In response to my post about the launch of the Friends of the Ordinariate site, Terry from Japan chided me in the comments section.  Since then, I've had some experiences I want to share that have a bearing on his criticisms and given me food for thought. Here's an excerpt of what Terry said:

You may have a very low opinion of the Catholic mass, which is very evident in your posts, but in a lot of the world, particularly in Asia, Latin, thees and thous are alien to them and have no relevance.

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If keeping the poetry, thees and thous, costly vestments etc. result in just a small group of worshippers who think they’re a class above the rest, than you can keep it.

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I’ve met many people who only attend the NO who are ten times better Christians that those who only attend the full bells and smells form of mass, turn up their noses at everything else yet cannot find any charity in their hearts.

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If you’re going to keep thumbing your nose down at everything that doesn’t fit in with your idea of worship, you won’t be happy even when you are fully accepted in the Catholic church.

Last weekend, I attended a service at an Anglican Network in Canada church in another city.  This is the group that has separated from the Anglican Church of Canada for its departure from the authority of Scripture and represents the evangelical and charismatic streams of the Canterbury Communion.  I went early to the BCP service, but it was dramatically different from the formal way my little TAC parish does a said Eucharist.

There were only about four of us present.  The minister (he calls himself a pastor, not a priest) sat with us part of the time.  The readings were not from the day according to the BCP for that Sunday but from the new lectionary. It was very informal. The sermon was excellent.  Very well thought-out and beautifully linked up Old and New Testament. I was impressed at how hard he worked at this for such a small audience.  The church building was modern, had some crosses about and some appliqued banners. The altar was a table of sorts, with no altar coverings to indicate it was Lent. But I felt welcomed and at home nevertheless.  A drum set and microphones were set up for a contemporary worship service later that morning.

It was not what I have grown accustomed to in our little Traditional Anglican Communion cathedral in Ottawa, but very familiar to me from previous experience in evangelical and charismatic churches. And this pastor is a beautiful, holy Christian. I have had a family emergency going on in that city, and this man, who did not know me from Adam, responded to an email request on the recommendation of another Anglican Network priest who is on a Christian writers' listserv I belong to, and started visiting my family member in hospital and has been an immense support to me.  That Sunday service was my first time meeting him face to face.

During his sermon, he mentioned how there could be beautiful, formal liturgies, but teaching from the pulpit that ran totally contrary to the Word of God.  Uh huh.  And I have witnessed beautiful formal liturgies done with the lips flapping and the bodies moving but it seems the hearts and minds somewhere else other than on worshipping God.  Gee, sometimes it's me thinking about something else while my lips say the Confession or the Prayer of Humble Access.  It's that kind of formalism that has probably done more than anything else to turn people away from traditional liturgy.

It is possible to make an idol of the Book of Common Prayer, and sadly, I have found many Traddies, both Anglican and Roman Catholic alike, can tend to nurse a continual sense of mild outrage. There is always something to be upset about, right?  As I have to tell myself often, being appalled is not one of the fruits of the Spirit.

Yet, I ask, why can't we have it all?   Why can't we be as evangelical and fervent about the Holy Scripture and spreading the Good News as the best evangelicals? As charismatic and freely operating in the supernatural gifts of the Spirit as the best charismatics? As Catholic and intellectually profound, assenting to the whole counsel of God, as the best Catholics? As traditionally Anglo-Catholic with all the smells and bells, the thees and thous, and genuflection to boot?  And while I love and admire the different expressions of Christian worship in the Body of Christ and have benefited greatly from the loving witness of my brothers and sisters who are not Catholic, I hope we can revive a precious heirloom of western civilization through the Ordinariate and bring back a fullness that many don't even realize is missing because they have never experienced it.

John Zmirak recently posted an excellent essay over at Inside Catholic about why "Trad-Catholics" seem to care about externals. And perhaps that is how I am coming across to Terry.  Zmirak wrote:

The Ordinary Form can be extraordinarily reverent when said by a holy priest. I've been to such liturgies hundreds of times, and I'm grateful for every one. On the other hand, the new liturgy, with all its Build-a-Bear options, is terribly easy to abuse. The old Mass reminds me of what they used to say about the Catholic Church and the U.S. Navy: "It's a machine built by geniuses so it can be operated safely by idiots." The old liturgy was crafted by saints, and can be said by schlubs without risk of sacrilege. The new rite was patched together by bureaucrats, and should only be safely celebrated by the saintly.

I've been to many a Novus Ordo mass that lifted me to heaven as any Eucharist is supposed to.  I remember a mass Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec, conducted in a hotel ballroom during the 2006 Catholic Women's League convention in Montreal.  This is a hard venue to make holy at the best of times.  But the room, crammed with 600 women, became infused with heaven and worshipful silence.  Ottawa Archbishop Terrence Prendergast also does a beautiful Novus Ordo liturgy, though he often adds the Pater Noster and other Latin elements since he has a bilingual (French and English) and this speaks to the universality of the Church.  (We should all be brushing up on our Latin for the Ordinariates, too.)

Zmirak goes on to write about how many Catholic converts from the evangelical world do not know why the Trads get so upset about externals.  He writes (please go read the whole thing; I'm tightening it up so as not to violate copyright):

So what is the practical motivation that drives us Trads to schlep to distant or dangerous parishes, to irritate our spouses and incommode our pastors, to detach from local churches our grandparents scrimped to build? Why insist on external things, like kneeling for communion on the tongue, male altar servers, and the priest facing the altar? None of these, I'll admit for the 5,000th time, is essential for sacramental validity or credal orthodoxy; isn't being a stickler on such issues a wee bit pharisaical, even prissy? (I have encountered the odd Trad activist with an unnatural attachment to silk and lace — pastors wearily call them "daughters of Trent" — but they aren't the norm. Weary fathers of six or seven pack most Latin Mass pews.)

Here's what we Trads have realized, that the merely orthodox haven’t: Inessential things have power, which is why we bother with them in the first place. In every revolution, the first thing you change is the flag. Once that has been replaced, in the public mind all bets are off — which is why the Commies and Nazis filled every available space with their Satanic banners.

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If the Church could change the Mass, ordinary Catholics concluded, the nuances of marital theology were surely up for grabs.

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The perception that the Church was in a constant state of doctrinal flux was confirmed by the reality that her most central, sacred mystery was being monkeyed with — almost every year.

The other day, I saw online some wedding pictures that a writer-friend had posted on Facebook.  I confess to being rather shocked that everyone, including the groom and the pastor who married them, was dressed in jeans and casual shirts.

Yet, knowing my friend, I would bet this marriage was more faithful to the internals of the sacrament of marriage than some of the tarted up $20,000 weddings in frothy white gowns and tuxedos between women and men who idolize romantic love but care nothing for Jesus.  I also welcome the trend towards having less expensive weddings.

Back in my Baptist days, I was on a team organizing ladies' retreats.  I had little patience for the non-spiritual elements that some of the team members wanted for them, such as floral centerpieces, candles, chocolates on the pillows, the planning of a crafts workshop during the weekend  (Crafts!!!!  Bleaaaaaach!!!!! I'm allergic to crafts.), the preparation of ice-breaker games to make it easier for shy gals to mix in (Who needs them?  They are silly.).  I just wanted to go straight for the spiritual, thank you very much, with no concessions to the soul or the body.  This was supposed to be a spiritual retreat.

But my oh my, was it ever nice that we worked as a team and the women who loved doing that kind of thing lovingly made the centrepieces and the little favors and put the chocolates on the pillows and decorated the dining room of the rustic but not charming retreat hall to make it magical by candlelight.  I worked in my area of giftedness that does not happen to include those things I have listed, and they worked in theirs and the result was something far better than the sum of our measly parts.

So Terry, if I had to choose between holy worship that had none of the outward expressions I have come to appreciate, just humble contrite hearts pouring our their love of Jesus Christ, wearing jeans, strumming guitars or whatever, and informed only by their prayerful searching of Holy Scripture, versus a beautiful liturgy done by people who do not believe, only love the cassocks, the poetic language, the music and the incense, I would not hesitate to choose the former.

But thankfully, I do not have to choose.  I hope the people who want to wear jeans to church feel as comfortable as some of our ladies who like to dress up, including hats.  And if one of these days we have a priest whose attire looks like an unmade bed because he, like me, is not good at ironing, if his teaching and pastoral care is holy, I won't mind.

The discipline of our liturgy, the daily offices, the lectionary, the requirement that the homily teach only what the Church has always taught, not the personal opinion of the priest, may be what my evangelical or charismatic brothers and sisters call "add-ons," because for them the heart of the faith is a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  But what glorious add-ons, I tell them! Not that I believe they are add-ons — what we see outside the Church are subtractions, even if what remains is beautiful.

But if it had not been for those faithful to the disciplines of old, they would not have the heart of the faith, as handed down by the Apostles.  Protestants are continually re-discovering and re-inventing the wheel.  We have a wonderful opportunity to reveal and restore the wheel of catholic faith and practice in its particular Anglican expression.

So when I express my hopes for the Ordinariate, I am not intentionally disparaging other forms of worship. I hope within our Ordinariate we will have a way to pass on something beautiful and intrinsic to western civilization.