'Ordinary' vs. 'Extraordinary': a comparison

[hibernicus]

IMHO it is a great pity that the use of an altar stone with relics was made optional (which practically means abolished). it's a very ancient practice and there is clear scriptural warranty for it in the saints who cry out from under the altar in the Apocalypse of St. John.

[hibernicus]

The NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER recently published a diatribe against the EF Mass, pretty much calling for its abolition and accusing it of promoting clericalism and all the evils thereof. You will find links to the original article and to several responses, satirical and otherwise, at the link below:

www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2019/11/the-national-catholic-reporter-s-new.html#.XctYDlf7TIU

A couple of comments:
The author refers to EF communicants "kneeling at the priest's feet". Last time I did it I knelt at an altar rail - she is choosing her words to emphasise an image of total subservience and servility.
She replies to the objection that Eastern Rite churches have similar liturgical practices by saying that the Eastern Rites are authentic traditions and the EF is not. Of course if she were consistent she would say the Eastern Rites ought to be wreckovated as well, and her idea of "authentically traditional" might be summed up as "whatever we are doing today is the tradition; what we did yesterday is obsolete and no longer part of the tradition, even if we did it for the previous 1500 years".
Lest I think all the errors are on one side, Joseph Shaw's claim that EF devotees don't engage in this sort of diatribe against other people's practices because they are too busy worshipping is laughable. We don't have to go too far on the net - and not much further in real life - to find trads who talk as if every OF Mass was a clown mass, equivocate about the validity of the OF Mass, etc. I am told a significant proportion of SSPX sermons are on "how lucky we are to have the Traditional Mass", which is like the Gaelgeoiri in AN BEAL BOCHT who claim it is not enough to be authentically Irish to speak Irish and nothing but Irish - you must speak ABOUT nothing but Irish.

[maolsheachlann]

It's hilarious that the National Catholic Reporter article speaks so grandly of tolerance in its final paragraphs, while engaging in the most bitter denunciations of Latin Mass worshippers throughout the entire text. But what else would one expect of the National Catholic Reporter? (It's amusing, also, to see yet more evidence of that old liberal double standard: tradition is charming and beautiful when practiced by foreigners, or representatives of a foreign culture, but toxic and narrow-minded when practiced in one's own culture.)

I don't have a dog in this fight. I've attended maybe five Latin Masses in my life. I was impressed by the devotion and discipline, but I didn't find it life-changing, or feel that I could never go back to the Ordinary Form.

Just as Traditionalists were caricatured in the National Catholic Reporter article, I feel that the Ordinary Form is often caricatured by SOME Traditionalists-- the vast majority of Ordinary Form Masses I've attended have been soberly and reverently celebrated. It's amazing how seldom the priest breaks out into a rap during the homily.

Most Traditionalist Catholics are simply Catholics who love the Extraordinary Form, but some really have tunnel vision. For instance, when I recently wrote an article on the decline of poetry for the Burkean online journal (which nowhere mentions the liturgy or even Catholicism), someone left this comment: "The decline of poetry is surely paralleled in the Catholic Church by the post-Vatican II changes in the liturgy of the Mass. Whatever one’s religious beliefs, even at a cultural level one must regret the passing of the traditional Latin rite and its replacement by the vernacular Mass or Novus Ordo. I suspect that it is no coincidence that poetry and liturgy are both in decline in these times. But there is hope here too and growing numbers of the faithful are rejecting the sheer banality of the modern rite and returning to churches – although few in number – where the Latin Mass is celebrated."

I'm grateful to him for commenting, but it's typical of the monomania of some Traditionalists, which Hibernicus is right to compare to that of the Gaeilgeoirs in An Béal Bocht.