Opening shot, 11-17-18

I began this book in the role of a crabby old (very old) objector to the new mass, intending to issue primarily a cry from the heart, an extended complaynt at the plundering of liturgy as I knew it, which I sometimes considered akin to Henry VIII’s rape of the monasteries — Shakespeare’s “Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.” A despoliation, I feared — and to some extent still do.

You can imagine the shift involved, to go from complainer about the New Mass — Novus Ordo (new order of mass = new mass) — to looking for what I had to learn about it and charting a course for myself among Vatican 2 and other documents and assorted commentary and my own experiences and my own commentary including my complaynts.

So it’s an adventure, a journey of a soul, some might say, but not I. In fact, I shrink from grand statements. Don’t like them, because they glorify a common — not common enough — process of changing your mind or at least somewhat re-positioning yourself in a matter of wide discussion.

For the rest go here . . .

There for the man who owned his own darn weekly newsletter. Blithe Spirit explains itself in its inaugural issue, 3/6/96.

What’s This All About?

In the course of human events comes a time for declaring oneself. It’s not good for man to be alone with his thoughts. He must unburden himself, or explode. Suppression, says Freud, is bad for the soul — but he flourished in the steam age. What if he’d been a computer age baby? Would he have said garbage in, garbage out?

We’ll never know. Meanwhile, allow me to unburden myself — of thoughts large and small, largely about our community, Oak Park & River Forest, but not only that. Let chips fall.

It’s an exercise in self-declaration, you might say. Good for the soul, if nothing else. And full of short paragraphs.

Gentlemen, start your engines.  . . .

The rest of it is here . . .

Make it part of an offensive against recognition of the supernatural?

Our commentator puts the case of the Carmel in Philadelphia in a larger context of the crisis in the Church which started with the Second Vatican Council, and he issues a sort of battle cry, calling Catholics to resistance.

Down with the sacred, up with the world we know and can do something about!