It is the normal Catholic life lived as it was in parishes around the world for hundreds of years before the Asteroid, and it is finally being rebuilt. In some places at least. Thanks be to God, and thank you to Pope Benedict.
Some have said that the trouble with the Traditionalist movement in the Church is that where it exists, it is more akin to historical re-enactors and re-creationists than the simple, ordinary daily life of a Catholic. As a traditional Catholic it is nearly impossible to have what all Catholics around the world could have as a matter of course, as their right.
Even the (laudable) attempts to "integrate" the True Mass into the regular life of an otherwise N/O parish serves only to highlight the discontinuity, the terrible rift in the Church between what we have and what we left behind. The Real Mass, in the setting of a Novus Ordo parish, becomes a kind of museum piece, trotted out to please the grandmas. It remains a concession to us weirdos who have some kind of rarified personal attraction to its exoticism.
But at a place like Trinita, all that is swept away. Mass and confession, devotions and sacraments, are simply on offer without any fuss or particular surprise, without an eyebrow raised, as they have been for the 1965 years of the life of the Church. There are no arguments over how the liturgy is done. There is no "parish council" endlessly critiquing the priests' every move. Laymen are relieved of the tedium of liturgical and doctrinal vigilance that characterises life in every other parish in the post-asteroid Catholic world. We can simply pursue our sanctification and the work given to us as laymen, without having to give a thought to what is going on in the sanctuary.
Pay, pray and obey...
gives us plenty to do.
More pics.
Last Mass at sweet, humble, ragged little San Gregorio (I was there. It was lovely. We did the Via Crucis in Italian before. Don't know Italian, but gave the responses in Latin.)(Oh, wait. On second thoughts, no I wasn't. This was the previous Sunday. I only got there for the very last daily on Saturday.)
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and on Youtube
Hey, it's not just pray, pay, and obey.
ReplyDelete"What is the province of the laity, to hunt, to shoot, to entertain."
Sounds like a fine life to me.
I wonder if liturgists meddle with their surgeons, on the same basis they meddle with the Mass? Necause, after all, don't they know better than those who have dedicated their lives and years of study?