The quality of ones enemies and the desperations of their lies

Sometimes one is brought 'round to an idea or persuaded to embrace a position not by its adherents but by its detractors.
Let me say, first, I don't "remember" the Tridentine Mass.
Of the maybe 7 or 8 thousand Masses I've attended in my life I remember participating in fewer than 3 dozen of the Extraordinary Rite.
My druthers would not have been the TLM. (Note the tense -- I don't know what my druthers are now. I am evolving.)
And I would, until 7 years ago or so, have counted myself among the liberals in the Church.
I think I blogged recently about my accursed, "honest", big mouth, giving people information they don't want to have, and how I told several people at the retreat that until recently I had thought "Conservatives" were wingnuts. I thought they exaggerated the problems, I thought they were extremists, I thought they were making universal mountain out of tiny, isolated molehills, I didn't know THEY WERE RIGHT.
And more and more I realized that it wasn't just the music (my area of training,) it was the whole shebang that had gone sour, about which they were lied to , they were betrayed, they were given stones when they needed eggs, they were given scorpions and snakes when they asked for fish.
And now, I am realizing that the Traditionalists received AND CONTINUE TO RECEIVE the same (mis)treatment.
The CNS, the official organ of our esteemed episcopacy printed an article by one Fr D.
I am reprinting it here, because I suspect it may disappear from the internet by weekend's end.

The parish just to the west of mine has been celebrating the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass for more than 15 years. The pastor has special permission granted years ago by the former Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal James Hickey. He is also one of the few priests around who remembers the pre-1962 ritual.
Almost nobody comes.
He gets about 30 people per Sunday, even though his is the only Latin Mass for at least 40 miles around in an area that encompasses more than 20 parishes.
Most of the people who come are elderly. They like this Mass because it is quiet and short. It reminds them of the olds days. A few young people come once in a while out of curiosity. They do not come back often.
My neighboring pastor is a bit exasperated with the whole thing. It means a lot of work for him. Under the old liturgy the priest did just about everything. The people who come to the Latin Mass like that part of the tradition just fine. They don't think they should have to do anything but show up. After all, it is the priest who says Mass. They are just spectators.
Before Vatican II's reforms, there were no lectors or eucharistic ministers. The servers said most of the responses. A lot of the prayers were said "sotto voce," i.e., inaudibly.
For my neighbor, the extra liturgy means that he has had to move the altar used for the Mass facing the people. (He has recently stopped doing this because nobody showed up to help him.) Then he has to set out different books and change into different vestments.
Most inconvenient of all, he has to prepare and preach a different homily.
Why a different homily? Because there are different readings. In the pre-1962 liturgy there was a one-year cycle of readings. We read only an Epistle and a Gospel. There were no readings from the Old Testament. We didn't hear much of the Bible and it was heard in Latin.
Since the reforms of Vatican II our book of readings for Sundays (Lectionary) has a three-year cycle, which includes readings from the Hebrew Scriptures. So my neighbor can't even preach the same homily for the Latin and English Masses on most Sundays.
A few folks from my parish go over to my neighbor's parish for the Latin Mass. Mostly they are quite elderly. They don't like all the singing at my parish. They don't like shaking hands. They don't like Communion in both forms. They don't like having three readings.
They tell me what they like most about the Latin Mass is that they can get in and get out in less than 45 minutes. They put a high premium on speed. A good liturgy is a short liturgy.
For them a good liturgy also is one where they don't have to speak to anyone or do anything. Their whole attitude says "I want no commitment and I want no communication." Hardly the "full and active participation" that Vatican II called for.
So now that Pope Benedict XVI has issued his "motu proprio" permitting the celebration of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, will there be big crowds at the Latin Mass? Will more parishes start to offer it? I doubt it.
Apart from the schismatic followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and a few young people who are nostalgic for a church they never knew, almost nobody is pressing for it. Nobody under the age of 55 even remembers the old Latin ritual.
I think my neighbor's experience will be the experience of the church. We can offer it. But almost nobody will come.

Now it seems the author is allowing as how he may have.... misspoken.

Right.

Someone has spoken with the pastor of the flock he maligned (he didn't malign the pastor, merely lied.... erm, misreported about him,) and members of the beleaguered flock are speaking up.
http://richleonardi.blogspot.com/2007/08/how-do-you-say-retraction-in-latin.html
The question is begged, WHY
Why, if the Extraordinary Rite doesn't interest you, write about it at all?
If it does interest you and you are opposed to it, why present the FACTUAL grounds on which you oppose it, and why not report about it FACTUALLY?
And if you can't do either, why open your yap?
Actually, I think I know why.... I can see Orson Welles as Archbishop Charles Kane (pining for the toy sedia gestatoria he once had, and nicknamed "Rosebud,",) or Dan Ackroyd in clericals and a big pectoral cross, playing the ecclesial equivalent of the crass publishing magnate in Bright Young Thinks, barking our orders to "get me a story." (Note the indefinite article. Not interested in getting THE story.)
The whole Liturgical-Industrial Complex and the CYA Establishment.... well, there's no other way to say it, they protest too much.
It doesn't ring necessary, if true; so if they feel it necessary, than I believe it must be because IT IS NOT TRUE.
And that makes what they are trying to suppress much more attractive, frankly.
What are they afraid of?
Why is the suppression of the Extraordinary Rite so important to them?
What is its power?
And how can I get in touch with it? (I already know the answer to that, but the ride is seeming shorted and shorter...)
Why are they doing this?
Let us pray for Fr. Saverio Vitturino, the priest whose Mass the column attacked, and to God in thanksgiving for such priests.
And let us pray for Fr D., too, let us pray to to God for all those who are in thrall to, or are the Useful Idiots of, the Father of Lies.