Author Archives: Jim Bowman

It’s in the category of things I wish I’d written so well.

Opening lines:

In the 1999 comedy Office Space, lead character Peter Gibbons (played by actor Ron Livingston) is interviewed by a pair of consultants hired by his employer to assess personnel. In one of the film’s more famous scenes, the consultants ask Peter about recent absences from work:

Bob Porter: Looks like you’ve been missing a lot of work lately, Peter.

Peter Gibbons: Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve been “missing” it, Bob.

It is in that same vein that I present this list of ten things you will “miss” by going to the Traditional Latin Mass.

Just a few for openers:

1. Altar girls. Look all you want, you won’t find them. As the justification for this modern innovation comes from the 1983 Code of Canon Law and a 1994 clarification from Rome, the traditional Rite (using the 1962 liturgical books & norms) does not permit for them.
2. Lay readers. Only the priest (at a Low Mass), or deacon and subdeacon (at a High Mass) can read the Lesson & Gospel, as this function is, of course, a liturgical function. In fact, prior to their elimination by Pope Paul VI in 1972, minor orders included that of lector for this very purpose.
3. Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion. Or as they are sometimes erroneously called, Eucharistic ministers. Nowhere in the traditional Roman Rite will you find armies of laity (often female) storming the sanctuary in secular clothing to assist with the distribution of Holy Communion. When you assist (i.e. attend) at the traditional Mass you will only receive Our Eucharistic Lord from the consecrated hands of a priest.

For the rest go to this (liturgy) guy’s posting arena. He’s a gem.

Banning it is a no-no.

“Pope Benedict did not “allow” the “old Mass,” and he granted no privilege to celebrate it. In a word, he did not take a disciplinary measure that a successor can retract. What was new and surprising about [his] Summorum Pontificum was that it declares that the celebration of the old Mass does not need any permission. It had never been forbidden because it never could be forbidden.

One could conclude that here we find a fixed, insuperable limit to the authority of a pope. Tradition stands above the pope. The old Mass, rooted deep in the first Christian millennium, is as a matter of principle beyond the pope’s authority to prohibit.”

It’s in the category of what no man can tear asunder.

O my most humble Jesus, who for love of me humbled yourself and become obedient unto the death of the Cross, how dare I appear before you and call myself your follower when I see myself so proud that I cannot bear a single slight without resenting it!

How, indeed, can I be proud, when by my sins I have so often deserved to be cast into the abyss of hell! O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, help me and make me like you. You, for love of me, bore so many insults and injuries. I, for love of you, will bear slights and humiliations patiently. But you see, O Jesus, how proud I am in my thoughts, how disdainful in my words, how ambitious in my deeds.

Grant me true humility of heart and a clear knowledge of my own nothingness. May I, for love of you, rejoice at being despised and feel no resentment when others are preferred before me. Let me not be filled with pride when I am praised, but seek only to be great in your sight and to please you in all things. Amen.

. . . and unto dust you will return. A salutary consideration in the midst of things.

And me? Here I was at this time yesterday, compliments of Deacon Paul, so generous with the ashes:

AND: He gave out the time-honored “Remember” thing, which not all ash-givers have done for me, instead “Jesus loves you” or some happy variation of that in tune with watered-down post-Vatican 2 over the decades.