Who is the real fundamentalist/extremist?

I don’t often read or recommend Patheos blogs, but Crescat has a post up about a disastrous liturgical experience she had at, of all things, her grandmother’s funeral.  Adding insult to bereavement, I suppose.

We are often told by certain elements in the Church that orthodox/faithful/traditional Catholics are fundamentalist extremists, that we are rigid and unyielding promethean neo-Pelagians, that we are “Taliban Catholics” according to Fr. Thomas Rosica, persecutor of bloggers…….we just generally stink at everything.  But how many have experienced rigid adherence to liturgical abuse and denial of the faithful’s rights like the below?  I know I have, a number of times:

Consecrated pita bread. 20 minute sign of peace. Refusal to give communion on the tongue at a grandmother’s funeral. Nah! Trads just make these things up.

……But if sacrilege is your cup tea, boy oh boy, is this parish just for you – especially if you have complete and utter disrespect for the Eucharist and disdain for those disgusting “traddies” that like to receive on the tongue. I mean gross, right? Yeah, to hell with those people. Lets just be jerks to them at their grandmother’s funeral……

Not only did he consecrate a wheat pita but when I went up to receive on the tongue he forcefully tried to pry open my hands to put the Eucharist in my palm. When I remained in front of him with my mouth open, hands folded closed, to receive on the tongue he grabbed my hand and took the Body of Christ, wedged it between my fingers and said, “Just take it. It’s easier this way.”

And while he was busy making a show out of denying me communion on the tongue in front of my family at my dead grandmother’s funeral, he was hap-happily giving out consecrated wheat pita to the rest of my non-Catholic family without a moment of instruction or notice in the program on why they shouldn’t receive.

But he did, apparently, have time to issue a diatribe on why his parish doesn’t have kneelers and insisting that everyone remain standing throughout the Consecration and until after the last person had received.  Pompous much?

There are far more rigid and unyielding dogmatists of the post-conciliar revolutionary “orthodoxy” in the vast majority of parishes than there are priests of a traditional bent who will refuse to serve Communion to any who won’t kneel and receive on the tongue, or who will absolutely insist only on Gregorian Chant in the Mass, or that the Novus Ordo retain Latin as most believe Sacrosanctum Concilium prescribed. In fact, finding a diocesan priest who will permit all of the above is exceedingly rare, the legitimate requests of a good number of people be damned. But when it comes to progressive/modernist priests, you will toe their line!  They will not provide the Host to you on the tongue, they sure won’t even contemplate a bit of Latin in the Mass, they will wear gaudy, inappropriate liturgical costumes and prance around with their wireless mic, they turn the Mass into a worldly hootenanny.  Funny how the very worst clericalists come from the side that always claimed its intent has been to do away with that terrible clericalism of the benighted past.

Locals who assisted at the forlorn Novus Ordo Latin Mass in Plano will recall what a significant role this kind of liturgical action on the part of a priest played in that Mass’s subsequent demise.

Another factor to keep in mind is the fact that liturgical wreckoavators like this priest can persist in dioceses for decades, sometimes across several bishops, with never being called to account or disciplined in any way, while a priest who tries to add a bit of Latin to the Mass or who feels called to offer Mass Ad Orientem will get his hand slapped, and hard.  Merely offering the Novus Ordo Mass in Latin, as even VII indicated was perfectly fine and even preferable, can get a priest laicized real quick if he doesn’t have a good canon lawyer at hand.  But there’s no double standard…..

Which gets back to the point – who are the real extremists?  Is it the priest who just wants to honor God by facing Him during the Consecration, or is it the bishop who threatens to end his career for doing so?