an argument comes full circle

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Jul 17, 2007

Sometimes if you alter an argument just a little bit, you can gain a real insight.

Take, for instance, this argument against about the post-conciliar changes in the liturgy. I'm going to change the sentence just bit; my amendment is in italics:

The celebration of the Novus Ordo Mass compromises the coherence of the Church’s self-understanding and threatens to reduce the liturgy to a simple matter of individual "taste" rather than what it is meant to be: an accurate reflection of what we believe as Catholic Christians.

You've heard that argument before, right? But now watch what happens when I restore the sentence to its original form:

The official proclamation that this medieval rite is "extraordinary" compromises the coherence of the Church’s self-understanding and threatens to reduce the liturgy to a simple matter of individual "taste" rather than what it is meant to be: an accurate reflection of what we believe as Catholic Christians who live in the twenty-first century.

It's from an anti-papal diatribe that appeared in The Tablet, in which Father Mark Francis, a noted liturgist, condemns the use of the old ritual.

Noteworthy, isn't it, how both extremes can use the same arguments? Noteworthy, too, that they are quite explicitly rejected by the Pope with his insistence that both forms belong to the authentic treasury of the Roman rite.

[Tip to Father Z.]