by Michael Kramer

Created on: December 19, 2008

Oddly enough, I am also writing from the Springfield-Cape Girardeau Diocese, as someone on the "yes" side is. I moved here about a year ago. I spent most of my life growing up in Miami, Florida. In my 21 years, I have seen Masses all over the Country, in both the Extraordinary and Ordinary Forms of the Roman Rite.

What if I told you that the Church was reversing what happened in the 1960's, but that there is no other possible course since not a single Council document called for what we have today, and the vast majority of the Council Fathers who voted for reform would take back their vote if they could have seen into a crystal ball into todays liturgical madness? In other words, the Holy Father is moving the reform in the direction called for by Vatican Council II. Shocker!

I will have to address both Forms of the Roman Rite. Let's look at the situation surrounding the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (TLM).

By the grace of God I found this Mass myself when I was 11, on the Internet. My life hasn't been the same since. Before discovering this treasure of the Church, I had no desire to be a priest. Since discovering it, thoughts of the Holy Priesthood continue to resurface in my mind.

In 1969, Pope Paul VI released "Missale Romanum". This document promulgated a new Rite of the Mass. At the time, there was much fuss about wether or not priests could continue to use the TLM. In nearly all cases, the answer came back in the negative. Truly out of character for the Catholic Church, given that Archbishop Sheen explains in a video on the TLM that the Church has a custom of never abolishing a custom or rite in the Mass that comes to us from time immemorial. Pope John Paul II in Ecclesia Dei taught that "respect must be shown everywhere", for those like myself who attend the TLM. Pope Benedict XVI, nearly 40 years after poor management of the reforms in Diocese's around the world, especially concerning the role of the TLM, taught that the previous Missal had never been aborrogated, and hence was "always permitted", and also will soon officially promulgate the first of, God willing, many reforms to the current Missal, the upcoming changes having been initiated by Pope John Paul II.

It is too bad that priests who have since passed into eternity did not have the chance to hear the Holy Father vindicate them. Thousands of priests continued to say the TLM when the new Missal came out. I remember attending one such Mass in Miami. The priest was in his 80's, cast aside, and

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