Monday, November 29, 2021

For Preserving the Historical Record:
(Against Comment Box Censorship)

In the posting from yesterday, I included comments of mine published in response to the linked article. As one of them was taken down while the source being responded to was allowed to remain, I will post here the response censored from the comments thread. Those interested in the piece I was responding to can find the lnk in that comment section for the full context. (I am in no mood to supply such a courtesy now.) Without further ado...

I yawned the moment I saw Leila Lawler resorting to the usual trad drivel and was just waiting for the obligatory Quo Primum reference. There it is, right on schedule even if she is five Pope Pius’ (and thus three hundred plus years) off in historical chronology.

I then waited to see the complaint that Tyler did not write a lengthy tome on liturgical history in an article with probable word and space limits and she did not disappoint there either, how dare he in a single article not cover “all the important issues” (cf. L. Lawler)? Then the trad literary circle where one trad (Peter K) recommends the work of another trad (Leila L) who themselves recommended the work of the one recommending them (Peter K). Nothing like keeping things in the trad echo chamber after all. But we are not done as we have the usual trad claims about supposed “contradictions” which they are either too lazy or disingenuous to see are rarely in substance what they claim. That would of course get in the way of the trad “in short, propaganda” (cf. L. Lawler) and at no time must we allow that.

From there we have the complaint that Tyler “does not grapple with the actual results of the near-universal implementation of the Mass of Paul IV” (cf. L. Lawler) setting aside the fact that (i) Paul IV never promulgated a Missal and (ii) it took some time for Quo Primum to be implemented in accordance with Pius V’s wishes. (In some parts of the world it took a century or more!) Someone needs to introduce Leila and other trads to a Latin saying “abusus non tollit usum.”

From there she gets in a standard trad swipe against Amoris Laetitia manifesting an unfortunate (and arguably vincible if not crass) ignorance of the issue. But it served its purpose for her as a great response padding distraction from the topic of Tyler’s article. Then she wraps up with a standard trad call of disobedience under the guise of being “truly obedient” and she has the temerity to accuse Tyler or others of “obeying contradiction”!

As enough has been said about Leila’s garden variety tradbabble, it seems appropriate to end this by admonishing her with the words of Pope Leo XIII:
“[I]t is to give proof of a submission which is far from sincere to set up some kind of opposition between one Pontiff and another. Those who, faced with two differing directives, reject the present one to hold to the past, are not giving proof of obedience to the authority which has the right and duty to guide them; and in some ways they resemble those who, on receiving a condemnation, would wish to appeal to a future council, or to a Pope who is better informed.

On this point what must be remembered is that in the government of the Church, except for the essential duties imposed on all Pontiffs by their apostolic office, each of them can adopt the attitude which he judges best according to times and circumstances. Of this he alone is the judge.” [Pope Leo XIII: Apostolic Letter Epistola Tua]

Sunday, November 28, 2021

Shepherding the Flock Out of the 1962 Missal

I have a few comments posted to the comments section of the link above. As they are approved, I will repost them here.

Comment #1:

Tyler, 

The title of the article should be changed. I think it is too deliberately provocative and that does not serve the cause of authentic dialogue very well. Otherwise, the article is not bad. (Some points could use fleshing out but I understand the nature of space constraints, word limits, and the like.)

I realize there are trad folks griping in the comments section about it but they whine about everything anyway as it is and despite numerous rebuttals over the years, they continue to make the same discredited objections. I highly doubt it is even worth the time and effort to engage the wilfully obtuse at this point but of course as we are called to evangelize so moving forward we must and entrust our efforts to God.

Despite the mountains of absurdities in trad arguments, they are right about exactly two substantive points and the longer those two points go unaddressed throughout various parts of the Church, the more trad resistance will have a flimsy pretense of justification. The first is Church architecture. Churches that look like gymnasiums do not speak to the senses in a way that is uplifting. (To be clear, this is not directed at places in the world where they have no other options but throughout the First World, the iconoclasm directed towards churches in the aftermath of the Second Vatican Council was inexcusable.)

The second is Church music. You need not go all Gregorian all the time to have music fitting for liturgical worship but much greater discrimination in songs chosen as well as how they are arranged would go a long way to augment a liturgical celebration rather than hindering it.

I doubt I have witnessed a single liturgical celebration in my life that was wholly absent liturgical abuses and that includes when I attended the Tridentine form. But there are minor abuses and more significant ones. If those promoting the revised Roman Missal do not focus on rooting out abuses and creating an atmosphere conducive to authentic and uplifting liturgical celebrations, they will hinder their cause rather than help it.

But anyway, to get back to the first point I made, please change the title of this article to one less provocative, Tyler. Perhaps something like “On Bishops and the 1962 Missal” or something more innocuous than a title that explicitly denotes taking something away. While it will not placate the Usual crowd of trad gripers at least it will be much less of a proverbial finger in the eye.

As comment #2 was deleted, I will make a separate posting of it on the site and link to it here.