Iconoclasm

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Over in the valley of the River Adur, Fr Sean posted something really good about the manner in which those attached to more traditional forms of Catholic worship should celebrate. He didn't say that 1962 Missal is perfection, just that messing about with the rubrics at this time would be a really unsensible thing to do. I agree wholeheartedly with him.

The best way, perhaps, to think of what happened in the Roman Church after Vatican II and until the election of the current Pope, is to compare it with the iconoclasm which shook the East in the eighth and ninth centuries, not least because one of the arguments the iconoclasts used was that only in the Divine Liturgy itself could Christ Himself be truly seen, and Mass itself, and the manner in which it is celebrated is an icon.

Our iconoclasts have not given up: they are bent on maintaining their austere vision of a communal gathering in a whitewashed hall and will fight for it. They are tremedously powerful, and are cornered, so their victory over a disunited opponent is almost assured: their victory over a united opponent is much less so.

Let's not tryto unpick the reforms of Pius X or Pius XII just yet: let's concentrate on placing 1962 in opposition to "the spirit of Vatican II", and defeating that. Let's behave like Catholics and think in centuries: few of those of us alive today will see the way the Church rights herself after such a turbulent century as the twentieth, so let's not try to bring the Millennium about by ourselves. And let's make sure that we don't make of ourselves a focus for disunity by deciding that the rubrics are for others, and not for us.