Dear English "Catholic Bishops"...

(Not my church...yet)

Last weekend, I'm happy to announce, we started enjoying the extraordinary privilege of Mass in the True Rite of the Latin end of the Catholic Church, right here in our miserable little "English Catholic" brick hovel, with gorgeous Gothic St. Alban's looming and glowering [see above] over us a few yards away. I have to say, I felt quite relieved and not a little sympathy for my Irish ancestors at their Mass Rocks, with one chap stationed at the road on the look out for the Black and Tans. I half expected some aging tie-dyed Bikenstocked priest to come bursting in, but the Mass was conducted with great decorum and with fewer interruptions and less chattering than that wretched little garage has likely ever experienced.

We are starting with monthly. I'm sure his excellency said nothing about "starting with", but of course, we have been taught as modern, adult, We-are-Easter-People Catholics to read between the lines and interpret official statements according to our own Lived Experience.

I told Fr. ______ at the tea n' snax that I would write a letter to Bishop Noble thanking him for his generous permission for the implementation of Motu Proprio that, as we all know, specifically states that we don't need his permission...but never mind. I was told that this would be imprudent.

Probably true, but ooo how tempting to do a little polite gloating. I would start by informing his excellencye that I was born after their precious Council and then wax rhapsodic on the glories of the Church's traditional liturgy and how glad I am that it is experiencing such a resurgence among the young in the Church... But of course, I promised to behave. Fr. ______'s a real priest, after all, the kind we're supposed to obey.

The peevishnes of the revolutionaries as they are increasingly forced to recognise the failure of their revolution is starting to make them look ridiculous. Though how they could look any more ridiculous than they've been looking in the last few decades is hard to imagine.

They're mad, and who wouldn't be? But the more they jump up and down squeaking in impotent fury and outrage, the more amusing they become. The pathetic attempts by the tie-dyed revolutionaries to hold on to their power is starting to be a subject of comic blog posts, cartoons and running jokes everywhere. The reason? All you have to do is attend "Mass" at one of their churches, climb up to the choir loft and look down at the tops of heads. From that perspective, the answer becomes self-evident.

In this vein, Damien Thompson today, in a laudably gratuitous poke at the E&W Episcopate, mentions Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, [to my utter lack of surprise, a former champion figure skater], who is known for his generosity towards Traditionalists:

I would never accuse Bishop Arthur of suppressing the 1962 Missal in his diocese.

I gather that he has very generously given permission for the Traditional Mass to be celebrated on the third Monday of the month at 5.30 in the morning in a remote village in the Yorkshire Dales - provided, of course, that the celebrant has the necessary Vatican doctorate in ecclesiastical Latin.

To paraphrase Ezra today: Just so you know, Cardinal Bubbles, when they're all laughing at you, you've lost.

Or, as it is increasingly being said on English Catholic blogs: Face it hippies...