Latin Mass Attracts Young Worshippers and Converts in Bob Jones University Territory

The Greenville News ^ | 4/27/04 | Ron Barnett

[Mershon]

"As it is, the SSPX is far more effective in its present irregular condition--protected as it is by the Holy Spirit from the surrounding corruption."

BCM: Ah yes. No personal opinion here. "Outside of SSPX, there is no salvation." Protected by the Holy Spirit. You have an interesting view of ecclesiology. Did you take training from the Eastern Orthodox? They believe the same thing, don't they?

[Mershon]

The action which cause such disunity was not ours--we hold onto what has always been taught and believed.

BCM: Including Vatican I? I posted it some time ago. Have you read that and adhered to it?

[Mershon]

But disunity is not our doing--it is the fault of those who lead the revolution. We're only holding onto a piece of driftwood to keep from drowning after the dam broke.

BCM: Funny, I think I hear an echo of Martin Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, the old Catholics, etc. etc. etc. As a "Novus Ordo" type, I will affirm you by recognizing that parts of the driftwood to which you are holding onto have "elements of truth," and thus the Holy Spirit, within them.

[TheStickman]

Friendly "check your email" bump:)

[Diva]

Then he begins to sing the liturgy from the Roman Missal of 1962.

Detroit's Cardinal Maida has given the Indult and starting in September there will be 2 places where the Tridentine Mass will be offered. As yet I don't think a formal announcement has been made or a decision as to where the Masses will be Celebrated just that there will be two.

[marcus29]

I've heard about this as well. Do you know if the indult will be every Sunday?

[Diva]

Do you know if the indult will be every Sunday?

Rigth now all I know is that the Cardinal will say the first one in September. After that whoever gets the nod will do it every week, at least that is what the Presbyterate Council meeting notes seem to suggest. The Cardinal was upset that people from his diocese had to go to Windsor to attend an Indult Mass or go to a Schismatic Mass (his words), I think there are several in the Detroit area. As far as I know no announcement has been made about where the Masses are to be said but there are suppose to be two places.

[royalcello]

The Charleston Renaissance Ensemble will be singing a Palestrina Mass and other works for Stella Maris parish in Sullivan's Island with Msgr. McInerny on May 16 on Sunday.

Wonderful!

If I were in Charlotte, knowing what I know now, I would probably attend the SSPX regularly also. They are the only place for sanity in some dioceses.

I am glad you feel this way. I guess our positions are not all that far apart after all (except for that pesky detail that I'm not actually Catholic, at least not yet!).

However, I believe that when/if a new bishop becomes open to the TLM, one is obligated to work within the diocesan structure as much as possible to bring about regularization.

I basically agree, although I think that if this "openness" does not include an understanding of traditionalists' need of a parish life and a weekly TLM, they are justified in being wary.

[gemoftheocean]

Geez, then I guess all those catholics in the first few hundred years who did the liturgy in Greek were doing it all wrong too. Did it ever cross your mind that the change was made from Greek to Latin simply because Latin was the vulgar language of the people and that fewer and fewer understood Greek? Sheesh....to listen to some of you talk, I feel like I am broadcasting a "newsflash" to some of you.

[gemoftheocean]

But even here the final arbiter is neither the Pope himself nor canon law--but the conscience of Archbishop Lefebvre. If he disobeyed to preserve the faith--then he is not culpable. Not all the papal letters in the world can make him guilty if he was not guilty. It is not a matter of who has the higher rank. It is a matter of what is the objective truth, a matter of who is telling the truth about the Archbishop's own motives. But the former knew with certitude; the latter could only guess.

Interesting. So if Lefebvre's "conscience" had told him that artificial birth control was okay, then he'd have a right to teach that to his sheep too.

Without realizing it, you give a free pass to people like that reprobate priest in the Pittsburgh area who wants to set up his own version of a parish.

The sword cuts both ways.

[ultima ratio]

No, the issue is clearer than what you suggest. It had always been a teaching of the Church that a superior may be disobeyed if he commands something harmful to the Church and to souls. The greatest doctors of the Church have agreed on this so that one might form one's conscience on this basis alone. But it has NEVER been a teaching of the Church that artificial birth control was permitted. We are talking here about the destruction of the traditional Mass and its devastating spiritual consequences for millions of Catholics, not a matter of mere sexual convenience.

Clearly Archbishop Lefebvre was standing on firm moral ground and the Pope was not. The evidence was overwhelming that the Church was in crisis and that the cause of that crisis was the New Order and the New Theology and the papal policies hostile to Catholic Tradition. Religious orders of long standing were collapsing, vocations were drying-up at an alarming rate, catechesis was in a shambles, Catholics were walking away from the new Mass in droves and scandals were multiplying exponentially. There was plenty of evidence the "new Advent" was a disaster, notwithstanding the Pope's optimism, and it weighed heavily in favor of the Archbishop's judgment.

[ultima ratio]

As a matter of fact, we don't really know if the first Masses in Rome were in Greek as you say. There is some evidence they were always in Latin. Excavations in Rome and Pompeii of ancient altars with Latin inscriptions have called this assumption this assumption into question.

But even if you were correct, there is a reason for much of what had evolved over the ages. The further removed we get from apostolic times, the more we have need of whatever furthers a sense of the sacred. The need is particularly acute in a modern age in which we are bombarded daily with noisy messages in the vernacular.

The great religions, moreover, have always reserved a language for speaking to God alone. Latin, like Hebrew for the Jews, or ancient Arabic for the muslims, serves this lofty purpose, in addition to its unifying all Catholics liturgically. It has the added benefit of being fixed in its meanings--so that there cannot be a semantic erosion over time.

Finally, my argument is not for the Latin alone. Latin is not enough. The Novus Ordo in Latin would still be deficient and Protestant in its theological underpinnings, rather than truly Catholic. It would still play down the dogmas of Transubstantiation and Propitiation, whatever language is used. It would therefore still be a danger to most Catholics.

[ultima ratio]

You need to get more familiar with the persecution of priests who dare to say the old Mass. You also need to become more familiar with the strictures placed everywhere on the indult--the rarity, the odd hours, the remote places, the spitefulness of bishops towards those who show traditionalist sympathies. It is you who have no inkling about what's really going on. It took two decades for the bishops to respond even grudgingly--and they are most stingy in their attitude. This is even recognized by some in Rome. At the Fontogombault Conference in 2002, Cardinal Ratzinger had this to say:

"It is necessary to stop the ban of the liturgy that was in force until 1970. Currently anyone who defends the validity of this liturgy or who practices it is treated like a leper, all tolerance ceases. The like has never been seen before in the Church's entire history. By adopting this attitude toward them, they despise the Church's entire past."

And he added, "It is only by grasping that it results from the practical disqualification of Trent, that one can understand the exasperation that accompanies the fight against the possibility of still celebrating Mass according to the 1962 missal."

It is as I have said: those who hate Trent, hate the old Mass as well. It is because of this they defend the Novus Ordo--which they recognize as theologically consonent with their own modernist--read Protestant--orientation. It is you who don't know what's really going on when you post such nonsense as you do, thinking this one swallow in one diocese somehow makes for a traditional springtime. It does not. The winter is still very cold and very much upon us.

[ultima ratio]

Yes, I've read it.

[ultima ratio]

Your error is that you think rank is all. It isn't. Neither are the palaces in Rome. What matters is the Catholic faith itself. Much in Rome and elsewhere these days--at the highest levels--is not Catholic--without the Pope's caring very much one way or the other.

[ultima ratio]

I ask again--Martin Luther, the patron saint of the Novus Ordo? It is not traditionalists who revere him, but the guys you praise so fulsomely, many of them in Rome. We despise his opposition to Catholicism--reflected also in the Novus Ordo which is very little different from a Lutheran service.

[ultima ratio]

Of course we accept Vatican I--but not the distortion of its teaching whereby every sneeze and hiccup of the pope is declared infallible. That is pope-worship, not Catholicism. And it is the pretext on which hinges a great deal of destructive hatred for Catholic Tradition and the SSPX.