I go to Mass for Scripture and the Eucharist, for prayer, worship of God, and adoration of Christ in the Eucharist. I sit in the chapel, instead of the main part of the Church. There’s a large window in the chapel, behind the chapel altar, opening to the main altar, and loud speakers so I can hear and see well. But there’s also a tabernacle in the chapel with a clear door and a monstrance behind the door, with the Eucharist constantly visible for adoration. I sit quietly there, since not many parishioners will be in the chapel. My mother and I used to sit there, listening to music group practice before one of the Masses, when she was alive (d. 2019).

I don’t care about all the criticisms of the Novus Ordo Mass. For me, it has everything I need. I’m not interested in the details of any form of any Mass. In fact, I prefer a plain almost ugly Mass to a beautiful one. If the cantor and music are too good, it distracts from prayer.

Yes, the Vetus Ordo is like “falling in love”, which is emotion and exterior. It is like meeting a beautiful charming young woman. But the soul of the Vetus Ordo is the same as the soul of the Novus Ordo. Newest in Latin can also mean last. The Novus Ordo is like the woman you fell in love with when she was young, but now she is older, and most of the superficial stuff is less attractive and less important; what is left are the important things in a relationship. The beauty of the form of the Vetus Ordo is dangerous. People fall into a shallow emotional love with what is superficial. A Mass should have beauty in form, should it not? But some have fallen for the exterior elements, rather than the interior, and they do not love the woman, just her superficial qualities that will pass with age.

Then there is something worse, which Francis is fighting, like a father whose daughter has fallen in with the wrong crowd. Some are using the beauty of the Vetus Ordo to draw the faithful away from the Church Herself. The beauty of form in the Vetus Ordo becomes the bait to draw the weak in faith or the ignorant or the proud away from the Truths of holy Mother Church. “Come away from that old woman, the Church, and worship with this beautiful priestess in our pagan temple.” Can the Mass become idolatry? It can if you marry its exterior form to the heresies and schism forming on the far right in Catholicism.

Errors include replacement of Church authority with the majority view of traditionalists, who speak as if inerrant because they claim to be the mouthpieces of Tradition. Instead, they are the Oracle of Delphi, a windy noisy temple spewing nonsense (like Vigano). They preach hatred for Pope Francis. They are in formal schism, for rejecting Vatican II and every Pope since then. Their heresies include: that Popes can be heretics, that Popes can be apostates or idolaters; that the Church is not indefectible, but has in fact defected; that the Apostolic See is corrupted and leading astray; that the Novus Ordo is was a grave error by the indefectible Church and the unblemished Apostolic See; and so many other grave errors. Once you reject the Magisterium, one heresy after another follows.

They say, “We’re growing rapidly, adding more and more adherents to the Latin Mass”, and they think that justifies their schismatic and heretical position. Fundamentalist Protestantism is growing rapidly in South America. I know I keep mentioning this but, Arianism was very popular in its day and it grew rapidly. That’s just not a valid argument. The true Church grew rapidly, in Her early centuries (and at other times). It just does not prove anything. A rapidly growing business might be good for society, or it might be bad.