Lace, smells and bells： What's with all the pomp and circumstance at the Latin Mass？
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Summary
In this episode, Beth and Jenna talk about the role of women in the church, why they wear veils, and why they don't face the people at mass. They also discuss the importance of facing the east and why the church should worship facing the sun.
Transcript
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Even in the Middle Ages, when people were illiterate, they were educated in all kinds of
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ways. If you go into a medieval church, it is the Bible in stone and glass.
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Beautiful. Before we leave the topic of women, because it's huge, there's another one,
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and this one probably affects people even inside the Latin mass community. So there is a practice
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inside of the traditional Latin mass, and that is head coverings. Not for men, but just for women.
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Why that? And a lot of women take great offense to that and have a really hard time with it. So
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what's that about? Well, I mean, they certainly shouldn't take any offense at that for a couple
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of reasons. One is that St. Paul speaks about women covering their heads in church. And it's very
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interesting. Joseph Shaw, who's a name I know is familiar to you. But Joseph Shaw has an excellent
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piece talking about the veil, where he explains that it isn't that St. Paul is just going along
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with the convention of his time when he's talking about that. He's actually pushing deliberately
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against the conventions of his time. Because in Judaism, men covered their heads, as they still
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do. And women, well, women might wear a veil just because every woman wore a veil until modern times
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all the time. You know, that was just part of their clothing. But it wasn't as if women, Jewish women,
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had to wear a head covering, but the men did. So St. Paul was kind of switching things around.
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Well, why did he do that? What was his purpose? He had a purpose in mind. And the purpose was to
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emphasize again, the headship of Christ, the bridegroom, the husband of the church, and the
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bridal nature of woman, right? With which the veil, I mean, we still use veils at weddings, right? And
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nobody objects to that. But it's a real accentuation of her femininity, of her bridal nature. But I think
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we can even go a step further and say, holy things, sacred things are veiled, right? The tabernacle
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is veiled, should be veiled. The chalice and patent at the beginning of mass are veiled,
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should be veiled. I say should be because sometimes you don't see that, but always in a traditional mass,
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the tabernacle would be veiled. The chalice and patent would be veiled, right? We cover things
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that are holy, not because there's something wrong with them, but because there's something
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beautiful and special about them. That's why a veil is put there. Well, what is beautiful and special
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about woman? In scripture, the woman is the source of life, right? She is the one who gives life to
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the world. Eve is the mother of the living. The new Eve, right, is the one who brings life to the world,
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Jesus Christ, eternal life to the world. So there is something especially sacred about womanhood and
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femininity, and that's why I'm convinced the devil attacks it so much. He attacks womanhood and
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femininity with a ferocity next to which nothing else compares, right? You're doing really well
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against all these hard, hard questions. That's really good. So there's another one that I think
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people are either put off by or concerned about and wonder about. One thing, it's not, again,
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universal, universally not seen at the Novus Ordo, but it's hardly ever seen such that it's almost never
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seen. And that is the priest doesn't face the people. In fact, he turns his back on the people
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and he's like all over there and we're sort of like looking at his back. Why? For some people,
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they'd see that very impersonal, almost like unwelcoming. You know, even as you said before,
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he's blocked off by a gate. I mean, what's going on there?
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The way to think about this is not to think that the priest is turning his back to me,
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but that the priest is facing together with me in a common direction. So why are we all facing in
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the same direction? Well, we're supposed to be facing, this is not literally the case in every
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single church that's built, but we're supposed to be facing towards the east. And that is the
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traditional direction for a church to be built. Why do Christians worship facing east? It's very
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simple, right? We believe that when God created the universe, he created it already as a symbol
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of the salvation that he wanted to give us in Jesus Christ. So when he created the sun and made
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it rise from the east, he already had in mind Christ, his sun rising on the day of Easter.
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And so the early Christians, they took the sun at the S-U-N as a symbol of the risen Christ.
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And that's why they faced east. They knew that Christ would come again from the east. He says that
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himself, as lightning comes from the east to the west, so will the coming of the son of man be.
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Scripture calls it the orient or the east all over the place, such as in the prophet Zechariah
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and in the Psalms. And so it's basically scripture puts an equal sign between Christ and the east.
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Okay. And therefore the early Christians faced east to remind themselves that they were preparing for
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the second coming of Christ. This is something that I think, by the way, is very foreign to modern
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Christians' mentality. Well, maybe modern Catholic mentalities. We tend to think about the Mass as
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simply a recollection of something that happened in the past, right? We think, oh, we're thinking
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back to when Jesus gave us his body and blood at the Last Supper, or when he died for us on the cross,
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or even when he rose on Easter. But the early Christians, for centuries, their main thought
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with Sunday Mass was, Christ is going to come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.
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Come, Lord Jesus, right? And it was more of an eschatological, future-oriented perspective.
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The eastward orientation was very important about that. But then if you sort of back away from that
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little bit of history, and you just ask, what is the psychological effect of everyone facing in the
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same direction towards the altar? What it does is it all focuses us towards God versus Devum.
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It puts us, it makes us all look outside of ourselves, outside of our closed circle, which is
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what you get when the priest is facing the people. It becomes a kind of seminar situation, you know,
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and the priest is, people are looking at his face and his expressions, and he feels like he has to
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maybe ham things up a bit, or at least he has to appeal to the people or something. No, all of that
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is very horizontal, very anthropocentric, very man-centered. When you're all facing in the same
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direction, it quickly becomes apparent, this is not about us. This is about God. We're here for God's
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sake. And it is about us, but only in as much as we order ourselves to God, right? It's all outward,
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it's all ecstatic. We're supposed to be going out towards him. So I think that's what the priest
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facing in the same direction as the people really signifies, or really affects in us. It affects
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a disposition to look outside of ourselves towards God. That's how I would put it most basically.
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And just as a last comment on this topic, you know, your bus driver, your airplane pilot,
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your general of an army, they're not facing you. They're facing the direction that the army is
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marching. They're facing the direction that the bus or the airplane is flying, right? We are all on a
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journey. We're on a pilgrimage. We're going somewhere, right? And that's exactly what that
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orientation shows. About Holy Communion, it's a very different thing from one mass to another,
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from the Novus Ordo to the Latin mass, because, well, you might find a bunch of people at a
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Novus Ordo mass who will kneel and receive Holy Communion on the tongue. Sometimes it's hard because
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they're lining up in the line, and it's kind of awkward, especially if you're not very
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agile to kneel down and stand up right away. It's enforced at a Latin mass. They won't
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give you Holy Communion if you put out your hands. The priest sort of refuses you. What's that all
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about? Why is there no option? And what's the meaning behind that? I'm going to say something
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positive first and then something negative. The positive aspect is, what is the symbolism
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of how we receive communion? Well, when we kneel and we tilt our head back and we put our tongue out
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to receive the host, that is a position of humility, a position of submission, a position of
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receptivity. It is a posture of adoration because when we're on our knees, at least in the Western
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tradition, that signifies worship. We only fall on our knees when we want to pay homage or veneration
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or worship to something. So in all of those ways, it very much befits us, our status as
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creatures, as children of God who need to be fed by our father with the bread that is his son. So
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it's very much, it's a childlike posture and it's a humble posture. And I think, honestly, this is one
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of the reasons why it bothers some modern people. I'm not saying that they're consciously thinking,
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I am proud and I want to stand on my rights. But the idea that we have to get down on our knees
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and open our mouth and be fed by someone else is humiliating. But it's good. That's the way it
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should be because we are children that need to be fed by God. We are not adults who can feed
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ourselves, right? Now that's, so my positive remark is this posture and this way of receiving is
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utterly appropriate. Along with that is the fact that in the traditional right of ordination and even in
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the new right, although it's, it's muted there, the priest's hands are anointed with, with, with
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sacred oil, right? To show that his hands and John Paul II made this very clear. You don't have to go
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very, very far back among the popes to see them say this, that the priest's hands are set apart for
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the ministry of the Eucharist to, to prepare it, to consecrate it, and to distribute it. So Thomas
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Aquinas' argument and John Paul II's is that it's fitting for the same one who consecrates the
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Eucharist to distribute it to the people as well. Because this is not ordinary bread. This is the
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body and the blood of Christ. And therefore, specially consecrated hands are, are the ones that should be,
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are the only ones that should be touching this holy bread of eternal life. Our hands as lay people
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are not anointed with holy oil in that way. Our hands are, you know, our hands could be dirty.
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You know, why are we receiving into our hand, you know, this, this precious mystery and risking
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that some particles will fall away from it, you know, or risking that some people will carry it away
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because they don't even know what to do with it or because they're Satanists or something like that.
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I mean, all these problems happen the moment you allow communion in the hand. All kinds of irreverence
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and sacrilege and blasphemy becomes possible because of that. But if the priest is simply
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putting the host in everyone's mouth, they have to receive. There's no other, there's no other
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choice. If they're going forward, they're going to receive. Now I said, I was going to say something
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negative. The, the, the negative side is what Bishop Athanasius Schneider has so well documented,
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which is that there is, there was never in the Catholic tradition or the Eastern or the Orthodox
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tradition for that matter, a manner of receiving communion, like the one today when Catholics
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receive in the hand. And you and I have done a, we did an interview about this some years ago,
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and I wrote a book about it called Holy Bread of Eternal Life. Um, although there's one chapter
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in turned around my latest book that, that really goes into this and kind of summarizes it. So it's a
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nice one chapter summary, but, um, the early Christian method of receiving in the hand for the period of
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time that that lasted was for somebody to receive always in the right hand. You never received
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in the left hand and then you bowed down and you basically ate and licked the, the, the, the piece
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of, of bread off of your hand to make sure you got all the fragments and also to bow in reverence to
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it. You didn't feed yourself. You didn't receive in the left hand and then feed yourself with the right
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hand. That was never, ever done. Who was the first to do that? The Calvinists were the first ones to say
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people should stand and receive in the hand and feed themselves. Why? Because we want to show that
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this is not the body and blood of Christ. This is simply symbolic food that we're feeding ourselves
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to, to remember Jesus by, right? So it's the Calvinists. It's not Cyril of Jerusalem or whatever
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that offers the model. It's really the modern Catholic communion in the hand method is a Trojan horse
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for Calvinistic reductionistic Eucharistic theology. It's very dangerous. It's been very harmful. I think
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it's the number one cause of the crisis of, of lack of faith in the real presence. And I have to say
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the fact that the Eucharistic revival did not directly address this to my mind shows its fundamental
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unseriousness. The largest survey of Catholics in the United States in history of the United States
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pointed to that. It was a survey of more than 14,000. And it, it basically said exactly as you said,
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the number one cause of the deterioration and the belief in the true presence of Christ and the
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blessed sacrament had to do with communion in the hand. And the number one suggestion to remedying
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the situation is go back to condemning and not allowing communion in the hand. Nonetheless,
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the next question is going to be really challenging. And I don't mean to be irreverent by saying this,
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I'm going to present what is on people's minds. Some of the things that, that people think about
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and they, they perhaps are too shy to say, but it's on people's minds anyway. So let's get into this.
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So there's a lot of pomp and circumstance. You could call it that at the Latin mass compared to
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a Novus Ordo mask. Um, the people say, look, there's, there's a lot of lace going on that you don't
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see. If you go to high mass, you'll see a priest is actually helped to dress and undress. You know,
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he does that in front of the people and it's the, the garments are very elaborate and so on and so
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forth. You can start there. Uh, well, yeah, let's just start there. What's that all about?
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One of the chapters in my book is called why the traditional mass is kingly and courtly,
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right? And so your question in a way relates to this. Why do we use such lavish vestments? Why does
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everybody bow to each other as if we're in some kind of King's court? You know, why are objects
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and even the priest's hand kissed? You know, we can come back to that if you want, but why,
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why are, where do all these gestures come from? These gestures are gestures that go back to
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a basic human instinct for how we behave towards a King. Okay. You find this throughout history,
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all sorts of courts. It doesn't even matter what culture you're talking about people. When they come
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before the presence of the King, they prostrate themselves to the ground. Uh, and the King says,
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now you may rise, you know, and, or they might, or, or if some high ranking minister comes and gives
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them a favor, they might kiss his hand, right? These are very natural, universal anthropological
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symbols of our respect, the respect of an inferior towards a superior, especially toward highest superior
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in the whole society, the King. Well, this is not something that was sort of foisted upon
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the Latin mass or upon the Byzantine divine liturgy, which is full of that stuff even more.
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Um, it's not something that was foisted upon it by, by human beings who were bored or who thought that,
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you know, that, that they needed to, who were being anthropomorphic by trying to make God like an
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earthly King. No, it's the Bible itself, Old Testament, New Testament, all over the place that calls God,
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the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, that talks about heaven as a court where everybody's falling
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on their faces before him. All of this stuff there in scripture, it is the archetype of our worship.
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And that's the way Christians always understood that, that God revealed the design of the, of the,
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of the tabernacle initially, the tent, but then later the temple, all of this was revealed in order to,
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to show us something about how, what is really the case in heaven? How can we imagine it?
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What's the best way for us to imagine it? Uh, assuming that we need to have a lot of different
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images, you know, scripture is full of, of tons of different images. Some of them are even
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incompatible with each, with each other. Um, but the point is that the, that a very dominant
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kind of symbolism for what our worship should look like here. And even for what heaven looks like
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is the court of a King, right? And so the development of Christian liturgy just took that and ran with
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it and just said, okay, you know, God, we, this is God's seal of approval. This is the way he
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showed it to us. This is how we're going to do it. Um, so I think the elaborateness of the vestments
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should not be a problem to anybody. The fact that they're made of, you know, in the old days,
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they were made of gold threads and silver threads and all kinds of rich and valuable materials.
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This shows our honor for God. We give him the best we can. We don't give him, you know,
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some kind of, of ceramic hippie cup, you know, and wear like a polyester drape, you know,
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that's an insult to God. I'm sorry, but that's an insult to God. If that's the best you can do
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because you're dirt poor, that's one thing. But if you could afford to, to give him your best
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and to lavish your best resources on him and you don't, that's an insult to God. So, and I think
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that lace, lace has to be understood in a similar way, right? So I don't know why it's the case,
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why people think lace is effeminate. It's not effeminate. I mean, it, lace is a particular,
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um, uh, very expensive, refined craft form that developed over many centuries in many different
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cultures, not just Christian ones. And it's just, it's what is worn by people who either are very
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rich, okay, because only they can afford it or by people who are doing religious ceremonies for the
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same reason that I gave before, because we're not going to just wear a plain, you know,
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basically like a bed sheet. We're going to wear something that's been very elaborately crafted,
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That explains a lot of it. It explains why that concept, because there's a lot of things that
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happen that are odd for someone seeing them the first time. When the priest passes by,
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even outside the sanctuary, people bow toward the priest. If it's a bishop, they will genuflect even
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before him and kiss the ring on his hand. When, when the priest goes up and is, is, uh, going up the
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stairs, the altar boys will like lift the, the, uh, his, his, um, the garment that he wears. So I
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guess, so he doesn't trip even when he raises the chalice and the host, they sort of lift the back of
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his chasuble there a lot of things, but I guess they can all be explained in that same way about
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the, the King's court. One of the ones that I always wonder at is the, they will kiss not only
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the priest's hands, the, the altar boys at the mass will kiss the, the accruets, like the, the,
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the bottles that hold the water in the wine. What's that about?
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Really, when you enter into the traditional Latin mass, uh, or again, any traditional apostolic
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Christian rite, what you're entering into is a forest of symbols. To use the wonderful expression
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of the poet Baudelaire, uh, that also is the title of a book by Father Claude Barth about the
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symbolism of the Latin mass. You're entering into a forest of symbols. So everything that's done
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has a symbolic meaning, everything, every object, every person, every movement, every,
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you know, it's, that's the way it is. And sometimes the symbolism is obvious to us. And sometimes it's
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more subtle. Sometimes it has to be teased out or it's based on some, a knowledge of scripture,
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which you might not have. But the point is that the symbolism is there many, many layers of symbolism.
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And I mean, on the, on the most basic level, you know, the, the objects, the cruets with,
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with wine and water, these are holding liquids that are going to go into the chalice and become
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the blood of Christ. Right? So even before the consecration, they have a dignity. These,
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these two cruets, what they're holding have a dignity, you know, just like you could say an
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unbaptized human being has dignity, has metaphysical or ontological dignity, even though he doesn't have
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the supernatural dignity of a son of God because he hasn't been baptized yet. So you could look at
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the water and wine that way, you know, it's like an unbaptized pagan. There's dignity there. Let's,
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let's respect and reverence that dignity because of what it can become because of what it's ordered
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to. Right? So that's how I, you know, I see all of these things and like the lifting of the chasuble
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that you mentioned, you know, that's an interesting case where the original purpose for that, just as the,
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the servers lifting the edge of the garment as the priest walks up the steps, it was a practical
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origin. The medieval chasubles were very heavy. And once the custom developed of the priest raising
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the host and the chalice, because that did develop in the middle ages, he, it was, the vestment was so
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heavy that it was hard for the priest to lift up his arms. So the servers would lift up the chasuble
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to give him a boost. That's all it was. It was very practical in, in origin. But as time went on,
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the vestments got smaller and smaller. Fabric was cut off from them. That's how we end up with,
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with the so-called Roman or fiddleback chasuble, which is basically like fabric on the front and
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the back, but with nothing on the sides. That was designed to free up the priest's arms to make
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it easier for him to move around and to do what he's supposed to do. But because of the conservative
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instinct of the church, the lifting of the chasuble gesture never went away. It just kept being done,
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even if it wasn't practically necessary. And then what happened, and this is also something you see
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in liturgical history, then people looked at that and they said, what does that remind me of?
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My goodness, it reminds me of the passage in the gospels when the woman with the flow of blood,
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with the hemorrhage, touched the garment of Christ and was healed by the power that flowed
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through it, right? And so now when we look at the servers lifting up the vestment, the chasuble,
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we can think, Lord, heal me by contact with you as you healed that woman who grabbed hold of your
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garment, right? And I think that's so beautiful that you have these layers that develop and accumulate.
00:21:56.760
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And also, if there was ever an inducement for altar boys to serve that part of the mass where
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they're lifting the chasuble of the priest, there is a... Boy, what a motivation. Okay, so now for a
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very controversial question, but again, I say this not out of any irreverence, but because I know
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it's on people's minds. A lot of this stuff around this being misunderstood, the kissing of the
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priest's hands, particularly by altar boys, you know, that's why a lot of people say it's about
00:23:02.680
lace and whatever else. It comes back to the question of abuse. A lot of people think, oh,
00:23:09.120
yeah, in the Latin mass, you know, those priests there, they, that's a, that's, that's where all
00:23:15.380
the abuse really lies. And, you know, is this, you know, encouraging it? Shouldn't we just stomp that
00:23:20.820
stuff out? Because it is encouraging this kind of abusive relationship, and it's just horrible.
00:23:29.760
The basic way I would respond is, is this, we are living in a very sick society,
00:23:33.860
and the sickness comes on multiple levels. It's a psychological sickness, spiritual sickness. It
00:23:39.500
affects everybody to one degree or another. You know, some, some people might be 98% well,
00:23:44.820
and other people might only be 2% well, but, but there's a spectrum there. So we are living in a
00:23:49.600
very sick society, and homosexuality is a plague. It's an epidemic of our times. It is a plague that
00:23:55.080
is driven by broken families. We know this. We know this from statistics. We know it from,
00:23:59.980
from research that, you know, broken families produce broken people. Families without fathers
00:24:05.800
produce imbalanced people. I mean, there, you know, there are so many ways in which the, the,
00:24:11.100
the delicate human psyche, which is already wounded by original sin, can fall apart and can deviate.
00:24:16.880
And so that being said, we, we are seeing a crisis of abuse everywhere, right? It's in the Catholic
00:24:22.400
church. It's in the Protestant churches. It's even in the Orthodox church. They don't want to talk about
00:24:26.020
it, but you can research it and find out that it's there too. It's in the Boy Scouts. It's in the
00:24:29.820
Girl Scouts. Wherever you look, it's, it's there. Okay. It's among atheists, right? I mean, it's not
00:24:34.900
really about religion per se, and therefore even less is it about liturgy per se. So my, my point would
00:24:41.760
be that of course, we're going to find instances of homosexuality in, in, in every area of, of the
00:24:50.360
Catholic church. We're going to find it in the happy, clappy Novus Ordo environments. And we're also
00:24:54.740
going to find it in the traditional environment as well. That being said, I think that there are
00:25:00.080
powerful resources that a traditional Catholic life offers and the traditional Catholic worship
00:25:05.700
to mitigate or to eliminate those dangers. It's, I think that traditional Catholic practices,
00:25:11.900
which include, you know, obviously a prayer, a more demanding prayer routine and fasting and
00:25:17.340
abstinence. Um, I think that, and, and also just people tending to take moral theology more seriously,
00:25:22.700
to take sins and the commandments of God more seriously, to take confession more seriously.
00:25:27.620
I think all of these are reasons to expect, to find fewer of these problems in traditional
00:25:33.720
enclaves. And that, I mean, that has been my experience and that of others who have been long
00:25:38.000
involved in the traditional movement is that while problems exist, these problems tend to be much less
00:25:44.300
than they are elsewhere in the church. I mean, obviously, you know, people can argue about this,
00:25:49.360
but I'm just saying, that's been my impression. The most manly priests I've ever worked with have
00:25:54.460
been traditional priests, right? The ones who seem most comfortable being men, being masculine,
00:25:59.220
not being chauvinistic or macho, but also not being effeminate and delicate and, and sort of,
00:26:05.480
you know, worrisome in that respect, right? That's, I've worked with hundreds of these priests,
00:26:09.700
and that's the, that's my impression of what we're dealing with here. All of that being said,
00:26:13.920
I would also add that if you're in a time of crisis like ours, then it probably is a good idea
00:26:21.220
to not have some of these gestures, if they're going to be misinterpreted, right? These gestures
00:26:26.540
are, they're in the rubrics, that is the kissing of the priest's hand, it's in the rubrics,
00:26:31.540
but it has been omitted for quite a long time in very many places. And that, I believe that the
00:26:37.920
Vatican, way back before the Second Vatican Council, gave permission to omit this where it would be
00:26:44.720
culturally problematic. You know, that's not the exact expression, but that was the upshot of it.
00:26:50.240
You know, if there's a place where, you know, like, for example, when the missionaries went to China,
00:26:55.820
they, they had to grow beards and grow their hair out, because nobody would take them seriously as
00:27:01.660
sagacious figures if they didn't do that, even though the rule at the time was every priest has to
00:27:06.340
shave and have, you know, short hair. So the church can adapt to different situations. And I think
00:27:11.720
here, you know, it's fine if, if people don't, if people think it's better to skip the, the so-called
00:27:17.240
customary kisses. I mean, that seems fine to me. I think in a healthy age, those, there was nothing
00:27:21.900
wrong with that, you know? I mean, any more than there's something wrong with a father, you know,
00:27:27.560
cuddling his little children or, or, or even the little children of his friends. If he's a healthy man,
00:27:33.200
there's nothing wrong with that, right? So that's where I think we need to be careful not to
00:27:38.120
exaggerate and, and, and maybe, you know, create caricatures, right?
00:27:43.100
Last question for you. This is also a tough one, and it is about attitude. A lot of people who go to
00:27:51.900
the, to the Novus Ordo and, and have been to some Latin masses come back and, and I shouldn't say,
00:27:58.080
it's, it's definitely not everybody. Come back with a perspective of, oh, it was rather unwelcoming.
00:28:06.140
And I felt kind of like people didn't accept me there. The attitude sometimes you'll see in,
00:28:12.960
in comment boxes and stuff from traditional Latin mass or advocators of the traditional Latin mass
00:28:18.720
seems sometimes to be condemning, dismissive. I guess there are some people who believe that the
00:28:25.960
Novus Ordo mass is invalid. How do we get through all of that?
00:28:30.940
There's no reason to deny that there are going to be cranks in, you know, in traditional communities.
00:28:37.700
There are going to be misfits. There are going to be people who are embittered by, especially
00:28:42.760
sometimes older people who've been through a heck of a lot. And we should actually try to be patient
00:28:47.160
towards them because the church has not treated Catholics well. And you know, this very well,
00:28:50.860
you know, the church in general has not treated laity well since the second Vatican council,
00:28:54.760
and has often used, you know, laity as a sort of, you know, either, either as a, a cash cow or a
00:29:02.320
doormat, you know? So, so I think that, you know, we can understand that, that in any human community,
00:29:08.040
there's going to be a cross section with all of the typical foibles of human beings. And sometimes
00:29:13.060
those can be magnified when you have a very, a discreet, tiny community of people who feel kind of up
00:29:21.220
against the wall, who feel persecuted, especially after Traditiones Custodes, and who are all, who are
00:29:26.060
not always going to be on their very best behavior, you know? So I think we have to recognize that we
00:29:30.160
have to just encourage, I always encourage my fellow traditionalists, you know, to be kind,
00:29:36.740
to be welcoming. And I've seen that, you know, at my fraternity parish, there are some, we, I am
00:29:41.740
blessed to be, I've been parts of many communities over the years, and I've seen some of this problematic
00:29:47.140
behavior, but I've also seen a lot of the opposite. I've seen a lot of welcoming and a lot of, of
00:29:51.760
kindness and a lot of bonhomie. And, and definitely like at our parish, there are people who go out of
00:29:57.500
their way to invite newcomers, come down to the coffee and donuts afterwards, you know, and tell
00:30:02.260
me about yourself, where are you from and whatever. So I just think, again, we have to be really careful
00:30:06.960
not to paint with too broad of a brush, right? About how traditionalists are. No, some of them are that
00:30:13.680
way, but you just need to kind of get out of your shell and meet more of them, you know, and see,
00:30:18.060
see what, if your impression changes. But I'll also say this, and again, not to be, not to be
00:30:23.260
judgmental, not to seem judgmental, but I think that sometimes what happens is people from the outside,
00:30:28.780
they come to a traditional Latin mass and everybody's really well-dressed and everybody's
00:30:33.540
kind of praying, you know, very, you know, fervently. And there's a kind of orderliness there
00:30:37.900
and a strictness there, which is absolutely foreign to most of the rest of the world. Okay. I mean,
00:30:43.060
we just have to face it and admit that. And I think sometimes people feel judged, like they
00:30:47.980
just coming into that kind of environment, they, oh my goodness, I'm not dressed well enough. And
00:30:52.680
oh, I don't have a veil. And they must be thinking badly of me. Maybe these people are not thinking
00:30:56.940
of you at all. Maybe they're just thinking about, about their, about their, their kid's diaper or
00:31:01.580
whatever, you know, like, you know, I mean, there are a lot of explanations for how, why somebody might
00:31:05.000
have a frown on his face and it's not about you, you know, it may not be about you at all. So I think
00:31:09.280
sometimes people kind of project a little bit and they feel uncomfortable in this environment.
00:31:13.560
I would just say, nobody should let that be an impediment to discovering this rich heritage
00:31:18.120
we have as Catholics, you know, just, it's part of your patrimony. It's part of your birthright,
00:31:24.840
you know, embrace it, discover it, appreciate it.
00:31:28.200
Well, one thing we definitely appreciate, Peter, is both your, your patience with us and your, and
00:31:33.200
just, you've given your heart to this and your intellect to it. And to be able to bring that to
00:31:38.880
folks who don't have the time or ability to do that reading, I want to stress once again for
00:31:44.020
everybody, you want to get into these, you want to have these answers for your friends, go to tan books
00:31:51.520
and get turned around, replying to the most common objections against the traditional Latin mass
00:31:56.200
by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. Peter, thank you so much for being with us.
00:32:00.140
Thank you, John Henry. Any, any final words to, to plug your book or your website or anything like
00:32:05.800
that? No, I guess I'll just mentioned to people that, that you can find me these days, most often
00:32:11.740
writing at my sub stack, which is called Tradition and Sanity. We need both of those a lot more
00:32:18.900
nowadays. Peter Kwasniewski, thank you so very much. God bless you. God bless. And God bless all of you.
00:32:30.140
Aloha, everyone. This is Jason Jones for LifeSide News. We hope you enjoyed this video. For more
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