I couldn’t resist adding my voice to the banter and debate on the liturgy that has animated writers and visitors to the Ink Desk over the past week or so.

I am entirely at home with the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy, and am also very comfortable with the Ordinary Form when it’s celebrated with due reverence and decorum. I share the Holy Father’s preference for the Mass in both forms to be celebrated ad orientem—and the more Latin the merrier! The music should be chant or polyphony, though I have no problem with traditional hymns, such as those published in Ignatius Press’ Adoremus hymnal.

Those priests whose celebration of the Ordinary Form are worthy of emulation include Father Joseph Fessio of Ignatius Press and Father Jay Scott Newman at St. Mary’s Parish in Greenville, SC.

And now for an explanation of the gratuitously provocative and no doubt offensive (to some) heading to this post. I am, of course, not seriously advocating the killing of modernist liturgists. Such slaughter is against the law and, much more seriously, is a mortal sin. Although such liturgists murder the liturgy, we should clearly refrain from murdering the liturgist. It is, however, possible to enjoy the killing of a liturgist without committing a sin or needing to go to confession (or prison!). The way to experience this sinless and singular pleasure is to read Lorraine Murray’s excellent thriller, Death of a Liturgist. Lorraine, an occasional contributor to this site, is to be praised for writing a book that vents her own spleen against modernist liturgists with comic abandon. The novel is well worth the read.