Excerpts from A Liturgy from Hell BY GEORGE A. KENDALL

Excerpts from 

A Liturgy from Hell

FEBRUARY 2024 

BY GEORGE A. KENDALL

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/society-culture/a-liturgy-from-hell/?fbclid=IwAR0IEJz64LXby5tXQ8GufuxhMejJKyzkEXf6E4dWgxke2Kh--ZIR-hrQuNI

Responses by Laurence Gonzaga

"Clearly, the Novus Ordo is not the work of the Holy Spirit, and that leaves only one other possibility—that it is the work of Satan. The Traditional Latin Mass has the authority of the Holy Spirit behind it. The Novus Ordo does not. Just as clearly, neither the Novus Ordo itself nor Traditionis Custodes has legitimate authority behind it, and we are not obliged in conscience to obey either. They are null and void."

Laurence: Clearly? Says who? Who is George Kendall to conclude this as if it's an infallible truth revealed to him by God. The Devil didn't give us the Novus Ordo, don't be ridiculous. The real question here is, who hurt you, George Kendall?

"The Novus Ordo has been with us only half a century. During that time, it has left faithful Catholics with a sense of unreality, a sense more of the absence of God than of his presence. This is the case even where the Novus Ordo Mass is celebrated reverently—as it is, for example, by the monks who celebrate it on the Catholic cable channel EWTN. Despite this earnest reverence, it is still deeply unsatisfying."

Laurence: I don't know where this author is getting this idea. Sure, not every parish is full with standing room only, but I know my local parish is in many of the mass times that I attend. Do I get a sense that they feel an absence of God? No. To be fair, I do prefer the TLM to the NO. If you were to ask my opinion whether if they were exposed to the TLM or a highly reverent NO, with Gregorian chant and more Latin, would they get a greater sense of the presence of God? I think so. But the claim that even the most reverently celebrated NO puts out a sense of the absence of God is ridiculous. Just another case of emotional gibberish from this author. 

"So what we have is a situation where great harm has been done to the Church as a result of a colossal lapse in judgment by Pope Paul VI—a good man who was fixated on the mistaken belief that some kind of meeting of the minds was possible between the Church and modernity (I suspect he was deceived by Satan as well as by manipulative advisers). And now the error has to be reversed—a huge change, to be sure, but clearly necessary if we care at all about the future of our Church."

Laurence: hindsight is 20/20 isn't it? This commits the fallacy of "post hoc ergo propter hoc", or after this therefore because of this. The decline or some will call the fruits that we perceive in the church subsequent to the Second Vatican Council, and specifically to the point of this article, the reform of the Roman Rite called for by Sacrosanctam Concilium, are complex to assess. Who could have really foreseen the impact of the changes that were brought about? Not even Benedict the 16th would realize the impact until several years after the council. Even the hero of the Traditionalists, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, signed the documents of the Second Vatican Council including the document on the liturgy. Therefore, there was nothing in principle wrong with the document's language itself. Including the concept of introducing vernacular into the liturgy, where appropriate. To be clear, what we got in the NO is so much more revolutionary than what SC called for.  Whatever the case was, it is what we have to work with today. Crying over spilled milk after 60 years for another 60 years is not going to get us anywhere.

"But there is an alternative. The strategy of the Catholic faithful should be to forget about Vatican politics and to work at the local level (the diocese and the parish) to establish as many Latin Mass communities as possible. Ideally, these should exist under the authority of the local bishop, where that is possible. Where it is not, we will have to go underground, operating in secrecy, perhaps celebrating the Mass in one another’s homes, using canceled priests (that is, those unjustly canceled for the crime of being Catholic—child molesters and such need not apply!)."

Laurence: As a strategy I'm totally on board with this author. As I've said several times in social media recently, think globally, act locally. Now some will put in the effort to try to create more Latin mass communities, and if that's what folks want to commit their time to, then so be it. Personally, I don't think it's going to make a difference. If there was a time for significant growth it would have been right after Summorum Pontificum, and even with 14 years of that, yes there was growth in the TLM but not significantly. Around here I was part of various groups that helped to start two additional TLM locations in the diocese. One was short-lived maybe lasting a year or two. The other one lasted 7 years or so. But at the end of the day all the folks that would go to those locations still preferred the longstanding TLM location. Naturally the folks that coordinated the long-standing TLM location resisted breaking up the community because that would mean less folks would attend their shop. So what really needs to happen is you need to convince folks to switch over to the TLM part of the time if not exclusively for things to grow and spread. That kind of thing just doesn't happen. Honestly, the truth is, most people like to bark more than they like to bite. As former president of an Una Voce chapter, I can say, people are lazy, and it's easy to just have meetings and complain but not really get anywhere. 

"When the pope or a bishop tells us we must comply with Traditionis Custodes, which is an attack on Christ and on His Church, we can and must disobey. I like to think of this as ecclesial disobedience, comparable to civil disobedience."

Laurence: civil disobedience, such an American revolutionary concept. I wonder what the TFP would say about these tactics, ironic, usually very anti-revolutionary. Not that the TFP are identical to the traditional movement, but they do tend to find their adherents overlapping. People have already tried this, in extreme forms like the SSPX. Nothing about the day to day of SSPX ops has really impacted anything significant within the canonical confines of the actual Catholic Church. They are not the solution. 

"The young Hollywood actor and recent Catholic convert Shia LeBeouf told Bishop Robert Barron in 2022 that he preferred the Traditional Latin Mass to the Novus Ordo because 'it feels like they’re not selling me a car.'"

Laurence: there it is, always ready to exploit popular culture when it serves their purpose. Most of these folks don't even have a clue who Shia LaBeouf really is. He's a tortured soul, and it's no wonder for me that he's attracted to the aesthetics and introspection fostered by the TLM. That doesn't mean it suits everyone's tastes though. In this liturgical game, it really boils down to tastes, no matter how many TLM books they put out there. It's mostly just an echo chamber in our various cliques and camps.

"Now the Catholic tradition, which I have been comparing to a tree, is, like the tree, a product of slow growth, and it is only natural that its wounds should be healed by the same process—not by a new pope decreeing its prompt return, but by organic growth leading to the proliferation of Latin Mass communities. There is no doubt in my mind that the fear of such an eventuality is what prompted Pope Francis to issue Traditionis Custodes and launch his unholy war on the old Mass."

Laurence: whatever is going to happen is going to happen. As I said to an old friend I recently reconnected with, I don't lose too much sleep about what might happen to the TLM in the future. This Pope will come and go. As will the next one. Every age has its challenges and we do the best we can to work towards the preservation or attainment of the greater good as we see it. If the charismatics want to keep pushing for their tongue speaking and prophecies, so be it. If the happy clappy teen liturgies want to keep doing what they're doing with praise and worship music, so be it. If the traditionalists want to keep doing what they're doing promoting the TLM and bashing the NO, then so be it. God will still work his purposes through all of it, good, bad, and indifferent.