I have searched far and wide for a way to express how I view this whole debacle. Finally, yesterday I found a succinct little nugget from an interview with a certain Fr. Thomas Kocik that generally expresses the way I feel:
This is exactly how I view it. The Pauline Missal represents–the Missal itself and the manner in which it is usually celebrated–a break with that “stream of tradition within the family of the Roman liturgy,” implicitly or explicitly, symbolically or actually, take your pick. Whether or not ancient practices were restored, these things do in fact represent a break with tradition, because tradition is a thing that must develop naturally. And I believe I am fully within my intellectual rights to say this without contradicting or “going against” the Pope, or being a “rad trad,” or being a “sedevacantist schismatic” or whatever.
It’s like a line of letters, representing practices, following a certain pattern:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOP <<This represents unbroken tradition, at least as a whole. Changes happen, but they are modest. P is VERY much different than A, but they can be said to be in full harmony with each other because the “stream of tradition” is unbroken and is natural.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPEFGH <<This represents broken tradition, at least as a whole, even if “EFGH” has already been done before. It breaks the flow because it puts us “back” to where we once were, ignoring later developments. H is only in harmony with A inasmuch as the first occurrence of it is. The second is not and cannot be.
Tradition isn’t like saying, “Oh, we’ve done that before so we can do it again.” Tradition is an uninterrupted stream of practice. That is not to say that ancient things cannot be restored sometimes, or that new things cannot be introduced. In fact, I think tradition begs for continual development, for that is what tradition is. It is
natural development in harmony with the
stream of the practices of the past. The key phrase there being “natural development.”
It is not traditional to restore 15 things to the Mass, things that we did in the year 600. Not because they aren’t ancient (they are), not because the practices themselves aren’t traditional (they can certainly be said to be), but because their restoration is unnatural and jarring to the stream of development of tradition. And again, I believe I can comfortably say all this without offending the supreme Papal dignity of the decisions of Paul VI and subsequent Popes and without condemning my immortal soul.