A New York Times hit piece on the Tridentine Mass

Someone at the New York Times does not like the Tridentine Mass.

In today's (July 29) edition, New York Times editorial board member Lawrence Downes attacks the Tridentine Mass in what has to be a patently phony, set-up op-ed piece (click on this post's title).

He says he "drove through a strange liturgical neighborhood" last Sunday by going to a Low Mass at Chicago's wonderful -- Downes does not think it that -- St. John Cantius Parish, where in the past several years the pastor has turned a parish ready to close into a thriving one by restoring the sacred there: Bringing back the Tridentine Mass, and reviving Gregorian Chant, Latin and Greek classes and true Catholic culture.

Of the Tridentine Mass, Downes says he has never "seen, heard or smelled one." Well, thanks to that flirtation with blasphemy and to the rest of his op-ed piece, we can smell him out, and the odor is sulphur.

Downes does not tell us -- although he does mention "a clutch [emphasis added] of seminarians in the front row" -- but thanks to the Catholic revival there, vocations to the priesthood have been flourishing at St. John Cantius Parish http://www.cantius.org/

Downes does admit the parish is thriving. But he says the Tridentine Mass he attended made him "irate" because, he claims, it "reassert[s] the unchallenged authority of ordained men" and hands Mass "entirely back to Father."

Downes shows his liberal elitism and snobbery by actually complaining about the Tridentine Mass attracting "Smart, devout, ambitious Catholics — ecclesial young Republicans, home-schoolers, seminarians and other shock troops of the [F]aith..."

He calls the Tridentine Mass "silent, submissive worship" and the beautiful sanctuary "oddly barren."

Downes makes other mistakes, saying "the Latin rite...took hold in the 16th century" and "there was nothing to hear" -- he claims he, and by extension everyone, could not hear the celebrant praying the Mass.

Part of the phony, set-up angle to all this is that Downes says he phoned -- of all 300 million+ people in the United States -- Eugene Kennedy, who just happens to be an ultra-liberal ex-priest.

Kennedy, he says, "spoke fondly of" the Tridentine Mass but said he wouldn't want it back.

Downes paraphrases Kennedy as saying, "Priests aren’t ready; it takes years to learn. And forget about the laity..."

What a ludicrously false statement, that the Tridentine Mass takes years to learn!

Downes does not explain why the laity love the Tridentine Mass and flock to it if there is no place for them in it. Of course the laity participate!

Downes also does not explain why MILLIONS of Catholics have stopped attending the New Mass and have LEFT THE FAITH in the almost 40 years since its introduction.

Do flock to the web site of St. John Cantius Parish and see all that a Catholic parish can be. May every parish become like this one. Amen!