Conservative commentariat columnists and the fun of fox hunting

Having recently buried my mother, it came time for the sorting of heirlooms and memorabilia.

My mother was a collector, but it struck even me that keeping the booklet of "English text for use of the people at mass" - which was all the rage in 1964 - was a trifle eccentric, perhaps even odd. Well, for starters, she was protestant, after her father had an argument with the local priest about the level of tithing deemed needful.

Still, I now know where I get the 'useless junk might come in handy' gene from.

On the front of the booklet are a number of quotes from the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council's Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy:

In order that the Christian people may more certainly derive an abundance of graces from the sacred liturgy, holy Mother Church desires to undertake with great care a general restoration of the liturgy itself. For the liturgy is made up of immutable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These latter not only may, but ought to be changed with the passage of time if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become unsuited to it.

Now of course this act of modernization - under the imprimatur of N. T. Cardinal Gilroy, Archbishop of Sydney, and issued 10th June, 1964 - immediately led to a rebellion by conservatives in the Catholic church which continues to this day, as they demand the right to celebrate the mass in the obfuscatory, irrelevant, dead language of Imperial Rome, as if somehow the language of the Caesars was mystically intrinsic to the liturgy.

If you follow this kind of controversy in loon pond, with the squawking about the right and fitting way to cut eggs, whether from the big end or the little end, it immediately becomes clear that conservatism is deeply illogical and profoundly emotional. And therefore great fun.

Here was the church's rationale for using English and other languages directly accessible to the flock of the faithful:

Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that full, conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. Such participation by the Christian people as a "chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people" is their right and duty by reason of their baptism.

Well forget the nonsense about Christians being a chosen race (using race in that way is very Humpty Dumpty) but do a flip on the Church's feeble attempt at modernization by using English in the liturgy. You might get to thinking that the church's conservatives preferred the full theatrical, dramatic and unintelligible world of the Romans for mysterious reasons. 

Perhaps you could also say that they preferred the faithful to engage in empty, unconscious and inactive (even passive) ways in the liturgical celebration by using Latin, a language they couldn't understand, in the way that Latin had always been preferred by the power elites during the middle ages as a way of maintaining power and keep the peasants fruitfully ignorant.

Funnily enough, flicking through the pamphlet one phrase in Latin still made the cut when the celebrant says "Per omnia saecula saeculorum", which literally means for all centuries of all centuries, or for ever and ever or for ages of ages. 

Even the modernists couldn't resist one last dip of the hat to the past. Perhaps there's an emotional nostalgic sentimental irrational dash of the conservative in all of us.

I've often wondered what Christ would make of St. Peters, a vast and exceptionally vulgar display of material world power, naturally decorated in abundance with marble looted from ancient Roman buildings (that's right, they didn't just loot the language, they looted the architecture). But as it seems he's shown no interest in returning, and since the rapture seems to keep getting delayed from rapture to rapture, I guess I'll never know.

But I do think - taking a cue from his attitude to money lenders in the temple - that he might think it it just a mimicry of the pomp and pageantry royalty served up the peasantry as part of the process of staying in power and living the high life. In much the same way as Latin intrinsically has as much to do with spirituality as a Buddhist koan in ancient Chinese.

Now of course the way to deal with an issue like this is to dub the supporters of the Latin mass as a hurt, oppressed minority, the victim of cruel chardonnay sipping inner west latte loving elites, and you have the perfect mechanism for any argument.

So it goes.

Which is why is conservative is such an incoherent, emotional understanding of the world - an equivalent of the kind of euphoria that whistles through English people when confronted by a tune from Elgar or Australians assaulted by Waltzing Matilda or Americans by the endless repetition of their anthem and the display of their flag on everything that moves and much that doesn't.

Tories that quiver at the knees at the sight of the queen are as addicted to mumbo jumbo as any dedicated Marxist is addicted to gulags, while commentariat columnists who berate China are invariably struck dumb by the way that the United States leads the world in both the number and percentage of residents it incarcerates and at an absurdly high cost (New High In U. S. Prison Numbers).

But then how else can you show you're tough?

Now it's usually suggested that it's the left or socialists or liberals or greenies who are hysterical and emotional and illogical and unable to be trusted with the hard decisions, the tough calls, or the need for some fierce rucking to take the ball up the middle. To be conservative you have to be so dry that desiccated coconut would be positively brimming with moisture.

Well that's the theory, but what of course is charming about the inhabitants of loon pond is just how foolishly human they are while squawking about how foolishly human others are.

Which is why the forensic and taxonomic examination of all kinds of commentariat columnists can be such fun for the dedicated loon watcher.

So in honor of the campaign to bring back the Latin mass - and here's hoping Mel Gibson's next movie is in Aramaic and Russian - and in support of all the other passions, pieties and follies of our squawking loons, it's a view, a cry, a tally-ho and on with the chase.

It doesn't mean anything of course, but just like fox hunting it can be fun for all but the fox.