The author comments on Dr Kwasniewski's essay at New Liturgical Movement. I can't wrap my head around the idea of voluntarily attending an abusive Mass either.
From Happy Despite Them
By Leila Marie Lawler
Peter Kwasniewski addresses the strange and abuse-enabling trope I've confronted often, that we should attend and even seek out liturgically troublesome Masses on the theory that in doing so, we participate in the sufferings of Our Lord.
Best pull quote: "let’s not make spiritual sadomasochism into a virtue"!
Well meaning people often lapse into the fallacy Peter Kwasniewski addresses here. (Another example, that I have heard argued without irony: The evils of socialism resulted in a flourishing of faith and fervor, therefore we should seek a socialist form of government.)
Fundamentally, the fallacy is to forget that grace builds on nature and does not replace it. Our duty is to order everything to the heavenly good. And it is a duty, repeated often in Scripture, denied by those who have fallen into gnosticism. This error is enabled and amplified by the theology behind the Mass of Paul VI, that somehow the Mass is a sort of Last-Supper-ish play. Thinking that bad liturgy can somehow be good for us ends in holding something along the lines of "we must deny Christ to follow Christ." Make no mistake, this is a position found in the writings of Fr. James Martin SJ and other darlings of the current leadership, alas, of our Church.
The Mass is mystical worship, we do participate in the actual sacrifice of Calvary as it is re-presented, in an unbloody manner, at the altar; and thus we do try to unite ourselves with the sufferings of Our Lord. But mysticism does not have anything to do with making bad actions into virtues that require our assent. And make no mistake -- intentional participation in such things is assent.
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