Embracing Impoverished Liturgy and Impoverished People - A Glasgow Catholic Worker's Reflection on the SSPX Excommunication by Ross Ahlfeld
Spoiler alert: this isn't really an article about the SSPX's recent excommunication and schism. Not because it isn't important, but because I turned fifty a few months ago, and reaching half a century has done something unexpected to me. I've become more willing to accept the things I cannot control. I've become less interested in winning arguments, less invested in legalism and dogma, and much less concerned with convincing anyone else that I'm right. Perhaps most surprisingly of all, I've changed my mind. That is especially true when it comes to liturgy. There was a time when I would have described the post-Vatican II liturgy as "impoverished." In those days I shared much of the SSPX's frustration. I lamented the gaudy polyester vestments, the cheap office carpet tiles, the bare concrete breeze blocks that lined the walls of so many churches, and those earnest but excruciating folk hymns from the 1970s. (I still struggle with Colours of Day...