My head has got so big it is about to explode!!! The Third Liturgical Movement has just been published. Far from me to claim such a grandiose title for my work of collecting the work of others, living and deceased, much more erudite than myself! I am a rebel, an eccentric, outside the box, and sometimes I throw out mostly useless ideas, but occasionally ones that make sense to other people. If it can do some good somewhere…

It’s there for anyone to pick up and improve on. I have never sought to make money out of it, and I am no leader of anything. I’m not interested in creating yet another group. What I do on the internet leaves each reader in the privacy of his own home surrounded by his own free air, with full liberty of expression. Even if someone picks it all up and removes me from the picture, I don’t mind. Only the ideas are important and they might abide for another hundred years or so.

My website As the Sun in its Orb is there and can be consulted at any time. I welcome links and suggestions for improvement. I don’t think this “third liturgical movement” will go very far, but that it for you and others to decide.

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Sometimes, the The New Liturgical Movement is blamed for problems brought up by the traditionalist world. Many of the contributors on this fine site are in reality higher in mind and spirit than many of the traditionalist caricatures. I have corresponded with Shawn Tribe who has done excellent work over the years. The NLM site has published many articles on pre-Tridentine liturgical rites like Sarum, Ambrosian, Dominican, Lyons and others. These contributors are as willing to promote the idea of pre-Tridentine rites, but they are Roman Catholics and are limited by their bishops, religious superiors and parish priests. They can only do what their Church allows them to do, and they can only conclude that the 1962 Roman rite is better than nothing! It is not my perspective, but it is theirs.

Some bloggers might want to denigrate the NLM, but I cannot avoid seeing the best of intentions in it. We outside the RC Church have more freedom, but maybe less in the way of credentials and credibility based on being “in the mainstream”. As I have mentioned in my Facebook group on the Use of Sarum, there is room for those who want to use it and those who merely want to study it for the purposes of a comparative method in their liturgical studies. There is room for both. I would certainly have been one of the NLM contributors had I stayed at Gricigliano and become a good Roman Catholic priest. That was not to be so, and my “take” on the base of experience is different, but the difference is extremely subtle.

Another Roman Catholic blogger produces some very interesting work in The Rad Trad, and he is of a mind to resist complete conformity to the post Pius X and Pius XII norms. Is Liturgy Worth Keeping? is most germane to our discussion.

The objective is multi-disciplinary as university people say. If any of us has insight, it can only be part of a whole.