Are They Losing?

The New Liturgical Movement prints an essay which poses the question: are the LitWonkLefties losing?

It's their observation that the screech-level is getting high, and the arguments advanced by those folks are no longer "arguments" in the strict sense--rather, they are lies, or name-calling (usually the mark of the losing side.)

Regardless of what happens with the rumours we've been hearing these past few weeks, it seems to me that these sorts of comments are potentially the signs of increasing desperation on the part those who wish to see a further program of liberalization (ultimately de-Catholicization when taken in its more extreme forms) in Catholic doctrine and liturgy -- and who are recognizing the signs of the beginning of the end in this regard. One way or another, at one time or another, this will happen.

The dissenting program is ultmately not self-sustaining, it has no staying power -- it is akin to a cultural group which contracepts itself into non-existence. As this program effectively desacralizes and de-Catholicizes, its adherents fall away, or at very least do not multiply with new generations. By their very principles it creates a culture where new generations no longer see a need to stay within the Church and they leave it. There are some exceptions of course, but the statistics about practising Catholics within our Catholic schools bears witness to this trend, the dying of so many aging religious orders bear witness to this trend. It produces few vocations, gains few converts and keeps few individuals as the years tick on.

Perhaps the most glaring of them is mentioned:

Cardinal Mahony's recent comments which spoke of Latin in the Roman liturgy as not really "traditional" and only indicative of a "small slice" of our liturgical tradition is, perhaps, more self-revealing than usual -- and comes, let it be noted, in response to a question which highlighted to increasing popularity of our liturgical tradition. One would hope that such embarrassing inaccuracies and misinformation would help spur some people to distance themselves from the Cardinal, and hopefully spur the Cardinal to distance himself from his own comments. Again, their extreme nature smack of a kind of desperation because of how obviously inaccurate they are.

Rumor (and it IS rumor) has it that B-16 will soon sign and present a motu proprio which will "liberalize" the circumstances under which the Tridentine Rite Mass (Mass of 1962/Old Rite) can be celebrated. Practiced observers doubt that he will do so. At the same time, we know that B-16 has initiated talks with the SSPX about reconciliation.

The winds of change....