JJP, this is not at all how your comments come across. You started out by saying, "Either you are being fascietious or you genuinely don't understand the Divine Liturgy. In charity I'll assume the former." You followed up with "Nothing you're saying makes sense." Then later on we got, "I see what you're trying to do, it just isn't working."

Now if you want him to explain further because you don't understand, that's great and that's progress, but it's progress we could have had at the beginning, instead of after lots of dissmissive comments.

I quoted a long passage from Cardinal Stickler that makes the argument being alluded to. Did you read that? Do you still not understand the idea (which, remember, I don't agree with)?

If JDC is making the same assertion that the Cardinal is (and I'll let him speak to that), then I would disagree with the both of them.

The iconostasis isn't meant to guard against profanation in the same way that speaking Latin is referenced, if at all.

If there are others that are more versed in the Byzantine liturgy that disagree with me, I'd love to learn.

Oh boy. This is become tiresome. Feel free to reread my postings on this thread so far. I'm sure I haven't been speaking Latin. Thanks for the chat, fellas.

I think Father Taft calls it the argumentum ad tourismus--the notion that, at one time, one could go anywhere in the world and hear same exact Mass everywhere. Taft, of course, demolishes that conceit in short order, noting that even within the Latin rite there was always a plurality of liturgical rites, and that, even within the Tridentine rite, it was celebrated in very different styles in different places. I have, in my snarkier moments, noted that it united all Roman Catholics through a shared incomprehensibility.

Both the Roman Catholic writer Thomas Day and our own Father Serge have noted that the attempt to suppress all use of Latin is driven by the same urge for liturgical uniformity that used to resist any attempt to introduce the vernacular.

Latin traditonalists ought to note that the use of the vernacular in the Mass was first broached at Trent, for the power of worship in the language of the people was the same in 16th century as it was when Pope Damasus had the liturgy translated into the ligua vulgaris. Unfortunately, Trent was very much a reactionary council, at which, if the Protestants were fer it, they were agin' it. And the Protestants had been banging the drum for vernacular worship from the beginning. Therefore, even though it recognized the advantages accruing from use of the vernacular, Trent came down four square for Latin. In retrospect, like so much else of Trent, it was a short-sighted tactical decision that was disastrous in the long term.

Even the most biased observer will understand that one language represents less difference than multiple languages.

I have really tried not to perpetuate these discussions on this forum, being for one that I'm tired of them, and for another that this isn't the place to discuss Western Christianity, but the bewildering bias and stubborn blindness one experiences on these threads is perhaps the best argument against participation.

Yes. That was the foundation of the praestantia ritus Latini (priority of the Latin Rite): the Latin rite is normative for all Christians, therefore all liturgical diversity is merely an anomaly to be tolerated by dispensation until the peasants can be weaned away from their quaint ways of worship. As Pope Gregory VII Hildebrand said, "Diversity is the mother of heresy". So, by all means, let us have just one liturgy, celebrated in just one language, unintelligible to all but a handful of antiquarians.

On a different topic how successful has the Ordinariate been so far in American and the United Kingdom?

I know there is plans on having a Anglican Catholic parish in the San Diego area and as a former Anglican I am looking forward to attending mass there from time to time.

For the UK http://www.ordinariate.org.uk

Looks like good, steady progress is being made in a quiet way. The five former Anglican bishops, now monsignori were and are very able leaders.

I usually have a hearty disinterest in things-Roman, but I think the Ordinariate in England and Wales is very inspiring.

So this is the source of all your uncharacteristically irrational bias on the matter? Because some have suggested it ought to be foisted on the other Churches, you've been offended and can't see the use of it for the Latin Church?

I suppose that's understandable. The history of Christianity is nothing if not a history of historic wounds.

You seem to be the one creating wounds, my friend; the vast majority of Catholic Christians of the western rite seem quite content with the Novus Ordo and the use of their mother tongues in that liturgy. Speaking of "lingua franca", it might be of interest to you that even in the universities of Italy now they are teaching class in...ENGLISH. In Stuart's defense, even though we do not always agree, he is always real and eminently rational.

That's good: objectivity is a virtue. Of course, one can be disinterested and indifferent at the same time.

Not so.

The vast majority of Catholic Christians of the Western rite have nothing to do with the Church outside of the hatch, match, and dispatch moments of life, if even those. I understand that a diocese near me recently produced a report saying that 83% of RC's resident in that diocese aren't coming to Mass at all.

Anyone here watch those videos I posted?. What did you think of them?.

That's Canada for you.

That's another issue that has little to do with liturgy or language. I'm referring to the faithful, or fideles, if you will. There's such a thing as a majority of a minority, is there not? In any case, you seem quick to stand in judgement even of those. Hatch, match and dispatch. Cute.