To Hobart, to Hobart

No, not "to buy a fat pig" (!), but "to M.C. at Mass" – that's why I'm setting off for the 200 km drive this afternoon, then staying the night with dear friends (pray for Ben, who's been very ill with pneumonia, but thank God has recovered after a fortnight in hospital), before assisting at the sacred Liturgy, lunching, and motoring back up north to-morrow.

Readers lucky enough to have weekly or even daily Traditional Masses handy may forget how it is to have the Latin Mass available only rarely, and at a distance; as it is, this Sunday presents to me the great luxury of the third Sunday in a row of E.F. Mass.  How I miss my old parish in Perth, where I had this every Sunday, and almost every day.

I am even more focussed than before on daily Mass, and I do love the Mass, OF as well as EF; but I believe the latter is the better, and if I had the chance I would attend it ever, and the former, never.  Still, it is an imperfect world, we cannot have all things as we would like, and both forms of the liturgy are valid and licit and truly propitiate God in the offering of Christ in His Sacrifice, truly give us Christ in His Sacrament in Holy Communion.

All men know, of course, that the way the OF is often done does permit many unfortunate abuses: even this morning, at Mass at Carmel, our celebrant, who is, bless him, increasingly bringing himself to deign to use the new translation, ostentatiously said "Cup" for "Chalice" each time the word appeared in the relevant part of E.P. III, even in the words of consecration!  It was doubtless valid, but entirely illicit, not to say a stupid and prideful pretended correction of the text, as if dear Father were wiser than and above the authority of Pope and Bishops.  Such lunatic self-love!  We as laity have a right to the liturgy as laid down by the Church, and not to be patronized by a distorted clericalism.

But leaving aside egregious errors, I do honestly hold, with my own theologian education (almost now to Masters level) to support me, that the traditional Roman liturgy has a greater cognitive content, greater reverence, greater solemnity, greater strength than the modern form, and that, while I will gladly attend the Ordinary Form – especially when offered devoutly by a priest not given to tinkering! – I will more gladly attend the Extraordinary, and make greater sacrifices to do so.  "The old is better."