I ran across this quotation which the writer attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo (+430):
“People reject the Church because she speaks against the sins they love”
While this is true, Augustine did not say or write that in any of his extant works. It does, however, distill the essence of something else he did say in a sermon:
Hoc autem fit dum amant peccata sua, et oderunt praecepta Dei. Sermo enim Dei adversarius tuus est, si tu amicus sis iniquitatis tuae. … This happens because they love their sins and hate the commandments of God. For the word of God is your adversary if you are a friend to your own iniquity.
This is from the Enarrationes in Psalmos 35, 1.
The wording “People reject the Church because she speaks against the sins they love” captures Augustine’s thought, but should be labeled a paraphrase, especially since Augustine says “sermo Dei … the word of God,” rather than “Ecclesia … the Church.”
Let’s extend this principle in a natural way.
For a Catholic, the sacred liturgy is the preeminent locus of encounter with both the Ecclesia and the sermo Dei.
In her sacred liturgical worship, especially in her tried by test over millennia worship, Holy Church appears most fully as herself, confessing the faith, proclaiming Scripture, offering sacrifice, administering the sacraments, and rendering to God the worship that is His due according to the virtue of Religion.
In the liturgy, the Word of God confronts man sacramentally, doctrinally, morally, and bodily. This encounter with mystery in the Word requires kneeling, silence, obedience, repentance, and adoration. It tells man that God is God and that he is not.
This explains the peculiar vehemence with which some attack the traditional sacred rites.
Their objection may concern aesthetics, history, or pastoral practice. Their claims may be rooted in assertions without foundations but imposed by bullying and power.
Hatred, however, is something stronger.
When a person cannot merely dislike the older liturgy but must mock it, suppress it, or denounce those who love it, Augustine’s diagnosis becomes uncomfortably pertinent. The rite may be touching a wound he refuses to have healed.
This might be what is on display at RNS in a piece by the infamous Jesuit Thomas Reese: Why I hate the old Latin Mass: A confession
I may write more about that embarrassing slop in another post if I get a few more important things done first. It is irritating to waste daylight on him.
Returning to the point, the traditional liturgy does not flatter modern man. It speaks constantly of sin, judgment, sacrifice, propitiation, penance, and the need for grace. In other words, it tells you how to attain the eschatological joy which the Novus Ordo emphasizes.
Whoever has made peace with a cherished sin will naturally experience such worship as an adversary.
Hatred of sacred tradition may therefore be less a liturgical judgment than a moral symptom.
The man who clings to his sin believes that he is judging the TLM.
The TLM, quietly and relentlessly, is judging him.
From his feat and hatred of the rites, there grows as a consequence a fear and hatred of the people who desire those traditional rites.
ON POINT, FATHER!!! NAIL ON THE HEAD!!! Thank you! This should help convince and convict us all.
I obviously can’t judge what I do not see or know, but as someone who’s been trying to bring others to the TLM, I’ve come to suspect that for the vast majority of folks that choose not to go, or don’t attend for long, there is likely some secret sin they refuse to give up. Reason for the suspicion? My own wretched self.
Granted, everybody has different temperaments. I can’t imagine most sanguine types having a particular affinity for the low mass; however, I find it hard to imagine how anybody who is honestly striving for virtue and sanctification, would end up anywhere other than the TLM (ultimately, at least).
On a (probably) related note, the more I’ve been exclusively attending the TLM, there’s been a marked increase in hostility from friends and family. For example, a friend I’ve talked with many times over the past year about the faith seemed very receptive about the idea of God and Christianity until I started talking about sin and penance. Was honestly a bit startled how abruptly they shifted tone.
Our Lord effectively told us, John 17:14-16, that we may be in the world, but we are not of the world. We will be hated for that reason. At the end of the Beatitudes, our Lord states, “Blessed are ye when they shall revile you, and persecute you, and speak all that is evil against you, untruly, for My sake: be glad and rejoice, for your reward is very great in Heaven. For so they persecuted the prophets that were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12) While it does not stop or end the persecution that we who advocate for the TLM experience, it helps to remember from time to time that we are in good company. At the end, both persecuted and persecutors will face the Final Judge where all our excuses will fall flat.
Pray for those persecuted unjustly that they remain steadfast in the Faith.
My wife this morning, read to me about the king of Norway, who just passed away. His funeral mass will be a traditional Latin funeral mass requiem mass. It made me look and see how many Latin masses there are in the world. I was very happy to find that there are officially 447 Latin masses in the United States. Which is the highest amount of Latin masses being said in the world that is more than double of the countries next to us. God rest the soul of the king of Norway. How do you say?