Almost as soon as we started attending the TLM, we experienced a sort of gag order as far as how we should speak of the ancient rite and the New Mass. It went something like, "We accept the NM as legitimate while merely preferring the TLM (for obvious reasons that...we're not supposed to talk about)."
We had the sense that we were doing something wrong by attending the TLM, but the more I came to understand this form of the Mass and the more it became, to reference the CCC, the "summit of (my) Catholic life," the stronger was the sense that for me to abandon this form of worship would be to abandon my faith.
I'll admit: That's a bit melodramatic, and perhaps not entirely accurate; certainly I could remain a Catholic and attend the NM, it would just take more extracurricular work on my part.
My true, less melodramatic sense was that abandoning the TLM would make me a hermit, living in a desolation, being forced to build walls of defense to guard my faith each time I attended a NM and experienced music that was not liturgical and sometimes was even anti-Catholic, tag-team readers and cantors and deacons (oh, my), priests who created barriers not bridges between the people and God by inserting so much of their own personalities into the Mass that "actual participation" seemed limited to a closed dialogue between priest and people instead of prayer to God, and...well, the list of distractions and stones in the pathway to Catholic worship at the NM goes on and on, laid with the best of intentions perhaps, but not necessarily laid in a way that makes straight the path. Plus, as a Protestant-by-birth, I was aware of an old saying that seemed to apply: The road to perdition is paved with good intentions.
It was very clear to me: The ancient rite seemed like serious business and the new Mass, as it was offered pretty much every where, seemed like it had been designed to entertain elementary school children. It didn't take me long to recognize the chasm that existed (exists) between regulars at the TLM and the regulars at the NM.
The difference was manifested in many ways, from the way people described "assisting at," or "offering" the TLM compared to "going to" or "breaking bread" at the NM, to the way most people dressed at either Mass, to the way that people at the TLM knelt and prayed in silence after Mass and the people at the NM tended to hang out visiting loudly; but the most concise, most clear sentiments denoting the width of the chasm came from a nun who loved the New Mass and a parishioner who loved the Old Mass:
Sr. ____: Those people are disobedient and holier-than-thou!
Old Mass Parishioner: They act like Protestants because they worship like
Protestants.
Once I recognized the depth and drama of the controversy swirling around the TLM, the Mass I loved, I asked my brother, "What have you gotten us into, anyway? Maybe being ignorant and blissful would've been better?" It was a joke, of course.
After a few years, by the 2010's, it became obvious that secular persecution of the Church in the U.S. was on the rise. As federal and some state administrations imposed a new order-style societal vision upon all, from convents to Catholic hospitals, to Catholic universities, and Catholic-owned private businesses, I again found occasion to joke with my brother: "Great, I was a narcissist with my own customized religion for 25 years, all my liberal friends loved me, and then I become a Catholic just in time for the next Great Persecution!"
Now, as secular persecution increases in accord with new laws and new sensitivity to the expression of opinions which contradict the newly-discerned notions of family and the sanctity of life, and more than ever we need the solid rock of Tradition and the TLM, we suffer through Bishop of Rome Francis (BORF), in rhetoric and through suggested modifications of practices, pruning the Vine to the point where there's a very real fear that large groups of people who call themselves Catholics will practice their faith in a manner that does not embody the doctrines of the Church, thereby becoming cut off from the very root system that sustains the life of the Vine, the Church.
I could joke about the other situations because, behind it all, my Catholic formation was based on the truth that the Church was inseparable from Tradition and history. She has deep roots. I could look beyond the confusion caused by the "spirit of Vatican II" with assurance that, at its heart, the Church still held to the clear presentation of the Faith in the Catechism of the Council of Trent. It would just take time to work it back to the forefront. And, of course, in my life as a Catholic, we had the last years of Pope St. John Paul II and we had Pope Benedict XVI as, for the most part, tradition-friendly guardians of the faith.
But, with each new controversial BORF-appointed cardinal, with each new controversial BORF-appointed bishop, with each new controversial BORF-suggested implementation of innovative pastoral practices, with each new controversial BORF interview, thoughts of the day, and name-calling tirade, the wee bits of traditional Catholic teaching he espouses become more and more obscured by what seems to be a renewed enthrallment with the hollow gestures and phrases of the "spirit of Vatican II."
Most days now, the awareness grows of a conspiracy of men blinded by the lust of imposing their own designs upon the Church.
At once, we are hermits, and we are the flock tended by hollow men
Excerpt from "The Hollow Men" by T. S. Elliot:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas!Our dried voices,
when We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form,
shade without colour,
Paralysed force,
gesture without motion....
