Even if parishes were often set up along ethnic lines, there was still, beyond this, a strong sense of belonging to the one Catholic Church, the great equalizer and leveler.
To the one patriarchate of Rome.
The American churches gave up on assimilation and requiring immigrants learn English. They also gave into multiculturalism, and allowed for different worship "styles."
The imposition of the vernacular and the lack of ritual and rubrical discipline has separated us into little enclaves. You end up with Masses for white upper-middle-class golfers, Mass with African-American Gospel music, Mass for Hispanics, Mass for Vietnamese, etc. etc. How can the Church “unite the different races” if she can’t even unite us in a single recognizably Catholic worship?
Churchmen after the Council foolishly abandoned this remarkable power of a single Creed, acknowledged and taught as such; a single observance with real asceticism; and, above all, a common body of Latin liturgy to draw together people of different races, ethnicities, languages, classes, backgrounds, and vocations. We may truly say that the practice of the traditional liturgy has been, and is capable of becoming once again, the Catholic Church’s “secret weapon” for unity among the faithful of the far-flung and demographically highly diverse Latin rite.Latin as the unifying language of a political or ecclesial empire. No thanks. That Latin ecclesial and political myth persists, though. "A common body of liturgy in hieratic English to draw together people of different races, ethnicities, languages, classes, backgrounds, and vocations..." That is a solution as much as what Kwasniewski is advocating. But the bureaucrats who run the Latin churches surrendered.
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