only I prayed silently instead of aloud in some places.
So here's my controversial contention: putting aside all the abuses because they are abuses and not problems inherent in the novus ordo, the biggest shortcoming of the mass in vernacular is that people have lost the habit of praying along with their missals, striving to make the prayers their own. Active participation has less to do with what you do or don't say aloud, and more to do with how much fervor and effort you put into the mass yourself when you assist. I'm convinced that if people were in the habit of praying with missals, more folks would have the same experience I did --and not find much difference between the two uses, properly celebrated.
For the record, my favorite liturgies took place at a parish where the pastor celebrated the ordinary form of the mass in Latin, ad orientem, with a full choir and complement of altar boys. I couldn't care less what language the Mass is in, but there are things in the extraordinary use I miss profoundly when we attend--such as the power of a fervent Congregation pronouncing the Creed aloud. A friend once described that moment as "like driving a stake in the Devil's heart," and I've always experienced it as such ever since. I dislike saying it silently. I'm aware of the translation problems that have dogged the ordinary use & I see the Traditionalists' point about the "kiss of peace" in the ordinary use being a distraction in its present location (which is why the Pope recently suggested transferring it to earlier in the rite). But ultimately I figure it's not my place to attend mass with the attitude of liking or disliking whatever is being properly done. If the mass is celebrated well, and you give yourself to truly trying to pray every word of it in union with the whole Church, with as much fervor as you can muster, the differences sort of melt away. Which opinion I know won't please anyone, but there it is.
Update: Perhaps more what Rueful Red asked for: Fr. Z. smashes the Tablet to bits.
