Church shopping, and my anti-Novus Ordo view

• Opus Publicum: A free market for religion. Great points — indifferentism, including American denominationalism, is heresy – but as Holmes said, "Elementary"; when different churches or faiths live side by side, tolerance, not acceptance. I'm not trying to kill my Protestant neighbor, not "his church is just as true as mine."
• "It is the MASS - Eastern or Western - which is the most beautiful thing because in it Jesus is present. Not a particular rite!"
  
  True but the Novus Ordo is bad. But thanks to Pope Benedict I have no conscience problems with it in most of the English-speaking Catholic world. He admitted there was a problem and had it fixed, which is why he's "the Great." Beautiful? That's the older form of the Roman Rite and the Eastern rites.

  It's not bad, it's just your preference, and yes, thanks to B16 everyone can have their preference, which is a very good thing.

  Don't patronize me.

  The Church cannot give something detrimental for our spiritual life.

  By "bad" I didn't mean heretical or invalid; the church is indefectible. Again, no conscience problem with Benedict's English Novus. That said, the older form is better, and while the church never gives you something spiritually detrimental, the clergy can and do, as anybody who experienced American Catholicism in the '70s and '80s can tell you, from guitars and Eucharistic ministers to "God our Mother."

  'Better' how? Does it bring me more of Jesus? We need to stop second guessing the Church - either she is or she isn't.

  In the form of teaching, yes. The idea that you can't criticize the prudential judgment of Popes is a conservative Catholic mistake since Vatican II; "the Pope is the church" is false.

  No not teaching - is Jesus more present?

  I know what you mean. So a valid Mass that doesn't clearly teach you the Real Presence is just as good as a valid centuries-old one that does clearly teach that? Right, and a Yugo's as good as a Lamborghini.

  So the 1962 Missal teaches it better than all the Eastern Rites? But maybe the 1950s teaches it better? Or the 1920s? And who says?! I refuse to be pushed into 'tiny colonies of the saved'.

  I was comparing '62 to Novus, not to the Eastern rites, which are just as good as '62. The trouble with Novus, as a seminary graduate has pointed out to me, is its omissions show Bugnini's Protestant intent; it was deliberately ambiguous to favor heresy. But because the church is indefectible, it's not heretical, as the English translation ordered by Pope Benedict makes clear. I go to English Novus a few times a year: holy days of obligation, vacation Sundays, and special-event Sundays (classic-car shows and flea markets). So, contra some conservative Novus apologists ('80s flashback: they hate trads more than liberals do; liberals don't take us seriously), "the older form is better" doesn't necessarily mean "leaving the church for a cult with the church's trappings." Might be fun to shock them with Huck Finn's "All right; I'll GO to hell" but the truth is people like me aren't leaving the church (a line used on trads back in the '80s) by pointing out Novus's problems.