Fr. Z's Blog

From a priest:

I regularly use a limited amount of Latin in the OF at weekend Masses. Most parishioners really appreciate it, but after catechesis and so on a few just won’t give up their protest.
Last Sunday I preached on Otranto and mentioned that the words of consecration will be in Latin in honor of these special martyrs, as it was the language of their worship. After on of the Masses somebody wrote in the intentions book in the back of the church “no more terrible Latin.” It is amazing that even though 95% of the Mass was celebrated in English some people react so negatively towards the Latin. The bigotry is amazing; our sacral language has such a bias towards it. Has anyone ever said “no more terrible (insert language here).” We priests need to persevere in promoting the use of Latin in the OF, and also learn and celebrate the EF. We need to pray for the conversion of our faithful, so many of whom has lost all sense of Catholic identity. It is another reason for SP.  God bless, oremus pro invicem!

Ahhhhh Latin!

Aging-hippie liberals interpret everything within the Church still through the lens they formed during the anti-authoritarian civil-rights and anti-war protest movements.

When we try to uphold hierarchy and authority or rubrics or the older form of Mass or obedience to the Magisterium or decorum in liturgy and sacred music, an involuntary subconscious switch clicks in their heads. They take your faithful Catholic position of continuity to be an attack themselves and on Vatican II.

When they hear Latin, a buzz starts in their heads, their vision tunnels, their hands start to clench and unclench of their own accord.

When they see a biretta… when they see a cassock… when they see a Roman vestment… CLICK. BZZZZZZ.  The sweat breaks out….

Vatican II cannot, in their brain’s chemistry, be separated from the protest movements they have idolized until they are actually paradigmatic, iconic, even mythic.

The Council itself – in the received liberal interpretation – cannot ever be questioned or subjected to the authority of the letter of the Council’s texts, because they cannot separate their understanding of the Council from those movements of protest.

The events outside the Church in the USA in those days are completely fused with the event of the Council and certain post-Conciliar reforms.  They interpret everything they do through the lens of this combined and unassailable myth.

Reason #647886 for Summorum Pontificum.