(Must Read!): Rediscovering traditionalism Benedict XVI's popular new traditionalism

www.isn.ethz.ch ^ | 30 Sep 2008 | John Casey

[Publius804]

Rediscovering traditionalism

By John Casey

On 14th June this year about 1,500 people filled Westminster Cathedral. Every seat was taken; people stood in the aisles and spilled out on to the piazza outside. The occasion was a mass, but not an ordinary mass. It was indeed a mass in what is now officially called the ``extraordinary form'' of the Roman rite, i.e. the mass as it had existed before the changes that followed the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). It was celebrated by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, and was the first mass in the traditional form to be celebrated in the Cathedral by a cardinal in thirty nine years.

Before the mass, Cardinal Castrillon had addressed the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, a group which had striven for forty years to preserve the ancient liturgy. He told them to `take heart' because the new Pope sympathised with them, and he spoke of the `sacrifices' of those members of the Society `who have not lived to be here today.'

To outsiders, all this emotion, this talk of sacrifices made by dead Catholics for the liturgy might well be unintelligible. What are the great issues at stake? Why should people throng Westminster Cathedral and spill out onto the street, including many too young to remember the old ways, just to experience a service in Latin conducted by a prelate with his back to the people?

[Publius804]

You can read this article with Fr. Z's comments here:

http://wdtprs.com/blog/2008/10/benedict-xvis-popular-new-traditionalism/

Things maybe falling apart elsewhere but there is a renewal going on in the Chruch.

[Publius804]

Ping!

[livius]

This is an excellent article! I read it on Fr Z’s blog. Thanks for posting it here.

[kellynla]

BTTT

[informavoracious]

Deo gratias.