I found this piece by Fr. Robert McTeigue over at Canon 212. Frank Walker’s aggregation of world and Church news demands daily reading, and this piece is one reason why. Your typical Catholic, blogger or not, would simply not come across this type of post. But I digress.
It has not been so many years ago that this novus ordo refugee escaped that wretched experiment that I do not recognize this priest’s lament of a typical parish n.o. ‘celebration’. It is a long piece but well worth reading in full. A taste:
Now let’s turn to the element of Mass that causes the greatest heartache for so many priests each weekend, namely, the way that people receive Holy Communion. Again, the literature on this topic is quite extensive. Even a cursory survey would be impossible. Instead, I will ask you to put yourself in Father’s place. Imagine that it’s Friday. The weekend is finally here! Time to celebrate! But not so for Father. Friday means that he must ready himself for another round of weekend Masses at Saint Typical’s. As he steels himself for the weekend, he recalls what he saw last week:
- The young man who put out just one hand to receive Holy Communion — because he held a 7-11 Big Gulp in the other.
- The gentleman who dropped a Host on the floor and, without missing a beat, said, “Oops! Can I get another one?”
- The smiling woman Father had never met before, who sticks out one hand to receive Holy Communion, while with the other hand she thrusts a pyx under his nose, saying, “I’ll take four please — it’s for my ministry!”
- And Father knows that after every Mass, he will have to get down on his hands and knees to look for consecrated Hosts under the pews and stuck between the pages of hymnals.
Despite every effort he has made, congregants give Father no reason to believe that this week will be better than last week.
Father concludes, at the end of a very true and fairly exhaustive litany of liturgical crimes at the typical novus ordo, by writing: “At the outset, I spoke of lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi. The only way forward that I can see is to restore the lex to the orandi.
Of course, the LEX to the ORANDI was distilled in more-or-less perfect form in 1570– lex-ing what was oran-ding for more than a millennium before. The only way out of this is for what remains of the Latin Church to jettison once and for all the fabricated liturgy of the modernists. Of course. OF COURSE.
But that is a post for Captain Obvious. I would like to make a couple of further observations, because that is the Grade-A superblog material you pay for here:
First, I really feel for the priests of St. Typical parishes everywhere. Yes, some may have bought into this foolishness. Yes, some may not really care and–as my brother sometimes Bobsphemes of the great Catholic poet Bob Dylan in the mid-80s (jokingly, I hope)– are just cashin’ them checks. But there are so many priests, and we all know some, who are in love with Christ and are trying to live their vocation and save souls. They get discouraged. They have been deprived of the formation and food of the faith they deserve. They are there, with their flock, doing the best they can. And they have the novus ordo to work with, and so many souls to try to save. No reform, real or pretend, of the novus ordo is going to fix the problem. They deserve the real Mass, of course. But they deserve our prayers as well. Let us not forget them in prayer.
Second, lest we think that the homily cited above only applies to St. Typical parishioners, we should all take heed of the message that the miracle of Holy Mass demands we examine our consciences on our preparation for it and participation in it. Just in the last month or two, in our church– which may be the largest TLM community in the country– the priests have felt the need to deliver two sermons on proper decorum in Church during Mass. Ask: Are we late? Do we prepare well to assist at Mass, and more importantly to receive Our Lord? Do we pray? Are we willingly distracted? Are we grateful?
In the ancient Mass, we do not lack for silence, reverence, and beauty. The Mass is as perfectly oriented to the worship God deserves as that of which human beings are capable. Are we consciously sensible of this great gift of God? Even if we are trying to be properly disposed, we can always strive to do better.
And we should.
I sincerely wish you and yours a blessed and fruitful Holy Week followed by a most joyful Eastertide!