I recently did a post on traditional Catholics and the emphasis they place on external worship, citing the fact that this can be a very dangerous road. Just because something
looks holy, that doesn't necessarily mean God is present. I gave the example of an Anglican high mass which looks very similar to a TLM. However, that is very deceptive because Jesus Christ is present in the TLM while the Anglican Mass truly is nothing more than smells and bells.
I have found great support for this argument in my Lenten reading. Part of my spiritual reading for Lent has been
The Dialogue by St. Catherine of Siena, a doctor of the Church.
The Dialogue is the record of conversations St. Catherine had with God the Father in which, while in a state of ecstasy, she dictated the Father's words which were written down verbatim by her secretaries (St. Catherine could not read or write, at least not until the end of her life).
In Section 68, God the Father talks about the difference between loving Him and loving the consolations we receive from Him. He warns of the great danger that comes from loving the consolations more than Him.
Page 129-130 - But my servants, even though their love is still imperfect, seek and love me for my love's sake rather than for consolation and pleasure they find in me. Now I do reward every good deed -- but the measure of the reward is the recipient's love. . . .it is not my intention that the soul should receive this consolation foolishly, paying more attention to my gift than to me. I want her to be more concerned about the loving charity with which I give it to her, and to her unworthiness to receive it, than to the pleasure of her own consolation. If she foolishly takes only the pleasure without considering my love for her, she will reap the sort of harm and delusion of which I am about to tell you.
. . . When she has experienced my consolation and my visitation within her in one way, and then that way ceases, she goes back along the road by which she had come, hoping to find the same thing again. But I do not always give in the same way, lest it seem as if I had nothing else to give. No, I give in many ways, as it pleases my goodness and according to the soul's need. But in her foolishness she looks for my gift only in that one way, trying as it were to impose rules on the Holy Spirit.
That is not the way to act. Instead, she should cross courageously along the bridge of the teaching of Christ crucified, and there receive my gifts when, where and as my goodness pleases to give them. And if I hold back it is not out of hate but love, so that she may seek me in truth and love me not just for her pleasure, but humbly accept my charity more than any pleasure she may find. For if she does otherwise and runs only after pleasure in her own way rather than mine, she will experience pain and unbearable confusion when the object of her delight, as her mind sees it, seems to be taken away.
Such are those who choose consolation in their own way. Once they find pleasure in me in a given fashion they want to go on with just that. Sometimes they are so foolish that if I visit them in any other way than that, they resist and do not accept it, still wanting only what they have imagined.
This is the fault of their selfish passion in the spiritual pleasures they found in me. But they are deluded. It would be impossible to be always the same. For the soul cannot stand still; she has either to advance toward virtue or turn back. In the same way the spirit cannot stand still in me in one pleasure without my goodness' giving her more. And I give these gifts very differently: Sometimes I give the pleasure of a spiritual gladness; sometimes I give contrition and contempt for sin, which will make it seem as if the spirit is inwardly troubled. . . .
The words I highlighted in the last paragraph, "
For the soul cannot stand still; she has either to advance toward virtue or turn back. In the same way the spirit cannot stand still in me in one pleasure without my goodness' giving her more" are very similar to those of Pope Francis when he celebrated Mass on the 50th anniversary of first Mass in a language other than Latin. From an article by
Crux:
Allowing priests to celebrate Mass in the language of the local congregation rather than in Latin allowed the faithful to understand and be encouraged by the word of God, Pope Francis said.
“You cannot turn back, we have to always go forward, always forward and who goes back is making a mistake,” he told parishioners after commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first time a pope celebrated Mass in the vernacular following the Second Vatican Council.
“Let us give thanks to the Lord for what he has done in his Church in these 50 years of liturgical reform. It was really a courageous move by the Church to get closer to the people of God so that they could understand well what it does, and this is important for us: to follow Mass like this,” he said as he left Rome’s Church of All Saints March 7.
The
Remnant Newspaper posted a typical traditionalist response to this message from the Holy Father: "Pope Francis Celebrates Tragic Anniversary Today in Rome." As this article states,
[T]he so-called "New Mass" and all of its Protestant trappings were imposed on the Church by modernist revolutionaries acting under the auspices of the demonic "spirit of Vatican II."
Father Z, who tries to appear more moderate than the extremist Remnant Newspaper, was basically in agreement with this statement [
HERE]. Father Z deftly avoided any mention of the Mass or homily by Pope Francis. He started out his post, entitled "Speaking of 50th anniversary of vernacular Masses… BUGNINICARE! (Revisited)", with the following statement:
In some circles there has been some panting whoopdeedoo about the fact that 50 years ago Paul VI celebrated Mass for the first time in a Roman parish in Italian.
Yes, Father Z, and the one making the biggest "whoopdeedoo" about this was none other than Pope Francis. The Vicar of Christ, unlike you, felt this was a very important event in Church history.
Father Z, as part of his response to the "whoopdeedoo" reprinted an old post about Msgr. Annibale Bugnini which Father Z entitled, "Bugninicare! UNIVERSAL SPIRITUAL-CARE REFORM FOR THE CATHOLIC CHURCH." After writing disparagingly of the New Mass, Father Z then posted several pictures showing abuses of the Mass but disingenuously presented these pictures as the natural result of the "Bugnini" changes. One of the comments was very typical of those posted:
Dundonianski says:9 March 2015 at 8:34 am
A wonderful tapestry of what was (and is) valid and licit; my sympathies to the SSPX!
But the one comment that everyone loved was this:
Henry Edwards says:9 March 2015 at 10:34 am One thing we did not hear from the Bugninicare reformers was “In [sic] you like your old Mass, then you can keep your old Mass.”
Why are traditionalists so insistent on the superiority of the TLM and the spiritual destructiveness of the "Novus Ordo" as they call it? That answer was given recently by none other than the aforementioned Father Z.
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