Ritual and Anti-Ritual: Cultic and Cultural Consequences

At my parish, we are fortunate to have Solemn Mass most Sundays during the academic year. Each of these Masses reminds me anew, sometimes with an almost shattering power that brings me to tears, of one of the most basic reasons I love the traditional Latin Mass with all my heart.
For something to be a religious rite, to possess the quality of rituality, it has to have several properties.
First, it must come—and feel like it comes—from ageless depths, from time out of mind, from innumerable nameless ancestors (even if a few of them are named too).
Second, it must present itself as ever unchanging, always the same, semper idem. Its rituality precisely consists in the fact that it is predetermined; it is formulaic, controlled, and objective; a solemn act of offering that disposes its human ministers as mere servants. The ceremonies, the words uttered or chanted, the items employed, the ministers and their roles, are “set in stone,” year after year. The use of an ancient sacral language,…