I don't feel any less a Catholic because I go to the "new" Mass. I'm sure the Lord thinks no less of me because I speak to Him in Enlish rather than Latin.
It's not the way Mass is said, it's the message (or lack of it) coming from the pulpit that is impacting.
We need a strong, loud, clear Church now.
"I'm sure the Lord thinks no less of me because I speak to Him in Enlish rather than Latin."
That ain't the point, mate.
"It's not the way Mass is said, it's the message (or lack of it) coming from the pulpit that is impacting."
And Latin says, "Since we're starting with Divine Revelation, "change" isn't on the agenda."
(Change being a codeword for "compromise with evil.")
Besides, there's been so much rewriting not only of liturgy and prayers, but even of scripture itself, inflicted in the name of "translation" that it's way past time to bring back Latin in a big way.
If the modernist heretics want to rewrite the Vulgate, they won't be able to hide it as a "translation."
The language is not the major difference.
The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is at the very center of the Church. How it is celebrated is crucial to every other aspect.
As a man prays, so does he believe.
Unlike the Novus Ordo ward heelers of forty years ago, we can be generous enough to allow the Novus Ordo to continue to be said for those who simply MUST have such rubrics but to give it absolutely no encouragement as we return to our traditions and liturgical roots.
It is time to sell the modern architecture big box monstrosity church buildings to serve as designer boutiques or Home Depots, restore the wreckovated church buildings for the liturgy they were originally to house, and even build some new traditional churches. Remove and burn the hot dog stands that replaced our altars.
If you want to restore the Church Militant, few measures will further that goal more than restoring the liturgy of our ancestors.
Of course, God hears your prayers. Of course, you are no less Catholic for attending Novus Ordo Masses.
That having been said, why not offer to God the best we have to offer: a thoroughly reverent liturgy, Gregorian Chant, Palestrina, instead of banal Kumbaya stuff?
It is no coincidence that the Church learned to shut up and hide its light at about the same time that it adopted a second-rate liturgy. Many expect B-16 to be a mere transitional pope because of his age. It may turn out that JPII (a magnificent pope IMHO) was the transitional pope preparing the way for what B-16 will have to offer us. B-16 was a radical peritus at V-II and turned back to tradition not long thereafter. He knows intimately the damage that was done and he likely was elected to reverse it. JP II was elected to accomplish the end of the Soviet Empire.
That we pray to God is quite important. George Weigel (JP II biographer) and Anne Applebaum (WaPo columnist married to Radek Sikorski) were on Book TV over the weekend claiming that JP II's World Youth Days and special outreach to the young were vital seeds for very one-sided French and Dutch youth voting to reject the Euro constitution. Very important work.
How we pray to God is also important. That appears at this point to be B-16's mission. Internal Church war over liturgy would be far bloodier than over the rejection of Marxism and liberalism. here are reasons for this. Read Pius X's encyclical Pascendi Domenici Gregis and its accompanying syllabus of errors Lamentabile Sane. The modernist heresy against which he railed and acted was allowed breathing room by Pope Benedict XV (1914-1922) who apparently thought that suppression of heresy was declasse, gauche, medieval and not at all acceptable in his social circle. Modernism simmered underground for fifty years and burst forth in the late 1960s. A thousand flowers of non-Catholic radicalism bloomed: pacifism, environmentalism, half-vast Marxist economics, unilateral disarmament, liturgical experimentalism, national bishops' conferences acting as though they had actual collective authority (morality by ecclesiastical pseudo-legislative fiat nation-by-nation????), anarchy in the pews, bad music, worse liturgical abuses, consecrating loaves of French bread to be ripped apart and consumed (or spilled onto the floor to be walked on by parishioners at St. Margaret Sanger's) and so many, many more abuses.
Crush the abuses. Let the offended leave. Let those genuinely attached to the Novus Ordo attend it for so long as they insist. Restore the liturgy and the traditional teachings of the Church and its historic confrontational style against the world, the flesh and the devil. Chase the heterodox hierarchs into retirement or excommunication as may be desired or necessary. Purge the seminaries once and for all and chase the poofters from the priesthood. This would be a painful overall prescription in temporary ways but it is far better to suffer the temporary pain for the eventual restoration of Church authority as a force in the world.
May God bless Benedict XVI in his every Catholic effort.
Ummmnnhh,
In Rome, the crowds are multi-national. Latin works for all people there, vs. English for the Aussies, and Amuhr-kin for the US folks.
More welcoming, you know...