Harrison Butker recently kicked up a shit storm over the role of women in modern society. If he and his wife want to live that way, I am OK. I am also OK with him telling people that is what he believes. So I didn’t pay much attention to the whole falderal because it seemed like just another controversy de jour. People getting upset because someone wanted to upset people so he found a way to upset them.

But then I stumbled upon an article from conservative columnist Peachy Keenan where I discovered Butker liked the Latin (Traditional) Mass. Now that is interesting and amazing. I have given up on the Catholic Church long ago and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would prefer the old Latin Mass. I had a few years of Latin Mass in my pre-Vatican II childhood. I even had to train as an alter boy with the old Latin Mass. My opinion was it was a pain in the ass.

Apparently, I am wrong. It is a thing that has caught on with modern Catholics. I checked up on the mystery of the Latin Mass here and here. I could have gone on as Google directed to me to numerous links on the topic but, after reading the two above, I can say I still have no idea why anyone would like the old Latin Mass. It is a lot of gobbledygook about the mystery of the Eucharist, reverence and tradition.

Even after 12 years of Catholic education, Communion is a mystery to me. Why I have to eat the body and drink the blood of Christ is beyond me. It sounds cannibalistic and I avoided this sacrament as much as humanly possible. So, I missed the transcendent experience of Communion at a Latin Mass. So I will give the Latin Mass lovers this one because Communion stumps me in Latin or in English.

Then, how is the modern mass irreverent? Standing when receiving communion as opposed to kneeling when receiving communion is one explanation. God would rather us be on our knees than on our feet. People dress too casually for the modern mass which has nothing to do with the Latin Mass. The Latin Mass doesn’t have a dress code. It is their own personal prejudice of what reverence is because God has advised them about the importance of kneeling before him in a three-piece suit.

Finally, there is tradition which is the worst possible reason to use the Latin Mass. The lovers of the Latin Mass say that practicing the mass in this way connects them to the vast majority of saints who worshipped God in exactly the same way. So you can only connect to God by living the way the saints did? The Saints wouldn’t recognize the present mass. So I guess there should be no electricity or central heating in churches. People should skip baths, not brush their teeth, and wear the same clothes they worked the fields in in order to connect with saints of yesteryear. Why go half-assed in your connection with the saints when you can go in for the total traditional experience? Most of what we do is not traditional and for good reason, the past was horrible for most people. Tradition for tradition’s sake is bullshit.

Furthermore, modern people are not peasants. Almost everyone can read, write and a good portion can even think for themselves. The Church has to appeal to a much broader and more educated group of people than in the past. An appeal to tradition is all very nice but unlikely to capture the imagination of all the people searching for God. People usually abandon tradition when it no longer works, so Butker and his ilk can continue to go to the Latin Mass if they want. Vade in pace which is go in peace for you non-Latin speaking hell bound heathens.