Fr. Z's Blog

For those of you who missed it, I direct your attention to an important post at The Chant Cafe (whose motto is “Double Shots of Plainsong – No Foam”).  I am sure the cafe serves Mystic Monk Coffee, too!

Jeffrey Tucker did everyone a great service by posting video/audio tutorials demonstrating how the new, corrected translation can be sung.

What is interesting about this, is that no one has done this before.  This means that people can get, for the first time, an idea of how the Novus Ordo can be sung in English.

This will obviously annoy liberals, enemies of the new, corrected translation.  They are busily vilifying the new Roman Missal.  The last thing they want is for people to hear the translation and like it.  Why would they be incessantly running down the new, corrected translation?  Probably pride and fear.  They can’t stand not having their way and they know that a new clarity of Catholic teaching that will resound in the prayers will require that they too be consistent with the teaching, in living or in the case of clerics also in preaching.   For some who are older, this huge step demonstrates that their old ideas from the 60’s-80’s are being swept away.

“But Father! But Father!”, some of you hard-core trads are saying.   “I don’t care about the new missal or new translation or new Mass.  We want only the old Mass!  Why are you propping up something we don’t like?”

First, I want Holy Church to be successful in her mission.

Second, if you think this blog is only about the TLM, you haven’t been paying attention.  Take off the blinders and pull the earplugs.  There is a big picture to consider.

The Novus Ordo is a major tool of Holy Church’s mission right now.  Who knows what may happen in 50 years.  Could the tool be better?  Sure.  Would I prefer a different tool? Of course!

What I prefer doesn’t matter.

We work with the tools we have and we do what we can.  I will remind some of you who may have forgotten that my conversion to Catholicism was sparked by an experience of the Novus Ordo celebrated in exactly the sort of continuity described by Benedict XVI.  I respect what it can accomplish when it is celebrated with fidelity and with continuity.

This is the real world, folks, not traddie fantasy camp.  Every Mass, Novus Ordo, TLM, should be offered with the best we have.   The corrected translation is a huge improvement for the Novus Ordo.   The majority of Catholics who go to Mass are going to hear something vastly improved. I believe that, in this new translation, Christ’s voice will ring more truly.  People will respond.  What’s bad about that?  It may lead many of them to want more (read: the TLM).

The Novus Ordo is the experience of the vast majority of Catholics right now.  I may prefer the older, traditional form of Mass, but I know that when there are improvements to any liturgical worship we all benefit.  Rising tides raise all boats.

To use another metaphor, I prefer a nice steak and cabernet to baby-food goo in a jar.  Just because I don’t like goo, that doesn’t mean that the goo isn’t exactly what babies need to grow up and start preferring steak and cabernet.  No parent forces little Bundle-Of-Joy to have a porterhouse when what she really needs is milk and goo.

To extend this a bit, you can’t set a T-bone in front of a guy who has a broken jaw that is wired shut, or who doesn’t have the strength to raise his hands.   The faithful have been catholicly crippled for decades now, systematically starved.  They are undernourished and atrophied.  We are going to have to stick the steak in a blender for them so they can take it through a straw, or else cut it up for them and feed with with a spoon until they recover.  But they need better stuff through a straw than what they have been getting.  The new stuff out of the blender hasn’t had all the nutrients removed.  That’s what the lame-duck ICEL translation did: it extracted the nutrients.

Some of you who prefer the Novus Ordo may be about to have a sputtering nutty and start flinging comments about how insulting I am about the Novus Ordo, how condescending I am about the average people in the pew, blah blah blah.  No.   First, I’m not talking to you.  That should be obvious. Second, it is the liberals who are condescending and offensive.  They are the ones who have kept people down.  In fighting the new translation they are doing a grave disservice.  I believe people are hungry for more.  I trust that they will get it so long as they are not poisoned against it in advance.  The Novus Ordo can do a great deal for them.

Sure, I think the TLM could eventually do more, but… I live in the real world.

We have to get people into church with worship that is improved, with a more meaningful translation, with better music, with greater dignity, with solid preaching.  Once they are in… or back… there is a greater likelihood that they will ask for more.

Some people will be attracted into Church through the traditional forms.  That is why we need more and more and more of the traditional forms!

Others will be attracted by the Novus Ordo.  GREAT!  Get them in the doors.

Thus endeth my rant.

Again, for those of you who missed it, I direct your attention to an important post at The Chant Cafe.
Jeffrey Tucker did everyone a great service by posting video/audio tutorials demonstrating how the new, corrected translation can be sung.