Liturgical Humbug

There is a lot of it about. Liturgical humbug that is. People claiming to be the real thing, traditional or modern, boasting of their excellence when in fact as Arthur says in The Life of Brian they’re just making it up as they go along.

You see these folks don't understand that their opinion doesn't matter one hoot and their creative or antiquarian tastes don't justify anything. Private individuals including priests don't decide what happens in the sacred liturgy. They are honor-bound to celebrate it as the Church gives it to us. To impose mere tastes as absolutes is to deny the breadth of the Church's tradition and to use personal tastes as a pretext for violating the Church's liturgical law is grave liturgical humbug. To just not care and do things wrongly is cancerous liturgical humbug.

The Pimpernel has drawn his sword in the face of a lot of liturgical humbug from active participation in Christmas midnight Mass to Patricius the prince of liturgical humbug. There are those who won't countenance the use of a fiddleback and perpetuate their own affectations or who presume to adopt monastic customs in secular churches. Others concelebrate casually when nobody is looking while others do it badly when everybody is looking. 

The Pimpernel has also been able to salute those who have no time for this sort of thing. They get it right all the time and don't think about how they can improve the liturgy, but about how the liturgy can improve them. They understand that the liturgy is too important and too great to be improved by individuals. They know that when the humbug of private taste takes root it spreads like a poisonous weed.

To arms all who would do honor to the sacred liturgy! Liturgical humbug is our enemy wherever it is found. Honor him who asks what the Church says is to be done, not he who decides how we will do it here or there!