A bishop discovers the Latin Mass

Nice to see.  I have no ax to grind with the Novus Ordo (that's New Order to us non-Latin speakers).  Though I question its effectiveness, as I do most things the Catholic Church has done in the last century.

The Catholic Church, somewhere and at some point, decided it would go with a 'keep up with the Jonses' approach to its place in the modern world.  Assume progress, assume all these new acaedmic and scientific disciplines are discovering the real universe and everything in it, and modify accordingly.  In some cases compromise.  If all else fails, surrender and toss those old Christian teachings and values out the window.

Now, as we begin to see hints that the entirety of Christian Western Civilization was essentially Nazi, and ideas as simple as 'hard work is good' and 'families with a Mom and Dad and some kids happen to represent a positive' are spun as some subversive white supremacists colonial imperialist racist propaganda, the Church's current approach is going to be put to the test.  Just how much of what the Church developed over the first 2000 years of its history can it jettison?  At least, how much can it jettison before people logically conclude that if the Church was wrong about so many things for so long, how can we believe it's right about anything now?

That's been a problem for quite some time.   You can only insist those Christians before were just wrong about so many things we see and touch and hear before people conclude Christians might not be right about all those things we can't see and touch and hear - like God and the Holy Spirit and eternal life.

Not to mention that, at the end of the day, surrender and continual abasement does not usually lead to respect.  Just ask any one of a dozen mainline Protestant denominations.  When the Episcopal Church in America ordained Bishop Gene Robinson, he insisted that it would mark a turning point in his church's decades long decline.  Now you'd see bus loads of people flocking to the churches to celebrate its embrace of right-think.  Well, no.  Just the opposite.  The decline has continued and, according to some, accelerated since then.   That's because people respect people who stand their ground if those people are people of good will.  If they aren't, don't worry about them.  If they are, they'll respect the Church even if they don't like it or those in it.  Assuming, of course, it isn't being liked by all the people at the best parties that motivates us.

End the end, a century or more of making the Church more secular has accomplished nothing,  Trying to divide the secular and material from the spiritual does nothing.  And that includes taking anything the secular belief system says is true and thinking we can just slap a God-stamp on it and make it Christian.  Those who believe the secular faith will not meet Christians halfway, any more than various left wing movements born of the secular worldview will.  Just when have feminists compromised with the Church?  When have LGTBQ activists compromised?  When have abortion rights groups compromised?  Compromise?  They've never heard of the word.  The same goes for other world religions, BTW.  The Church's continual insistence that meeting the rest of the world halfway will work someday verges on the old definition of insanity.

So maybe it's time to rethink all the things the Church has modified or changed over the last few generations in its efforts to keep up with the Jonses and get those rascally Jonses to come to the Church.   It hasn't seemed to work for the first century of doing so.  Maybe it's better to rethink the old worn out strategy before we add another century to the list.