Oh, I get it Dad!

So just like the lunatic-fringe-anti-choice-homophobic-bigoted-fanatics we are, today the 7 of us loaded up and made our way for an hour and a half to the only Tridentine Mass in one the nation's largest dioceses. That's right, we're those kinds of Catholics. Really though, it's for the best, because I think that we really do make rank-and-file N.O. Catholics feel uncomfortable when our veil-wearing three year old refuses to hold hands with whichever poor soul manages to squeeze into the empty spot on the pew next to us during the Our Father. Well anyways, today was a special day. Today I was given revelation #5,281 on why the Traditional Mass is the better choice....for us.

If you've ever attended the TLM anywhere other than your weird aunt Sally's living room,

you're bound to have seen them. The little red cash cow of the Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei called the Latin English Booklet Missal. On the front cover is one of those

delightful black ink drawings of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that was so prevalent in Catholic kitsch when the Benzinger Bros ruled with an iron fist. Sadly the spirits of Vatican II brought to the liturgical artists the new light of amorphous symbology perhaps ending forever (if not for Summorum Pontificium) exchanges like this that happened today.

Daddy: Anne, I want you to draw something that you see happen during Mass today.

Anne: OK. Like what?

Daddy: Anything. Here look at this [hands her the red book]. What's happening there?

Anne: Jesus is on the cross.

Daddy: What about at the bottom?

Anne: The priest is holding up the Blood.

Daddy: That's right.

Anne: [Sitting quietly with Pooh Bear's thinking face on for several minutes.]

Daddy: [Enjoying the repetitious sounds of the Rosary before Mass].

Anne: [Beginning to draw the altar]

Daddy: [Wondering to himself if the demon will manifest in Michael this Sunday.]

Anne: Ohhhh, I giiiit it Dad.

Daddy: ?

Anne: The priest is Jesus and Jesus is the priest.

Daddy: [Dumbfounded] That's right, Anne.

Anne: [Quietly continues on with her neorealistic, slightly amorphous liturgical sketches.]