Far less than meets the eye

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Ecumenism is the Universal Solvent of Tradition .

The Traditional Mass


ABS favors the Traditional Mass because it was an organic development of nearly 2000 years arrived at via the action of The Holy Ghost upon the Church Jesus established whereas the New Mass, the normative mass, was an artificial creation arrived at by man in positive ecclesiastical legislation in a Committee following the Second Vatican Council.


That is not to say that the N.O. Mass, the New Mass, the Normative Mass, the Ordinary Rite, is in any way not a true and valid Mass, for it certainly is a true and valid Mass, but it is to say that the Immemorial Mass, The Extraordinary Form of Mass, The Traditional Mass, the Tridentine Mass, The Gregorian Rite, and all of the other names it is known by, is a superior Rite that, in its prayers and rubrics, evinces that which is closest to perfection in the Worship of God. Its beauty, and solemnity, its music and rubrics (the required actions of the Priest at the altar which sublimates the personality of the priest by removing from him any notion of spontaneity and improvisation), are directed at the truth that He must increase and we must decrease.


Here is one way to demonstrate the dramatic difference twixt the Extraordinary and Ordinary Form of Mass (or at least as how it came to be implemented, although such implementation was neither intended or legislated for).


The N.O. Priest eyeballs us and audibly speaks the words of Consecration to us;
The Trad Priest faces God and confects the Eucharist in Ecclesiastical sussurus.


That one moment of eternity entering time, the Consecration of the Sacred Species, the Bread and Wine, in which, through the action of The Holy Ghost,  the substance of the bread and wine becomes the substance of the Body of Christ and the Blood of Christ is the most sublime and mysterious action ever taking place on Earth since the events of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday and, as such, ought be undertaken with the solemnest and most sacred deportment humanly possible, in an atmosphere of reverent silence and rapt attention, and it is in the Extraordinary Form of Mass that such an atmosphere has been created and maintained via Ecclesiastical tradition.


The actualisation of these Sacred Mysteries in the Extraordinary Form of Mass, with the immemorial prayers reverently directed ad orientem before a marble High Altar, with the beautiful vestments, with the incense, with Gregorian Chant and Sacred Polyphony, in a Church abounding with iconography and sacred adornment is the very least we redeemed Christians ought dare bring before our God as we Worship Him.