An analogy about the Latin Mass

First off, may I apologize to a commenter for inadvertently deleting a recent comment about the Latin Mass. He or she believes it is useless to appeal to liberals to give us the Latin Mass and said we should go right to the Ecclesia Dei commission. He or she also predicted the comment might be "censored," and unfortunately my clumsy, typo-prone digits made that prediction seem to come true, contrary to my intent.

The official Latin Mass procedure laid out, as we know, is to go to our pastor first and, if necessary, go up the ladder from there. But as we also know, people's frustration with foot-dragging is completely understandable.

A quick comment about the Latin Mass:

The Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact dissolved in 1989-1991, thanks to the decades of prayers from much-maligned Catholics faithful to Our Lady of Fatima's request, and thanks to the anti-Communist cooperation of Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!").

But once liberty came, some people in the former USSR and Captive Nations, indoctrinated for several generations with official Communist atheism, had little or no context for faith, little or no vocabulary of belief. They didn't know what they were missing. (Many people had kept the Faith, underground; and for many others, Christianity is making a return now, Deo gratias.)

The situation is similar with Pope Benedict XVI's liberation of the Latin Mass. Some or even many Catholics today, indoctrinated for the last couple of generations with the lies that the Latin Mass was bad and was abolished, have little or no context and vocabulary for understanding the Latin Mass. They don't know what they are missing.

Fortunately, lots of Catholics -- more than the liberals want to admit -- are loving the Latin Mass and flocking to it. And more and more Catholics will come to love it when you and I teach them to understand what it is about. Amen.

(The beautiful image above is a detail from a larger illustration at an excellent and indispensable web site that has a Latin Mass tutorial and many other resources for priests and laity, http://www.sanctamissa.org )