Now that we have entered the season of “Greater Lent” (as the period from Septuagesima through Holy Saturday is sometimes known) it seems appropriate for me to continue following the path of penitence by confessing some of my own sins, liturgically speaking.  While there are many of these – and no doubt too many to enumerate – I trust that God’s mercy covers the many things done in ignorance, which most of my sins were, to a greater or lesser extent.  Nevertheless, it is true that some of my liturgical sins were more harmful to my fellow-Christians than others, and so it is probably those for which I ought to be most sorry and to do the most penance, as they were most likely to have provoked a breach in the bond of charity. 

Of these, probably the greater number, subsumed under the heading “a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing,” occurred not too many years after the period of “liturgical awakening” in my life, when I and my family first ventured from the safety of the fold of generic Evangelical Christian worship, and found our way to an small Episcopal parish.  It was a wonderful time of exploring a richness of worship experience that was unprecedented in our prior experience, and which, further, seemed to offer the promise of connecting us on the level of praxis with the great Tradition which stretched back to the Apostles and our Lord himself.

What I did not understand at the time, however, was that what I was experiencing was not nearly so “historic” as I had been led to believe, but was rather a slightly modified version of the Novus Ordo cooked up by trendy Episcopalian liturgists during the ’70s following the lead of Monsignor Annibale Bugnini (who was chief architect of the disastrous “Reform” of the Roman Liturgy which followed the Second Vatican council) and, as it turns out, often working in conjunction with the ICEL and used it’s translations of the “real” Novus Ordo that had been rolled out in by Paul VI in 1969.  

Since my background had been so devoid of anything which could connect with the historic Church’s liturgy, even this “liturgy-lite” seemed a wondrous banquet, and I dove in head-first, with great zeal, but very little knowledge and even less understanding.  As a result of this lack of knowledge, I found myself a willing pawn in the battle of the Bishop vs. the Traditionalists in my own parish.  Without knowing where the new-fangled “tradition” begun with the promulgation of the 1979 Episcopal Prayerbook had really come from, I simply accepted it and it’s claims to represent the historic Christian Tradition at face-value, and simply assumed that what the Bishop was trying to do must have a good reason. 

I understood so little about the basics of liturgical sense and even less about the true Historic Christian liturgy, that I was completely insensitive to the Traditional architecture of our parish, with it’s wonderfully carved High-Altar.  To me, it simply put the Priest “too far away” from everyone.  So I wholehearted agreed with and supported the Bishop’s move to install and consecrate a new versus populum Altar located not “far away” at the eastern end of the building, but right in the midst of the people – at East end of the crossing.

While it is true that there were some positive gains from the “renovation” – such as the opening up of the North and South transepts which had been walled off for many years – nevertheless, those gains were more than over-matched by the many other changes (such as moving the font from it’s traditional position near the entrance to front-and-center at West entrance to the crossing, and moving the choir and organ from the traditional “monastic” location in the East transept immediately West of the High Altar into the newly re-opened North and South transepts) which were made, so that in truth the “renovation” should be classed more as a “wreck-o-vation”.  But I knew so little at the time, that I couldn’t have begun to understand why much of what we were doing was so fundamentally wrong and out-of-sync with the true historic Tradition of Christian worship.

Over time I have come to understand that it was largely many of my unquestioned “protestant” assumptions about “the point” of the liturgy which functioned to help insulate me from being more sensitive to how wrong and out-of-sync with the great Tradition of historic Christian worship most of what we were doing was.  As a “reformed protestant with a prayerbook,” I simply assumed what all protestants inherently assume, which is that worship is “of the people, by the people, and for the people”.  Now, I should be clear, if you were to ask a protestant “is worship for man or for God” he would quickly say, “God, of course!”  and might even follow it up with “what a silly question!” But the fact is that in practice, all of the decisions about what is done and what is not done stem, in one way or another, not from the Divine but from the Human.  This is necessarily so, because protestantism has no concept of the historic Center of Christian Worship, which is the propitiatory Sacrifice of our Saviour made present by the Holy Ghost upon the Altar through the agency of the ordained Priest who offers up the Consecrated Host to the Father as our Lord himself offered his body and blood for the life of the world. 

Without this Divine aspect at the Core of Christian worship, all that is left is the human aspect – an either more or less elaborate club meeting where songs are sung, and preaching and catechesis is done, and in the more “high-church” settings, a communal meal (the “Lord’s Supper”) is tacked on in what, without the anchor of it’s being a re-presentation of the Propitiatory Sacrifice of the Cross, easily degenerates in practice, and in the minds of protestant worshipers, into not much more than a kind of “team-building, community-enhancing activity”.  And this fact is reflected in both “what” is done, and “how” it is done.

For example, in such a (protestant) context, it makes PERFECT sense to move the focus of the liturgical activity from the High Altar, versus Deum, to a versus populum “Holy Table”, situated “in the midst” of the people for whom the Supper is prepared and celebrated. 

You see, without the understanding that the Sacrifice is being offered TO GOD and on BEHALF OF the faithful, and only secondarily and derivatively is it received back FROM God (by the power of the Holy Ghost through the agency of the ordained Priest) “for” the faithful – without this understanding, there is no readily intelligible *reason* for worshiping versus Deum – which ends up being interpreted as the priest “turning his back” on the people.

You see the difference?  It is only because the Sacrifice of Christ’s Body and Blood is FIRST offered, as it was on the Cross, TO GOD for the Church, and ultimately, for the life of the world, that it THEN, in union with and AS that same Body and Blood which hung upon the Cross, can it be given back to the faithful, not before, and not without.  Thus, it is according to it’s nature as a re-presentation of Christ’s Propitiatory Sacrifice, that the priest stands versus Deum, and, conversely, it is AGAINST that same nature that the Mass is performed (as it is almost exclusively in the Novus Ordo) versus populum.

In that kernel of truth, lies hid most of what separates truly Historic Christian worship – and thus the Traditional or Tridentine Mass of the Ages – from the Novus Ordo and all it’s near imitators in the mainline Protestant denominations (TEC/PECUSA, ELCA, UMC, PCUSA, etc.).

In that kernel of truth, lies the reason why Catholic Churches have always had, not a “bare” cross, but a CRUCIFIX at the center of the Church above the Altar – to emphasize the unity of the offering which takes place there with that which took place so long ago on the Cross, and is thereby “re-presented”, NOT primarily “to us”, but TO the Father, FOR us.

Now, I must quickly state, for the record, that none of what I have said addresses the *validity* of the Novus Ordo.  As I have said recently, “validity” per se is not what I am discussing here.  But if you are a serious Catholic, how can you not see the trajectory which is operating in this so-called “Reform”?  Remember, that NOTHING in the documents of the Second Vatican Council ever changed any of the Magisterial teaching regarding the Sacrifice of the Mass, or the Priesthood ordained to celebrate it.  But those agenda-driven modernists who crafted the “Reform” of the Liturgy were hell-bent on changing what they wanted to change regardless of what any Council – or any Pope, for that matter – wished, and for reasons which had nothing to do with what the Council Documents themselves asked for.

Just as the New, post-conciliar Breviary was replaced by a mutilated facsimile, censoring God the Holy Spirit himself through the excision of “certain” (and you can guess which) Psalms and certain verses (again, you can likely guess which) of certain other Psalms – quite to the contrary of the wishes of the Concilium, so the Mass of the Ages was replaced by a dumbed-down, mutilated facsimile (again, please note, that I’m not saying it’s “invalid”) which was crafted so as to mute as much as possible, through excision of many prayers and portions of prayers containing important theological content, and through the extremely potent use of non-verbal sub-text (versus populum, lay ministers and readers, altar girls, etc. to say nothing of the architectural and artistic “wreck-o-vations” many of which exceed my own liturgical sin described above), all-together cooperating in massively attenuating, if not out-right contradicting, the unchanged teaching of the Magisterium concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass and the Priesthood ordained to celebrate it.

So it is in this context, that, while very concious of my own sins and failings including, but not limited to, those described above, I must nevertheless note that these days there are many – sometimes for the best of motives (like our friend over at Libera Me) , and sometimes maybe ”not so much” – who just want us all to be able to “get along”, whether we agree with the liturgical “reform” or whether we see it as in fact a “wreck-o-vation”.  Sometimes this is an admirable sentiment, and sometimes it is even a necessary posture.  However, there are many times when it turns into merely a way of blunting, slowing down, and otherwise hindering what our Holy Father is trying to accomplish by freeing the Traditional Latin Mass (or, as he calls it, the “Extraordinary Form” of the Roman Rite).  While such maneuvering may be done in a variety of ways and, as I’ve said, for a variety of reasons, it usually focuses on, in one way or another, attempting to claim the “moral high ground” by framing the attempts which are being made, in the light of the Holy Father’s Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum to bring back to life in every parish the Theological and Aesthetic beauty, glory, and richness of the Traditional Latin Mass as somehow (e.g. Fr. Longnecker) “putting pomp ahead of people”.

But the truth is that it’s not a matter of “pomp”, rather it’s a matter of presenting the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, of our Catholic Faith, in all it’s liturgical beauty, and goodness, and NOT attempting to undercut and contradict that truth with conflicting signals and non-verbal sub-text.  In this respect there is not, and can never be, any comparison between the two forms of the Roman Rite.  It is for this reason that I can say that Traditional or Tridentine Mass is the only form of the Roman Rite (not saying anything about the Eastern Divine Liturgy) which can truly connect one with the great Tradition of Historic Christian worship, since the Novus Ordo, dispite being technically “valid”, is not part of that great Tradition of Historic Christian worship, but rather an imposter, based upon a faux-tradition, as has been increasingly admitted even by those in the field of Liturgics.

As I repent of my past (liturgical) sins, I pray and work for, and I urge you also to pray and work for, the success of the Holy Father’s initiative to restore a place for the Traditional Tridentine Mass in each and every parish – for Truth’s Sake, for Beauty’s sake, and for Goodness Sake!