WHEREAS THOSE WHO PREFER THE ANCIENT LATIN MASS TO THE POINT OF REFUSAL OF ATTENDING THE NOVUS ORDO SHOOT THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT, WHICH, BY THE WAY, THEY HAVE DONE SINCE POPE FRANCIS ASCENDED TO THE PAPACY

This is a Novus Ordo Mass I celebrated at Saint Joseph Church in Macon, Georgia around 2008 or '09. Recently, a very traditional website, which only praises the TLM ditches the NO, used this photo to praise the TLM on their Facebook page. I posted a comment on that post saying in fact it was the "Ordinary Form" of the Mass celebrated in an" extraordinary way"! I think they might have removed the photo! Therein is the problem with traditionalists shooting themselves in the foot!

During the papacy of the pope of the century, Pope Benedict XVI, the progressives in the Church, symbolized by the National Catholic Reporter's ideologies, where angry, unhinged and apoplectic when Cardinal Ratzinger was elected. 

The liturgical progressives went ballistic when Pope Benedict issued his now defunct Summorum Pontificum, the logical progression of Pope Benedict's papal magisterium of renewal within continuity of the past. 

I never thought, during the papacy of Pope Benedict, that orthodox Catholics, either those completely satisfied with the modern Mass or those who prefer the TLM, would ever act as despicably against a pope as the modernists did to Pope Benedict.  

BOY WAS I WRONG!

And therein lies the animus Pope Francis has toward those who desire orthodoxy, especially those who want the TLM exclusively. We have unhinged prelates, priests and laity not only disrespecting the current pope but the papacy itself. They are, of course, Neo-Protestants. And one of the most unhinged is Archbishop Vigano, now justly excommunicated, but as a medicine to lead him to repentance and full communion with the Church once again. 

Let me give some advice to the orthodox, especially those who will not attend a Novus Ordo Mass, but drive hours to a TLM, even one where the priest is only partially in full communion with the Church:

GROW UP AND BECOME CATHOLIC.

Back in the day when I was a pastor, I experimented regularly with celebrating the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin, with a schola chanting the propers and other parts of the Mass. The entire Mass was ad orientem, except for the Liturgy of the Word, which, apart from using the Gradual, was the Liturgy of the Word for the day offered as it is in all Novus Ordo Masses. 

This Novus Ordo Mass was choreographed as the TLM is.

Holy Communion was distributed at an altar railing with kneeling for those who desire it but one could stand as well. 

I also celebrated the Novus Ordo in this "traditional" way but entirely in the vernacular, English in our case. 

When Saint Anne's in Richmond Hill, Georgia was no longer allowed to celebrate the TLM each Tuesday at 5 PM, I celebrated the NO in the traditional way and in Latin.

I was shocked, shocked I say, but not really, that the more hard-shelled TLM lovers refused to attend the Tuesday Mass celebrated as closely as possible as a TLM but being faithful to the Latin Novus Ordo Roman Missal.  

These hard-shell TLM lovers, a minority in my view, but too very vocal, have shot all TLM lovers in the foot as well as themselves. It shows a grotesque lack of spiritual and moral and Roman Catholic maturity. 

Maybe we can recover what Pope Benedict XVI tried to accomplish and the trajectory for Church renewal he established during his papacy with the next pope. I don't know; I'm not clairvoyant. But Pope Benedict's vision for  Renewal in Continuity is the only way to go and liturgically the way to go is a new Roman Missal that is a combination of both the NO and the TLM, similar to the hybrid Missal briefly used around 1964 to about 1967.