Why 'Church Unity' Doesn't Justify Sacrificing the Latin Mass

Part 2 of a complete response to Fr Reese's case against the Traditional Latin Mass by Thomas Colsy

Part 2 of a complete response to Fr Reese’s case against the Traditional Latin Mass by Thomas Colsy

[Part 1]

“[T]he Mass was always changing throughout history.”

This isn’t strictly true – and it’s rhetorically slippery. It was remarkably static for much of its history and revisions became lighter and less severe as the sapling of the Church’s liturgical norms matured and flowered. The Mass developed organically over centuries. A garden or grove, tended with angelic care. The reform of the 1960s was then the most sudden and severe architectural renovation, conducted at extraordinary speed, in the Church’s history. It was guided by committees animated by a particular reading of antiquity.

Organic development is like a tree growing rings. The post-conciliar reform was more like enthusiastic landscaping. Both involve gardening; only one involves a chainsaw.

Reese next describes a priest who complained: “it just wasn’t the same because in the old church, after ordination, he would be allowed to touch the consecrated bread for the first time. Now anyone could receive Communion in the hand. It was as if part of his priesthood had been taken away.”

This is a very interesting point. Let us not skip over this. There is a deep, unspoken, and mysterious reason we keep the things most special, sacred, and intimate only for those for whom it is appropriate and we are most close to. It is not appropriate to give the things you especially gift to your beloved to just anybody. This cheapens and devalues the gift.

Man reserves his body for his wife, and woman hers for her husband. Even Christ selected twelve disciples and, even within this already intimate and exclusive body, had an “inner circle” composed of those most close to him – Peter, Andrew, John, and James.

His greatest secrets, such as the meaning of the sower and the seed, Christ refused to give to the crowd, honouring their commitment, sacrifice, and role to come. “Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but it has not been given to them.”

Our religion has never repudiated hierarchy in favour of egalitarianism or ignored difference and the concurrent privileges and duties of sacred office. I don’t blame the priest for feeling like something precious had been cheapened. It certainly had.

We come to the crucial claim:

“[F]or the most part, the liturgical changes were accepted and implemented with excitement and joy. They were the most visible reforms of Vatican II. And after a bit of confusion, they were accepted overwhelmingly by Catholics in the pews.”