7th Monday of Easter

I really like the Lucinda Grande Font. It makes me feel comfortable with the type face, which is something most people never bother to notice about the things they read, what typeface is used in their printed publications. It's overlooked by most people, yet to me it is a thing of beauty to see the serifs. If you don't know or care what I'm talking about, click here anyway.

Pre-Vatican II
Post Vatican II

I've given up calling them Old Style and New. Let's be honest, it's the Breviary before or after the Second Vatican Council. We shall call it what it is; a liturgical divide. Yes, the old Latin and the muttering that the priest, turned away from us was far more mysterious. But a lot of it was also left overs from previous eras of church liturgical tradition. Things that were added and no longer have any meaning. Tradition is a living thing. The divide between before and after Vat. II, is healthy, for it is alive in those of us on both sides. Therefore the very fact that the two side debate one another--that is, when debate is again allowed--we can find a middle way.

Tradition will work out what we obsess about. We you think of historic changes, and the time it takes for a real historic change to occur, then you realize we are still in the midst of working, according to Traditions demands. This is important, the Holy Spirit will fuse the traditions. We all agree Catholic worship should be beautiful, meaningful, and correctly done. The Mass is serious business, we should always treat it as such.

At the monastery on certain feast days, usually it is Br. Chrysostom who will intone a Latin piece from their old Trappist books. Always during a long communion. It takes forever to sing, and is some of the most holy moments in my worship experience at the Abbey. The Latin can transcend and speak for our raw emotions. So can English, for in English we too can say "the God in whom we live and move and have our being." Both languages have raw emotional power.

I believe that we should not willynilly through away two thousand years of worship tradition, simply because we turned the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours (LOTH) into English? I describe myself as the Mad Catholic Liberal! And I am, because I say let's keep some of the austere beauty of the old and it's highest moments, and let us also live withing the new Mass that God in God's wisdom saw fit to create in the Second Vatican Council.