Pints With Aquinas - Why we LOVE the Latin Mass w/ Jacob Imam

Episode Date: July 22, 2021

Jacob Imam and I are not what is described as "trads" and neither of us attends the Latin Mass on a regular basis, but we LOVE the reverence and beauty of the Latin, or Tridentine, Mass. In light of Pope Francis' "Traditionis Custodes," we flesh out 7 reasons why the Latin Mass is truly extraordinary. A few of the 7 reasons are: The primacy of the Eucharistic sacrifice The quality of the homilies The formality of the mass and attendees The beauty of the Latin language and music ...and 3 more!   Sign up for my free course on St. Augustine's "Confessions"!   SPONSORS Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ Homeschool Connections: https://homeschoolconnections.com/matt/   GIVING Patreon or Directly: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/  This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer co-producer of the show.   LINKS Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Gab: https://gab.com/mattfradd Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas   MY BOOKS Get my NEW book "How To Be Happy: Saint Thomas' Secret To A Good Life," out now! Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

We good? G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas again, only hopefully this time you can hear me. Can you hear me, internet? You tell me when they can hear me, John Paul. They can hear me. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Today I am joined around the bar table with my good mate Jacob Imam from New Polity. You can check out his link below. We're going to be discussing seven things we love about the Latin Mass and then we're going to be looking at reasons you've given us for why you love it. Before we do that, I want to let you know about a couple of things we've got going on this week, which are really exciting. Thursday, I'll be interviewing Monsignor Charles Pope about Pope Francis' modus proprio, and where we go from here. We'll be taking your questions there as well. Super

humble, reverent, beautiful priest. And then on Friday, I'm hosting a conversation between Dr. William Lane Craig and Jimmy Akin about the Kalam Cosmological Argument. In particular, the philosophical version of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. The two of them disagree about that. So that's going to be a fascinating discussion. So if you haven't yet subscribed to Pints with Aquinas, please click subscribe and then that bell button. That really helps us out. I think this is going to be a really encouraging and helpful episode today. So another thing you can do before we get started is hit that like button and share this video on Facebook. One more thing before we get started, I want to give a shout out to a friend of mine who makes these gorgeous candles. That's right, candles. Now,

she's not paying me to do this advertisement. I don't make any money from the candles. That's right, candles. Now she's not paying me to do this advertisement. I don't make any money from the candles. She didn't even ask me to do this advertisement today but she's a dear friend of ours. She's a homeschooling mum and she sent me some of these candles recently and I'm not... I promise you I'm not lying when I say these are the greatest smelling candles ever. So I'm gonna open it up and I'm gonna put it in front of Jacob's face. He's gonna let you know if they smell as good. Can you see this, Jacob? I'm gonna open it up and I'm gonna put it in front of Jacob's face. He's gonna let you know if they smell as good. Can you see this, Jacob? I'm pretty excited to see this. Yeah, here we go. Can you see this, John Paul?

Yep. All right, check it. Isn't that classy? That is classy. Can you see that? Beautiful. She does all this from her home? Yeah, she does all of this from her home. She's got like, as I say, she did not ask me to do this. So she's, my hope is that you guys will click that link at the top of the description and buy a ton of her candles. And then she'll like me more. No, that you would bless her family, right? Give that a smell.

Man. You have to be honest, too. It's just like a candle? Can I just go the rest of the conversation? Just smelling it? Yes, you can hold it and smell it. Is that all right? Yeah. It's just like a candle or? Can I just go the rest of the conversation? Just smelling it? Yes. You can hold it and smell it.

Is that all right? No, honestly, these are the best smelling candles I've ever smelt. No, these are actually phenomenal. They're very natural smelling. They're not artificial. And as I say, homeschooling mom. She teaches her kids Russian for goodness sake. So please help her family out.

Yeah. Isn't that cool? Yeah. You should totally help her family out. Right. Help her family out. Click that link in the top. Buy a candle or 800. She even has a return policy.

So if you don't love the candle, she will give you a refund. You're going to love it. And yeah. All right. That was all I wanted to do because I love her and I would just, you know, we wanted to do that. All right. Jacob Imam. What's up, Habibi?

It's so lovely to see you. For those out there, what does Habibi mean? My buddy, my dear friend. If you're a woman saying it to a dude, it's kind of like my lover, but just like amongst dudes, it's like my dude, my man. It could mean my lover, and I would be none the wiser. Then I tell it to all my friends, and then it'd be awkward. We'll just skip that over.

Well, dude, it is lovely to have you. Thank you for doing this at such late notice. We're going to be sharing seven reasons. We love the Latin Mass. We've even written them down. We've done a bit of research. Look at that. We're ready to go. And as I say, afterwards, we're going to be seeing why people, why they love it. They've shared their reasons for us as well. But before we get into this, we should offer some caveats. I think one of the first caveats is neither of us are really traddies, depending on how you define the term. Sure. I don't really know how to define it, but I think it has something to do with a three-piece suit and a tie. Ah.

And I think we're disqualified. You're doing better than me. At least you have buttons. With shorts down. Yeah, yeah. We have Latin mass offered at midday on Sundays at St. Pete's. I think I'm going to start going. I think you decided you're going to start going to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think what an interesting thing for so many of us at the parish, and Scott Hahn alluded to this when he was on your show not too long ago,

is that so many of us here just interchange between the 10 a.m. and the noon. We'll go back and forth. We really don't make much bug about it. My wife, one kind of all cards on the table, my wife and I were married in the Dominican Rite, which is pretty darn close to the Tridentine. It's just a few different, few very slight differences most people don't notice. But yeah, I think for the most part, it's just like, we love it. We think it's beautiful. And, but we're not ideologically committed to it. I think that might be a proper distinction between somebody who would call themselves like a traddy or traditionalist.

I'm not sure about the language, but whatever you want to call us. Right, right. I want to talk about our first experience of the Latin Mass as well. We'll try to talk about our first experience without sharing what we love because we want to to get to that later. So when's the first time you ever went to a Latin Mass? Well, it was in Baylor, at Baylor University. There was a, not a Newman Center, but a student center there called St. Peter's also, confusingly enough. And I walked in, I was a catechumen at the time, I believe. And I walked in a Saturday evening and thought that there was something else going on. I was like, what is this? I'm really not sure if I'm in the right place. Because you grew up Muslim as well.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't know how long you were a Catholic before experiencing this. Oh, I was a catechumen even. Oh, I'm sorry, you said that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. So I was not to be received for several more months. I just started to go to masses or just really, I think, adoration only for the most part prior to this. And I must have gone to a Mass because I knew that there was something weird going on. And I thought it was just a completely different liturgy. I had no idea that it was actually the sacrifice of the Holy Mass until the priest raised the host. And I thought, oh my gosh, I'm in a completely different place. It was just a total experience of otherness.

I felt completely out of place. Sorry, I shouldn't have said that. You told me not to say how I feel. But that is how I felt at that time. It was just like nothing I'd ever experienced before. I had no experience to liken it to. Yeah, I think the first time I have experienced it was while I was living in Ireland.

I looked up Latin mass and I think I drove about an hour or two to get there. And I remember my first experience just being like, this is weird and I don't know what to do. I wish I could say I was bowled over by the beauty and caught up into the ninth heaven or something. But it was just like, this is different. I liked it, we'll get into that. But I wasn't

immediately taken by it. When my wife and I lived in San Diego, when Liam was a kid, we went for about three years and really enjoyed it. We've been in a Byzantine church for the past three years in Atlanta. Now we go here at St. Pete's. So went to a Novus Ordo mass this morning and Latin mass on the weekend. Please please god second thing we want to say this is the second caveat and i do not want to keep clarifying every single time i say something good about the latin mass i do not want this episode to turn into what i love about the latin mass is x and i'm not saying that i don't want to do that a lot so i'm going to say it right you're not saying that the novus ordo is illegitimate or that it's disgusting or whatever. Yeah, yeah.

You want to add to that? No, I think that you've said it all. This conversation has become so political, I think, and I guess we'll talk about some of the reasons why we think that that has been the case as we go on and our reasons. But we're really not trying to make any sort of political statements here. We're really just trying to say something positive about it. I mean, Pope Francis, in the modu proprio, said that there were some pastoral care needed for those who felt attached to the older forms of the Mass. And we're some of those people. And so we just wanted to say, because it seems like such a contentious time,

and because there seems to be a divisiveness in the church over this matter, that we just want to say something positive. We're not trying to be contentious. As I mentioned, we kind of go interchangeably, my family at least, to the 10 in the noon between the Novus Ordo and the Tridentine. But we just want to say, why is it that there are some people that feel attached? And we'll speak, you know, generally for some of those people, not for all. We'll kind of give the reasons that we fell in love. Some people might find that they share some of those loves. We share those in common.

And others won't, and they'll have more reasons, and I'll look forward to hearing what people comment as well. But I think it really stems from that. And one of these, I mean, kind of the last thing I'll just toss on the table is that politics and economics is my thing, and liturgy is totally not. So I'm totally speaking as just somebody who desires to see Christ's face more clearly and longs for that unity with God and became a Catholic as a result.

And that's about it. I'm just speaking from an average Catholic perspective and nothing more than that. Yeah, my opinions hold absolutely no weight, no authority. You know, to your point, you know, about this being a divisive topic, I would just say, and this is a difficult thing to do, but I would say this to those who are watching who feel strongly one way or the other, just to give, and this is said so cheaply perhaps, but to give each other grace here because we are living in unprecedented times, right?

The modu proprio by Pope Francis was an unprecedented thing in many respects. We're all kind of trying to process this. So it would be cool if we could not be a bunch of jerks. That would be cool. And another caveat before we get into this, I want to say, if you're a Latin mass Catholic watching this, as somebody who's not committed to going every week, I'm really sorry for the pain that you're going through right now. I'm really sorry. Because I can only imagine, right? Like when I went to the Byzantine church, we were going for three years, we loved it. If there was a modu proprio that came out by Pope Francis, and he said, because of the schismatic tendencies of some Byzantine Catholics who tend to downplay the Immaculate

Conception, the authority of the Pope. Because of that, we are going to basically start to get rid of it. My heart would have been broken, and I know people who are very invested, their heart would have been broken. And I do hear a lot of dismissive attitudes from people from the Novus Ordo crowd

that I just think is completely unacceptable. Like they're like, all right, get over it. Like we all have to get on the same sheet of music, and this is about unity. And I want to be like, dude, there are families who love their little community church who are afraid right now. So you could speak perhaps with a little bit more empathy.

So just personally, I would like to say to you, like, I'm sorry for whatever pain you're going through right now. I think that must be really difficult. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. And to all those, I would like to reiterate that. There is something within the letter more than the motu proprio that Pope Francis said, speaking about this schismatic tendencies and, you know, something almost scandalous and rejecting bad and contudes. And you see that a lot on Twitter, I would say.

You see that a lot online. I don't think you see that much in parishes. No, it's there. Don't get me wrong. You can find this. But I've been in about six different parishes as I've moved around, in part because Oxford has so many, and everybody's,

everybody's kind of part of the same community there. But there's really only been one of those six where I can never have said that there was some sort of hostility or animosity that, you know, what Scott calls the mad trad, many people call the mad trad syndrome. I think that is more of a phenomenon of the internet, which is designed to make us mad, designed to keep us on it so that more people can advertise and make money from it. It's not the common scene when you walk into a Tridentine parish. You find just huge families.

You find just huge families, you find love, you find great people there, and just a marvelous community. Well, before we get into the first point, let me just kind of ask you, and you decided to get to it there, what was your kind of, do you mind giving us an overall reaction that you had both to the letter and the moda proprio before we get into it? Or would you rather us just get into it? Yeah, overall, I mean, I found that they were, I don't really understand how they were completely compatible, to be perfectly honest. The letter and the litopropia?

Yeah, so I'm looking forward to your conversation with Monsignor Pope. I'm trying, you know, I've reached out to some canon lawyers. I'm really trying to figure it out. I was shocked, That's for sure. It was far more extreme than I thought it was going to be when it came out. It definitely centralizes power in a way that I hadn't known in our tradition. Yeah, centralize power in what way? I know what you mean.

Yeah, for instance, I think it's Article 3.4 or something like that that specifies that if a seminarian wants to learn the Tridentine Mass, that he not only needs to ask his bishop for permission to do so, but the bishop then has to take that to Rome to be able to grant permission to learn it. Right. I haven't seen that sort of authority centralized in this way, non-conciliar in the tradition. But I'm also not an ecclesiastical historian. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out as well.

Yeah. One thing's the letter. The other is the implementation. Totally. We'll have to wait and see. We can only speculate. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

So anyways, I was shocked. I was definitely hurt by it. I was, I mean, there is a side of me, um, that is a bit scared because I do love it, you know, I don't want to lose it. It seems like everything's going to be, you know, just like normal around Steubenville where our bishop is very supportive. Um, but you know, there's, there's, there's a side of all of that. And of course, you know, it's the church, so we're with her to the end. But, yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation, looking forward to learning more as the weeks unveil what's happening. All right, let's get into it.

The first thing we love about the Latin Mass is the sense of mystery that you encounter when you go to Holy Mass. Yeah, well, I mean, it kind of came up with your first experience and my first experience that we're like, what is going on? It is so different. I mean, just profoundly different. It's by no means similar, relevant. It's not beckoning you in at all. And I think that is really important. I think that's one of the most important things about it and why, and it comes back to this point of love, I think so beautifully. So think about it like this. When you try and communicate something to someone, it really matters what that medium is that you're using. You know, if you're trying to write a romantic letter to your wife, you don't text it.

You sit down, you write it, you get a nice, beautiful piece of paper. You get, you know, beautiful ink. You might like toss some rose petals in there, depending on just how romantic you are. The medium really matters. If you just kind of shot off a message, it completely undergirds all, or undermines, excuse me, all of the real convictions of your heart that you have towards your spouse. There's something that is really important about that. Similarly, if you're kind of going down your feed, your Facebook feed or whatever, and you see a message that says, you know, I love God and you like it. And then the next thing that comes up is, you know, I love squirrels and you like it.

It's just like, well, that really doesn't say a lot about your love of God. It almost says nothing. It equates it to your love of squirrels. You know, there's something kind of actually silly about it. The medium really does matter profoundly. really does matter profoundly. And when you come to something that is so different, it really says that your love, your desire for it, what you're trying to communicate is completely different from what you try to communicate in other aspects of your life. Now, some people might say, well, it's important to be relevant because that's the way that you bring people in.

And that's just a tough one because I really don't think that's the case. I think it is true that a popular band or something like that might get more of a crowd in our modern world than the Latin mass would. But that's not the point. You know, when a band comes on and it welcomes people in, it doesn't change them. It keeps them as they are. The similarity is an invitation for some sort of relationship, but it's no relationship to change who you are. It's no invitation to change who you are or how you're relating to those that have invited you. I think that's really important. I love what you put here. Similarity may be a condition for comfort, but dissimilarity is the

necessary condition for love. Unfamiliarity is the occasion for ecstasy. That is profound. Did you come up with that? Well, I'm sure I grabbed it from somebody else. Yeah. But think about just a man and a woman, you know, you go back to the scene of love, that what does he love about her? Well, what are the grounds that he might love her? Well, precisely that she's different and that there's always something new. I mean, the fact that he can't understand her, that she's something other, that's something almost unapproachable in a certain sense, it makes him stare longer, not in a creepy way, but to love, to spend the time, to get to know her,

it continually invites him in. This reminds me of a couple who had been married for 50 years and they were sort of reaffirming their love before the altar. And my excellent bishop, Eugene Hurley, said to the man, you know, what do you love about her? And he just said, she's a mystery. After 50 years, she's a mystery, you know? It's like that, yeah. So I really think that's the first thing where we need to start. And it shows in a couple of ways.

So, or there's a couple of important points, I think, from this. The first one is that if with relevance and with similarity, you invite somebody into your church, well, the very point of inviting them is to change them forever. So I just want to make sure that's clear. But if all they have when they're in mass is the same as what they get out in the world, then the point of the mass goes completely unfulfilled. Right.

So the dissimilarity is really essential for that. I think there's something essential about the grouping of similarities. Like when you kind of meet people like for a bowling club or something like that, he's like, you have something in common. But again, it identifies a group, almost like a genus, almost like a species. It identifies a group, almost like a genus, almost like a species. But something dissimilar has an occasion for binding you together in a completely different way, changing and reforming you so that you might be a unique group. Yeah, I remember being a kid in Catholic school.

They bent over backwards to make it as familiar as possible so that we could grin and bear being there for the half hour that was required every week. And I remember like they would let us choose our own music and we would play it from a tape player or a CD. And they asked us to choose the music and I didn't believe in God or Christ and wasn't instructed on how to choose liturgical music. And so chose a Metallica song for the closing song, I think. Mama Said, I think it was, from the Load album. Album doesn't matter, sorry. Point is, like, that's tragic. And I had no idea. And I think another time after I had my conversion at World Youth Day, again, really wanting to get the kids

involved, they allowed us to play, like, with a guitar and drums up there and singing. And honestly, like, I used to be a music minister with guitars and drums, and I repent of that, in a sense. Like, it came from a good place. Like, I had encountered the person of Jesus Christ who changed my life, and I wanted other people to encounter Him as well. So it really came out of this, like, I want to go out to you. But in a sense, that evangelization work happens outside of the liturgy, and then you bring them in to be fed. Right. Yeah, I think that's so important. The way that the early church evangelized to the world was not through inviting them to Mass. It was by sharing life with, inviting them to experience their life, not even fully into the community, but to see, look how well we love one another. It does not look anything like how the world loves

one another. Your neighborhood is not like my neighborhood. If you want to see what we're doing, we will invite you in. You'll come and see. But even when you're a catechumen, you're going to leave after the liturgy of the word. You're not even going to see what the true mystery is, what everything leads up to in the Mass, what the Mass is ultimately all about. That came after. You weren't even taught about it until after you had been confirmed into the church, once you had been baptized. So I think there's something important about the Tridentine Mass that teaches us how to evangelize well, that this is for us,

that we need this. We will not be good Christians without the Mass. But once we do have it, once we are docile to it, once we welcome Christ fully into our hearts, then we might have a chance to go out and share something with the world. We might have something, someone go out and share something with the world we might have something someone to share the world uh with and so i i think this is this is really important a lot of people talk about the beauty of the trinity mass and we'll we'll spoiler alert that's one of our

points but but i don't think on first appearance it's beautiful i think it's disturbing i think it's dissimilar i think it's unsettling I think it's dissimilar. I think it's unsettling. And I think that's the point, is that that makes the occasion for love possible. Yeah. Now, I mean, I think maybe you overstated that a little, I think. Because it's beautiful. Yeah. It's not not beautiful.

It might be both. Yeah. It's beautiful and disturbing. It's disorienting. You walk into this thing that's clearly beautiful. There's all these precise activities taking place and rituals taking place. There's clearly a sort of, what do you say, it's integrated. It's something intended and regimented almost.

And there's a, I mean, with the beautiful smells and the candles, there's a beauty to it. Absolutely. But it is kind of off-putting at first, especially if you haven't been initiated. It's, as you say, disturbing. I think that's a good way to put it. Yeah, yeah. For all of us, for everything in us that hasn't been brought to God, you know. Should we move to the second one?

Yeah, let's do it. The second reason Jacob and I love the Mass is that the sacrifice of the Mass is preeminent and obvious. Yeah. You've got a story about your mom. Yeah, my mom. Some people know kind of the story from the first time we had a conversation on your show together about my mom and her family having left the church over Humanae Vitae when she was 11 years old. when she was 11 years old. And then about six years ago or so, I had become a catechumen,

I think, at that point, or just entered the church. And she decided, well, I want to figure out what this whole thing is about. And so she started to go back to Mass, and she was going to parish near her home for a little while. And I went back to visit her and I said, hey, let's go over to an FSSP parish and, you know, see the Tridentine Mass and to pray it. And I'll never forget her face when we left. I'll never forget. We walked out and she just stopped.

And she just stood there for a little while. And she says, I finally get it. I finally get it. Now, before I tell you what she said, you have to know my mom is not an academic. You know, she's no dummy. By no means is she a dummy. But she's one of these just simple and good people, full of common sense and wisdom. But she was working as a greeter at Costco at the time, you know. So she wasn't, you know, in the ivory tower or off onto, you know, a huge career or anything like that. And I think that's really, you know, something that a lot of people criticize those who attended Latin Mass about

is that they over-intellectualize the faith. And it wasn't. For her, she just walked out and said, I finally get it. He's not trying to entertain me. He's not trying to talk to me. He has a duty before God, and he's doing it for me. It's like, oh my gosh, that's the best summary that I've ever heard of what's happening. There is a real point is that what we're doing is not just enjoying a family meal together. We're sacrificing Jesus Christ to the Father, and we're entering into his sacrifice. The one and only sacrifice for our Protestants watching, this representation. The representation. Yes, yeah. Thanks for doing that. The one and only sacrifice of Christ, and we are entering into him.

You know, we are entering into the very sacrifice which makes union with God possible. What is our union with God? How do we get union with God? Well, through union with God. Through by completely unveiling ourselves to him in our life. Consume him. he becomes in us. So that's, I think, explains some of the reverence too that you see at a Tridentine parish as well, where people come, for the most part, dressed a lot nicer.

I mean, I went to the Latin Mass this past Sunday. And I remember thinking, oh, it's a Latin Mass. I've got to try. Yeah, yeah. And I should always feel that way. But there is this holy peer pressure, in a sense. Like, we're here together, you know? Yeah, and I think that's beautiful.

Like, we need some sort of, like, cultural, like, real cultural, like, enlivened, animated cultural Catholicism that then beckons us into further intimacy with God. So with this, but with the analogy to the family meal, I'm not trying to be overly critical. Well, you already said we don't have to be overly critical. That's the preamble. Yeah, exactly. But with that, it's like, what do you do at a family meal? You know, you joke, you laugh, you drink, you have a good time. You don't really, you're not uncomfortable.

You're in the most comfortable place ever. You're around all the people that you like know best. The Hollywood is even warmed, right? And like these hot baths. Like you don't want any discomfort. The hues have to be cushy, soft. That's exactly right. There's nothing about the discomfort that leads you into the moment of

mystery, the occasion for love. But I think it is the fact that it's not just the family meal, but it is the sacrifice, our hope for salvation, that makes it the place of reverence. You know, something along these lines, sacrifice, reverence, is the Latin mass seems to me to be very masculine. There's something about a man who he really would like to know where he stands. And there's something, I don't know, clear cut. There's something very honoring about you kneel down now to receive your Lord. Shut up, kneel down, open up your mouth. There's something very masculine about that.

And I've heard Latin mass priests, FSSP or whatever, say that it's often the man who's leading his family to the mass. And I think it's because they sense there's something serious that will finally take this hunger, this yearning that I have with as much seriousness as I come with, you know? Yep. And I think there's also something

just going along your lines of masculine that we are drawn to something where we are slightly pushed away from. If we just dominate a scene, it's like, no, I've conquered it. You know, I can do whatever I want. You do not walk on the altar. Oh, my gosh.

You get that way. Yeah, exactly. And so for when the world says... We want to know our place. Exactly. And so when the world says, don't worry, we're all just one big family. You're just fine. You turn to the Latin mass.

And what do you find there? No, you have to be incorporated into the sacrifice in order to be truly unified, to restore the unity, the familial unity that we had at creation. And that's a serious thing. You don't just get that. You have to do it this way. Christ commanded it. We obey him. Yeah, absolutely. Well, the third thing you and I love about Latin mass is quite simply the homilies. I mean, and again, we said at the beginning, we weren't going to say this. Let me try and see if I can get away with saying it one more time.

We're not saying that you don't have, we don't have amazing homilists in the ordinary form, if we can't call that anymore, apparently. But when you go to a Latin Mass, you know that you're about to get fed with meat. The church fathers, Thomas Aquinas. I mean, this last Mass was the reality of hell was mentioned. How many of us who go to Novus Ordo parishes, I'm just going to use that expression, since that's what we all understand, haven't heard a homily about hell for the last, well, we can't even tell you when,

or contraception or something like that. And it's not like every time I go to a Latin mass, that's all I hear, like hell, hell, hell. I don't think the pendulum's swinging the other way. I think it is based very much on the readings for that day, but it's substantive. I know I'm going to be fed, and again, to repeat what I said earlier, I know that my hunger for the Lord is going to be met with seriousness. Yeah. I find that also the readings that go along with it, that give like the source, the fuel for the homilies, just have much more of a punch. Like they're all about, here's who Christ is. This is who he is. He's God. He's unveiling these,

the I am statements, St. Paul, but we stirring up who this incarnate Lord is. I mean, there's just, instead of what you often find is do this, don't do that, some of the moral precepts that you find in the scriptures, which are essential, but they're not necessarily perfectly appropriate for what's about to come. The liturgy of the word is supposed to lead you into the Eucharistic liturgy. You're supposed to hear something about who Christ is so that when the priest raises the host, you might say, ah, that's him. I recognize him in the breaking of the bread. There's something really important about that, of being told who Christ is in the readings. And then you find, again, in the homilies as a result, something very powerful

about the revelation of Christ. The fourth thing we love is the beauty. And we've touched upon this, the transcendence and the music. Now, one thing that seems obvious to me, and again, speaking as a dad, you know, who has no authority, but just from my own experience, it seems to me that if you take an element of the Latin mass and contrast it with the Novus Ordo, it just seems more beautiful. I mean, the vestments seem more beautiful. The altar boys and how they act, it seems more beautiful, more intricate. The lace that the priest wears, even. The incense. And again, we can do this in the Novus Ordo, but often it's thrown aside.

Right, but there's also not an appropriate place in the Novus Ordo for the music to be sung. Also, I think that's really important. So before the preamble, in our parish in Oxford, you'd have these beautiful, absolutely gorgeous music sung, and the choir was off the charts, and you name it. But the priest can't, you name it. But the priest can't be praying during that time. You just have music, and then you have prayer. So, but in the high mass of the Trinity, those two things overlap, and I think that's really important. So there is an amount, immense amount of silence, something we'll talk about, but there's an appropriate place for the music to occur

that's not present in the Novus Ordo, that wasn't aligned for it. I think that's an important point to mention as well. But really, beauty is just so essential because it is that place, it is the thing, it is the transcendent transcendental that makes truth and goodness desirable. It beckons you in to what is true and good by making it appealing, like properly, profoundly, eternally appealing, calling you in. Now it also as a result has a power to transform us because it is conducted by the divine. This is really important and it just can't be overstated is that if beauty really is a

transcendental, something that is encapsulated within the nature of God, then in the mass where we are brought into the divine life, where theosis takes place, where divinization takes place, where we were brought into unity with the Lord, well, beauty has to be the part that beckons us into it, the thing that brings us into life. It's almost like the magnet of sorts where that occurs. And there's just another part to it I think is really essential is that particularly in the Trinity, all of your senses are engaged. Now, why is this important? Well, when Balthasar talks about this as beauty needing to see the whole

image and not just little details. So, I mean, think about like a test rat. You know, you are doing experiments on it for just figuring out one little thing about it, but you're not noticing the whole rat. You care less about the whole rat. This is like cute nose and little whiskers and actually pretty much disgusting everything else. But you're missing the whole rat. You're not considering the whole thing. Beauty takes in everything. The details shine out from the whole so that you might be able to know what it is truly and fully. And the Trinity Mass understands that. It engages all of our senses. Everything is fully called out to be used to worship God.

So I think it's not just so much that beauty is in the nice music and in the beautiful vestments, but in the fact that it has been created to call out all of the senses that God has created us with. Which is also a nice sort of response to those who might accuse Latin mass Catholics as being merely intellectual. Yeah. Because we are a body as well as a soul, and that entire body is being bombarded with the smells and the sights and the, you know. It's overwhelming.

And I think it's true too that like beauty, there's an element, there's a sense in which beauty is subjective, but it's not only subjective. There is an objectivity to beauty. Aquinas talks about sort of the three things that make something beautiful. First, he says something like, beauty is that which when seen pleases. And you're like, not terribly helpful. But then he'll say something like, well, there's a sort of like an inner coherence to the thing. I think what he means by luminosity when he says that. But one way I've tried to understand this more is – I'm trying to explain this to kind of my newly converted 17-year-old self.

I might say, okay, all things being equal, would it be better to celebrate Holy Mass on a card table or a marble altar? Now, I think at the time I probably went, it doesn't matter. to celebrate Holy Mass on a card table or a marble altar. Now I think at the time I probably went, it doesn't matter. But I think if I was to think about it more, I'd be like, no, it seems more appropriate for what's going on that there ought to be a marble altar. There's a sense of, you know, that that's more appropriate because it's a better thing.

And there's a Gregorian chant is a better thing than, we are companions on the journey, breaking bread and sharing life. Have you heard that song? No, but I'm really sad that it exists. Welcome us in the lost and the lonely. Is that another one? See, you escaped all this.

You grew up Muslim again. I don't know what kind of, your music's more beautiful than that. I could sing it, but I'm not going to. I think that would cause scandal, too. Well, I... But at least your music... I say your music, you're no longer Muslim.

But at least that music gives you a sense of the fear one ought to have when approaching the living God. Yeah. I mean, there's a hauntingness, hauntedness to that music. Yeah, that's true. Whatever else you might say about it, I mean, at least initially. There's no doubt. You find that in the East as well. You know, like a Bulgarian Orthodox chant is something I would recommend everyone go check out.

It's terrifying and it's sacred. There's something along those lines that when you say fear, there's four types of fear that St. Thomas talks about as well. Survile. Yeah. So the first is material which of course christ condemns like where we just long for material things and we just fear ever ever losing you know my cup of coffee in the morning or like my beer at night or whatever and then you have servile fear which is based in, where you do something just because somebody tells you

that you can't do it and you fear some like real good or losing some real good through like beating or bruising or whatever, boiling water to keep the alliteration going. Like that's, it's good to do good things, but not for the right reasons. And if you're doing it only to protect yourself and not for the sake in which you're called to do it, then you're not really doing good. St. Thomas says you haven't acted well. Then you get to initial fear. That's what he calls the third type of fear. And that's the fear of being eternally damned. And it's primarily you fear it because you like your body. You like how things have been created.

You don't want to lose it. And so you want to do the right thing so you don't go to hell forever. And he says, you're on the right track, but you haven't quite made it. The only fear that's actually licit is filial fear. The fear that where you fear losing the intimacy with God himself. It's actually love. I'm smiling because something similar happened to me a couple of nights ago when I post a clip on my Sips with Aquinas YouTube channel. For those who are watching, we have two channels, Pints with Aquinas, Sips with Aquinas, where we put all our clips. And I had interviewed Scott Hahn about the Latin Mass, right?

And I was planning on releasing this clip at some point, but given recent events, I feared losing, right, that friendship. You know, I don't want to offend my friend. Yeah. Just like I wouldn't want to offend you. It would cause me pain if I knew that I had hurt you, you know, or said something that offended, say, your wife or your child. I said something like that happened. I felt the need. I wanted to share this. Can I

share this? And he said, yes. But that fear of, I don't want to offend our Lord. I don't want to offend our blessed Lord. I love him. Yeah. And it really calls out, I find with the beauty that everything is demanded of us. As you said, these points overlap in a certain regard, but I find that with the beauty point is that there is something that I am called to, to enter into, and it's a fear of losing him. I must enter into it. This is so extraordinarily overwhelming. I don't want to lose him. I want to be here with him. extraordinarily overwhelming. I don't want to lose him. I want to be here with him. So I never, I have to be honest, I've been to, there's very few occasions within the Novus Order where I have had that. Me too. I'd say 1% of my entire experience is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and sometimes you have it beautifully celebrated. I mean, we're so

spoiled here at St. Peter's with Father Huffman and Father Greer. They celebrate so beautifully. Ad Orientum, they celebrate, you know, chanting certain parts in Latin, but it's... Altarail. Altarail, kneel down, but it's rare to find that elsewhere. I think I wouldn't... And whenever you find something new, a new theory, or some sort of institution that isn't quite working, you have to figure out why isn't it working. Is it systemic or is it incidental? And I think that's part of the question that a lot of people are asking about having two different forms of the mass

and which one is superior, which one's inferior, all these questions. An analogy is rising up in my mind. I haven't fully fleshed it out yet, so let's see how it goes. I think sometimes those who do not attend the Latin mass can impose their own woundedness upon those who attend the Latin mass and cannot understand how it is they would find these things desirable. Or you shouldn't want to do that.

Well, why shouldn't I? Well, maybe it's because when you did it, it was robotic and it didn't mean anything to you. And so you just assume that it doesn't mean anything to them. Whereas I think maybe what's required is a bit of humility to actually ask them, to walk with them, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. is a bit of humility to actually like ask them to walk with them that kind of thing yeah yeah yeah that makes sense yeah we don't want to impose our junk on other people just because i don't get anything out of it okay well maybe they very much do have you asked them yeah silence is the silence is the reason why people don't this is what it. But that's number five for us. Yeah.

And I think silence, I mean, I would love to hear what you have to say on it. This is just completely by observation, but I really think that silence does reveal you to yourself. It gives you a chance to sit down and say, what's going on? You know, who am I? Whose am I? You know, who am I? Whose am I? You know, what am I living for? In our overly technological age where all of our contraptions

are vying for our attention constantly, you know, some have said that we escape to movie theaters, or I guess now just Netflix, in order to just avoid... Assholes. Well, avoid being asked for attention for everything. But instead of giving up to silence, we give up to movies. So we give up to something else that's not asking for constant changing of our attention,

but something that we can just hold on to forever. But ironically, of course, that's just fine for our attention in a completely different way and it doesn't give us a moment to stand before the creator into the moments that are sacred into the moments that are silent and to say you know what am i doing here yeah an initial thought came to me 17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal, one of his poncets was, all of the ills of the world can be traced back to the fact that man does not know how to sit alone in his room. You know, something to that effect. And it's a tremendous point. And I remember as, say, a 16-year-old who would go out partying,

you know, maybe have a few drinks, maybe drink too much, hating the silence before I drifted off to sleep often not being able to handle it so needing to play music because i hated being with myself because as you say silence reveals you to yourself and sometimes you don't like what you find there and there is something about the latin mass and the novus ordo where the priest is facing with the people that you just naturally don't assume that this is a show. Oh, yeah. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. But when you've been kind of conditioned to think that, well, every experience I've had where somebody on a stage is looking at me, it's their job to hold my attention. Then you take that into Mass, and so the priest feels

the need perhaps to be a little more funny or a little more clever or a little more creative. But one of the beautiful things about the Latin Mass, it must be great for a priest. It's like, no, all you got to do is just celebrate the liturgy. You don't have to be interesting. You have to be funny. You just have to be faithful and reverent. Yep. I know we're trying to be positive here, but I do think, I'm very happy to say that I don't think there's any excuse for ad populum masses. I don't think there's any excuse for that. And it's really this point that you're talking about, is that we're not just happy-go-lucky, just entertaining you one more time. For the liturgy of the Word, that

makes some sense. There's instruction happening. For the liturgy of the word, that makes some sense. There's instruction happening. For the homily, obviously, there's instruction happening. But he's not talking to us when he's sacrificing, making the sacrifice upon the altar, entering, conforming his life into the life of Christ so as to help us get to heaven. He's Moses leading us out of Egypt. He's Joshua leading us into the promised land. This is a moment where we have to be with God fully in an order, in a true

common good. I mean, these words are in some senses synonymous, where the order of the congregation is leading us to the good. The common good that we have is not one another. It's Christ. It's where we're moving in the common direction. I think that's really important, and we only get the moment of silence. We only, I mean, of course, when we see somebody else's face, we feel like we have to react. If there's nobody else's face, we, all we have, all, the only face that we see is Christ's when he is left and above the priest's head, you know, as we stare upon the host. I mean, that's what we're being led to. And in an increasingly or thoroughly secularized world where there is no sacred space

and there is no sacred silence. How sad if I was to go to worship our Lord and I find that people are shuffling about the church like they would in a 7-Eleven. There's really no difference. I don't want that. I want to go somewhere where I can kiss the earth, as it were. I want to go somewhere where I can kiss the earth, as it were. I want to encounter the divine. I want to be able to sit before the Lord in silence.

And I think this was an interesting experience because Liam and our kids and Cameron were going to a Byzantine liturgy, right, where it's like there's a lot going on in Byzantine. It's so beautiful. I mean, there's constant chanting and bowing. And then we went, the first Latin mass we went to after three years of that was a low Mass. And my kid's like, what's happening? It feels like an awkward adoration or something.

What's he doing? And I get it. But again, it's because we've maybe been conditioned to think that, okay, what am I going to get out of this? As opposed to what can I give? Right. Well, I do have to say, I don't find any attachment to the low Tridentine Mass. I mean, there's not enough to grapple with, in a sense. I can totally see why people all just started praying the rosary to themselves. Oh, totally. It's like doing something else, you know? I mean,

and I think that's important is that when we're talking about mystery and shrouding and the beauty and silence is that it's really important to be able to move from that dissimilarity into love to have this similarity be an occasion for love you actually have to have something that that is dissimilar like just silence for a long time is actually quite similar to being in adoration um and the fact that low masses were actually considered private masses i think is something important that some again we need we need to sit with uh that there is a you know properly speaking something called a public mass that's a high mass and so i i for those of you who are saying that

i've kind of experienced this i always say i'm with you on that one, I think. I think I'm also with them when they talk about the liturgy of the Word only, like, being in Latin. It's like, wait, why is that? Shouldn't I be able to understand? And I think, yeah, you should. I mean, I think sacred scripture is mysterious enough. The Bible was written in Koine Greek for a reason. I'm very happy to be corrected and be taught, like, why it's not that way. But I think part of the reforms, what you saw in the Middle Ages was, or excuse me, part of the reforms of Vatican II and moving to the vernacular for the sacred scriptures moves back to what we had in the Middle Ages, where vernacular was used for the liturgy of the word you know when you when

you when you're talking to people it's nice to have one another understand you when you're talking to god it's a completely different posture that we're to have so anyways i'd be interested in what people think about that and being corrected on that or more reasons i'd love to hear them but but but i do within this point of silence, I don't want to press it too far. That's the reason why I bring that in. You know, when you mentioned adoration, that made me think of something.

You spoke about your mom having that profound experience and the look on her face when she left the church. And what was it she said to you? Yeah, she said that, I finally get it. I finally get it. He's not talking to me. Well, that reminded me of an experience a friend of mine had. When I was living in Ireland, we flew out an ex-porn performer from LA,

and we hosted this big night in a jazz club where I interviewed her about the reality of being in the porn industry. She was a Protestant Christian at this point, but I took her to a traditional Eucharistic adoration. She's never been to adoration. She's never been to mass, anything like that. And I said, well, come in. We'll go and we'll just pray for a little bit.

And we did that. And whenever you're praying with a friend in a foreign environment like that, you're always terribly concerned about what they're thinking and going through. This must be very strange for them. So I won't keep them too long. And I was so afraid when we walked out that she'd say, yeah, what was that? Why do you worship bread? Or what was that gold thing? But we walked out, and she looked at me, and she touched my arm, and she said, did you

feel the presence of God in there? Like, she was overwhelmed by it. And I kind of, on a sensory level, was like, I mean, not really. I had an itchy foot. But I know objectively, but, you know, like like, I mean, not really. I had an itchy foot. But I know objectively, but I didn't have that experience, but she did. It was really cool. Well, maybe I'm just thinking as you're saying that, maybe I should revise some of the dissimilarity of like don't invite

or like our first move to evangelization shouldn't be to invite somebody to Mass because these experiences happen all the time. Yeah, I could have explained it to her. mean i mean i could have actually prepared her better than i did and maybe it would have been a more profound experience but as you say i mean the catechumens were asked to leave yeah or were asked to leave yeah at the liturgy of the eucharist so yeah maybe something in particular like lapsed catholics coming back you know finding something completely new wait this isn't the catholicism that I hated and stomped off. Anyways.

Should we move on? Yeah. Sixth thing we love. You want to say it? Boys participate with men. I think this is just so important. Particularly, I have in mind altar servers, that their job is necessary.

Their job is complicated. Their job gains the respect of the men in the parish. Boys actually are drawn to the faith. It's hard work. It's hard fit, super hard work, yeah. I mean, your Peter's going through it. I mean, he's about to. Yeah. And you know what? I think that that increases their devotional life. As beautiful and as a child's simplicity is, it's called out of itself into greater reverence when that happens. And most importantly, it gives them a taste for what the vocation of the priesthood may be, you know? And particularly, like, that's the one who sacrifices for us.

Like, the job of a priest primarily is not to be a pastor, not to be a nice guy. It's to sacrifice himself in Christ, with Christ, for us, to us. That's it. And insofar as somebody, a young boy, is participating up with the priest, he says, is participating up with the priest, he says, you know, is this my vocation? Is this what I should be called to? Especially when he sees the seriousness with which the priest celebrates the Holy Mass.

Yeah, it becomes a serious option at that point. The seventh and final reason we love the Latin Mass, and then of course we're going to move on to what you have said, dear audience, and that is that it is old, like really old. It's super old, man. Yeah, I mean, it's the earliest parts are dating back to the beginning of the third century, the 200s, but the point, I don't, it's amazing to be able to pray with the same words that Christians have always prayed with. Well, for the vast majority of history, for the naysayers. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, fair enough. It is comforting to know that I'm not making this up. We're not making this up. I mean, Pope Benedict was a scandal. I mean, he wrote about the scandal of the liturgy when it broke him into two, in particular, into the Tridentine and the Novus Ordo. And particularly, he was far more critical of the Novus Ordo because it seemed, it gave people the sense that we just came up with it, that we just created it. But the spirit of the liturgy is not something that is

an artifact of man. It's not a creation of his hands. It's something that God has, in a sense, organically revealed to the church, so that the law of lex credendi, lex rendi, is together, but it's revealed, it's unified. It's something that is given and that we enter into. And I think that's what the age, in a sense, communicates to me. It's comfort. It's assurance that this is Christianity, that my union with Christ has a chance, has a shot. Hope is able to lead faith and charity before her because we have

this assurance that this is what we have been given to pray, teaching us to pray. Because how do we really know God? Of course, there's the revelation of nature itself and the beauty that it is, but we need the revelation of the Word to be able to even interpret the revelation of nature itself and the beauty that it is. But we need the revelation of the word to be able to even interpret the revelation of nature well. I mean, this is, you know, kind of catechist 101, so I'm sorry to bore people, but we really need that. We need to be given the words to pray, because we need to be given the revelation of who God is. If we're not taught who God is or how to approach him, then we really don't have a shot. Then we're just making it up ourselves. And man, I don't have any

I cannot get myself to God. Like that is just obvious. I can't just make up the words, this whole I'm just spiritual thing. I don't believe it for a second. I know I'm not spiritual. I know I'm a pretty crummy guy and I know I need the church's help. And if the church has led so many saints to heaven through this prayer, through this sacrifice, then I know that I have a shot. A misunderstanding I am hearing of late is that the Latin Mass was invented at Trent or something. And so why are you so concerned about these 400 years that elapsed? Just like move on to this. What do you say to that?

Yeah. So it certainly was not invented at Trent. It was codified. Yeah, it was codified. And what you do find, and I think this is an important thing, is that there were different organic developments that happened. This is really important for traditions. You can't have abrogations, really,

you know, and that might sound like a bit of fighting words. This is the one thing that I, my kind of Islamic radars go up in the moda proprio, where at the end, everything else has been abrogated. Now, sometimes there's some lines or some reasons for that, but it might tend to go up. Abrogation is just a done thing within Islam because it's a legal tradition. If one thing's not working, we'll try something else. But we're a theological tradition most properly. The revelation that God has given us, teaching us who he is, is building upon itself as we get more and more clear glimpses of who he is and what he does, how he wants to be with us and participate in our lives, or us in his life, rather. I think that's really important that

we have this development, and that's what you did see at Trent. It was not an abrogation of all the organic developments that did happen from the earlier Latin liturgies, it was almost a conglomeration of them, a mixing together of them. It was a design that beautifully wove what was happening together so that we might have greater unity in our prayer. That is a really important difference, I think. Beautiful, man. Well, that's the seven things that we that we love about the latin mass and and i don't know about you but for i i for one i'm going to try to become more frequent in my attendance of the latin yeah me too me too yeah yeah i think this is giving us all a chance to see why is it because pope but pope francis's um major concern he mentions in

in the letter is that there's schismatic tendencies. You know, we got to check ourselves on that. If we have schismatic tendencies. Pope Francis is right on that. Yeah. Then we must repent. Not right in the sense that on the ground, all these people at Latin Masses. Right.

I don't mean he's right on that. But yeah, like I get it. Like I see that. But then as I said to you, I also saw that when I went to the Byzantine church. And I went to a lot of different Byzantine churches. And I would very regularly encounter at least one guy who was like, yeah, I don't know how to feel about people with infallibility. I'm like, what do you mean you don't know how you feel about people with infallibility? You're Catholic.

So if you're watching us right now and you think that Jacob and I are just trying to be divisive, you might say to yourself, well, someone who is going to, say, a Ruthenian Byzantine church, suppose that was just put the kibosh on. And again, the light of mass hasn't been squashed yet. It feels like it might be heading in that direction. We'll have to see how it plays out. Wouldn't you have some compassion for those families who had found a great love in the Byzantine church? Or do you think they're wrong? Again, if you're very critical of Latin mass goers, do you think they're wrong to find it beautiful?

Is that... Yeah. I mean, I think there's something important about just a little bit how it's unnatural that there are two different expressions of the liturgy in the West. And again, Pope Benedict was very clear about this, primarily prior to his papal election, where it's almost insane to give people the impression that we've created another one. Okay, that's one point. But just the idea that there's two different expressions,

it's almost scandalous. And I think what he was trying to do was move, and this is just theory, you know, could be just rubbish, start to move towards a single expression of the Mass. And you do see that in his own moda proprio. You see that, I think, in what many churches are doing, what St. Peter's is doing, where the 10 and 12 crowd are like totally interchangeable. We're in 30 years or something like that. They take away the two missiles and just give us a third, and that's the only one we have. It's like, great, we got one. We're praying in union together.

That's wonderful. We made it through kind of a really tough time, you know, but we made it through. I think that goal of unity within the right is important. And so if people are kind of, you know, want to affirm what's just happened in that regard, we would say, great, like that is a common goal, I think, at least for me. Yeah. All right. So what we're going to do now is take a look at some of the comments y'all have sent in. I posted this on YouTube the other day. We got 418 comments from y'all. We're not going to read all of them, but we'll go through some of the most popular. Thank you for watching. If

you're enjoying this episode, if you think it's beneficial, if you think maybe your priest or your bishop might even enjoy it, you might respectfully share it with them. And certainly click share in the bottom right-hand corner of this video, this little share button. Sharing that on Facebook would help us a lot. Also, as I mentioned earlier, we now have another channel called Sips with Aquinas. We really wanted to be intentional about what we were posting on this channel. I didn't just want to throw everything at the wall. I wanted you to know what you were getting to see whether or not you thought it was worth subscribing. So here on this channel, Pints with Aquinas, we do these longer form discussions.

Father Gregory Pine, who I forgot to mention earlier, will be doing an episode on Wednesday addressing this modu proprio. But then on Sips with Aquinas is where we take out those little three-minute clips and put them up. And that way you might be able to share them easily with friends. Or if you're not terribly sure if you want to invest in an entire episode, watching one of those clips might convince you that the episode is worth watching. Or maybe it'll convince you that it's not. But either way, please help us out by subscribing to the new Sips with Aquinas channel. And we would really appreciate it. All right.

So I don't have my glasses. So let's see if we can do our best here. I can read them if you're struggling. Thank you. And I also told people to thumbs up what they thought were the best comments. So this comment by Joe T. got 317 thumbs up. Wow. I'll share it.

You see what you think. He says, here's what he loves about going to the Latin Mass. The whole Mass is structured towards the veneration of the Eucharist in obvious ways. Priests face the altar. Structure is more streamlined. The predictability of the language and rites take the emphasis off of them to the degree that they stand alone as parts of the Mass and instead emphasizes them as they are related to the Eucharist. It's much easier to remain undistracted.

Now, we've addressed a lot of these, so we don't necessarily have to comment on them, but if you feel the need, feel free. Nope. Christocentric is beautiful. Joseph Tolan says what he loves about going to the Latin Mass is the robust prayers and gestures are explicitly Christocentric and sacrificial in nature. We address that. John Acrila says,

It taught me what a priest really is. It showed me reverence and truly gave me the understanding of the timelessness of Calvary. Not only am I worshiping in a worthy manner, I'm also worshiping the way my ancestors worshiped. Yeah, that's beautiful. That's so beautiful. Sean Byers says, Christ-centric, not anthropocentric. It's a mass that acknowledges by act the reality that unity of man is not possible unless rooted in a unity in Christ. I'm kind of hoping you'll have some comments on some of these, otherwise I'm just

going to keep reading. I'm just enjoying all this. You know, one thing, I wonder if this made it in there, is that you do find a lot of like-minded Catholics there. Yeah, you really do. Yeah, and that's a really special thing, to be able to go in and presume the faith, which you don't really get to do in a lot of Novus Ordo. This is going to sound weird,

but one of the things I love about the Latin Mass is just how open mothers are to breastfeed their children. Dude. I just love it. I think it brought one of my friends back to the church. Tell us about that. Tell us how. No, let me set this up.

This would be a great sip with Aquinas. Tell us how a breastfeeding mom at the Latin mass led your friend back to the faith. Yeah, shout out to Joseph. He left the church, I think, in high school or early college, and is a terribly intellectual guy, super smart, and really didn't feel a need for religion. But, really didn't feel a need for religion. But of course, looking into the void that is atheism, you can almost easily fill it with something also eternal, where God takes up that infinite void with his active infinity. So he walks in one day thinking maybe maybe you'll find something here and uh and who comes down next to him in the pew but a mother and a mantilla seven kids and one on her chest coming in he goes surely there is a god he said there's nothing more attractive in the world and in part of it

was her pain you know and part of it was her beauty in the moment. And she genuflected. Yeah, she genuflected before getting into the... While breastfeeding. Yeah. That is a woman that that man is unworthy to have. That's right. That's right. But I think there's, you know, that sacrifice mixed with the beauty of the reverence and the stripes. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's funny. Again, there's that stereotype that people who are into Latin must be super puritanical or some such. You're like, well, there's a lot of people being fed during a holy mass,

and it's just cool. It's just beautiful. I love it. It's lovely. It shows a great appreciation for mothers and babies and life. Now let's see here. This fellow, or lady, I beg your pardon, Deanna Betts, says, I didn't appreciate the TLM until I started reading the Old Testament.

The TLM is a beautiful link between the structured worship rites in the Old Testament and the person of Jesus revealed in the New. Yeah, that's a great one. Are there negative ones? I really want to hear what people are... Yeah, well, would you like me to see if... I mean, I'm honestly just going down the list. And so far...

Let's go down to the bottom of the barrel. We're going to go down to like... I got to scroll for a while, but we're going to go down to question or comment 400. Let's see what we got here. Actually, I mean, are you going to read it first? I don't know. Let's see. Everyone in the church knows what is going on and why they are there.

You can feel that the people who attend the Latin Mass are devout. Okay, so that's a positive one. The TLM is the liturgy where it says Gabby. I should say their name since they were kind enough to... E-to-V? A-to-V? The TLM is the liturgy where I don't need to bring myself to feel the metaphysic reality or to focus on holy mystery, but rather I am lifted into heaven

where the presence of God is so strong that I want to bow even lower and to make myself even smaller to properly place myself in front of him. There's just nothing like it. I've only been twice. How beautiful is that? Because it's so far away, but after each time i was second guessing myself if it was even real if it really did feel as majestic as i remembered it that's beautiful that was the most negative one you found here's a negative one

this is great this person's name is Riders of Rohan. I hope that's their real name. Middle name of... He says, I have never attended. I want to someday. I will be honest. Some Latin mass people have really turned me away from going.

However, they seem to treat people who don't go like second class Catholics. Yeah, some do. It's true. Some do that, especially in comment sections. I'm sure we've had a ton of that in the live stream tonight. Have we? It hasn't been too bad. Some do that, especially in comment sections. I'm sure we've had a ton of that in the live stream tonight, have we?

It's not been too bad. Hasn't been too bad. Okay, glory. But yeah, you get that. You get these people and they look down their nose at people who honestly didn't even have an option, perhaps. And they're doing their best and they go into a reverent nervous order and they can be like that. And that's very, very off-putting. Yeah, totally.

like that and that's very very off-putting yeah totally so maybe like we've done a really good job but i think defending our traditional brothers and sisters which i think we consider ourselves basically a part yeah but maybe it's important that we not let the treads off the hook as it were yeah and and to be perfectly honest it's i spent it's been today talking about this with a couple of friends after we had seen Francis's letter, or the first time we saw one another since reading Francis's letter, and we were just furious with the guys, everybody can guess, on Twitter and on YouTube, because, oh my gosh, what have you been doing? You truly have, in a real sense, questioned the authority of the Pope. And even if you say, no, no, he's still valid.

He's still, you know, he still, you know, sits in the seat of Peter. You know, but you say everything that he does is stupid. Devil horns on his head and memes. Yeah, that's... Give me a break. I hope your Patreon, you know know is big enough they're in the money i'm good thanks you know i'm angry enough already that's what happens when you drink continue no i haven't had a sip uh maybe i should calm down but but seriously it's like

you just wanted one more provocative statement after another and i hope the money was worth it you know now that you have actually led so many people into this this place of anger into this place where you say that that France is everything he does is is pretty much worthless I mean give me a break you really think you're saying somebody did this on a video yeah I don't want you to call them out no one else you want to but okay I see what you mean so you watch this and you you had this reaction. Oh my gosh, it's just horrifying. And if that's what Pope Francis is seeing, or rather if his bishops who, you know, gave him the feedback from a survey that he gave them are seeing online, and they're not really going to

their parishes and seeing just, you know, the mom with the seven kids and how wonderful she is. Then of course you're going to think that these people are radicals and evil, but they are just being egged on. I really think that this entire technological infrastructure that we've created is just to make people more angry with one another. It is for sure. That this mimetic rivalry is breaking up Catholicism, like true unity, the Catholicity. So what would your advice be to those who seem to not be able to help themselves? They say all sorts of demeaning things against the Pope.

Come right back to what the foundations of the church are. You know, yes, like there are some grievous things happening, disgusting things. I would say diabolical things. But don't lose the unity that we have. You know, for every one bad thing that you think, think another good thing about where you're at. I mean, we really have to retrain ourselves.

But I get so infuriated because I really think that there's truth that's being hidden, that people are being misled in all of this, that we're not able to see just how glorious our tradition is because we're participating in the media culture. The media just wants another click. It just won't because another click means another buck. And if that's what you're going for, man, that's just. Well, look, you asked for, no, that and i think it isn't it's important we point that

out like no one is accusing people who go to we we are not accusing those who go to the latin mass of being angry and cismat we're not doing that you know just like it would be inappropriate to accuse those who go to the novice novice orderdo as like material or formal heretics or something like that. Sure, sure, yeah, yeah, of course. But it is important to recognize that this does exist and it's not okay. Yeah, but we really need to make sure that we're not treating Twitter as if it's real life.

I mean, it's not real life. It's not how people really behave with one another. You wouldn't say things like what you tweet to another person when- Hopefully not. Yeah, well, hopefully not. But we begin to do that. Oh, I've got a another person. Hopefully not. Yeah, hopefully not. But we begin to do that. Oh, I've got a great critical comment for you.

Okay, bring it on. You said you wanted the most critical comment. I'm going to smack you with a comment from Adam, Adam Malwick. I'm going to give up saying last names, even trying. Most last names, unpronounceable. The most boring and unchristian-like experience in my entire life. The whole thing in a dead language.

Nobody speaks. You can barely see what's going on, and you stare at the back of someone's head. Everything is so static, lifeless, and lacking human emotion that it seems pointless to even be there. This kind of mass should be forbidden. There is a reason why Vatican II changed this.

Mass is not just a faraway matter between a priest and Eucharist. Christ is in our hearts, and we, the lay people, are his priests too. And we should all pray, participate, and understand what's going on. This is an alienating, dumbed-down version of an actual Mass. Wow, he's saying that of the Latin Mass. And then he says, once again, ban it, in all capitals. Ban it. B-A-N-T, yeah.

The first thing to point out is that the document in the Second Vatican Council, of course, Sacrosanctum Concilium, says nothing about the priest facing the people. So he'd still be upset with what Vatican II has said there. It says Gregorian chant should be given prior to placing the liturgy. It says that the faithful ought to know the ordinary in Latin. So if the Novus Ordo was implemented the way the Second Council called for it, it sounds like this guy would still be upset. What do you say to him? Because, I mean, to be fair, this is what people say who just

think it's nuts. It's just dead language, no human emotion. Just look at the back of someone's head. What do you say to that? Well, I would say something different to each person, I think. I'd really like to know who this guy is, where he came from, what was his experience growing up. But the first things I would just say is a general rebuttal is that, would you say that what people were doing for the last, you know, nearly 2,000 years, 1,800 years, was illegitimate? Would you really, like, if we cut ourselves off from the tradition, from what Christians were doing, then can we actually call ourselves Christians? I mean, that's a, that's a really important thing. Now, I'm not, what I'm not saying here is that, I'm not turning around and

saying, just because we've made it up, we're not, we're, we're illegitimate. We've already made that, were illegitimate. We've already made that, you know, claim that it is. It's clearly so. Some cases, beautifully so. But you cannot say the opposite of the Tridentine Mass lest you cut yourself off from the council. Sort of excommunicate the majority of Catholicism. Yeah, exactly. But, I mean, Vatican II, I mean, the one that everybody rallies around. I mean, there was no call for universal use of the vernacular. I mean, even the rubrics for the Novus Ordo still presume that the priests are celebrating ad orientum, not ad populum. The rubrics presume that.

And, you know, most of all, yes, we are his priests, but not really in that moment. That is true symbolically, but we have to be first, well-grounded in reality first before we move to abstractions. Symbolism only ever takes form off of the truth. Yeah. Look, we have almost 900 people watching right now, 898 people to be precise. Wouldn't it be cool if 898, 899, 900, 901, 902, maybe we could close by offering three Hail Marys. Yeah, let's do that. We'll offer it for the church.

We'll offer it for our Holy Father. And we'll offer it for our bishops. I don't know. I mean, the church kind of encompasses those two categories, but I'm just thinking on the spot here. Yeah. All right. Let's do it.

I love it. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Jacob, before we wrap up, I have a link at the top of the show notes to New Polity. Thanks. So maybe just tell us a bit more about you. People listen to you like, this guy's incredible. How do I learn more about him? What's he up to? Well, thanks. New Polity is a think tank that we run out of Steubenville. It's precisely

for Catholic social teachings, but even more than that, when Christ came to found a kingdom, the kingdom of God, he didn't mean it in some ethereal way. He meant to concretize it. He meant for it to be something real that transforms the way that we interact with one another, and as a result, changes our entire political order. As a result, changes our entire economic order. So it's a place where we start to sit and think, and then also live out what that might be. So join us in for that conversation, and we'd look forward to you helping us through it as well. Awesome. And it's a beautiful website. And you guys have a quarterly

quarterly journal, which is also just beautifully laid out. Alex does such a fantastic job. Everything. So I'd really recommend people go check that out. Thanks. Thanks. Yeah. Sweet, sweet. Are we good? Thanks for watching, everybody. God bless. Give us a thumbs up. Subscribe. Hit the bell button. And we've got four. No, we have three new episodes coming up this week. We have Father Gregory Pine, who will be discussing the modu proprio on Wednesday and taking your questions.

On Thursday, I'll be chatting with Monsignor Charles Pope. And then on Friday, we have that discussion between Jimmy Akin and Dr. William Lane Craig. And as I said at the beginning of the show, please help us help my friend, Elisa, by checking out her candle website.

She is a beautiful homeschooling mom of five kids. She's not paying me to advertise and get money from her candles. She didn't even ask me to do this. We just love her family and want to help her out.

And it's legitimately the best smelling candles I've ever... Here, check this one out. What is that? This one is called Ritual. Ah, Ritual. Smell that. It's beautiful. You can take this home to Alice and you guys can smell it together.

That's so nice. So anyway, her link is in the description below for Truly Kindred. Please buy a candle or 800 of them. They even, I think, do bulk stuff. So give her a call. Contact them. And if you don't like it, she will actually give you a refund.

So you have nothing to lose. So please go check them out. As I say, I don't make a cent from that. I just want to help her out. So please help me help her out. God bless. Thanks a lot. Thanks, brother.

That's it. Kanskje vi kan ta utsida på en kål? សូវាប់ពីបានប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពាប់បានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបានបា ༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱༱� សូវាប់ពីបានប់ពីបានប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពីប់ពី Bye.