A question...does liturgical complacency, that is, willingness to stupidly accept novelty alongside tradition as two things that can co-exist in a comfortable relativistic fudge (in other words, any difference there might be between Old and New Rite doesn't matter, since they are ''two forms of the same Roman Rite'' - this includes '62 of course) entail a moral or an intellectual suicide, or both?
This constitutes my first objection to ''Catholic Traditionalism'' - other such questions will follow soon...
Most Traddies are rather like the rabbits in 'Watership Down'. The 'comfort zone' they inhabit means they do not have to engage with pertinent questions.
ReplyDeleteWell, at the very least it's a deliberate unwillingness to go the whole hog, inevitably leads to all kinds of contradictions.
ReplyDeletePatricius:
ReplyDeleteNot all traddies believe the New rite to be really valid. However, they follow the Holy See in using the 1962 Missal, it being authorised. I do sympathise awfully with what you said in this, and your later post, but I think you maybe polarise people too much: those who support the New rite, which you lump all "traddies" into, and those who don't, but you would say those would have to support an older Missal than 1962? I think there may be a third, who would support the '62 Missal because it's authorised, not support the New Missal, and also want some turning back of things in the so-called Extraordinary Form...
Do I make any sense?
Paul: How can people go the whole hog? If you mean using Missals pre-dating '62 without authority, this simply cannot be an option.
Mark,
ReplyDeleteThe old rite is celebrated by the virtue of immemorial custom, not what is 'authorised'.
Before you were born real Traditionalists were celebrating pre-1962 liturgy without any putative permission or indults.
By your logic when Pope John Paul III comes along and abrogates Summorum Pontificum and commands you use the 1967 Ritus servandus with the new calendar you will be rather up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddle.
It is following the latest fashion and novelty from Rome that caused the problem in the first place.
I don't have a problem with immemorial custom, but I'm making the point that one cannot use what is not permitted.
ReplyDeleteIs it really licit, say, to go and use some 16th Century Sacramentary, just because one wants to?
Mark,
ReplyDeleteA monosyllabic answer: Yes.
By your argument immemorial custom has no force when contradicted by the latest fashion.
Liturgical rites and the complex sociological and psychological matrix of the patrimony they create and generate belong to the entire worshipping community not just to a single individual who can change them by whim or fancy.