More frothing at the mouth

Another case of Catholic Prog Hydrophobia


http://www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=6588215
Turning back the liturgical clock
By Frank K. Flinn
The Boston Globe Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Catholics around the world should now have no illusions.
Pope Benedict XVI's recent decision to encourage wider use of the traditional Tridentine Mass in Latin is the latest move in his long campaign to undo liberal reforms in church practices popular with Catholics since the 1960s.
The move may well trigger liturgical schisms in dioceses throughout the world. [and will Chicken Little be disappointed when it doesn't?]
The form of the Mass ... the priest stands on an elevated altar, facing away from the people and mumbling the most sacred parts of the liturgy in Latin. [yes, it says "mumble' in the rubrics, I imagine, that is an inherent part of the rite -- just like the jokes, pep rally exhortations and hippo-ride-at-Disney "I can't HEAR you"s are of the normative rite?] ...
The depth of the traditionalists' hatred of Vatican II teachings was and remains astounding. [agreed, though nowhere near as astounding as the depth of the hatred of their opposite numbers for the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass]

progressives wanted to advance the openings begun at Vatican II,.....Christian social action (liberation theology, feminism, ecology), and ethical theory (priestly celibacy, birth control) [hmm... he seems to have left out abortion. wonder why?]
Paul VI started to apply the brakes, but Pope John Paul II and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, his new prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, went in for a whole new brake job.
They set out to thwart the progressive side of the church. ...
In the preface to a liturgical treatise he accused modern Masses of being faddish "showpieces" and "fabrications." [Imagine that!] He went on to praise the Eastern Catholic and Orthodox Eucharist as exemplars of an "eternal liturgy." One can detect a Eurocentric prejudice in his remarks.
... The appeal to an "eternal liturgy" is false. ...
The very word liturgia in Greek means "the work of the people." [WRONG! It means public work, done FOR the people]
This notion embodies at its fullest the principle of collegiality, the key theological idea that shaped Vatican II. The Tridentine Mass is the work of the priest. By turning back the liturgical clock ... to the heyday of the Inquisition

Frank K. Flinn, adjunct professor of religious studies at Washington University in St. Louis, is author of "Encyclopedia of Catholicism." This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.