Pressing Forward Into the Void

Laurence England at “That These Bones You’ve Crushed May Thrill” has a response to the Pope’s frightening denunciation of the Ancient Mass this past weekend.  Pope Francis told the Catholic world we must ‘go forward,’ accept even more advances, and  ‘to go back is wrong.’

Jesus Christ does not simply call us to ‘go forward’, marching on blindly. He ceaselessly calls us back to Him. Repentance means turning around. We can go forward quite happily and unhappily leave Jesus Christ behind. There is no merit in simply going forward, for we could be going forward into the abyss. If I am in mortal sin, simply going ‘forward’ is not going to help me to save my soul. I could be marching merrily into Hell. I have to go back, turn around, preferably to a priest, to confess, to acknowledge my guilt and seek absolution to return to a state of Grace. Simply ‘going forward’ for the sake of going forward is the language of the ideological progressive who refuses to state where we are going forward to, neglecting to tell us for what purpose, for what reason or whether that movement forward has anything at all to do with Salvation.

Numerous statistics have been made available over time, not least by the Latin Mass Society that show a certain trend that does not lend greater credibility to the post-Concilliar Church as a resounding success. Of course, success is not necessarily what the Church is about, but faithfulness to Christ means reflecting on exactly what is going on and whether what we are doing is working for the salvation of souls and sanctification of the people of God. An ideological commitment to going ‘forward’ at any cost, not examining the evidence given by those of goodwill is, frankly, lunacy.

And why, exactly, should Catholics, Popes, Bishops and Cardinals, or priests, have an irrational fear of the past, of the tradition of the Church? Why such fear and loathing of our heritage? Why is commitment to the Novus Ordo so rigid and inflexible that it cannot bring itself to acknowledge any – dare I say it – weaknesses or deficiencies at all in comparison to the glorious Mass of Ages?

Why is it that the spectre of the traditional Latin Mass is one that haunts so many prelates and brings them out in a sweat? What, exactly, is so offensive about the Latin tongue in the liturgy? What is so terrifying about Mass being celebrated Ad Orientem? No reasons are given, just a kind of psychological ‘we mustn’t go there’ response that any psychotherapist could tell you means you have deep-rooted problems with accepting your past, as if the Latin Mass was some kind of horrendous ecclesiastical inflicted trauma visited upon the Church’s children by brutalising, callous parents.

The wholesale rejection of the past is a break with the Faith.