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"At the time, that did not register. I had no basis for comparison."

That's normal enough. Sitting in the pews growing up in the Novus Ordo, I knew there was something wacky about it all along. It had a public library feel to it, like a 70's social study book. But I never cared much to find out exactly why until later. That's probably the situation of everybody trying to grope their way up from the bottom wrung of the Conciliar Church. Patience is needed with people doing this, I would agree.

"And so, in utter faith, I packed up myself and my daughter, drove to the church named in the newsletter and picked out a pew. When the bishop processed in, he was proceded by altar girls. This was my first exposure and I was caught off guard. When the tiime for the Consecration arrived, I looked down, saw no kneelers in the recently 'wreckovated' church, and knelt on the tile floor. Looking around me, though, I noticed that the other participants at this liturgy remained standing. I was shocked!

Right; you see the problem as well.

"After 12 years of this nonsensical approach to contemporizing the liturgy in this diocese, what pushed me over the edge, was that day in February of this year when an EEM accidentally dropped a consecrated host on the ground. She truly had no idea as to how to deal with this situation! My heart sank and I choked back tears as I watched her pick up the host and toss it back into her Pyrex glass salad bowl. That was it! I walked, compiling a list of other Catholic churches within proximity to my home. On that list, I included two Eastern Rite churches - one Maronie and one Ukrainian."

Exactly! Good move; I'm all over it.

"When I walked into the Maronite Church one Sunday, I was overwhelmed by the simplistic beauty of a Tabernacle, a Crucifix and the Book of the Gospels. There, illuminated before me, were the elements of our catholic faith. The liturgy moved me to tears, as Father repeated the words, in the same language as our Lord, Jesus Christ, that were spoken at the Last Supper."

This is the experience of all people coming to the awareness of a Catholic Faith that has been ripped and stripped away from them; hidden, buried, suppressed, the descriptions are endless. This is something similiar to what I experienced when I entered into the sublimity of the traditional Latin Mass.

You have to understand something. The traditional Roman rite Catholics are right in fighting with everything they can muster in regaining and retaining the very sort of thing you describe.

The whole Roman rite needs their Faith back. When you fire on traditional Catholics, you fire on your allies.