I begin with a c&p of an article i found very informative. Orthodoxy and the Traditional Mass, 2: connecting with the past In the prelude to this series, I addressed the accusation that Traditional Catholics are uniquely disloyal to the hierarchy. This, in fact, is the opposite of the truth. In the following postI noted that not only do those attached to the Traditional Mass tend to be orthodox, but there is an extraordinary hatred of the Traditional Mass among many radicals opposed to the teaching of the Church. In this post I want to expand on that. Anne Roche Muggeridge, in her book The Desolate City, explains the way that the 'revolutionary' party in the Church gained dominance in a short space of time in the 1960s, in light of a parallel with revolutions in the secular sphere. .... The ancient Mass is not simply a well put-together liturgy, cleverly combining this element with that one. It is something which has developed over many centuries, slowly enough to enable us to participate in a meaningful way in the spiritual atmosphere of the preceding generation of Catholics, and the one before that, and so on for many centuries. It is the product of the Church in a very deep way: not of a committee, even at some distant time in the past, but of the prayer and practice of innumerable Popes, Doctors and Saints, and ordinary priests and lay people as well. We all know instinctively that, despite identifiable changes made in the decades up to 1962, it is essentially very, very, old, and that this age is not the age of a pot-shard dug out from an ancient rubbish-tip where it has lain forgotten, but of a great public building or city square walked over and worked and lived in every day since its construction until today. And this lived-in age makes it venerable, worthy of respect. The liberals of the 1960s needed to destroy this connection with the past, because they wanted to establish a new theology. The promulgation of the Novus Ordo Missae at the end of the decade restored a degree of stability to the liturgical scene, but of course a lot of damage had already been done, and even at its best the new liturgical settlement was a striking break with the past. What I want to draw from this is the usefulness of the Traditional Mass for Catholics who want to promote orthodoxy, and the disaster a rejection of the Traditional Mass is for them. The polemic against the Traditional Mass, which is still heard today, is that it was 'all wrong': it 'excluded the people', it made them 'dumb spectators', the theology, even, was misguided. If we allow that polemic to stand we are saying that the Church was wrong about her most intimate inner life, the shared liturgical life of the Christian community. It may be logically possible to say that she was wrong about that and right about all the doctrines, but, as I said in the last post in the series, it is incongruous.I can now go a little further and say, from the point of view of psychology, it is incredible: it is,almost, impossible to believe. It is not that people are incapable of distinguishing doctrine from liturgy, or are ignorant that the liturgy of the mid 20th century was not identical to that celebrated by the Apostles. It will amaze many neo-conservatives to hear this, but Catholics are not that stupid. It is, rather, that the institution they want us to believe in doctrinally also brought us this ancient liturgy. If the liturgy is rubbished, then the Church is rubbished. The Church loses her credibility. If you lose your credibility, you don't lose it selectively: people say, 'if he was deluded or a liar about that, I won't believe anything he says any more.' That's what the liberals wanted people to say about the Church, and to a tragically large extent they succeeded. The conclusion for practical purposes is a simple one. If we want to promote orthodoxy in doctrine in the Church, we have to reverse the process the liberals undertook in the 1960s: we have to reconnect people with the ancient liturgy, restore the prestige of this liturgy, convince people again of its value. Only by doing this will we get them to accept the authority of the succession of Councils and the ancient Creeds and the Scriptures: the authority, in short, of the Church's continuous life over many centuries, or, even more briefly, of the past. .... The last word can be left to Pope Benedict (Salt of the Earth): A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent. Pasted from <http://www.lmschairman.org/2014/03/orthodoxy-and-traditional-mass-2.html>
And so to answer the question i asked. Rorate Caeli is good for allowing one to follow the state of play of the Traditional Mass throughout the world. And to discover who the enemies of it are in the Church.
I see that i have not left a link to the Rorate Caeli site. It is fortuitous that an article posted to day provides a different argument for the value of the Traditional Mass. I c&p from it to generate a link to Rorate Caeli June is the month of Corpus Christi. It is the month of the great feast dedicated entirely to Our Eucharistic Jesus. As in all parishes, we too are preparing to celebrate it on Sunday 22nd of June, seeing that the Thursday of the Solemnity is no longer a feast day in Italy. We will celebrate it mainly, with a solemn procession after the sung Mass, by carrying the Most Sacred Host through the streets of the town. This should be the most important procession of the year, since here we are not carrying a venerated statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary nor a saint or relic, but Jesus Himself, living and real in the Most Blessed Sacrament; living and real with His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. This procession should be the most solemn, filled with adoration and holy respect for Our Lord Who is passing by. Certainly many will sense distinct melancholic thoughts arising: “it is no longer like this in our towns now, Corpus Christi can’t be celebrated as it once was; the streets used to be adorned and the sides along the way used to be covered with the most beautiful drapes; ... Why has the spirit of adoration been lost? Why do so many baptized souls not recognize the Lord passing by in the Sacred Host anymore? ... Among the “conservatives” many will say that it was all caused by certain factors: a) the moving of the tabernacles in churches – from the altars they were relegated into some corner; b) genuflections are no longer made; c) receiving Communion standing and in the hand; d) the reduction if not the disappearance of Eucharistic fasting, etc... All of which are true, but these are not the main causes – the real one is deeper. It all began with the disastrous reform to the Rite of the Mass which followed the Second Vatican Council. With the pretext of translating the Mass into the vernacular in 1969 - it was changed radically, practically re-made and purged of all the explicit references to the Propitiatory Sacrifice – in order to please the Protestants. In fact, the Mass was increasingly transformed into a Holy Supper and this was done basically, so that the priests and the faithful [could] be nurtured at the “two tables” of the Word and the Body of Christ; in short, the Mass was done so as to have Communion. So the central and determining factor of the Sacrifice of Christ disappeared from the everyday life of Catholics. It was for this Jesus instituted the Eucharist so that His sacrifice on the Cross be perpetuated - the sacrifice, which alone cancels sins and placates Divine Justice. ... A great writer wrote: “There are two great realities in the Mass, the sacrifice and the sacrament. These two great realities are fulfilled at the same instant, at the moment when the priest pronounces the words of consecration over the bread and wine. When he finishes the words of consecration of the Precious Blood, the Sacrifice of Our Lord is fulfilled and Our Lord is also present at the that moment, as is the Sacrament of Our Lord as well. […] This mystical separation of the species in the bread and wine fulfills the sacrifice of the Mass. Thus, these two realities are achieved at the consecration. They cannot be separated. And this is what the Protestants did; they simply wanted the sacrament without the sacrifice. This is the danger of the new Masses. Sacrifice is no longer spoken of; it seems that sacrifice has been set aside. You only hear talk about the Eucharist, and having a “Eucharist” as if it were merely a meal. ... “If there is no sacrifice there is no Victim.” These are strong but very logical words which conform to the faith. Without entering into extremely delicate sacramentary reflections we can easily say, that what has happened in the lives of Catholics is this: the obscuring of the sacrificial character of the Mass has caused the loss of awareness of Christ’s substantial presence in the Sacrament. The Old Mass meets the emphasis of the propitiatory Sacrifice of Christ’s substantial presence in the Sacred Host. The New Mass meets the emphasis of the Eucharistic banquet, Holy Communion, and – strangely enough – the almost complete disappearance of the spirit of adoration. Pasted from <http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-return-to-sacrifice-in-order-to-save.html>
Jerry, You did not include the following from the referenced article. I was reading down through saying, "Yes!" to all that was said, and then this was shared. This and so many like-minded articles infer that the Novus Ordo is wrong and even invalid. To love the Extraordinary Rite is fine; to declare the Novus Ordo wrong is divisive. The answer is a return to the complete Catholic clarity of the Propitiatory Sacrifice expressed in the right Mass. Safe in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
http://catholicintl.com/question-22-october-2007/ 'We must also remember the severe implications of coming to the conclusion that the Novus Ordo Mass is invalid. If the Novus Ordo is invalid, then the Church is defectible. If the Catholic Church, in her solemn liturgy/dogma is defectible, then we don’t have a Catholic Church, and we never did have one. It’s an all or nothing game when it comes to the Catholic Church’s validity. If she makes a mistake in her dogma (and the Mass is her dogma because it contains the dogma of transubstantiation), then you may as well be a Buddhist or an atheist, because it’s not worth following a Church that can err in dogma. When someone says the Novus Ordo is invalid, then he has also said the transubstantiation of the Novus Ordo is invalid, and thereby the Church has erred in following Christ’s command to perform transubstantiation. You cannot have one without the other. This is precisely why there is such a temptation toward sedevacantism today from those who begin on this slippery slope. Their minds won’t let them escape the logic that if the Church has erred in such a solemn aspect of her dogma as the very Mass she practices, then everything else the Church does becomes suspect of error, until there is nothing left. Again, it is an all or nothing game. No matter how corrupt and evil its hierarchy becomes, either we accept today’s Church as being protected by the clause in Matthew 16:18-19 or we forget about having a Church at all. It’s black or white, and no shade of gray.'
