…more than a thousand words, that’s for sure!
Many thanks to all of those who commented below. (Reflections also at New Liturgical Movement and Thrownback) I entitled the post “Necessary Conversations” because I think they are just that – necessary.
Why?
Because here’s the thing. I just don’t think it’s ever going to be 1977 again. Oh, I could be wrong of course – In 1960, not a Catholic soul alive could have imagined that it would ever be 1977. The idea of it would have flummoxed almost everyone.
(And mind you, “1977″ is a metaphor. It’s a metaphor for felt banners, liturgies built around 3 chords and a guitar (or maybe 4 chords, because G7 is really pretty), improvised Eucharistic prayers, totally sincere, yet endless Liturgy Committee meetings to figure out what we can “do” to make the Mass more “meaningful” and a liturgical sensibility that said: the less formal, the more in tune to the contemporary moment, the better. )
Not that every parish is going to turn into St. John Cantius tomorrow. Nor, perhaps, should it. Most everyone is still happy with 1989 (more chords, felt banners stuck in the closet now) but the pendulum is swinging in the direction, simply, of the retrieval of the richness of the Catholic liturgical heritage and some serious reconsideration of what ritual is and more specifically what the Catholic Mass is.
As I’ve said before, my big ah-ha moment over the past couple of years has been the realization that most of us – myself included – have been formed to think of the Mass as a prayer meeting. A highly structured prayer meeting, but a prayer meeting nonetheless, one which emphasizes community and who we are in the here and now, a prayer meeting which should somehow be expressive of who we are as individuals and a community.
Prayer meetings are good. But that’s not what the Mass is.
And that understanding is what I see reflected in the comments below. It seems fairly obvious to me – those who respond positively to the photo seem to emphasize the Sacrificial aspect of the Mass, and the necessity of the ritual and other externals reflecting that reality. TSO said it well:
It LOOKS like what it is – it looks like we are offering Jesus to the Father and asking Him (the Father) to look upon His son that we might be saved. The priest, in facing the altar, removes himself from focus and eliminates a distraction: the only thing we can look at, really, is Jesus in the Eucharist.
Those with negative responses – or even mixed – tend to emphasize the Mass as God’s people gathered to share in the meal of Christ’s Real Presence, and they don’t see that reflected in that image.
This, of course, is the classic way of envisioning the pre- and post-Vatican II thinking about the Mass, and it’s not accidental, for the shape and content of the 1970 Missal purposefully diminished the sacrificial sensibility. Whether you like that or not, whether or not you fancy Masons behind it or the Spirit, it’s true. It’s just the way it is – it is the way in which those of us who can claim to be post-V2 babies have been formed by the liturgy. I know I have.
And it can be very difficult to see it any other way.
So what I wanted to accomplish through my little exercise was first of all, the bringing of these differences to light in a way that avoided politics, accusations, ideological battles or spiritual swordsmanship.
I wanted, if only in this tiny little space of Church, for those who are uncomfortable with certain aspects of the pre-Vatican II Mass to listen to those who find it beautiful and spiritually enriching in an irreplacable kind of way and see that their devotion is not about nostalgia or aesthetics.
I wanted those who do find the Extraordinary Form more spiritually resonant – and even in general a more formal celebration of Mass across the board, which might include the Ordinary Form in Latin and celebrated ad orientem – to listen to those who are put off by it, either by their own history with it or other perceptions of clericalism or obscurantism and be able to talk about all of this without resorting to assertions of spiritual immaturity.
Several commenters who actually were alive during the 40’s and 50’s and remember the Mass before Vatican II have reminded us of the importance of being realistic, and they are certainly correct. In memoirs of these Masses, you tend to pick up that things were either dreadful or glorious, but that seems to be the way of memoirs – that we only remember the extremes. Long-time readers know that I am intrigued – even obsessed – with the period of transition around Vatican II, and that my position is simply – if there was no sense that reform was needed, reform wouldn’t have happened. Any student, for example, of the liturgical movement of the 20th century – and I don’t mean only the academic liturgical movement, but that which expressed itself in the lives of lay Catholics of the 20th century – knows that there was great interest in deepening lay participation in the Mass, both interior and external, that there was concern that Catholics make a greater connection between the liturgical life of the Church and everyday life, and there was a great movement to increase the numbers of Catholics receiving Communion at Mass.
This is absolutely true. But what I would say – simply looking at the comments here – is another reminder. Those who, in these comments, spoke to how the picture evoked in them feelings of awe and connection with Christ, were, for the most part, speaking from experience in the present, not looking back forty years. They were saying, “This is how it affects me, because this is what I feel and think when I attend Mass in this form.”
I just don’t think there is any going back. Not to 1954, not to 1965, 1982 or even 2007. We’re going forward and as Catholics, I wish we could listen and learn from each other without slamming each other in boxes. Perhaps there is something to be gained from contemplating the more intensely sacrificial expression of the Extraordinary Form and the power of careful ritual to “hold” faith. Perhaps there is something to be learned from the congregation’s vocal participation in the Mass. The marginalization, the mutual disdainful dismissals…can we stop? Can we?
Perhaps?
To me, it all comes down to this:
What some see as an obstacle to communion with the Lord, others see as a help. The way out of this is not to argue and engage in tactics of mutually assured destruction, but to explain why this – whether it is the ritual or the relative informality or the Latin or the vernacular – is a means to communion and nourishment for the mission with which Christ charges us all.
Of all the excellent comments below, one brought me to full stop. It was brief, it was deceptively simply, but it bore tremendous weight and I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m grateful to all of you, and especially Romulus, who wrote of the picture:
I see a man offering a sacrifice. The man has a cross on his back.
“It LOOKS like what it is – it looks like we are offering Jesus to the Father and asking Him (the Father) to look upon His son that we might be saved. The priest, in facing the altar, removes himself from focus and eliminates a distraction: the only thing we can look at, really, is Jesus in the Eucharist.”
I listened to an interesting podcast recently that discussed the diminished sense of God the Father in the Novus Ordo liturgy: http://catholicforum.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=268846. The most relevant part of the podcast for this discussion comes at about 21:10 into the podcast for the next 4-6 minutes.
Not ever experiencing anything but the Novus Ordo, I have to say I’m learning more and more about what the Mass really is.
Much of the controversy about liturgy seems to be predicated on a false dichotomy between the horizontal and vertical (or immanent and transcendent). I see ploenty of this in the comments.
This amounts to a “hidden metaphysics” that we rarely acknowledge. The problem is that it’s not a Catholic metaphysics. The incarnational principle, and the work of Christ, is precisely to bring the immanent and transcendent together, to give full expression to both. This is one of the key things that make a good liturgy.
Maybe we’d make more progress on liturgical reform if we acknowledged the faulty metaphysics that the two extremes surreptitiously share – and transcended them both by adopting a genuinely incarnational way of doing liturgy.
I didn’t even catch the deeper meaning of that when I read it in the combox. Powerful.
I am coming late, but will add my comment: my reaction was like that of hearing about a high school boyfriend (fond memories, glad to hear he’s well, but no desire to see him again). When the Latin Mass was what we had, I loved it. But that was in high school, too.
I did have one negative reaction: wearing lacy vestments. I had a moment of physical revulsion. After all we have gone through since 2002, didn’t these men see anything —icky—- about wearing lace? They weren’t reminded of the Daughters of Trent? I was and I thought they could have chosen equally sumptuous vestments without such connotations.
Thomas Day, music professor at Salve Regina University, wrote a fine book called “Why Catholics Can’t Sing.” I would highly recommend it esspecially in light of these discussions. Day has a strong sense of what the liturgy is, and what it isn’t. The book is enteraining, witty, and imformative; and walks through American Catholicism from its roots to now. So if you have time, pick it up!
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Catholics-Cant-Sing-Catholicism/dp/0824511530
Yes, I agree. I got a pretty good Catholic education, but I had no idea that a) Christ with us was offering everything to God the Father or b) that sacrifice was involved, except in the vaguest way.
Now, this isn’t to say that I didn’t pray to God the Father at Mass. I prayed to Him whenever the priest said to do so. But the image of Mass we got was all Jesus and us, with very little concern for what the Father or the Holy Spirit were up to.
Of course, it is possible that I was slow on the uptake, given that we were explicitly praying to God the Father pretty much all the time!
Ditto David’s comments. Putting the Eucharist in any box diminises it and limits the action of the Incarnation in our lives. Recently I sat behind a young family of five on Sunday, mesmerized by how each of them took turns pointing out something special going on at the altar. Christ was “truly present” there as they responded in a most reverent way.
At Mass this morning, I kept imagining the priest assuming the ad orientem ppsture once he began the Liturgy of the Eucharist portion of the Mass. It doesn’t have to be in Latin, and it doesn’t have to be silent, but how much more powerful that portion of the Mass would be if celebrated in that way.
Amy, I think you’re mixing things up. Seeing the Mass as a sacrifice does not preclude its meaning as a meal. It also includes Christ’s Real Presence (in fact, the dispute over the Real Presence was part of the Reformation). Your photograph neglected to include the congregation and they were God’s people (may not “the People of God,” but nonetheless).
The problem with the post-Vatican II Mass was its dilution of all three of those aspects in favor of a focus on the community.
In addition, not all of us who like the TLM are from ages past. We’re simply better educated theologically, or more aware of our Catholic heritage, or, less inclined to subordinate our Catholicism to social and political interests.
Finally, the inherent dignity of the TLM and its connection to all of Catholic history and culture resonates with many people who do not want any longer to participate in what has become a protestantization of the liturgy.
I also found Romulus’ comment perceptive.
One other thing I might add: Amy posted a picture, with commentary, and asked for impressions. It may well be that this had the effect of eliciting primarily aesthetic judgments. Certainly some of the comments suggested as much. It leads one to wonder if shots of other ancient liturgical traditions were also paired off with this – say, Gothic instead of Baroque, or, moving outside the Roman Rite, a Byzantine liturgy – whether the reactions would remain the same.
To which I would comment that liturgy should be and is, pace Pope Benedict, something we receive rather than create – although certainly this does not deny that certain aesthetic aspects may be to some degree culturally conditioned and, well, aesthetic trappings with which some Catholics can reasonably disagree.
But to some extent I think that this debate is a chimera. So is the use of Latin. And that is not to say that the rubrics, the traditions, the language of the mass for so many centuries shouldn’t be respected and kept alive as part of what is, after all, the tradition of *every* Catholic. But no – I think there has been little discussion of the deeper differences in “liturgical tastes” here, probably because they aren’t necessarily readily evident from photos.
And in that regard I am speaking of what I regard as the greatest strength of the traditional rite, and concomittantly all of the ancient rites of East and West, even up against a Novus Ordo mass done as traditionally as possible: the emphasis on the Four Last Things. Death. Judgment. Heaven. Hell. These abound in the prayers of the traditional missal but they tend to be toned down or excised in the new fixed prayers and propers. In recent years we’ve lost appreciation for these, and the developments in the liturgy are only part of the reason why – or just a symptom rather than a cause. Piers Paul Read has a worthwile new book on this subject for those interested.
But I think it’s possible to bring this emphasis back in the new mass if we really want to. You don’t need Latin or fiddlebacks for that.
When I finished reading “Spirit of the Liturgy” I began to wish for exactly the same thing, Thomas Tucker!
What if, in a typical Novus Ordo, the priest simply did the Consecration ad orientem? Wouldn’t that be such a perfect happy medium?
As it is, I find the most reverent NO masses are those where the priest, during the consecration, gazes lovingly into the chalice with his head and voice subdued. I know it’s posturing for effect, but it’s a meaningful posture with precisely the right effect.
In other words, it’s good liturgy.
Thanks for the synthesis and insights, Amy. It was a good experience to go through – and something that we all need more of: the talking TO each other, instead of at, or worse – about – each other. Speaking honestly, but without the vitriol and accusation that so frequently seems to attend both sides of the debate.
I hope that the next stage of the evolution of this discussion is not “This feeds me, and that feeds you, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree.” While certainly tolerance of other forms, other worship styles and other interests can be good, tolerance is not some supreme virtue – charity is.
The debate needs to continue – not for the sake of debate, but because we all need to hear what each other has to say. That’s part of the nature of communion. We don’t need to agree on everything, but we need to understand why, for example (picking something incredibly minor for the sake of making a point), Whitby finds lace albs revolting, while others (myself include) find them beautiful. Can we coexist? Certainly. We could coexist by avoiding the topic, or worse, avoiding each other. Wouldn’t we be better – as individuals and as fellow members of the Body of Christ – if we could explain to each other what attracts and repulses us, without falling into the name-calling or accusation of psychological unhealth?
Again, we don’t need to always agree. But I hope that we can do better than just tolerate our differences.
“I am speaking of what I regard as the greatest strength of the traditional rite, and concomittantly all of the ancient rites of East and West, even up against a Novus Ordo mass done as traditionally as possible: the emphasis on the Four Last Things. Death. Judgment. Heaven. Hell. These abound in the prayers of the traditional missal but they tend to be toned down or excised in the new fixed prayers and propers. In recent years we’ve lost appreciation for these, and the developments in the liturgy are only part of the reason why – or just a symptom rather than a cause.”
I wonder if that hasn’t contributed to a loss of the fear of the Lord in our society?
So many of my parents friends decry the way they were taught by the nuns to fear God. They were constantly told that they would go to hell if they did this or go to hell if they did that– things like eating meat on Friday could result in eternal damnation.
Then came Pope John and the fog was lifted.
That’s how they speak of “those days”.
But my peers grew up being taught by the Sisters that Jesus loves them. That being Christian is about rainbows and gumdrops. But then we had absolutely no framework to cope with the force of sin within. We felt no fear about sinful choices because God loves us (though we certainly have the guilt…we just don’t call it that anymore– we talk to our therapists about that sort of thing). God will let us into heaven no matter what we do. God loves sinners and God will always forgive no matter what.
This is all true– but it’s lacking a crucial element: fear.
“If God loves me so much, why does my life suck?” asked the children of the Boomers. And then they turned ad orientem to Buddha. Or they committed suicide. Or they turned to drugs.
“If God loves me so much, why do I feel bad when I do ______ (sexual act)?” But we kept on doing it anyway, because God will forgive. Because God loves me just the way I am.
There is a pendulum. And people that grew up being told they were wonderful and special are turning to traditional piety because it puts things in their proper perspective.
Yes, God loves me, but God also has mercy on me. I don’t merit grace and I do nothing to deserve it and life will be an uphill battle. There is still Calvary even if we are an Easter people.
I just received this quote in my inbox from my girlfriend:
“Today, there is a great aversion to an appropriate fear of the Lord. And consequently, there is a great trivialization of love and a great foolishness as regards relationship with God. Fear of the Lord is a gift of God; it is not opposed to love, but prepares for it. Fear of the Lord and love of the Lord go together. One of the reasons why there has been so much foolishness in the Church and in the world is because there has been so much lack of fear of the Lord.”
–Ralph Martin
Amy. this what you said is SOOOOOO much better than the piece by Melissa Nussbaum in Celebration magazine that was copied and handed out at my parish. With the title: “Formation: Liturgy.”
Can you make this in reproducible form and have OSV – or Loyola ( I see a more loyola stuff at my parish) publish it?
You said what I was thinking as I read Nussbaum’s piece:
>We’re going forward and as Catholics, I wish we could >listen and learn from each other without slamming each >other in boxes. Perhaps there is something to be gained >from contemplating the more intensely sacrificial >expression of the Extraordinary Form and the power of >careful ritual to “hold” faith. Perhaps there is something to >be learned from the congregation’s vocal participation in >the Mass. The marginalization, the mutual disdainful >dismissals…can we stop? Can we?
I’ve never been to the Latin Mass, any Latin mass. I probably won’t get to one in the near future since it isn’t being prayed anywhere near my home and just getting our act together to get Mass on time, in good spirits can be a challenge, especially when I also teach CCD (or – as it is called religious ed) and work full time.
But ALL this talk about it has deeply influenced how I pray at Mass now.
In the past, Amy has asked us what we heard in church on a particular Sunday.
This Sunday, we got “Father Seamus” jokes.
It’s bad enough to turn the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass into a stand-up routine, and even worse when the Catholic Writers’ Union is apparently on strike.
Janice, I’m afraid I must be less educated, less aware of my heritage, and more inclined to subordinate my Catholicism to social and political interests. I think you were agreeing with David’s first post, but I don’t know what he said.
I like Thomas Tucker’s idea: I think it would be less distracting if the priest faced the same way we do, especially if he had a microphone and continued to speak English.
SWP wrote:
“Yes, God loves me, but God also has mercy on me.”
Recently I read on some blog or another that the root word for mercy in Greek (Kyrie ELEISON) is the same as for olive oil and anointing with oil. So that in praying to God for mercy, we are asking God to anoint us, in a fashion, with his mercy. Just to talk about this little, often overlooked portion at the beginning of Mass could be such a wonderful sermon. The difficulty in rendering the Hebrew “Chesed” that lies behind the “eleison” of the kyrie’s petitions, for it means mercy and love. Etc.
The real problem with those 50s nuns who taught only fear and those 70s ex-hippies who taught only love (yes, of course, caricatures both of those depictions) is that both were poorly educated, and so both educated others poorly. Sisters were often thrust into teaching before they even made final vows. Lay teachers in the 70s weren’t usually given any training whatsoever (many still aren’t)–it was all about “share your faith”, a phrase I never have really understood. (So I’m too cerebral!)
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Re: Clericalism
Of course, this is a failing that can afflict a priest today as easily as it did in years past, and has little to do with the way Mass is prayed. I lived at a seminary for a couple of years, and some of the fathers were “clericalists” and some were not…it had more to do, I think, with personality than ideology, or perhaps, more to do with spirituality than liturgical sensibility.
At the parish I live in (typical NO parish in terms of liturgy), as opposed to the one I attend, I went to attend Mass in December on a very snowy day when I didn’t want to drive the usual 20 miles. I walked over to the church, to find that other parishioners were leaving the church, who told me the organist (who had to drive cross town to get there) had been told by the pastor to tell people that he was canceling Mass because of the weather.
Folks, that’s clericalism. (Father knows best. And even though we’ve made it there for a scheduled Mass, it’s going to be canceled, so please go home. You can try again later.)
At the parish where I attend (ad orientam, but in English as it’s an Anglican Use congregation), there’s no question that Father is in charge of the parish–but, anything I have ever done has always been received with thanks (and this would be others’ experience as well, I think), and never is a scheduled Mass canceled for weather. Father trusts us to be intelligent enough to know if we can drive safely, but he will be there if anyone shows up.
That’s pastoral care.
SWP’s comment on fear, especially the Ralph Martin quotation struck me.
Fear of the Lord is a gift of God; it is not opposed to love, but prepares for it.
You know that first hint of love, that infatuation with the beloved [God]? You want more than anything to be with beloved, but you are scared to death that you would be mortified were you to approach and say or do the wrong thing [sin]. So you hang back and watch from afar, gathering your courage, overcoming your fear, preparing yourself [examination, penance, confession] to approach the beloved.
Maybe we could think of Fear of the Lord like that.
I began serving Mass back in the early 50’s. Our parish had an above average Liturgical tradition and iin 1954 our pastor was consecrated auxiliary bishop. I served his first Mass as a bishop the next morning. From then until the post Vatican II Reforms by which time I was in my 20’s, I was involved in numerous Pontifical ceremonies, which is why, from among the myriad of comments we have just read I chose to tackle the issue of the vestments, especially pontifical items like the pontifical gloves. We didn’t normally get bad celebrants though I did serve a few Masses for a visiting priest who was scrupulous and was obsesssed with reciting the silent prayers correctly to the point of reciting some words several times. Going to other parishes I saw a wide range of celebrants, good and bad, although most celebrants were unremarkable which is as it should be. I must say, however, that even the worst celebrants were not as bad as what one sees nowadays, The rubrics gave them no room to go too far off.
During this same time I became very interested in LIturgical Reform and had to be one of the few high school students anywhere to regularly get a subscription to Worship Magazine for Christmas. I read closely any of the liturgical documents which were issued from Rome in those days including any decrees such as those supressing most of the octaves and changing the categories of feast days etc., quite unspectacular in light of what was to come. I might add, that both as regards the celebration of the traditional liturgy and as regards the matter of Liturgical reformI had the mentorship of excellent priests. I snapped up anything that was published by the Liturgical Press in Collegeville.
It is hard to describe to people who “weren’t there” how exciting a day was the First Sunday of Lent 1965 when the Interimissal went into effect along with the vernacular etc (In Canada we had gotten the lessons in the vernacular the year before). This was history! The Mass over the centuries had NEVER changed except iin minor matters not visible to the laity. I was fully aware of this. Being still rather young I was rather insensitive to rest of the congregation, most of whom must have been very bewildered (there was amazing little preparation for them).
And, at first things looked very promising but from 1965 to 1969 was a period of continual decline. By the time the Novus Ordo together with the new ICEL translations came in on Advent Sunday 1969 the old use was barely recognizable and the whole thing was just one more change.
As for clericalism it showed often enough in the attitude too many of the clergy towards those of the laity who were unhappy. One year the use of Septuagesima was Holy Mother Church in her wisdom realising we need a transition time into Lent. Then, without further explantion it “Oh we don’t bother with that nonsense anymore.” Treasured vestments and other items were destroyed, High Altars came down and if you questioned any of this you were ridiculed or told that you were too caught up in externals, toally missing the point that it was the clergy who were changing the externals. It was no longer Vatican II but the “spirit of Vatican II” which ruled the day. I was accused of triumphalism by one priest when I defended the use of the traditional Pontical Vestments. I said that “the bishops may get rid of their silken gloves but mark my words, they won’t get rid of their iron fists.” Some of the priests themselves disliked what was happening but all they could do was shrug their shoulders. Many priest left the priethood (several in my own parish).Nuns likewise left and those who remained became invisible as they modified their habits and then got rid of them altogether.
Over a period of time I felt consoled to hear of how great liturgists like Joseph Jungman and Louis Bouyer were disillusioned. We saw the Lefebvre Schism and the tremendous drop in
ass attendamce. Our pastor, the auxiliary bishop, who had been a Council Father told my Dad that “this wasn’t for us. It was for the next generation.” But I know that he too was worried and in a parish where the’re had been 125 altar boys I began seeing the bishop himself serving as “altar boy” at the Sunday afternoon Mass. And, the next generation obviously didnt agree with him that the changes were for them because in English speaking Canada Canada Mass attendance dropped by about 40% from 1960 to 2000. Quebec was worse.
I felt vindicated on July 7, 2007.
I’ve gone on at some length Amy because you said you were obsesed with those who had lived through the changes. Believe me I have barely touched the surface.
and now, on a sopmewhat different note, one of you commentators was perhaps more perceptive than he realized. He seemed, If I remember correctly, to like the Old Use but he couldn’t imagine it being celebrated in his modern parish church. He was probably right. The Old liturgy built the great cathedrals and our taditional churches. the new litugy built th new style. This is true of the arts in general (compare music). Perhaps mopst of all it formed people. It is clear that those whose formation is by the New Use are of a different mindset than those wwere formed by the old. Those of us raised in the old have the advantage of being intimately familiar with both liturgical experiences. I hope those who have only experienced the new will have the opportunity to really give the Old Use a try and really find out about it. Then make your choice between the Old and the New. You have an opportunity we never had.
I am gratified to see my comment spurred a little more discussion about the role of the Four Last Things – in liturgy and in catachesis.
“So many of my parents friends decry the way they were taught by the nuns to fear God. They were constantly told that they would go to hell if they did this or go to hell if they did that– things like eating meat on Friday could result in eternal damnation. ”
And of course we’re all probably familiar, even if only by legendary trope, with the Tale of the Mean Old Nuns. And there’s no doubt that exclusive emphasis on the Four Last Things can led to an unbalanced witness. As Chesterton famously observed in St. Thomas Aquinas, fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom – but not the end.
But it is still *part* of that wisdom, and we have seen the results of the extreme reaction against it all that followed the Council. I like Steve’s comments on this regard: the common element in the failures of both periods were ill-educated nuns or lay catechists or even priests. Sometimes even by those with big degrees after their names.
I think it’s increasingly apparent to most of us now that antinomian indifference isn’t any improvement on legalistic timorousness,especially when it feeds into what is already s surging tide of theological immanentism washing through the land: it’s all about us – me – and I/we must be affirmed in our goodness, not judged. Instead, there has to be a balance. And I think you can find a number of periods and places in Church history where that balance was struck. St. Francis de Sales springs to mind.
This retrieval would be much easier if Paul VI’s consilium hadn’t gutted so many of those ancient prayers in the ordinary and propers of the mass; or if options hadn’t been permitted at so many points. Better homilies and catechesis sure help, but they must be reinforced by the liturgy – lex orandi, lex credendi, what you pray should be what you believe. And if THAT can be done – and I know it would not be easy – we’ll be in better shape. But in the meantime, there is no reason why priests cannot start celebrating even just the canon/EP ad orientem/versus apsidem. And following more closely what the missal requires, rather than what they might prefer to improvise.
And again, you don’t need Latin or fiddlebacks to do that.
I think Suibhne’s onto something. My experience as a convert, just before the changes were promulgated, was exactly that: infatuation, hanging back and watching from afar, wanting to learn everything about the Beloved, wanting to fit in with His crowd, impatient with anything which interrupted my contemplation of Him.