Many a good Catholic I know, i.e., many relatively orthodox, sincere, practicing Catholics think that the "Old Mass" is somehow inferior to the "New Mass". On the other hand, as I'd argue, the "Old Mass" is superior to the "New Mass". Of course one can compare two good things.
The subordinate good thing, in a comparison, isn't thereby a bad thing, just less good than the super-ordinate thing. Of course being slavishly aware and sentimentally sensitive to equality in all forms it's likely such comparisons provoke annoyance or even contempt. Aren't they just equally good? Such a flaccid logic is annoying, as if reality is one-dimensional. Similarly annoying are those who feel themselves to be special guardians of keeping the peace, whose sole hope is that uncomfortable things, or controversial topics, remain secret and untouched --since discomfort and emotional disturbances are anathema. These guardians of our philosophical welfare are no better than the others who get provoked to anger or hostility as they see 'party lines' forming around legitimate and important issues of discussion and debate --what liturgical practice is most befitting of the worship of God? For such peace-lovers are deceived, placing truth behind convenience.
Among we Catholics the debate about forms of worship --about liturgical practice--is not the same as Protestant debate about 'styles of worship'. For upon the Altar of God comes the Man-God hidden under the appearances. And what for?
That is the question to begin with, and with which we shall annoy all those who annoy the steady inquirer, the philosophically motivated seeker of higher and better things. And let us be this person. Let us repeat and seek until we find the answer to it: What does the Man-God thus hide Himself for, under the appearances of bread and wine? For us? For his creatures? There are higher things and more exalted purposes than even the salvation of His creatures. There is what our salvation is for. There is what our life is for. There is what our very being is for. There is God's Divine Life of Trinity, perfect love, for which all love is for.
I cannot love as I must, if I am to love God as He is, as He does. Yet I will worship Him and hope my meager offering is pleasing, will hope He'll make it like incense blessed, rise heavenward. The True Sacrifice of Praise is not incomplete if no sinner eats at the Table. God isn't to be mocked. His purposes are unbrookable, like the ever flowing Love of the Trinity. I don't take communion as the termination of God's purpose, as if his Life is for me. There are higher things than the invaluable worth of each human life. There is God's Divine Life.
My good act of worship, a natural act of a natural man, is pleasing to God, being the operation of His creature. But there are higher things for man than a mortal man's acts. There are the acts of the Man-God. He hid himself under the appearances for God as a man. He does not hide his Godhood this way--its already hidden from mortal eyes and already hidden in the manhood of the Man-God. But under the appearances, He specifically hides his manhood, his place in the ordinary world as a creature of space and time. But still, He is in space and time, though he's now hidden, like God, but as Man, and hidden to all but the eyes of faith. Therein, He renders perfect human worship to God. That is why he hides himself. For we belong to mankind and can be in this perfect human act of worship. But not for our sakes, for His. My good natural act of worship becomes higher, His. The perfect worship of the Man-God is offered under appearances for me, but I am offered for God in the Man-God's worship, else my good natural act be good but not supernatural. Grace must raise up our natural offerings else we remain unable to render to God what faith sees He deserves.
The Old Mass done well preserves the order of the cosmos in its reverential space and time. The New Mass done well does this too, only to an inferior degree. We know it's inferior because we compare it to a model. That model is the Old Mass. It is inferior, even when done well, and even less when done poorly. But notice that it is inferior. Not the people in it. The people in any valid Mass are equal insofar as they might, by the pure force of the Love of the hidden Man-God, be like gods themselves, able finally to offer worship to the highest Being, the Trinity. But the form of the Old Mass, its prayers, its reverential time and space, its order, preserve the relationship between nature and supernature, man and the Man-God the Second Person of the Trinity in the Triune Life of Perfect Love.
Party-lines, politics, and peacekeeping remain upon this earth, but the Old Mass doesn't, nor can it. It sits like the Man-God, mediate between this and the next world, it being a reflection of that heavenly liturgy St. John reveals to us in the pictures of his Apocalypse or St. Paul paints for the Hebrews.
The question is never dead until Christ comes again. No amount of effort is better rewarded than the effort to render worship to God as God would render it to himself. Hence, little in our thoughts is more worthwhile than the consideration as to how we must direct such efforts.
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