Finally, the Pope begins to live up to his name and takes steps to restore the Church to its former glory.
I hoped when Benedict XVI was elected that he meant to make the Church somewhat more rule bound than it has been in the years since Vatican II. He picked that name, after all.
Since then I’ve been a little disappointed. He made more apologies, wishy-washed on a lot of things and generally seemed to be reluctant to make the big, structural changes that are needed. Finally, my dear friends at NPR tell me that he’s made one of those big changes.
He’s normalized the Tridentine Mass.
No longer need people suffer swaying folk singers, autoharps and silly tunes about God and us holding hands and skipping about like useless hippies. No longer do the faithful have to petition questionably aligned bishops for permission to hear the Mass in a long dead language with the priest showing the humble people his backside.
One of my complaints about the Mass has always been that there’s no sense of majesty. There’s no sense of mystery or respect. No sense that you are supposed to be communing with God himself, in His House. Modern churches are all about community, the typical feel-good higgledy-piggledy of our desperately confused society.
Well, bollocks to that. I don’t hold with the modern world and what’s good enough for one thousand nine hundred sixty five years of Church history is good enough for me.
I can hit the Latin service at 10 AM in Harrisburg, eh? I wonder what time the bars on Second Street open? Something to wash down sacramental wine that goes nicely with unleavened bread would be in order.