...mention the use of Latin...
...mention Mass offered ad orientum without altar girls and EMHC...
...mention receiving Holy Communion on the tongue while kneeling at altar rails...
...mention re-installing those altar rails...
...or mention the idea that each parish should offer the EF (Traditional Latin Mass) each week...
...and, in most parishes, you'll most likely hear a sort of Pavlovian response, almost a chant: "We can't go back, we can't go back, we've gone too far, we can't go back."
It's almost a text book definition of tragic irony, this notion that "we can't go back," as espoused by a generation of Catholics that cannot keep themselves from going back over and over again to the same mistaken, experimental approach encompassed in the "Spirit of Vatican II."
In former times, an objective observer would've said, "These people got snake bitten by that Second Vatican Council! They're up the creek without a paddle," and that's exactly what happened when popular Catholic opinion embraced the faulty premise that tradition, history, and heritage must be rejected in favor of the leaven of the secular world--snake bitten and up the creek without a paddle.
A battle exists between opposing forces. One side fights for that which was always, is, and will always be the greater good, the greatest good; that good which is always worth fighting for. On the other side, there are those seduced by their own desires and, having implemented them and imposed them on others, act as slaves, addicted to those desires.
Lately, we read about living in a post-Christian West. We talk about the secular world getting the upper hand and how a sort of shadow has fallen over the Church. There is confusion and everyone goes their own way. Bishops disagree with bishops. Cardinals disagree with cardinals. Priests disagree with priests. Our Holy Father engages in controversial behavior and uses controversial language. It seems that the pasture has been left to the weeds. The light of the Church seems to be failing.
But...the Church has always taught that darkness and confusion is merely a cloak that covers the light for a moment until the darkness is thrown off, and we move beyond it. And yet, to suggest seeking the light beyond the darkness, the truth beyond the chaos of relativism, instead of inspiring this Catholic nation to go forward and leave behind the mistakes of one generation, merely receives that same old, tired response that reeks of despair, "We can't go back...."
Is it true that the darkness has become so blinding that many have chosen to abide in the dark, or worse, have come to call the darkness the light? Can it be that this fight is left to a few, a remnant, a band of brothers willing to stand for the good in the world even when it would seem that all are against them?
I'll defer to my old friend Samwise....
"Frodo: I can't do this, Sam.
Sam: By rights we shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for."
(_The Lord of the Rings_, J.R.R. Tolkien)
