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but permanent deacons, communion in the hand, altar girls, eucharistic ministers,etc. surely are abuses that need to be curtailed and the god centeredness of the liturgy needs to be restored).

These are not "abuses." You should stay in the Tridentine Indult and leave the rest of us alone.

These are not "abuses." You should stay in the Tridentine Indult and leave the rest of us alone. Hey, pal, the folks who love the Old Mass are the people who are never left alone and have to go through many inconveniences and accusations of "schism" and "disobedience". So don't talk about "leaving the rest of us alone". The bullcrap that people have to go through who just want to worship God in a reverent fashion(and this includes many people who attend the Novus Ordo) has been going on for close to forty years. It's been a complete disaster for the Church in her catechetics, in her discipline, in her evangelical mission and in nearly every other department. Name one area of the Church that is stronger today than it was when the Immemorial Mass was the norm. Not some baloney, but statistics. Vocations are dryed up, conversions have gone way down(and we lose something like 1,000 people A DAY to Jehovah's Witnesses and Adventists in Latin America), and the Church is suffering the Passion of Christ right now because of unfaithful Bishops, Priests and Religious, and the complete indifference of most of the laity(who, according to a recent Gallup poll, only 20% believe in the Church's teaching on Transubstantiation).

According to St. Thomas Aquinas, only the consecrated hands of a priest should touch the host.The Council of Trent reiterates this, as does every single doctor of the Church. Instead of reading the NewChurch blather that you seem to love so much, pick up the Catechism of the Council of Trent, or The Holy Eucharist by St. Alphonse.

The reality is that, being entrenched in the bureacracy of the AmChurch, you just can't face the facts. Wake up! Stop calling a wasteland a renewal.

Altar girls and the use of fleets of EEM's are abuses, they were begun in defiance of authority, and they should be smacked down, hard, Deacon. Communion in the hand, similarly, was begun as an act of defiance.

Defiance just sort of makes you feel good, ain'a? (Did I tell you that I, too, am NOT a shrink?)