Wishing for Beauty and Sin

Over at Crux, Margery Eagan laments poor mass attendance in America.  In her reasoning she rounds up the usual suspects - folks do not get up Sunday morning and head to mass because the Church is "anti-woman...anti-gay".  In her opinion, it's teaching is just plain Neanderthal....the usual blather.

But she also goes on to say that the modern mass itself is a problem:

"...quality matters. Mass can’t be a cringe-a-thon, either, when it’s supposed to be delivering the good news of salvation from the charismatic man who brought it to us 2,000 years ago. So how come so few of us feel good or inspired or even spiritually uplifted after Sunday Mass?  [at most parishes]...there’s bad preaching, worse music. Predictably, almost no one shows up. What does the Church expect? Once upon a time, pre-Vatican II, the MYSTERY OF THE LATIN MASS AND THE BEAUTY OF THE ANCIENT CHANTS  made up for some of the Church’s Neanderthal stands. For 45 minutes or an hour, you were uplifted, even transported."

For 45 minutes or an hour, you were uplifted, even transported...In the Latin Mass, you are uplifted by beauty.  In Veritatis Splendor, St John Paul II wrote that "The light of God's face shines in all its beauty on the countenance of Jesus Christ, "the image of the invisible God" (Col 1:15), the "reflection of God's glory" (Heb 1:3), "full of grace and truth" (Jn 1:14). Christ is "the way, and the truth, and the life" (Jn 14:6)."  Christ's beauty is seen at the mass.  And Christ is also truth.  There is no possible separation in the beauty of the mass and the truth of the Church.  Ms. Eagan seems searching for this distinction, the beautiful mass in an immoral church.  The ancient mass comes with ancient truth - even prehistoric truth, Neanderthal truth.