The Asteroid 101

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Now, y'all know that I pretty much dropped the liturgical issues some years ago. I figure, it's not my department. You can't be everywhere and I am now surrounded by people who can (and do) write books on this stuff. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult to keep my eyes from glazing over at the post-Mass pranza when they start going on (and on...and on...) about it. About ten years ago now I started the whole process of coming out of the Novus Ordo Matrix, did all the reading, came to the usual conclusions (it's not the same religion), had the usual crises, and generally went through the pain involved in swallowing that Red Pill.

These days, I am happy enough with my liturgical situation. Secure enough in what I've learned that I don't need to go stomping around telling people what's Really Going On in breathless stage whispers. I just don't attend that other thing v. often, and when I do, I'm fine with leaving the people around me alone about it. I just pick something in the church to look at, a statue or stained glass window or something, that gives no offense. I don't know enough Italian for anything the priest says to get under my skin.

One thing the Trad Mass has taught me is that the liturgy does not depend upon my minute moment-to-moment attention. It's OK to let your mind wander off.

Anyway, I'm surrounded, as I said, by experts whose job it is to worry about it. In the same way that I let the US writers pay attention to the US political scene, I let my liturgy friends do the liturgy worrying for me.

But a couple of weeks ago, I met a nice young fellow from a seminary in Ireland who had been taken along to a Trad conference by his grandparents, for a holiday, they said. I had seen him attending the conferences and had been briefly introduced, but on the last night, was seated opposite him at dinner and I suddenly found myself in the position of the one explaining the deficiencies of the New Rite and New Theology. He was a clever enough young fellow (working on a degree in math and physics) and had the Faith, so it was fairly easy to show him the more obvious logical and theological inconsistencies about what he had been taught about liturgy. It was pretty much Trad 101 stuff and he was willing to listen. He knows some Trads in the seminary and had been unimpressed with their conversation (I can imagine!) and explanations.

In the end, though, I could see that this was a young man who was never going to be satisfied with half-answers from either side of the argument. Ultimately, he was a nice young guy who wanted to know The Real and seemed willing to face the consequences of what he learned.

I asked him, "What is your intellect for?"

He replied, "To know God."

"Yes. When you seek to know God, do you seek only partial truths? Or do you want to know everything that is within your power to know?"

He didn't answer, but gave me a rather pained look.

At the end of the conversation, after rather easily batting away all his objections (he was only 19, after all), I told him, "Of course, there is no reason at all for you to do anything about this. You can secure your salvation in NewChurch. As you said, the Holy Spirit has rescued the NO Mass and the other sacraments from outright invalidity. You can lead a perfectly holy sacramental life in the new dispensation and go to heaven. You don't have to look up and compare the two texts of the Mass and see what was removed and speculate on why. You don't have to read the Von Hildebrands.

You don't have to ask yourself these difficult and frightening questions."

"I can take the Blue Pill."

"You can take the Blue Pill."



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Today, Michael Voris offers a little short course in the Asteroid 101. How it happened, who the major players were and why they said they did what they did. Michael is a Reform of the Reform neo-con, but the information is there for the most part.

It's just a primer and It's pretty old hat stuff to me, but I guess there are still people out there like my young Irish friend who haven't heard it yet.

If you've got an hour to kill...



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