I make an appearance in this video produced by the Catholic Herald.
It's a good short discussion of some issues around the Traditional Mass. My contribution is to object to 'Shine Jesus Shine'; I should say that, in footage not included here, I'm equally critical, and for the same reason, of some old hymns like 'God of Mercy and Compassion'. The problem, in this case, is not the liturgical reform, although (contrary to the wishes of many reformers) it encouraged the invasion of Mass by terrible hymns.
My point is about sentimental, mawkish, emptionally manipulative art and rhetoric, which seems to me to be very much what the traditional liturgy is not. The texts and chants of the liturgy have a very different character: they are astringent, honest, and wholesome; they have an emotional range, certainly, but they put the supernatural message front and centre, and decorate or interpret this. What I object to is when an emotional reaction is sought out first, with the substantive message left as an afterthought. The people doing this would say to us: what's your problem? Look, we've filled the church for you!
The problem is that if you are subjected to lots of emotionally manipulative music, images, and sermons, you will get the impression that there is no justification for this emotion: that it is emotion without substance.
Imagine a saccharine image of the child Jesus: it is all about how sweet he looks, not about the supernatural realities. But other babies are sweet too, and images of other babies can be just as sweet. So if you anchor your devotion to the child Jesus in his looking sweet -- if that is where your religious emotion is coming from -- you can wake up one morning and think 'that's just a load of nonsense' and feel you've been taken for a fool. And at that point you won't be in a mood to let someone explain that after all there is some substance to it, which up to then no-one had bothered to convey.
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Regrdless of the music the Novus Ordo did (IMHO) make us lose the SANCTITY of Holy Mass. The argument about "your native language" is quite fallacious as most of us had a missal which contained the translation of the Mass into our native language. The problem now seems to be that we go to Mass in a foreign country & find that not only don't we understand the words but each country seems to have decided to have its own Mass where even the priestly actions cannot be followed & hence the Mass itself cannot be followed. Where is the sense in that? Add to these problems & include the disastrous lack of priests & you compound the problem. No doubt John XXIII had good intentions but you know the saying "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" Need I say more?
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