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| Not without prayer! |
Of course I belaboured the Bishops and the liberal majority but it was a note from a priest friend that made me take a closer look at the main impediment to the return of Mass in the Extraordinary Form.
My priest friend (PF) stated that it was all too often the Parish Priest who blocked the way, and after some head scratching I think that he is correct.
In parishes where there is a Senior Priest and an assistant priest (what we used to quaintly call 'a curate') then it goes without saying that the junior partner defers to the senior.
And most 'Senior Partners' were probably ordained in the fresh and heady times of the aftermath of Vatican II when change was the thing and babies were being chucked out along with the bath water.
Now that those young ordinands of the 70s and 80s have established themselves comfortably in the rather relaxed mode of modern Holy Mother Church, it is, perhaps, asking too much of them to revert to a Mass that they must surely feel uncertain of.
Liturgically, the EF is a world apart from the OF and to have to swallow one's pride and actually take lessons in the offering of the Mass must be a galling prospect.
Worse still to wake up on a Monday morning to find that the curate has forgotten to return the sanctuary to its OF format and that the altar is facing the 'wrong way' and that the front row of pews has been moved forward to act as communion rails.
It is quite natural for the PP to expect the curate fall in line with his own wishes and only the power of prayer (and time) will resolve the situation.
I sometimes think that we at the traditional end of HMC forget what a potent weapon we have in the Rosary and that a regular group meeting up to say the Rosary together would bring about more of a change of attitude than all the letters to the Bishop and beyond.
True or false?
