Asking the right question

 ... is much more than half the battle!

Or to put it another way, he who demands that a certain question be answered controls the conversation.

Ever had this feeling? That you are going around and around... that you have answered the question, in this case, "Do you believe the Novus Ordo Mass is valid," over and over, and yet you are still in the same wrangle, getting nowhere?

Well, this essay -- and I won't deceive you, it's long --  offers that blessed sense of release only found when the right question is finally asked.

In Cancelling Pope Benedict: Reflections on a recent article and the “hermeneutic of rupture, a priest responds to a defense of Pope Francis' Motu Proprio Traditionis Custodes, making this important point at the end (I have highlighted it for you):

Here we have yet another rearguard attempt to achieve the permanent institutionalization of the “hermeneutic of rupture” which Benedict XVI had dedicated his pontificate to combatting. We are told in this article that with his motu proprio, “Francis defended both the liturgical reform of Vatican II and the council’s ecclesiology,” but that “to be more thorough...Francis should correct a document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) from 2007, which asserts that Vatican II did not change the doctrine on the church.” In the rest of the article we can easily see the point: the author seems to bang his fist on the table and insist, But, yes! Vatican II really did change everything! Nothing can be the same anymore! You can’t believe like they did before the Council and you can’t worship like they did the before the Council! Although the author slams those he calls “Lefebvrists,” it seems not to occur to him that he shares their basic thesis that “Vatican II changed everything,” disagreeing only on whether the change was good or bad.

The importance of this article -- the decisive importance that I hope everyone will internalize -- is the author's question, which is bolded in the original, and which addresses the main thrust of the Motu Proprio:

The pressing problem in the Church today, then, is not: Do traditionalists accept Vatican II, but rather: Do the anti-traditionalists accept everything that came before Vatican II? The common lot of people attending Latin Masses today do “accept Vatican II,” inasmuch as it was legitimately convened and concluded by legitimate popes; yet they are not willing to let “accepting Vatican II” be a pretext or an occasion for rejecting or neglecting what came before Vatican II. And this is the real reason for the rage of the anti-traditionalists.

This point is what those who love tradition have trouble articulating, simply because we are always on the defensive, answering that other question of whether we consider the Novus Ordo valid. We are never allowed to get to the point, which is that we need more than mere validity to flourish, and that a bare adherence to not being invalid is ultimately corrupting of matters beyond liturgy, like doctrine and morality.

By the way, I include in "those who love tradition" people like myself, who up until recently considered ourselves "Reform of the Reform," Ratzingerian Novus Ordo faithful -- that is, not Traditionalists with a capital T. I understand that many will have in mind those who had always insisted on cleaving to the old form, but it's important to recognize Catholics like me who thought a "mutual enrichment" could be achieved and to understand why we we are puzzled that we didn't win out on something that to us seemed rather self-evident. 

We had thought and trusted, really, that reverence and true worship was actively being sought in at least some parts of the hierarchy who were faithful to Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI. With this Pontiff, have realized that our hope is in vain. Better late than never!

The liturgical situation, made so (uncharacteristically) clear by Pope Francis, leaves us then with no choice. We simply cannot accept a liturgy that has within itself the mechanism to become ever more banal and worldly, and the custodians of which demonstrate that they consider it to be in rupture with the past. 

That realization can feel like it puts us in the wrong, until we see that it's our defensive posture that creates that impression. We must stop accepting the premise that validity equals sufficiency. Yes, we think the NO is valid, but we also don't think that the barest legalism, affirmed by that response, can provide a fruitful path for what is, after all, the whole reason for our existence -- to worship God. 

Only when we ask the correct question -- does the anti-traditionalist accept everything that came before Vatican II -- that is, is our interlocutor in fact a Catholic -- do we recover the proper orientation. 

I urge you to read the whole thing. It's very freeing.