Rorate Caeli

The Traditional Mass: It's not about politics -- it's about Truth and Beauty



Commonweal is a journal known, at least since the age of the last Council, for its extreme liberal positions.

So it was not without considerable surprise that this past week readers witnessed the journal publish a text favorable to the Latin Mass: it is a personal account of the author's discovery of the Latin Mass. 

As many modern Catholics, the author assumed that the New Mass of Paul VI was merely a translation of the old rite -- and, of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The New Mass is a completely new concoction, completely unrelated to the Tradition of the Church. What was created, under the guise of introducing the vernacular, was a messy product of the 1960s, the disgraceful decade of cultural revolution.

The Commonweal piece seems particularly important to us because it shows it is possible to have a different sensibility to certain themes of Catholic social doctrine and still appreciate the Mass that was the same and only known by all great Catholic social reformers of the history of the Latin Church. The Traditional Mass really is not about a particular kind of political preference, but it is all about love for the most sacred thing on Earth: the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar.

The Traditional Latin Mass is the birthright of each and every Catholic. To each one of them, regardless of their political leanings, we say: Welcome Home!