The John-Henry Westen Show - Lace, smells and bells： What's with all the pomp and circumstance at the Latin Mass？

00:00:00.000 Even in the Middle Ages, when people were illiterate, they were educated in all kinds of

00:00:04.120 ways. If you go into a medieval church, it is the Bible in stone and glass.

00:00:17.640 Beautiful. Before we leave the topic of women, because it's huge, there's another one, 0.99

00:00:22.600 and this one probably affects people even inside the Latin mass community. So there is a practice

00:00:29.560 inside of the traditional Latin mass, and that is head coverings. Not for men, but just for women. 0.80

00:00:37.360 Why that? And a lot of women take great offense to that and have a really hard time with it. So 1.00

00:00:43.980 what's that about? Well, I mean, they certainly shouldn't take any offense at that for a couple

00:00:48.220 of reasons. One is that St. Paul speaks about women covering their heads in church. And it's very 0.98

00:00:56.580 interesting. Joseph Shaw, who's a name I know is familiar to you. But Joseph Shaw has an excellent

00:01:01.880 piece talking about the veil, where he explains that it isn't that St. Paul is just going along

00:01:07.660 with the convention of his time when he's talking about that. He's actually pushing deliberately

00:01:12.980 against the conventions of his time. Because in Judaism, men covered their heads, as they still 1.00

00:01:18.840 do. And women, well, women might wear a veil just because every woman wore a veil until modern times 0.78

00:01:25.560 all the time. You know, that was just part of their clothing. But it wasn't as if women, Jewish women, 0.88

00:01:30.480 had to wear a head covering, but the men did. So St. Paul was kind of switching things around.

00:01:36.420 Well, why did he do that? What was his purpose? He had a purpose in mind. And the purpose was to

00:01:41.800 emphasize again, the headship of Christ, the bridegroom, the husband of the church, and the

00:01:49.400 bridal nature of woman, right? With which the veil, I mean, we still use veils at weddings, right? And 0.99

00:01:55.680 nobody objects to that. But it's a real accentuation of her femininity, of her bridal nature. But I think

00:02:02.540 we can even go a step further and say, holy things, sacred things are veiled, right? The tabernacle

00:02:09.540 is veiled, should be veiled. The chalice and patent at the beginning of mass are veiled,

00:02:16.200 should be veiled. I say should be because sometimes you don't see that, but always in a traditional mass,

00:02:20.740 the tabernacle would be veiled. The chalice and patent would be veiled, right? We cover things

00:02:28.100 that are holy, not because there's something wrong with them, but because there's something

00:02:33.040 beautiful and special about them. That's why a veil is put there. Well, what is beautiful and special

00:02:37.560 about woman? In scripture, the woman is the source of life, right? She is the one who gives life to

00:02:46.740 the world. Eve is the mother of the living. The new Eve, right, is the one who brings life to the world,

00:02:52.660 Jesus Christ, eternal life to the world. So there is something especially sacred about womanhood and

00:03:00.040 femininity, and that's why I'm convinced the devil attacks it so much. He attacks womanhood and 0.97

00:03:05.640 femininity with a ferocity next to which nothing else compares, right? You're doing really well

00:03:11.620 against all these hard, hard questions. That's really good. So there's another one that I think

00:03:17.780 people are either put off by or concerned about and wonder about. One thing, it's not, again,

00:03:25.460 universal, universally not seen at the Novus Ordo, but it's hardly ever seen such that it's almost never

00:03:32.360 seen. And that is the priest doesn't face the people. In fact, he turns his back on the people

00:03:38.180 and he's like all over there and we're sort of like looking at his back. Why? For some people,

00:03:45.220 they'd see that very impersonal, almost like unwelcoming. You know, even as you said before,

00:03:50.500 he's blocked off by a gate. I mean, what's going on there?

00:03:53.340 The way to think about this is not to think that the priest is turning his back to me,

00:03:57.360 but that the priest is facing together with me in a common direction. So why are we all facing in

00:04:03.040 the same direction? Well, we're supposed to be facing, this is not literally the case in every

00:04:08.380 single church that's built, but we're supposed to be facing towards the east. And that is the

00:04:13.660 traditional direction for a church to be built. Why do Christians worship facing east? It's very 0.95

00:04:19.220 simple, right? We believe that when God created the universe, he created it already as a symbol

00:04:26.000 of the salvation that he wanted to give us in Jesus Christ. So when he created the sun and made

00:04:31.960 it rise from the east, he already had in mind Christ, his sun rising on the day of Easter.

00:04:39.560 And so the early Christians, they took the sun at the S-U-N as a symbol of the risen Christ. 0.73

00:04:46.640 And that's why they faced east. They knew that Christ would come again from the east. He says that

00:04:51.900 himself, as lightning comes from the east to the west, so will the coming of the son of man be.

00:04:57.300 Scripture calls it the orient or the east all over the place, such as in the prophet Zechariah

00:05:01.660 and in the Psalms. And so it's basically scripture puts an equal sign between Christ and the east.

00:05:08.860 Okay. And therefore the early Christians faced east to remind themselves that they were preparing for

00:05:14.720 the second coming of Christ. This is something that I think, by the way, is very foreign to modern

00:05:19.500 Christians' mentality. Well, maybe modern Catholic mentalities. We tend to think about the Mass as 0.70

00:05:24.920 simply a recollection of something that happened in the past, right? We think, oh, we're thinking

00:05:29.420 back to when Jesus gave us his body and blood at the Last Supper, or when he died for us on the cross,

00:05:35.600 or even when he rose on Easter. But the early Christians, for centuries, their main thought

00:05:41.260 with Sunday Mass was, Christ is going to come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

00:05:47.440 Come, Lord Jesus, right? And it was more of an eschatological, future-oriented perspective.

00:05:54.480 The eastward orientation was very important about that. But then if you sort of back away from that

00:05:59.520 little bit of history, and you just ask, what is the psychological effect of everyone facing in the

00:06:05.220 same direction towards the altar? What it does is it all focuses us towards God versus Devum. 0.50

00:06:10.620 It puts us, it makes us all look outside of ourselves, outside of our closed circle, which is

00:06:16.500 what you get when the priest is facing the people. It becomes a kind of seminar situation, you know,

00:06:22.360 and the priest is, people are looking at his face and his expressions, and he feels like he has to

00:06:26.500 maybe ham things up a bit, or at least he has to appeal to the people or something. No, all of that

00:06:31.800 is very horizontal, very anthropocentric, very man-centered. When you're all facing in the same

00:06:38.280 direction, it quickly becomes apparent, this is not about us. This is about God. We're here for God's

00:06:43.400 sake. And it is about us, but only in as much as we order ourselves to God, right? It's all outward,

00:06:49.180 it's all ecstatic. We're supposed to be going out towards him. So I think that's what the priest

00:06:54.420 facing in the same direction as the people really signifies, or really affects in us. It affects

00:06:59.700 a disposition to look outside of ourselves towards God. That's how I would put it most basically.

00:07:07.700 And just as a last comment on this topic, you know, your bus driver, your airplane pilot,

00:07:15.880 your general of an army, they're not facing you. They're facing the direction that the army is

00:07:21.200 marching. They're facing the direction that the bus or the airplane is flying, right? We are all on a

00:07:25.220 journey. We're on a pilgrimage. We're going somewhere, right? And that's exactly what that

00:07:30.320 orientation shows. About Holy Communion, it's a very different thing from one mass to another,

00:07:36.580 from the Novus Ordo to the Latin mass, because, well, you might find a bunch of people at a

00:07:42.920 Novus Ordo mass who will kneel and receive Holy Communion on the tongue. Sometimes it's hard because

00:07:47.080 they're lining up in the line, and it's kind of awkward, especially if you're not very

00:07:50.560 agile to kneel down and stand up right away. It's enforced at a Latin mass. They won't 1.00

00:07:55.280 give you Holy Communion if you put out your hands. The priest sort of refuses you. What's that all

00:08:01.160 about? Why is there no option? And what's the meaning behind that? I'm going to say something

00:08:06.060 positive first and then something negative. The positive aspect is, what is the symbolism

00:08:10.820 of how we receive communion? Well, when we kneel and we tilt our head back and we put our tongue out

00:08:18.160 to receive the host, that is a position of humility, a position of submission, a position of

00:08:23.880 receptivity. It is a posture of adoration because when we're on our knees, at least in the Western

00:08:29.960 tradition, that signifies worship. We only fall on our knees when we want to pay homage or veneration

00:08:35.740 or worship to something. So in all of those ways, it very much befits us, our status as

00:08:41.180 creatures, as children of God who need to be fed by our father with the bread that is his son. So

00:08:49.320 it's very much, it's a childlike posture and it's a humble posture. And I think, honestly, this is one

00:08:55.380 of the reasons why it bothers some modern people. I'm not saying that they're consciously thinking,

00:09:00.080 I am proud and I want to stand on my rights. But the idea that we have to get down on our knees

00:09:07.200 and open our mouth and be fed by someone else is humiliating. But it's good. That's the way it

00:09:13.740 should be because we are children that need to be fed by God. We are not adults who can feed

00:09:18.340 ourselves, right? Now that's, so my positive remark is this posture and this way of receiving is

00:09:23.520 utterly appropriate. Along with that is the fact that in the traditional right of ordination and even in

00:09:29.320 the new right, although it's, it's muted there, the priest's hands are anointed with, with, with

00:09:35.740 sacred oil, right? To show that his hands and John Paul II made this very clear. You don't have to go

00:09:41.180 very, very far back among the popes to see them say this, that the priest's hands are set apart for

00:09:46.980 the ministry of the Eucharist to, to prepare it, to consecrate it, and to distribute it. So Thomas

00:09:54.280 Aquinas' argument and John Paul II's is that it's fitting for the same one who consecrates the

00:10:00.460 Eucharist to distribute it to the people as well. Because this is not ordinary bread. This is the

00:10:07.280 body and the blood of Christ. And therefore, specially consecrated hands are, are the ones that should be,

00:10:14.540 are the only ones that should be touching this holy bread of eternal life. Our hands as lay people

00:10:20.220 are not anointed with holy oil in that way. Our hands are, you know, our hands could be dirty.

00:10:26.060 You know, why are we receiving into our hand, you know, this, this precious mystery and risking

00:10:32.000 that some particles will fall away from it, you know, or risking that some people will carry it away

00:10:37.560 because they don't even know what to do with it or because they're Satanists or something like that.

00:10:40.560 I mean, all these problems happen the moment you allow communion in the hand. All kinds of irreverence

00:10:45.200 and sacrilege and blasphemy becomes possible because of that. But if the priest is simply

00:10:50.340 putting the host in everyone's mouth, they have to receive. There's no other, there's no other

00:10:54.920 choice. If they're going forward, they're going to receive. Now I said, I was going to say something

00:10:59.380 negative. The, the, the negative side is what Bishop Athanasius Schneider has so well documented,

00:11:04.980 which is that there is, there was never in the Catholic tradition or the Eastern or the Orthodox

00:11:11.960 tradition for that matter, a manner of receiving communion, like the one today when Catholics 0.87

00:11:17.080 receive in the hand. And you and I have done a, we did an interview about this some years ago,

00:11:20.880 and I wrote a book about it called Holy Bread of Eternal Life. Um, although there's one chapter

00:11:26.080 in turned around my latest book that, that really goes into this and kind of summarizes it. So it's a

00:11:30.120 nice one chapter summary, but, um, the early Christian method of receiving in the hand for the period of

00:11:35.900 time that that lasted was for somebody to receive always in the right hand. You never received

00:11:41.940 in the left hand and then you bowed down and you basically ate and licked the, the, the, the piece

00:11:48.680 of, of bread off of your hand to make sure you got all the fragments and also to bow in reverence to

00:11:54.160 it. You didn't feed yourself. You didn't receive in the left hand and then feed yourself with the right

00:11:58.680 hand. That was never, ever done. Who was the first to do that? The Calvinists were the first ones to say

00:12:03.960 people should stand and receive in the hand and feed themselves. Why? Because we want to show that

00:12:11.040 this is not the body and blood of Christ. This is simply symbolic food that we're feeding ourselves

00:12:16.760 to, to remember Jesus by, right? So it's the Calvinists. It's not Cyril of Jerusalem or whatever

00:12:23.380 that offers the model. It's really the modern Catholic communion in the hand method is a Trojan horse

00:12:29.880 for Calvinistic reductionistic Eucharistic theology. It's very dangerous. It's been very harmful. I think

00:12:36.460 it's the number one cause of the crisis of, of lack of faith in the real presence. And I have to say

00:12:43.080 the fact that the Eucharistic revival did not directly address this to my mind shows its fundamental

00:12:48.940 unseriousness. The largest survey of Catholics in the United States in history of the United States 1.00

00:12:55.180 pointed to that. It was a survey of more than 14,000. And it, it basically said exactly as you said,

00:13:02.260 the number one cause of the deterioration and the belief in the true presence of Christ and the

00:13:07.260 blessed sacrament had to do with communion in the hand. And the number one suggestion to remedying

00:13:11.820 the situation is go back to condemning and not allowing communion in the hand. Nonetheless,

00:13:18.380 the next question is going to be really challenging. And I don't mean to be irreverent by saying this,

00:13:25.860 I'm going to present what is on people's minds. Some of the things that, that people think about

00:13:32.180 and they, they perhaps are too shy to say, but it's on people's minds anyway. So let's get into this.

00:13:39.000 So there's a lot of pomp and circumstance. You could call it that at the Latin mass compared to 0.98

00:13:45.280 a Novus Ordo mask. Um, the people say, look, there's, there's a lot of lace going on that you don't

00:13:51.520 see. If you go to high mass, you'll see a priest is actually helped to dress and undress. You know,

00:13:58.700 he does that in front of the people and it's the, the garments are very elaborate and so on and so

00:14:05.100 forth. You can start there. Uh, well, yeah, let's just start there. What's that all about?

00:14:09.800 One of the chapters in my book is called why the traditional mass is kingly and courtly,

00:14:14.480 right? And so your question in a way relates to this. Why do we use such lavish vestments? Why does

00:14:21.080 everybody bow to each other as if we're in some kind of King's court? You know, why are objects

00:14:26.320 and even the priest's hand kissed? You know, we can come back to that if you want, but why,

00:14:30.660 why are, where do all these gestures come from? These gestures are gestures that go back to

00:14:36.440 a basic human instinct for how we behave towards a King. Okay. You find this throughout history,

00:14:43.860 all sorts of courts. It doesn't even matter what culture you're talking about people. When they come

00:14:47.940 before the presence of the King, they prostrate themselves to the ground. Uh, and the King says,

00:14:52.300 now you may rise, you know, and, or they might, or, or if some high ranking minister comes and gives

00:14:57.660 them a favor, they might kiss his hand, right? These are very natural, universal anthropological

00:15:02.940 symbols of our respect, the respect of an inferior towards a superior, especially toward highest superior

00:15:10.020 in the whole society, the King. Well, this is not something that was sort of foisted upon

00:15:15.680 the Latin mass or upon the Byzantine divine liturgy, which is full of that stuff even more.

00:15:20.860 Um, it's not something that was foisted upon it by, by human beings who were bored or who thought that,

00:15:26.180 you know, that, that they needed to, who were being anthropomorphic by trying to make God like an

00:15:31.900 earthly King. No, it's the Bible itself, Old Testament, New Testament, all over the place that calls God,

00:15:37.620 the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, that talks about heaven as a court where everybody's falling

00:15:41.440 on their faces before him. All of this stuff there in scripture, it is the archetype of our worship.

00:15:47.200 And that's the way Christians always understood that, that God revealed the design of the, of the,

00:15:52.040 of the tabernacle initially, the tent, but then later the temple, all of this was revealed in order to,

00:15:58.340 to show us something about how, what is really the case in heaven? How can we imagine it?

00:16:03.480 What's the best way for us to imagine it? Uh, assuming that we need to have a lot of different

00:16:08.660 images, you know, scripture is full of, of tons of different images. Some of them are even

00:16:12.500 incompatible with each, with each other. Um, but the point is that the, that a very dominant

00:16:16.800 kind of symbolism for what our worship should look like here. And even for what heaven looks like

00:16:22.420 is the court of a King, right? And so the development of Christian liturgy just took that and ran with

00:16:28.300 it and just said, okay, you know, God, we, this is God's seal of approval. This is the way he

00:16:32.640 showed it to us. This is how we're going to do it. Um, so I think the elaborateness of the vestments

00:16:37.960 should not be a problem to anybody. The fact that they're made of, you know, in the old days, 1.00

00:16:41.600 they were made of gold threads and silver threads and all kinds of rich and valuable materials.

00:16:46.940 This shows our honor for God. We give him the best we can. We don't give him, you know,

00:16:52.140 some kind of, of ceramic hippie cup, you know, and wear like a polyester drape, you know,

00:16:58.980 that's an insult to God. I'm sorry, but that's an insult to God. If that's the best you can do

00:17:03.020 because you're dirt poor, that's one thing. But if you could afford to, to give him your best

00:17:08.200 and to lavish your best resources on him and you don't, that's an insult to God. So, and I think

00:17:13.360 that lace, lace has to be understood in a similar way, right? So I don't know why it's the case,

00:17:18.860 why people think lace is effeminate. It's not effeminate. I mean, it, lace is a particular,

00:17:24.300 um, uh, very expensive, refined craft form that developed over many centuries in many different

00:17:32.380 cultures, not just Christian ones. And it's just, it's what is worn by people who either are very

00:17:39.060 rich, okay, because only they can afford it or by people who are doing religious ceremonies for the

00:17:44.320 same reason that I gave before, because we're not going to just wear a plain, you know,

00:17:48.440 basically like a bed sheet. We're going to wear something that's been very elaborately crafted,

00:17:53.120 right?

00:17:53.780 That explains a lot of it. It explains why that concept, because there's a lot of things that

00:17:58.940 happen that are odd for someone seeing them the first time. When the priest passes by,

00:18:05.260 even outside the sanctuary, people bow toward the priest. If it's a bishop, they will genuflect even

00:18:11.220 before him and kiss the ring on his hand. When, when the priest goes up and is, is, uh, going up the

00:18:17.500 stairs, the altar boys will like lift the, the, uh, his, his, um, the garment that he wears. So I

00:18:24.080 guess, so he doesn't trip even when he raises the chalice and the host, they sort of lift the back of

00:18:28.860 his chasuble there a lot of things, but I guess they can all be explained in that same way about

00:18:35.200 the, the King's court. One of the ones that I always wonder at is the, they will kiss not only

00:18:43.540 the priest's hands, the, the altar boys at the mass will kiss the, the accruets, like the, the,

00:18:48.320 the bottles that hold the water in the wine. What's that about?

00:18:51.720 Really, when you enter into the traditional Latin mass, uh, or again, any traditional apostolic

00:18:58.040 Christian rite, what you're entering into is a forest of symbols. To use the wonderful expression

00:19:04.320 of the poet Baudelaire, uh, that also is the title of a book by Father Claude Barth about the

00:19:09.940 symbolism of the Latin mass. You're entering into a forest of symbols. So everything that's done

00:19:15.120 has a symbolic meaning, everything, every object, every person, every movement, every,

00:19:20.200 you know, it's, that's the way it is. And sometimes the symbolism is obvious to us. And sometimes it's

00:19:25.120 more subtle. Sometimes it has to be teased out or it's based on some, a knowledge of scripture,

00:19:29.520 which you might not have. But the point is that the symbolism is there many, many layers of symbolism.

00:19:34.140 And I mean, on the, on the most basic level, you know, the, the objects, the cruets with,

00:19:39.720 with wine and water, these are holding liquids that are going to go into the chalice and become

00:19:46.060 the blood of Christ. Right? So even before the consecration, they have a dignity. These,

00:19:52.160 these two cruets, what they're holding have a dignity, you know, just like you could say an

00:19:56.320 unbaptized human being has dignity, has metaphysical or ontological dignity, even though he doesn't have

00:20:02.540 the supernatural dignity of a son of God because he hasn't been baptized yet. So you could look at

00:20:06.860 the water and wine that way, you know, it's like an unbaptized pagan. There's dignity there. Let's,

00:20:11.680 let's respect and reverence that dignity because of what it can become because of what it's ordered

00:20:17.180 to. Right? So that's how I, you know, I see all of these things and like the lifting of the chasuble

00:20:22.960 that you mentioned, you know, that's an interesting case where the original purpose for that, just as the,

00:20:28.960 the servers lifting the edge of the garment as the priest walks up the steps, it was a practical

00:20:33.040 origin. The medieval chasubles were very heavy. And once the custom developed of the priest raising

00:20:38.960 the host and the chalice, because that did develop in the middle ages, he, it was, the vestment was so

00:20:44.520 heavy that it was hard for the priest to lift up his arms. So the servers would lift up the chasuble

00:20:48.760 to give him a boost. That's all it was. It was very practical in, in origin. But as time went on,

00:20:53.660 the vestments got smaller and smaller. Fabric was cut off from them. That's how we end up with,

00:20:57.980 with the so-called Roman or fiddleback chasuble, which is basically like fabric on the front and

00:21:02.860 the back, but with nothing on the sides. That was designed to free up the priest's arms to make

00:21:07.640 it easier for him to move around and to do what he's supposed to do. But because of the conservative

00:21:12.120 instinct of the church, the lifting of the chasuble gesture never went away. It just kept being done,

00:21:17.700 even if it wasn't practically necessary. And then what happened, and this is also something you see

00:21:21.960 in liturgical history, then people looked at that and they said, what does that remind me of?

00:21:27.980 My goodness, it reminds me of the passage in the gospels when the woman with the flow of blood,

00:21:33.760 with the hemorrhage, touched the garment of Christ and was healed by the power that flowed

00:21:39.200 through it, right? And so now when we look at the servers lifting up the vestment, the chasuble,

00:21:44.820 we can think, Lord, heal me by contact with you as you healed that woman who grabbed hold of your

00:21:51.260 garment, right? And I think that's so beautiful that you have these layers that develop and accumulate.

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00:22:27.720 And also, if there was ever an inducement for altar boys to serve that part of the mass where

00:22:34.560 they're lifting the chasuble of the priest, there is a... Boy, what a motivation. Okay, so now for a

00:22:41.780 very controversial question, but again, I say this not out of any irreverence, but because I know

00:22:48.040 it's on people's minds. A lot of this stuff around this being misunderstood, the kissing of the

00:22:57.820 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.

00:23:28.540 How do you respond?

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 1.00

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, 1.00

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 1.00

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 0.99

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 1.00

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, 0.79

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, 0.82

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.

00:32:25.020 And we'll see you next time.

00:32:30.140 Aloha, everyone. This is Jason Jones for LifeSide News. We hope you enjoyed this video. For more

00:32:35.920 content like this, check the link in the description. You can also connect with us on social media to

00:32:42.560 stay up to date with the latest news on life, faith, family, and freedom. Thanks for watching

00:32:49.520 and may God bless you.

The John-Henry Westen Show - November 28, 2024

Lace, smells and bells： What's with all the pomp and circumstance at the Latin Mass？

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