Wow--truth after truth here. Thank you. Babbitt is someone I need to read; I recall Kirk mentioning him in The Conservative Mind. Re. formation: my own mind and imagination are forever marred by years of rock music. As I wrote for Crisis a while back "Protect your ears and you'll protect your soul." I keep wondering what it must have been like to have a mind--a being--in a pre-noise age. In a time before screens. I don't think we know how degraded we've become.
Examining children’s books is one of the ways my wife, who leans strongly against tradition for reasons relating to her rather botched upbringing, has found her way back to the necessity of it. Very excited to subscribe and to search the archives for recommendations as well (ours are 4 and 1 and already the fight is on for their moral imaginations, contra the trash of the world around them).
I'm so glad you found my Substack, then! Take a look at "The 8 Worst Books . . ." to get an idea of what types of books to avoid. And then take a look at my post on the imagination of Elsa Beskow for an idea of what the moral imagination can look like in a children's book.
I ordered every book positively mentioned so far earlier today, I think! And yes indeed: we've seen many books of that variety, and couldn't agree more with your description of what's deleterious about them for young people. To date, our daughter has also found such books a bit boring, perhaps in contrast to better fare!
Also, take a look at my post on Kobi Yamata's What Do You Do With an Idea. That is key to understanding the romantic imagination--the type of imagination that you want to keep away from your children! Stay tuned for an upcoming post on the diabolical imagination of Karl Marx and also a lighter one on The Wind in the Willows!
“Much of the disorder in mainstream Catholicism today is a result of sham spirituality having infected the mind of the Church and the Church now being one of its purveyors.” So true. So much of this two-part essay is reflective of that Rosseauean “man is inherently good” and if we just tolerate, nay, embrace and accept all attitudes, viewpoints and beliefs, the common good will be achieved. Sadly this has been the nature and the direction of political and religious hierarchy for decades. We would be well served to remember the words provided by Matthew millennia ago when he wrote
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy[a] that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Matt 7: 13,14
"In most Novus Ordo parishes, a kind of doublethink is required to convince oneself that what is happening has been divinely instituted by God the creator the universe." Exactly. I am not the kind of person who has ever really struggled with belief in the Real Presence, but once when I was at a Novus Ordo, I could not help thinking how hard it was to believe what was going on was as sacred as it is with the kind of behavior I was witnessing before me. It's true -- it's almost as if the Novus Ordo makes it easy to doubt the Real Presence.
Would you consider writing more specifically on the things you believe we need to return to in life to "live liturgically"? I know you mentioned some of them here and in the first part, but I would love it if you could go more in-depth. I am only nineteen and was raised with a little decorum, but not so much as I could wish. I feel like I have to start from the ground up all by myself. Perhaps you could take us as you would your children and instruct us in living liturgically?
Andrea, thanks for your comment. I'll give it a shot in an upcoming post. I didn't go too deeply into that because I feel that there are so many "living liturgical" blogs out there that do it so well, that I didn't want to stray from my lane. I will say that I was raised as a Novus Ordo Catholic lite, and I had to really pull myself up by the bootstraps (with enormous help from the grace of God, of course) in my 20s. The real spiritual progress came when I had children and began to go deeply into the catechism so that I could catechize them. My husband I hit a moment when we realized that the surest way to pass on the faith to our kids was to be fully committed to the Latin mass and to living the liturgical year at home, guided by the traditional Mass.
I have had a similar experience after having kids. Although I have always appreciated a beautiful mass, I did not think as seriously about what was symbolicly communicated during a typical lax novus ordo mass. Now that I have toddlers, I realize that even if they don’t understand the doctrine of the Eucharist, they do understand if something is taken seriously or not.
I was raised in the Novus Ordo, too, but my family changed course when I was 14. I didn't know there were other newsletters out there writing about how even our behavior should be liturgical...
What was most surprising for us was the difference in behavior from our kids at the two different masses. Despite our TLM usually being around 1 hr. 40 min, the kids were so much better behaved than at the Novus Ordo. I realized that they intuited the seriousness of the traditional mass.
Such a nice article. Thank you Emily. I anticipate in the coming ages the dethroning of reason. I wonder, can the West, so fundamentally dependent upon reason since the days of St. Augustine, survive?
Next you should discuss the connection between reason and imagination and how the crowning of reason leads necessarily to revolutionary ideas that then lead to rational conclusions about the superfluousness of beauty and symbol. This of course is the error that the Protestants took to the extreme and that threatens our beloved Catholic Church.
I’m sorry, but I believe what you’ve written to be among the least charitable discussions of the NO liturgy I’ve read in some time.
EDIT: How did I forget this one 0) The NO isn’t divinely instituted, nor is any other liturgy. The Eucharist is, and I’ve sat in NO parishes with tears in my eyes multiple times during the consecration. It’s still a beautiful moment. You point at all of the human issues around the reception of communion as evidence that the NO is deficient, but the consecration itself is still breathtakingly, heartwrenchingly beautiful if you let it be
1) There’s no self awareness that the arguments you advance against the NO are the same arguments that led to VII considering liturgy reforms in the first place. People were unhappy with sitting through masses that they couldn’t follow without a missal. People were worried about parishioners losing interest and falling away from the church. The church didn’t look at the pre -VII mass and say, ah, nobody has seen any issues with this, but we’re going to talk about reforming it anyway.
1B) You can argue whether the liturgy changes were an improvement or not, but, currently NO alternative liturgies in the west are masses for spiritual elitists. People who are actively seeking to substantially inconvenience themselves to be more reverent. My only, and I mean only, issue with folks like this is they were likely the most reverent people at their old parish, people who could have fought to safeguard the reverence of the local NO liturgy and they end up leaving and depriving their local parish of their time, talent, and treasure in order to associate with a self-selected community of believers. But this phenomenon does mean that the people who care the most about safeguarding reverence are more likely to leave NO parishes and join alternatives. So people look at NO alternative churches and say “wow look how reverent these parishes are” because it’s only the top, say, 5% of reverent Catholics attending these churches to begin with. This means that the NO is judged by entirely different standards to its alternatives. The NO gets blamed for people leaving the church, but some percentage of those people would have left regardless of the liturgy, we just don’t know how many because almost none of them go to non-NO masses to begin with.
1C) If the problem is the NO liturgy parishes, does this go away when they’re no longer NO liturgy parishes? Do you really believe that young kids in otherwise thoroughly secular families who maybe go to mass once a week and don’t talk about the faith at home are suddenly going to blossom into devout believers because they have to sit through a different type of liturgy? Do you think that all of the yawning priests (though, more on him in a minute) are suddenly going to be wide awake every week because they have to celebrate Mass a different way? Not likely. It’s because the liturgy has never been the primary problem. At this point, the NO has fed the lives of multiple saints, even if alternatives would be preferential, pretending it’s wholly deficient is laughable. The issue is catechesis. But this is where the “reverence drain” I talk about in 1B rears its ugly head again. If all of the reverent people are leaving NO parishes, there are fewer reverent people at that parish to catechise the next generation. By withdrawing yourself from a NO community, you may be putting yourself in an area where you feel is more reverent, but, again, you deprive people in your old community of your gifts!
2) The poor yawning priest. Whether intentionally or by implication you’ve made it sound like the priest was bored or didn’t care. Have you stopped to think of reasons why he might have been tired on that day in particular (if it was enough to shock you, you must not see it from this guy week after week)? Maybe he was up late tending to a family member or parishioner who was ill? Maybe he was catching a cold and couldn’t sleep well? Maybe he saw somebody yawning in the front row of the parish? You’ve jumped to the least charitable explanation to try to paint an entire liturgy as insufficiently reverent, the guy deserves a break.
3) The Jokester Deacon. Perhaps the poor tired priest was too busy caring for his flock to write the homily. Maybe the deacon felt he had a particular pull to the gospel and wanted to preach on it. At the end of the day, there are good homilies and bad ones and where one falls is probably largely a matter of taste. You don’t have to like his homily, based on how you describe it I probably wouldn’t have, but maybe there’s someone out there who finds a more casual, jocular approach easier for them to relate to. Maybe they find a person who is less grave easier to approach with their spiritual concerns. If every priest and deacon was participating in non-NO masses you would still have homilies you felt were “bad”, probably in about the same number
4) Be nice to Luce. This is a dumb one, hence why it’s last, but instead of moaning about how the church doesn’t commission good art anymore, perhaps consider that Luce was designed as part of the effort leading to the church attending some Japanese cultural festival and an Italian comic con, it’s an evangelisation tool, Japan especially is very big on cutsy mascots. If they had made an oil painting to bring to these events, it wouldn’t have had the same impact because it wouldn’t be serving the same purpose. The point is not that Luce is the highest pinnacle of religious art, it’s a conversation starter to talk to people who aren’t religious about our faith. It either works, and in that case, yay! Or it doesn’t, in which case, the church wasted what is essentially a rounding error on trying to evangelise in a different way. There is literally no reason to be upset about this even if you don’t like Luce yourself.
Apology accepted! I hope you'll consider checking out a TLM the next time you have the opportunity. It has been a saving grace for many (like me) who may have fallen away from the Church or converted.
I agree with the final point. Luce has a valid place, like Br. Francis on Formed or Bob & Larry in Veggietales. Kids can learn about the faith through cartoon characters. Of course it does not rise to the level of sacred art; but who is saying it does? I think all the sound and fury about Luce is ridiculous.
I love sacred art and think we need more of it. So we should put more of our efforts into uplifting beautiful sacred things. There's plenty of bad art and everyone is entitled to dislike it, but maybe we can let Luce just be a fun cartoon mascot.
The men who changed the liturgy during the period of Vatican II undoubtedly had lost faith in the intrinsic beauty that was the Latin mass and all the popular devotions that Catholic life required of the faithful. It’s a shame that the lay faithful did not have a way to push back and reject these heartless men’s edicts that become the way the faithful had to worship going forward. I pray for the day when Holy Mother Church changes course and returns to her beautiful way of life centered on Christ our Lord and Savior!
Wow--truth after truth here. Thank you. Babbitt is someone I need to read; I recall Kirk mentioning him in The Conservative Mind. Re. formation: my own mind and imagination are forever marred by years of rock music. As I wrote for Crisis a while back "Protect your ears and you'll protect your soul." I keep wondering what it must have been like to have a mind--a being--in a pre-noise age. In a time before screens. I don't think we know how degraded we've become.
Truly, I think it is beyond our comprehension. The imagination is such a complex thing. What surrounds it creates our entire worldview.
And yes - check out Babbitt. I highly, highly recommend Democracy and Leadership (Liberty Fund has a wonderful edition).
Examining children’s books is one of the ways my wife, who leans strongly against tradition for reasons relating to her rather botched upbringing, has found her way back to the necessity of it. Very excited to subscribe and to search the archives for recommendations as well (ours are 4 and 1 and already the fight is on for their moral imaginations, contra the trash of the world around them).
I'm so glad you found my Substack, then! Take a look at "The 8 Worst Books . . ." to get an idea of what types of books to avoid. And then take a look at my post on the imagination of Elsa Beskow for an idea of what the moral imagination can look like in a children's book.
I ordered every book positively mentioned so far earlier today, I think! And yes indeed: we've seen many books of that variety, and couldn't agree more with your description of what's deleterious about them for young people. To date, our daughter has also found such books a bit boring, perhaps in contrast to better fare!
Also, take a look at my post on Kobi Yamata's What Do You Do With an Idea. That is key to understanding the romantic imagination--the type of imagination that you want to keep away from your children! Stay tuned for an upcoming post on the diabolical imagination of Karl Marx and also a lighter one on The Wind in the Willows!
“Much of the disorder in mainstream Catholicism today is a result of sham spirituality having infected the mind of the Church and the Church now being one of its purveyors.” So true. So much of this two-part essay is reflective of that Rosseauean “man is inherently good” and if we just tolerate, nay, embrace and accept all attitudes, viewpoints and beliefs, the common good will be achieved. Sadly this has been the nature and the direction of political and religious hierarchy for decades. We would be well served to remember the words provided by Matthew millennia ago when he wrote
“Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road is easy[a] that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it.” Matt 7: 13,14
Fantastic article.
"In most Novus Ordo parishes, a kind of doublethink is required to convince oneself that what is happening has been divinely instituted by God the creator the universe." Exactly. I am not the kind of person who has ever really struggled with belief in the Real Presence, but once when I was at a Novus Ordo, I could not help thinking how hard it was to believe what was going on was as sacred as it is with the kind of behavior I was witnessing before me. It's true -- it's almost as if the Novus Ordo makes it easy to doubt the Real Presence.
Would you consider writing more specifically on the things you believe we need to return to in life to "live liturgically"? I know you mentioned some of them here and in the first part, but I would love it if you could go more in-depth. I am only nineteen and was raised with a little decorum, but not so much as I could wish. I feel like I have to start from the ground up all by myself. Perhaps you could take us as you would your children and instruct us in living liturgically?
Andrea, thanks for your comment. I'll give it a shot in an upcoming post. I didn't go too deeply into that because I feel that there are so many "living liturgical" blogs out there that do it so well, that I didn't want to stray from my lane. I will say that I was raised as a Novus Ordo Catholic lite, and I had to really pull myself up by the bootstraps (with enormous help from the grace of God, of course) in my 20s. The real spiritual progress came when I had children and began to go deeply into the catechism so that I could catechize them. My husband I hit a moment when we realized that the surest way to pass on the faith to our kids was to be fully committed to the Latin mass and to living the liturgical year at home, guided by the traditional Mass.
I have had a similar experience after having kids. Although I have always appreciated a beautiful mass, I did not think as seriously about what was symbolicly communicated during a typical lax novus ordo mass. Now that I have toddlers, I realize that even if they don’t understand the doctrine of the Eucharist, they do understand if something is taken seriously or not.
I was raised in the Novus Ordo, too, but my family changed course when I was 14. I didn't know there were other newsletters out there writing about how even our behavior should be liturgical...
What was most surprising for us was the difference in behavior from our kids at the two different masses. Despite our TLM usually being around 1 hr. 40 min, the kids were so much better behaved than at the Novus Ordo. I realized that they intuited the seriousness of the traditional mass.
Such a nice article. Thank you Emily. I anticipate in the coming ages the dethroning of reason. I wonder, can the West, so fundamentally dependent upon reason since the days of St. Augustine, survive?
Next you should discuss the connection between reason and imagination and how the crowning of reason leads necessarily to revolutionary ideas that then lead to rational conclusions about the superfluousness of beauty and symbol. This of course is the error that the Protestants took to the extreme and that threatens our beloved Catholic Church.
I feel like such a discussion can dovetail with an examination of Karl Marx and communism, which I'm currently working on!
Great article....thank you!!
Amen! Lex orandi, Lex credendi.
I’m sorry, but I believe what you’ve written to be among the least charitable discussions of the NO liturgy I’ve read in some time.
EDIT: How did I forget this one 0) The NO isn’t divinely instituted, nor is any other liturgy. The Eucharist is, and I’ve sat in NO parishes with tears in my eyes multiple times during the consecration. It’s still a beautiful moment. You point at all of the human issues around the reception of communion as evidence that the NO is deficient, but the consecration itself is still breathtakingly, heartwrenchingly beautiful if you let it be
1) There’s no self awareness that the arguments you advance against the NO are the same arguments that led to VII considering liturgy reforms in the first place. People were unhappy with sitting through masses that they couldn’t follow without a missal. People were worried about parishioners losing interest and falling away from the church. The church didn’t look at the pre -VII mass and say, ah, nobody has seen any issues with this, but we’re going to talk about reforming it anyway.
1B) You can argue whether the liturgy changes were an improvement or not, but, currently NO alternative liturgies in the west are masses for spiritual elitists. People who are actively seeking to substantially inconvenience themselves to be more reverent. My only, and I mean only, issue with folks like this is they were likely the most reverent people at their old parish, people who could have fought to safeguard the reverence of the local NO liturgy and they end up leaving and depriving their local parish of their time, talent, and treasure in order to associate with a self-selected community of believers. But this phenomenon does mean that the people who care the most about safeguarding reverence are more likely to leave NO parishes and join alternatives. So people look at NO alternative churches and say “wow look how reverent these parishes are” because it’s only the top, say, 5% of reverent Catholics attending these churches to begin with. This means that the NO is judged by entirely different standards to its alternatives. The NO gets blamed for people leaving the church, but some percentage of those people would have left regardless of the liturgy, we just don’t know how many because almost none of them go to non-NO masses to begin with.
1C) If the problem is the NO liturgy parishes, does this go away when they’re no longer NO liturgy parishes? Do you really believe that young kids in otherwise thoroughly secular families who maybe go to mass once a week and don’t talk about the faith at home are suddenly going to blossom into devout believers because they have to sit through a different type of liturgy? Do you think that all of the yawning priests (though, more on him in a minute) are suddenly going to be wide awake every week because they have to celebrate Mass a different way? Not likely. It’s because the liturgy has never been the primary problem. At this point, the NO has fed the lives of multiple saints, even if alternatives would be preferential, pretending it’s wholly deficient is laughable. The issue is catechesis. But this is where the “reverence drain” I talk about in 1B rears its ugly head again. If all of the reverent people are leaving NO parishes, there are fewer reverent people at that parish to catechise the next generation. By withdrawing yourself from a NO community, you may be putting yourself in an area where you feel is more reverent, but, again, you deprive people in your old community of your gifts!
2) The poor yawning priest. Whether intentionally or by implication you’ve made it sound like the priest was bored or didn’t care. Have you stopped to think of reasons why he might have been tired on that day in particular (if it was enough to shock you, you must not see it from this guy week after week)? Maybe he was up late tending to a family member or parishioner who was ill? Maybe he was catching a cold and couldn’t sleep well? Maybe he saw somebody yawning in the front row of the parish? You’ve jumped to the least charitable explanation to try to paint an entire liturgy as insufficiently reverent, the guy deserves a break.
3) The Jokester Deacon. Perhaps the poor tired priest was too busy caring for his flock to write the homily. Maybe the deacon felt he had a particular pull to the gospel and wanted to preach on it. At the end of the day, there are good homilies and bad ones and where one falls is probably largely a matter of taste. You don’t have to like his homily, based on how you describe it I probably wouldn’t have, but maybe there’s someone out there who finds a more casual, jocular approach easier for them to relate to. Maybe they find a person who is less grave easier to approach with their spiritual concerns. If every priest and deacon was participating in non-NO masses you would still have homilies you felt were “bad”, probably in about the same number
4) Be nice to Luce. This is a dumb one, hence why it’s last, but instead of moaning about how the church doesn’t commission good art anymore, perhaps consider that Luce was designed as part of the effort leading to the church attending some Japanese cultural festival and an Italian comic con, it’s an evangelisation tool, Japan especially is very big on cutsy mascots. If they had made an oil painting to bring to these events, it wouldn’t have had the same impact because it wouldn’t be serving the same purpose. The point is not that Luce is the highest pinnacle of religious art, it’s a conversation starter to talk to people who aren’t religious about our faith. It either works, and in that case, yay! Or it doesn’t, in which case, the church wasted what is essentially a rounding error on trying to evangelise in a different way. There is literally no reason to be upset about this even if you don’t like Luce yourself.
Hi Wesley, I left you a response in the form of a post: https://efinley.substack.com/p/are-tlm-catholics-elitists
Thank you for taking the time to reply, I appreciate your charity towards me and I apologise for my harshness
Apology accepted! I hope you'll consider checking out a TLM the next time you have the opportunity. It has been a saving grace for many (like me) who may have fallen away from the Church or converted.
I agree with the final point. Luce has a valid place, like Br. Francis on Formed or Bob & Larry in Veggietales. Kids can learn about the faith through cartoon characters. Of course it does not rise to the level of sacred art; but who is saying it does? I think all the sound and fury about Luce is ridiculous.
I love sacred art and think we need more of it. So we should put more of our efforts into uplifting beautiful sacred things. There's plenty of bad art and everyone is entitled to dislike it, but maybe we can let Luce just be a fun cartoon mascot.
The men who changed the liturgy during the period of Vatican II undoubtedly had lost faith in the intrinsic beauty that was the Latin mass and all the popular devotions that Catholic life required of the faithful. It’s a shame that the lay faithful did not have a way to push back and reject these heartless men’s edicts that become the way the faithful had to worship going forward. I pray for the day when Holy Mother Church changes course and returns to her beautiful way of life centered on Christ our Lord and Savior!
Hear hear!