• CU

The Catholic Underground

With all due respect Joe – The same could be said for the clown Mass in San Francisco or for that poor missionary priest who has been in Zimbabwe for two weeks and is still learning the language – neither are particularly prayerful…

In reality, if you compare the rites on an even par: both celebrated with reverence, both with attention to the rubrics, both with love, both with well-ordered homilies, both with suitable music then that’s fair, then you can draw a legitimate conclusion of some sort…

I don’t want to make you a lightning rod Joe, but this kind of argument appears all over the place on the web today. Someone takes a picture of a great an glorious Mass being celebrated and put it next to a picture of some atrocity (old or new form) and tries to make a claim from it – fallacy. I can compare a bad example of an renaissance artist to a really good example of an impressionist and be forced to come down on the side of the fuzzy one (I loathe impressionism, sorry

The old Mass is the Mass of the Saints, there are almost no saints (setting aside modern martyrs) who were not formed by the Traditional Mass – none. That’s something that we can’t overlook. (The Traditional Mass was basically in place by the 8th century or so). It’s not as if we finally figured it out and now we have a Mass that can make us holy… The Mass I celebrated last weekend looks very, very similar to what St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius, St. Francis Xavier, and St. John Vianney would have prayed every day. In fact, if those men showed up at my Church on Sunday, they’d feel right at home – we can’t say that about the new Mass…

You are right in saying that the Mass must be well celebrated well – it must – but it’s not a breakthrough in holiness-technology, it’s an innovation, yet to be proven, and let’s continue to pray that priests will all take that great responsibility to heart.

@Michael:
From my dictionary for ‘Bashing’: The pejorative ‘bashing’ implies excessive or unwarranted criticism on a subject, group or individual.

I have tried to lay out a series of logical criticisms of a group which has factually and statistically failed to maintain it’s charism and which has consistently and freely denied the Catholic Faith as taught by the 21 ecumenical councils and their own vow of obedience to the Holy Father as laid out by Ignatius himself. I haven’t been excessive or unwarranted. So I wouldn’t call making a measured criticism of a group ‘bashing.’

An interesting quote (from my blog):
“The Jesuits have become their only authority, their only critic, their only judge, and this is the antithesis of their purpose.”

Are you, Michael, saying that I don’t have the right to question them, to question their motives, or to point out statical data about them? I sincerely hope not. You know when someone believes themselves above reproach and answerable only to themselves, they’ve kind of lost touch with the truth…

Glad to hear it.
Pax

I love it Josh – thanks for the correction. You’re the king of catching my overstatements…

Yeah, I really should have said that the Old Mass didn’t really apply pre-4th century or so. While it’s mostly complete form wasn’t around until mid to late 8th century, we know that the Canon was mostly complete by the end of the 4th century.

That being said, I stand by the main purpose of the argument which was just that the old Mass cannot be considered deficient – it has sanctified untold numbers of saints. I say this because so many people look at me and respond that the old Mass is just so bad. How could anybody experience God or prayer with all the Latin and the “old” music and the priest separated by the rail and so on and so forth. The argument just doesn’t hold water – while it’s foreign to us, the Traditional Mass (the Xform) has still got a heck of a track record.

Thanks Josh!
f.rph