What the bishop never sees
Why are bishops so eager to crack down on the Church's traditional peripheries but show very little interest in liturgical abuses in the 'Novus ordo'?
The liturgy wars are certainly back in the news.
Last week, Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte, North Carolina, announced new policies restricting the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass in that diocese to a single location.
Predictably, this upset a lot of people. Things got worse when a diocesan memo emerged that included talking points for priests put in the awkward position of having to defend the bishop’s controversial decision.
Things got even messier when a draft of a diocesan plan to change policies regarding the celebration of the Novus Ordo was leaked. The policies outlined in that draft would have restricted many traditional practices and devotions throughout the diocese – no celebrating Mass ad orientem, no celebrating Mass in Latin, no use of altar rails, no praying the St. Michael Prayer, etc. The response to all this was swift and overwhelmingly negative.
The diocese has since said it has shelved that plan, at least for now.
No doubt, as a reader of The Pillar, you already know these details and more. I won’t try to rehash them all here. Suffice it to say there has been a great deal of debate in recent days about the way things have been handled in Charlotte and elsewhere.
One question, which has been asked frequently since the promulgation of Traditionis custodes, is why Rome and some bishops are so eager to crack down on the Church's more traditional peripheries while showing very little interest in preventing or correcting liturgical abuses in the Novus ordo.
It is an understandable question, given the fact that the vast majority of Catholics (including those who infrequently attend Mass, if at all) rarely encounter any Mass other than the Novus ordo, where liturgical abuses are much more common.
Why spend so much energy hassling traditionalists who are passionately devoted to the (old) Mass when the Mass most Catholics do attend is often celebrated with such mundane banality that it becomes a near occasion for apostasy?