Does Rome have all the answers?

I often find that when the New Rite is dressed up a bit to look like the Old Rite the result is just farcical. Look at Papal Ash Wednesday this year for instance. I was loath to say anything until a friend emailed me and we had exactly the same grievances. Why are the Cardinal Deacons in Dalmatics rather than Planetae Plicatae? Why are the Cardinals in scarlet rather than violet as is more appropriate for penitential days? It is all in the New Rite and is therefore NOT traditional, even in the slightest, and the spectacle of Cardinals wearing their birettas when not paratus just adds insult to injury. Apropos, why are we supposed to be pleased with it? I thought the Holy Father had more liturgical sense than this...

It all seems to me as though the people in Rome have realised that something has gone wrong in liturgical history and are doing a very fudged job to try and remedy it, getting most of it wrong along the way. ''Oh, if you wear your biretta, your Eminence, I'm sure people with lukewarm liturgical hankerings and no real knowledge will be well-pleased, since you rarely see the biretta in use these days.'' Never mind about when and when not to wear it! If I were the Pope (and I'm sure everyone thinks ''thank God you aren't!''), I would call together all the Cardinals, Bishops, Abbots etc together to Rome, stand up in front of them and say that I repudiate every aspect of 20th century liturgical reform, and that they had better do likewise. Never mind about trying to read things in the light of tradition, which is just a pretentious cop-out and is also Orwellian Doublethink. Something is either good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, traditional or modern. Things can never be both. As regards interpreting things in a traditional context, would you try to read the Qu'ran in the light of Tradition? No, naturally you wouldn't; so why do we try to read things like the New Rite, Nostra Aetate, Unitatis Redintegratio and Gaudium et Spes in the light of Tradition? As Tolkien said of Lewis' idea of the ''miserific vision'' it is rationally nonsense and theologically blasphemous...

What do we do then? If only priests and bishops had ignored what those idiots in Rome said in the '50s. ''I don't care what Rome said, I am observing the Octave!'' You cannot look to Mother Rome when Mother Rome is half infested with Orcs can you? And so, you look to the Tradition of the Church, which is older than Bugnini and Paul VI. I remember from my Latin classes finding something in the Regula Sancti Benedicti that went something like: ''Do not do as the Master does, but only what he says.'' This is good counsel, but I think it rather depends upon the character and honesty of the Master.

So, does Rome have all the answers? Maybe we'll just have to wait a few more years to find out. In the meantime, certainly don't do as they do in Rome, since they're doing everything wrong, just stick with the Old Rite and maybe Rome can look to Tradition and to us traditionalists instead of her own ideas about Tradition...