Sorry - you can't have eggs/bread/milk/EF Mass....because......

.......THERE'S NO CALL FOR IT!

Do you suffer from the same syndrome as me? When you go into a shop or a restaurant and ask for something that should be available on a daily basis and the blood pressure rises when you get the response: "Sorry, there's no call for it".

Nothing is guaranteed to produce a fit of the vapours faster than some jobsworth stating this to me. I have just b****y well called for it! And it's not like asking for, you know....well, buffalo eggs or a Spanish cucumber.....it's an item that should be available.

I think that His Grace, Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow might need a wee nudge in the direction of responding to customer demand the call of the laity. He has just issued, in an Ad Clerum to his clergy, a statement to the effect that no one wants the Extraordinary Form of Mass. H/T to Damian Thompson for this.

Here is how the Archbishop phrased his strange statement...

"Some have argued that the options opened to those who hark back to the old Mass provide an example of how personal preferences can be indulged. The Holy Father and those who advise him have decided to make the old Mass, the so-called Tridentine, or pre-Vatican II, more available to the faithful for pastoral reasons; that is something we must respect. However, even with the most recent instruction from Ecclesia Dei, there is no requirement or indeed encouragement for any of us to promote the so called Extraordinary Form. I venture to suggest that there is no call for it, or pastoral reason to change what has become the settled practice of the Archdiocese, which I read as contentment and indeed appreciation of the pastoral advantages of Mass in the vernacular, and in a form which is less mysterious than at least some aspects of what my generation can recall of the “old” Mass. There is, and I now speak frankly, a difference between mysterious and mystery. The mystery of the Mass is, to the wonderment of the priest and people, the presence of God in the sacrificial offering of the Body and Blood of His Son’s humanity, effective through the ministry of those called to be priests, ministering at the altar where the gifts of the faithful of bread and wine are laid. The awesomeness of the holy exchange can be manifested in the way in which we celebrate the Mass, avoiding all that could triviliase the sacred, without any extravagant gestures, but on the contrary taking advantage of the rich potential within the rites themselves to enchance the significance of what we do by way of the dignity of our actions, the singing of those parts of the Mass which are marked for song and wearing vestments of noble simplicity".

It is a masterclass in damning with faint praise (the highlights are Damian's by the way).
This man must have been made from the same mould as Bishop Burns of Menevia, he's excellent at innuendo and double entendres also.

I find it offensive, disloyal and disobedient.

If His Grace ran an ice cream parlour, would it just sell vanilla?

Archbishop Mennini, get out the birch please!