Extraordinary (form) anecdote of the day

William Oddie, author and editor of several books (including a couple published by Ignatius Press), has penned a column for The Catholic Herald titled, "Why do our Bishops pull out candidates for the priesthood from seminaries which teach the Extraordinary Form? Why are they so intent on defying the Pope?" (August 18, 2011). He writes:

About three months ago, I wrote a piece about the pastoral letter from all the bishops on the subject of the new translation of the Novus Ordo—a letter which I said was another example of "a pattern of behaviour which the bishops have been exhibiting more and more since the papal visit". I was thinking also of the welcome given by them to the Ordinariate (a stark contrast to their behaviour 15 years ago when they crushed any such idea before it had chance to be born), and also of the restoration of two of our holy days of obligation, the return of Friday abstinence from meat, and so on.

All this was very welcome, and I had hopes that it portended not a selective tactical retreat but a permanent and irreversible cultural revolution. But a blog posted on Monday by Fr Christopher Smith, tellingly headlined "Why Are Seminaries Afraid of the Extraordinary Form?" tells a different story: the revolution in English Episcopal thinking has some way to go yet. Anglicanorum Coetibus may have attracted the support of our bishops: but Summorum Pontificum has so far attracted stiff Episcopal opposition to the Pope's wishes, an attitude which may tell the real truth about what they think of him and his vision for the Church's future. Why are seminaries afraid of the Extraordinary Form? Simple: as Fr Hill puts it, "what does a good seminary rector do when he knows that Tradition-unfriendly Bishops will pull their guys out of their seminaries if they begin to teach the EF?"

A few paragraphs later he quotes from Rev. Fr. Christopher Smith's August 15th post, "Why Are Seminaries Afraid of the Extraordinary Form?", which is available on The Chant Café blog. Fr. Smith opens with this anecdote:

I had just entered the seminary when Cardinal Ratzinger's book, The Spirit of the Liturgy, came out. I had an English copy expressed to me and brought it with me into the chapel as my spiritual reading during our daily community Holy Hour. One of the older men knelt next to me as I was engrossed in Ratzinger's chapter on Rite and whispered, "Do you want to get kicked out of the seminary? Change the book cover now." All of my attempts to not publicise the fact that I actually knew the Old Latin Mass had apparently been blown out of the water by this defiant act of wanton schism. Suddenly seminarians began to knock on my door and counsel me how to survive the seminary, and so I exchanged Ignatius Press' book cover for one entitled "The Pastoral Letters of Paul VI."

Read the entire piece, which has many good observations about priestly formation and the Extraordinary Form. Then, if you've never read Joseph Ratzinger's The Spirit of the Liturgy, track down a copy (it's also available in e-book format) and read it—it is one of the best books about liturgy written in the past fifty years. Also visit out the "Spirit of the Liturgy" website, which has links to many related books and articles: