Google images suggests that Fr Baldovin favours the 'tab' collar, when he's not in a jacket and tie.

This weekend I have a letter in The Tablet. Last week they carried a strange lament by an aging liberal, Fr John Baldovin SJ, complaining about the traditional tendencies of young Jesuits: I assume his experience is of the USA. Since the formation of these men is in the hands of his own generation, it must feel like a bit of a failure. He informs Tablet readers that he has to spend ages explaining to these youngsters that the Traditional Mass and associated things like the Roman collar (horrors!) are bad because they carry with them the baggage of an 'insular' conception of the Church from before the Council. Alas, he doesn't have space to explain exactly what that means or how it works. Why prayers composed in the 7th century, for example, or ceremonies developed in the 12th, are all about the Church of the 1950s.

They have published my response.

Fr John Baldovin SJ (11th May) makes a surprising criticism of the ancient Latin Mass: that it brings with it a ‘insular’ vision unsuited to mission. Is this not the Mass which converted Latin America, which established the Church in Imperial China, and which was equally at home at the court of Louis XIV, and the mission stations of Africa?

The astonishing breadth of historical and cultural circumstances in which the Church’s venerable Latin liturgy has sustained martyrs and formed saints reflects both the long and varied period in which it was developed, and also an attitude, which it encourages, towards the liturgy as something objective, given to us, and precisely not specially adapted to our personal needs and circumstances.

The reformed Mass, by contrast, not only relies more heavily on the personality of the celebrant, but [inevitably] bears the marks of its creators’ interests and concerns. These are those of a small group of mainly European liturgists, whose ideas formed in the 1940s and ‘50s. To the younger generation of traditionally-inclined priests who cause Fr Baldovin such concern, the Mass these men produced looks about as up-to-date as the transistor radio.
The Letters Editor cut out the word 'inevitably', making me sound a little less reasonable, a little more hostile. When trying to win the argument about the Mass, every advantage is worth having, isn't it?

Long-term readers will remember the series of short 'Position Papers' I published on behalf of the FIUV--Una Voce International--on a variety of subjects about the ancient Mass, both aspects of it which need to be explained to those unfamiliar with it, and ways in which it can assist the Church in evagelisation.

You can buy them from the Latin Mass Society in England, from Angelico Press in the USA, and from Amazon.

The Case for Liturgical Restoration Una Voce Studies on the Traditional Latin Mass EDITED BY JOSEPH SHAW Preface by Raymond Cardinal Burke 432 pages Paper (ISBN 978-1-62138-440-3): $19.95 / £16.50 Cloth (ISBN 978-1-62138-441-0): $30.00 / £24.00 THE CASE FOR LITURGICAL RESTORATION, which gathers the complete and definitive texts of the widely-admired “position papers” of the International Federation Una Voce, tackles the questions: What is the point of the Extraordinary Form? What is its rationale? What can it contribute to the life of the Church here and now? Taking up one by one the most controversial topics in liturgy today—among them, active participation, the role of the laity, eastward orientation, extensive silence, the use of Latin and Gregorian chant, male-only service of the sanctuary, communion received kneeling and on the tongue, the calendar, the lectionary, veiling, fasting, and the needs of the New Evangelization—the chapters argue that the traditional Roman Rite has its own internal logic, its own way of offering worthy worship to God and of sanctifying souls. It is a way often notably distinct from that of the reformed liturgy, and for this reason much in danger of being misunderstood or missed entirely by the casual critic. This book therefore stands to benefit everyone. Catholics already attached to the usus antiquior will arrive at a deeper understanding of its merits and a better ability to articulate them. Catholics puzzled by tradition-loving coreligionists and their own predecessors in the Faith will acquire fresh perspective. All will grow in appreciation for the Church’s rich liturgical heritage. “The importance of the publication of The Case for Liturgical Restoration: Una Voce Studies on the Traditional Latin Mass cannot be exaggerated.”  — ✠ARCHBISHOP THOMAS E. GULLICKSON “The Case for Liturgical Restoration represents a comprehensive, competent, balanced, and constructive contribution to the field of liturgical science, and above all to liturgical life and practice in the Church of our days.”  — ✠MOST REV. ATHANASIUS SCHNEIDER “The Position Papers address frequently advanced reformatory propositions, with the great merit of responding soberly, conservatively, and without polemic.”  — REV. JOHN BERG, FSSP “This volume offers the reader the opportunity to judge the strength of the case for a radical change of direction, a ‘reorientation’ as it were, in how the liturgy of the Latin Church is to be understood and presented.”  — REV. JOHN HUNWICKE “Detailed and dispassionate, this book examines those features of the traditional liturgy that have been the subject of controversy in recent decades, explaining their origins and their abiding value.”  — REV. THOMAS CREAN, O.P. “How propitious to show, in a moment of cultural decadence and ad intra dogmatic bewilderment, the beauty and sacredness of the liturgy in its ancient Latin tradition! To discuss these central topics, as this collection does with precision, is a well-timed enterprise.”  — REV. SERAFINO M. LANZETTA, STD “The liturgical devastations of our times make it more and more urgent that the immutable lex credendi of the Church should be restored. This book represents a significant contribution in that direction.”  — PROF. ROBERTO DE MATTEI, President of the Lepanto Foundation “The Una Voce position papers are wide-ranging and comprehensive in their discussion of the traditional liturgy and of how God is properly to be worshipped.”  — PROF. THOMAS PINK, King’s College London “With brilliant dialectical skill and exceptionally apposite sources, The Case for Liturgical Restoration argues the need for preserving and promoting all of those traditional aspects of Catholic worship that churchmen, in the name of adapting to modernity, jettisoned or downplayed.”  — PETER A. KWASNIEWSKI, author of Tradition and Sanity: Conversations and Dialogues of a Postconciliar Exile

Support the Latin Mass Society

My latest on LifeSiteNews

At St Dominic's, Haverstock Hill, in London.