In this piece, the author, Marian T. Horvat compares the altar of Cathedral of St. Louis with that of Abbey of St. Anne (Kergonan, France), as shown below, to illustrate the "cold emptiness in worship [which] is the result of the conciliar reformers' intention to please Protestants"
But when I first saw this picture, I noticed something wrong. First, the Missal appears to be at the Gospel side of the Altar and the Chalice in the middle, i.e., the Altar is set-up for an ad orientem celebration of the Mass, which is not typical of the average Novus Ordo Mass.
Next, the altar is an abbey, i.e., in a monastic setting, which traditionally had very austere settings for worship as illustrated by sanctuary of the aforementioned abbey.
I dunno, perhaps she could find another picture out there since this altar is certainly not a good example of "cold emptiness in worship" that she alledges.
3 comments:
Horvat and the rest of the TIA crew are more Jansenists than Catholics, in my opinion. They seem to have a distase for anything that smacks of modernity; God forbid they hold grudges agianst washing machines. They tend to make a big fuss out of anything, so much so that most of the time, the issue is shoved aside for something else.
While they have some occasionally good tidbits in that site, the general 'frumpiness' and 1950's traditionalist nostalgia gets old very fast. They are definitely a far cry from the Catholics of the Middle Ages, who held holy days as holidays and whose simple and direct piety are almost alien to the rigorous intellectualism that TIA purveys 'Tradition' to be.
More akin to Protestants I think, and committing the same mistakes like them. Whereas the 16th century Protestants believed that Scriptures trumped Tradition and the Magisterium, these guys hold Tradition over the rest, though they are selective in application, just like the Protestants and Scriptures. Jansenists were nothing more than Calvinists masquerading as Catholics.
^Agreed. The main problem with Traditionalists is that they hold tradition to be something fossilized and untouchable-- it simply is not. Tradition evolves continuously, and accrues and grows over time. Chesterton once said that the surest sign of societal collapse is conservation, and this is especially true today. It is a sad thing when "Tradition" is equated with nostalgia, and when "Traditionalist" is exalted more than the word Catholic.
Post a Comment