The Novus Ordo And Us

Inferior to wine. Not poisonous at all.

 

Please take the comparison below only as drink comparison. That wine is used in the Consecration is not relevant here.

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With V II the Church gave us, together with many other mistakes, a second-class Mass. Second-class, not sinful. Second-class, not something that would be even a grave matter to attend.

Speaking of drinks (and letting aside the sacramental aspect at the Mass) we were accustomed to wine. One day,  the Church told us wine is a drink for stuffy old people, and Coca Cola is the new drink the Church gives to you: bubbly, fizzly, young, dynamic, in tune with the new times, good for young and old, and apt to have many more people get at the table.

Coca-Cola is sugary, superficial, vastly inferior to wine in everything, pretty much of a child’s drink compared to it. But it can never be a sin to drink Coca-Cola; particularly so, when the Church gives it to you as the standard drink.

Now, I wish for the disappearance of Coca-Cola as Church drink, and to the return of wine – in its good time – as the only drink at the table. But I can never consider the drink the Church gives me a poison, though I will always say that as a drink it is vastly less, for lack of a better word, thirst-quenching or nourishing than the wine.

I have never made a secret of my position. I have stated very often on this blog that I attend the NO mass regularly. I even tour the land attending at Masses here and there to get the temperature of average Catholic parishes out in the V II wasteland.

Why, then, do I support the SSPX without any criticism? Because the SSPX deserves my support without any criticism. What they do is too important for all of us for me to start nitpicking on something in which, I am absolutely sure, many within the SSPX also disagree. In the matter of mass, the SSPX – or at least some of their members – do show some siege-mentality. Frankly, I do not care. It’s not that there is a precedent, because the situation of the true Church offering you Coca-Cola instead of wine, and prescribing that as the standard drink, is new.

I can fully understand those priests who refuse to celebrate the Novus Ordo because they consider the drink an offering that they feel they should not be forced to offer. They are, to keep the simile, like the waiter who thinks that for him to serve coca-cola instead of wine is unworthy of the tradition of the great restaurant he has the pleasure to serve. But this is very different from the very same waiter picketing the restaurant and saying to the would-be clients that the coca-cola is poisoned. I like a lot that there are waiters not wanting to serve the cola, because their understanding of the role of a waiter does not allow them to do so. But I will never call for the boycott of the restaurant.

Padre Pio prayed he would be allowed to die before being forced to celebrate the New Mass (he never was, before you ask, as he obtained an exemption like many other old priests), which gives you the idea of how seriously he saw both his obligations as a priest and duty of obedience on one side, and the Mass of the Ages on the other. I would, however, never countenance the attitude of those who think that Holy Mother Church gives them a poisoned drink. This is very dangerous thinking which easily leads into Sedevacantism.

Cure yourselves of Sedevacantism. Learn to respect the Church as the Church that God has given us, with all Her troubles; and if this Church gives you cola to drink, then by all means do not consider it sinful to drink it: it is the drink the Church gives you.

Very strong must be the man who can propose a pure “Radical Traditionalist” (“Rad Trad”) position without colouring this position with the perception of the NO mass as poisoned, or sinful. This is a very slippery slope. When you start sliding down that slope, Sedevacantism is what you’ll find at the bottom of it; and believe me, you don’t want to have your ass down there when you die.

This blog has always represented a line of Traditionalism (the advocating of the abolition of the New Mass, and the return to the TLM as the only Mass) as opposed to Radical Traditionalism; you have never read here that it is sinful for you to attend the NO, let alone gravely sinful. I utterly disagree with all those who say (and I do not care who says it) that if you cannot have a TLM to attend to you are free from Mass obligation, because… the Mass the Church that Christ founded on Peter gave you is just not good enough, or even sinful, or even gravely sinful. Sheesh!

I do not refuse the food that Holy Mother Church dishes on my table.

Do you? Do you?

If you have a valid Mass you can attend to, you have a Mass obligation. If you only have clowns dancing on the sanctuary and earthen vessels and strange “consecration” formulae and all that, well the doubt is more than justified, and I gather there were not a few of these masses in the worst phase of the “Springtime”. But do not come on this blog and tell me that you know Christ is there in the miracle of Transubstantiation, but you are too fine a Catholic palate to drink of His blood.

This issue cannot be escaped. If the Church is the Church, and the Consecration is valid, and the Transubstantiation takes place we do not refuse – or condemn – what is given to us. If we do, this means that we say that the Church is not the Church, or the Transubstantiation does not take place, or it takes place but it’s not good enough for us; because we want miracles made our own way, thank you very much.

Let others argue about this as much as they please. Let other pewsitters allow their pride to have the better of themselves, and their desire for purity to lead them to the rejection of what their Mother gives them. I live in a very simple world, a world in which my sensus catholicus not only rebels, but recoils shivering from the very idea that a layman would know that the Body and Blood of Our Saviour are dished to him, and answers: “no thanks, I think something very wrong is going on here. Actually, my mother is trying to poison me”.

Radical Traditionalism can be dangerous, and is not for many. Those strongly rooted in the Church will cope with it all right (and they will have to travel as far as they need to to have a TLM, obviously). Still, all too easily a well-meaning grievance can be turned – by the devil, who is always looking for ways to turn you away from the Church – to an outright refusal of what the Church offers worldwide; and it is then only a matter of time before the Church herself is, coherently with these premises, refused Herself. Once again: not every Rad Trad reasons in this way. But it can’t be denied that the emotional and the passionate can be easily swayed against the Church, and flipped around by the devil like pieces of a domino play, or like those old spring-laden toy soldiers you could make to keep marching the other way undeterred. You don’t want to be that toy soldier.

This blog is very, very critical of what goes on within the Church nowadays. But this criticism is always due to the fact that she is the Church. It can never be that the criticism leads one to refuse the very premise of his criticism.

The waiter has good reasons to refuse to serve the Coca-Cola in the restaurant. But we, the children at the table, will drink it whenever it is necessary or fitting that we do so.

The comment box is closed. You can call me “intolerant”, and thanks.

M