I must say I don`t normally make much of a fuss about Youth Sunday aka the Feast of Christ the King. However at the Extraordinary Form Mass this morning I mentioned it to highlight that we have a good number of youth who come each week. They have never struck me as rigid or hiding something. Where I do find an annoying rigidity is among those who are rigid in their refusal to see anything good about the EF. We have to put up with a lot of stick at this end of things such as visiting priests who think it so clever or amusing, when they preach or make an appeal, to say the first couple of sentences of their sermon in Latin. Or are quite happy to make an appeal but then, I hear, actively dissuade people from attending the EF. The arrogance astounds me as well as just the lack of respect and straightforward courtesy. Or those who throw their hands up in horror at the mention of the EF Mass as being completely beyond the pale and not to be taken seriously in the life of the diocese and at best to be tolerated and certainly not encouraged. The letter to the bishops accompanying Summorum Pontificum said, lest we forget: What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us
too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even
considered harmful..
Those who throw a stone at young Latin Mass enthusiasts should think first about themselves and in what matters they may be unacceptably rigid before doing so.
