By Anthony Esolen

Last Sunday I was away from home. It means I must hear Mass somewhere else. (…)

The Second Vatican Council’s document on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, says that Latin is the language of the Church; there was no Latin. It says that the pipe organ is best fitted for worship for its grandeur; there was no music on the organ, there was a woman playing the piano, in that style befitting a hotel lounge or a posh funeral parlor—all tinklety-tinkly ninths and elevenths and swoons. Sacrosanctum Concilium says that the people in charge of the music should avail themselves of the vast treasury of Christian hymns; there was one true hymn while the other three were show tunes—slovenly, effeminate, unfit for the liturgy, and impossible to sing for a congregation of both sexes. (…)

Sacrosanctum Concilium says that silence should be respected, but there was no silence. How could there be? We are to be silent before the holy, but at Saint Secular of Southern California there was no sense of the holy.

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