It is interesting to hear this canard of "discipline of the Church" used in regards to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. A discipline is easily seen in the practice of saying the Rosary, genuflecting, singing vespers, or fasting on vigils of holy days. But the Mass? I have to wonder if that goes too far. It's a sacrament, which, like the other 6, has three component parts. Do disciplines all have three component parts? No, huh?
Well, this thought was on my mind last night when I heard a radio broadcast in which a self-proclaimed expert on the "supernatural" (he was actually talking about preternaturral) pronounced his highly developed opinion that transubstantiation in the Catholic Mass is a form of cultism (he was apparently trying to say gnosticism). He threw it into a basket in common with such things as witch's spells, alchemy, necromancy, and even "ufology," because it involves the supposed transformation of one kind of thing into another by way of spoken words. In saner times the radio station would be in trouble for broadcasting blasphemous calumnies against the Church. As it is, this kind of thing happens regularly. In fact, our local Roger Cardinal Mahony has snuggled up to just such concepts in his speeches and writings. Several years back, he encouraged the flock to abandon our association of the actions of the priest at Mass with any notions of magic. We are just having a casual celebration, you know.
The Mass as codified in the 1570 missal was not a new concoction like the Novus Ordo was (and continues to be as it continues to morph all over the place). What Pope St. Pius V did was to carry out the directives of the long fought, infallible council of Trent (which took over 10 years and many gatherings of the bishops from all over the West before the age of machines), to put down into one book the tradition of Apostolic origin, the Mass that Jesus taught to the Apostles, and that St. Peter took to Rome. As it says very plainly in Quo Primum, any pastor of the Church (and the Pope is a pastor) who would dare to change what is contained in this missal will be subject to the wrath of St. Peter and St. Paul. Does that sound like it's just another "discipline?"
You could chime in that Peter and Paul are no longer around to bully the pope. We ought to regard those words a little more carefully. If they were to come back, most Christians might not recognize them. After all, what Protestant believes that St. Peter was the first pope, or that St. Paul was a Catholic bishop? Don't forget who it was that weilded a sword in the Garden of Olives, or who it was that ran a campaign of persecution against Christians before a providential event on the road to Damascus. Neither one was ignorant of the proper governance of the Church. They came from a time when Roman law ruled the land.
As a Catholic, I'd sure like to know the explanation that the supporters of the Latin Mass have as to why the Holy Spirit has chosen them to bring back the Latin Mass rather than the Holy Spirit guiding those participants of Vatican II that moved the Church to the New Mass.
I hope the Latin Mass becomes more common
To conduct a church service in a language unintelligable to the congregants smacks of pagan ritual (the mystery religions).