One Year Anniversary of the Motu Proprio

As a person who was raised Methodist, I retain a certain enjoyment of the old John and Charles Wesley hymns, gospel music and old school liberal social sensibilities ( equal pay for equal work, racial harmony and soup kitchens etc.) However, the Novus Ordo seems to delight in turning the Catholic Church into the Methodist one. Whenever I head the strains of Onward Christian Soldiers, All Hail the Power of Jesus Name and Amazing Grace in a Catholic Mass I get downcast and somewhat irked: if I wished to be a Methodist and hear these hymns I would never have converted.

I am not a Roman Catholic, I'm Eastern Rite Catholic, and a convert to the Catholic Church. When I converted, I selected the Byzantine Rite, because of my 18 years as a Greek Orthodox and how much I love the beauty of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, in part because of the modernized and often trite (and theologically dubious) English translation of the Novus Ordo, and in part because the local FSSP Chapel is across town far enough to be a serious drain on the petrol budget. Because the Melkite Mission here has few members, we seldom get a priest (and when we do we must fly one in from far away). That said, I have grown to love the Latin Mass very much. Only good can come of regularizing its use. This is the lost treasure of the West, the music, art, liturgy and architecture which lifts the soul to God. God bless Pope Benedict XVI forever for returning it to the world.

From Inside Catholic by Thomas E. Woods Jr.

QUOTE In recent weeks, Cardinal Hoyos has made clear just how ambitious Benedict's expectations are. The cardinal made headlines when, in response to a journalist's inquiry as to whether the pope wanted to see the Extraordinary Form in "many ordinary parishes," he replied, "All the parishes. Not many -- all the parishes, because this is a gift of God." "This kind of worship is so noble, so beautiful," he said.

According to Cardinal Hoyos, the Ecclesia Dei Commission is instructing seminaries to teach seminarians not only the Extraordinary Form itself but also the theology and language of the old Missal. He suggests that parishes hold classes to prepare their people for the traditional liturgy, so they might "appreciate the power of the silence, the power of the sacred way in front of God, the deep theology, to discover how and why the priest represents the person of Christ and to pray with the priest."

I never expected to live to see this. UNQUOTE