Psychological trauma shares this feature with physical trauma: everything hurts. Just as a hyperextended elbow hurts even within the normal range of motion, so a damaged psyche hurts in all postures. It is very difficult to know right from wrong when everything hurts. This is the situation with some of us who attend the Latin Mass.
We find solace there, even though we know we are thereby scorned. The traditional Mass is linear, pointing right past the priest (we’ve got his back!) to God Himself. The priest is the tip of the spear, doing something none of us can touch, leading us to the eschaton. We are privileged through baptism to march in the column, and we accept without question the hierarchical arrangement. We know who we are, those of us in the column, we tend to temporal things.
But the Latin Mass is said to be bad by men who hold high authority in the Church. These same men then give every indication of favoring sodomy. It is impossible not to notice the connection. And those of us old enough to have been altar boys or seminarians decades ago understand how such men operate. Without shame, and without ceasing. They just keep coming at you.
And so, even if there is no basis for our fear, we anticipate the worst. They will take the Latin Mass. They will hurt us again. They cannot be trusted.
This is the effect of trauma. How can it be resolved? How can we not be tempted to flee, perhaps to the SSPX, or to simple despair?
This writer believes he has been assured in prayer that God will not abandon him. Yet the facts are plain. God allowed the traditional liturgy to be ripped from the Church in the 1960s and 1970s. God allowed Traditiones custodes to supersede Summorum Pontificum. God thus allows Latin Masses, and Latin Mass communities, to be smothered at episcopal whim. God also allowed, to take a broader example, the extinguishment of public Masses during Covid.
So, what does “not abandon” mean? Does it mean this writer will again be able to endure exclusive worship in the Novus ordo? Does it mean he will be granted permission to escape to the SSPX? Ideally, could it mean the diocesan Latin Mass he now attends will continue?
The non-traumatized may wonder at such fretting. In their sanguinity, they may even take it as reason to end our places of travail. But the prophet Isaiah said something about Jesus which would better guide our churchmen: “A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory.” (Mt. 12:20.)