At the blog Voice in the Wilderness, Fr. Shawn P. Tunink describes his experience of saying Mass in the older, traditional form of the Roman Rite for the first time.
Every Latin Church priest ought to be able to celebrate Mass in the Extraordinary Form. If he can’t… well…
Here is something of this priest’s description:
Now, before anyone begins to label me some kind of “radical traditionalist,” you should know that I have really not been a fan of the 1962 Mass. I’m too young to have ever attended it growing up. Moreover, I have always felt that our primary goal has got to be to make the regular Sunday celebration of the Mass a much more sacred and transcendent experience. I was not a fan of the indult that existed under John Paul II. I at least wasn’t a fan of young people going to this. In my mind, the indult existed for those who couldn’t change, but it would eventually go away.
Pope Benedict caused me to have to do some rethinking of all this. As you may be aware, in 2007 Pope Benedict did away with the indult or “special permission” that a priest would have previously needed to celebrate according to the 1962 missal. Moreover, he seemed to be saying that all priests should know how to celebrate this Mass if their people asked for it. His desire, like mine, was to restore sacredness to the liturgy, but he wanted to do it through what he called a “mutual enrichment” between the 1962 Mass and the contemporary Mass. I could see that this wasn’t just a plan to allow certain people to remain wrapped in the nostalgia of the past, but a real way forward. This was not a return to the past but, in a way, a chance to perhaps go more slowly and get right some of the things that went wrong with liturgical reform after the Second Vatican Council.
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Read the rest over there.
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Hurray! Another priest ‘gets’ it. I personally believe the Pope meant the ancient Mass as a gift for priests. When our priests are well-fed, we laity will be also.