I see, or we saw, where 2/3 of Romans in the U.S. do not believe in the Real Presence, also where on 2nd thought the pollster, heretofore taken as horse’s mouth in such matters, got it wrong. Ah. Make that 2/3 of us do believe in the Real P, says another pollster. (When was the last time such a violent discrepancy happened? Should we be worried? More than usual, I mean. Hmm.)

In any case, so it goes, or went this time, in the wild and woolly world of polstering, where the devil takes the hindmost. Nonetheless, we do have the big show coming in Indianapolis aimed at bolstering said belief and I wish I could make it but find myself absorbed and/or spoken for in my customary round of fevered comings and goings, including regular meetings of the local Over 90’s club.

Nonetheless again, I remain intrigued by the issue. Not kidding, of course, nothing to joke about, depending as I am in my decades-long adherence to this faith of the Romans enforcing my assurance of the Savior in our midst and accessible by all, thank God for that. Indeed, I am reading a book on the subject, a sort of you don’t believe us here we are announcement by the Pius X society, offshoot of the Vatican 2 feature, its go-ahead on liturgical change, primarily of the Mass, The Problem of the Liturgical Reform: A Theological and Liturgical Study, meant for aficionados of the New Mass, also known as Novus Ordo.

Not just aficionados either but people who know what Denzinger is and do or did theology and read Latin at least a little. Many of you cannot imagine such at this point of our history as civilized people but I can and I am one of them. Denzinger? It’s an ongoing compilation of doctrine, fruits of labor by Jesuits and other people since 1854 and so you have Denzinger such and such, whatever’s the latest rewrite. Denzinger is ever a work in progress.

When this writer was a pup, sitting in a West Baden, Indiana, classroom, it was Denzinger Bannwart, named after its editor, to which we students referred as our understanding something as told us by our teacher, code name Forty, a splendid man on a lifelong mission to get things straight with not an irritating or contentious bone in his body. In retrospect, he was the boy at the dike, holding his thumb in the hole before all gave way, in this case, the devil MODERNISM, though in the early ‘60s we rarely heard the term. Pius X used the the word, calling it “the synthesis of all heresies.” His defense against the same was right-wing extremism in our book.

Be that as it may, Forty stood for the faith as it remained before Vatican 2 experimenters/innovators got to it, though we young Jesuits either didn’t know what was brewing in Rome or in varying degrees liked it. In this book from the society named after Pius, I found explanation, I think, for the 2/3 not believing (as above) but most of all probed for the whys and wherefores of liturgical change — as in my view has contributed to our alarmingly lessened belief.

Communion in hand standing up comes to mind. So does the overall, ah, noisiness of the New Mass vs the traditional quiet so praised by Cardinal Sarah but makes us so busy listening and responding to the celebrant/presider that we can hardly get with the main event, which is real, not merely symbolic, reenacted redeeming sacrifice. This liturgical book argues the old way, calling up Denzinger and other sources repeatedly to show (expose) the theology behind the new mass.

About which more later, please stay tuned . . .