Now a word to my own brethren the stick in the mud, curmudgeonly, reac- tionary, traditional types. Lighten up on the New Mass. If you are one of those folks that think that the new Mass is somehow less, somehow not quite as holy, and worst of all, one of those who think it is not valid, it is here that we part company. Have you no trust in God? Do you think the Holy Spirit is incapable of guiding the Church? The New Mass, as I have described it and as the Council Fathers (sorry, there were no Council Mothers as far as I can tell) envisioned it, is a very beautiful thing. They envisioned a reverent Mass with much Latin, traditional postures and gestures, with the celebrant facing the Lord, when appropriate, facing the people when appropriate. The new Mass was supposed to involve kneel- ing, genu ection and so on. They envisioned a Mass in which the treasury of sacred music continued and Gregorian chant had pride of place, though allowance was made for a limited use of local music for pastoral reasons provided that music was of an appropriate nature. 115 Well if all that’s true, how have we ended up with the triumphalist, narcis- sistic, battle-of-the-bands lunacy that passes for liturgy? I have spent half a year explaining that and I am not going to repeat myself. I would however like to explain, at least in my own limited understanding, why we have the new Mass in the rst place: Three simple words THE HOLY SPIRIT. The Holy Spirit anticipated the wild ride. Blessed Pope John and the Council Fathers invoked the Holy Spirit and convened the council, giving a mandate to streamline the liturgy; they could not have seen what the world would become in forty years. They could have known nothing of handheld computer phones so common that eight-year-olds would have them. Who could have imagined the world wide web, the fall of Marxism, a roaring Chinese economy and an heroic, growing Chinese Christianity, as well as a resurgent Islam, (though Hilaire Belloc had warned us.) They couldn’t have imagined, arti cial birth control claimed as a civil right and enforced abortions as a civil duty. Would they have believed anyone who told them that lth would be available 24 hours a day on handheld televi- sions and that computer access to pornography would be defended by leftist librarians as a right even for children? They couldn’t have imagined gay pa- rades led by Irish Catholic mayors. They couldn’t have imagined television commercials in prime time with nearly naked models hawking things to en- hance etc. (family column). They would have wept to imagine the depravity of modern society and, in nitely worse, that some of the clergy would plunge themselves and the good name of Holy Mother Church into that sea of lth. Certainly, they could not have imagined the collapse of education that was to aict the generations raised by television sets and day care providers. Could they have possibly known that, in a wave of pseudo-tolerance, academic excellence would take a back seat to political correctness? Who knew that the great universities, secular and Catholic alike, would produce generations of culturally and sometimes functionally illiterate graduates who thought themselves brilliant? Had the Council Fathers a clue, that forty years of politically correct, ideo- logically anti-Catholic religious education, largely taught and controlled by people who had turned their backs on religious life itself, would produce two whole generations of Catholics who learned nothing more about the faith than that Jesus loves me and this is how you hold your hands for rst Com- munion? Who could have imagined that the heritage of two thousand years 116 of art and wisdom, of saints, martyrs and scholars would be threatened with extinction in the blink of an eye? I’ll tell you who THE HOLY SPIRIT! We live in a world that cannot chew gum and walk at the same time. We think we are brilliant, but we are among the stupidest generations in history. We think we are wise and knowing be- cause we can do swell things with computer graphics and the latest software, but we moderns are the least personally productive and the least individually competent group of people since the fall of the Roman empire. When I was a lad, people still knew how to play musical instruments. Now they know how to play a radio. We listen to whatever music we please on handheld devices, but pull the plug and we are bored with the wind in the trees and the chirping of birds. In the same vein, we can’t spell, but we can access spell check. We can’t add or subtract, but we can work a calculator. Have you ever been in a fast food restaurant when the computer is down? The pierced and painted sophisticates who work there can’t make change for a ve dollar bill! We don’t talk to one another; we text short shallow messages. We can communicate by key board but there are precious few who can actually read or write handwritten messages. We don’t know how to grow a potato or raise a chicken or build a chair. When the power goes out, and at some point it will, if human history is any indicator, millions and millions of suave urbanites will wander around indignant that the government is not doing anything and then they will starve to death. I am not urging you to run to a commune in the mountains. Jesus said, \But when these things begin to take place, stand straight and lift up your heads, because your redemption is at hand." (Luke 21:28) Don’t run for the mountains this time. Stay. Live among those who don’t know the Lord, because they are going to need Him. If you abandon them, who will help them? The world has collapsed before and will collapse again. For two thousand years, the Church has been the source and guardian of the civilization. Don’t you think the Holy Spirit is still in charge? The great di erence between the New Mass and the Old Mass is that the Holy Spirit designed the New Mass to be LINEAR.
