Mission and Majesty

I don't often criticise the Holy Father's liturgical instincts, but I'm not too keen on the idea of making the Ordinary Form Mass end with a dismissal that hypes the notion of God's people being sent out for Mission. The alternative forms of dismissal now authorised include one which is inspired by that idea, and I gather that Orationes super populum soon to be authorised will play the same game. We went through all this in the Anglican 'reforms' of the 1970s, and if one isn't careful one can still find oneself in a church where one can't get away at the end of Mass before one has yawned one's way through send us out in the power of your spirit to live and work to your praise and glory, or something similar. My own suspicion is that most christifideles, as they walk out of church, have their minds more set on having a fag or a gin and wondering if it's too late to dump the children on the grandparents so as to be able to get an undisturbed Sunday grope at the wife. Or husband. And in any case, the Eucharist is not some preliminary to Involvement In The World, but itself the supreme Involvement of God in His world, finished and perfected when the deacon sings Ite Missa Est. These changes will seem to me to be additional grounds for favouring the Extraordinary Form.

And, reading about the constitutional crisis in Luxembourg caused by the unwillingness of the Grand Duke - bully for him - to sign a Euthanasia bill, I recall a similar crisis a decade or two ago when the King of the Belgians wouldn't sign an Abortion bill. It is disturbing that such flickerings of Christian conscience never seem to trouble our own Head of State. I am not in the habit of criticising her - it seems to me that she's worth ten of all those seedy trendies and libertines who sneer and giggle at her - but it sets me wondering whether we ought to bring the King back. Does anybody know what views our Sovereign Liege Lord King Francis II has on such moral questions?