Why bother?

I suppose since 1999, I have asked myself the question what got me into this. I don't know if I have an answer. At some point in early adulthood I became persuaded that the traditional Latin Mass had a superiority in terms of preserving and nurturing the Catholic faith to the normative Mass. Following on this premise, I saw that the availabililty of the traditional Mass in Ireland was very limited. I came to the realisation that there was little point waiting for someone else to move - I asked myself if I could make something happen. On reflection, I saw the situation was complex. The Irish Church, whatever about its mythical independence in the early mediaeval period or its remoteness during the penal period, was very ultramontane following from the pontificate of Pius IX and the period Paul Cardinal Cullen was Archbishop of Dublin. It was furthermore a very clerical church, although it could produce a lay apostolate such as the Legion of Mary. But from the point of view of the Irish Church, when Pope Paul promulgated the new Missal in 1969, that was the end of the matter. What was good enough for the Pope was good enough for the Irish bishops and clergy. Some laity grumbled over it: few did anything about it. Some priests said the Mass privately, as the exemption clause allowed. The Northern Ireland novelist, Brian Moore, wrote a novel Catholics to give artistic expression to the laity's grumblings. This was later made into a film. Moore's observations were remarkably perceptive. From the late 1970s, there was some form of protest. Archbishop Lefebvre and some of his SSPX priests began coming to Ireland, but things only became serious when an SSPX priest, helped by a few independent priests, took up residence in Ireland in the 1980s, opening St John's Church, Mounttown Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin in 1984. The papal indult Quattuor Abhinc Annos followed soon after this and initiated a series of ups and downs in Ireland thereafter.