The Mass is handed down to us from apostolic tradition, developed over the centuries of faith by the real devotional life of the People of God. It is therefore like a living, breathing, growing organism, reflecting and, in a mysterious way, sharing in the divine and human life of the Son of God and of His Mystical Body. The Mass is something we gratefully and humbly receive, just as we do our human nature and our supernatural life in baptism. Thus, even if per impossibile the Mass were no more than a glorified communion service, we would STILL have no right, no business, deconstructing and reconstructing the Mass of the Roman Rite, an inheritance the Church always considered it her duty to guard and protect.
It was and is a crime for Church leaders to treat the Church’s tradition in such a contemptuous way; it was and is an incalculable loss for the spiritual vitality and sanctification of her members; it was and still is the principal cause of the crisis of faith through which we have been passing in the decades since the Council. The only way we will restore an integrally Catholic way of life is with an integral liturgy, the liturgy that the Holy Spirit built up over twenty centuries with the living stones of clergy, religious, and laity, with the breath of their orations, lections, and chants, with the fire of the Spirit poured forth upon the Church at Pentecost. No matter how valid a new sacramental rite may be, no one can create for it a history ex nihilo, no one can make it to be a treasure handed down when it is not. No matter how valid it may be, if it is defective in regard to the way of worship, it will be defective also in leading people to the end of worship. The way and the goal cannot be divorced: “what God has joined together, let no man (and no committee) put asunder.” read...