Does He Know the Mind of Satan?

George A. Kendall is at it again. In his article titled “The Old Mass and the Purgative Way” (The Wanderer, July 19), he says, “What the Medjugorje cultists have done is to give an alleged private revelation priority over Christ’s public Revelation to the Church and over the Church’s Magisterium. Satan has them exactly where he wants them. We see much the same psychology in the attitude of many toward the old [Tridentine] Mass…. [They] become so obsessed with restoring the old Mass that it becomes a kind of idol, to the point where Gregorian chant, incense, Latin, bells at the consecration, and so on become more important, really, than the love of God. At that point, serious spiritual disorder sets in…. Idolatry does not consist in loving bad things too much, but in the disordered love of good things, and the higher the good which we turn into an idol, the worse the idolatry is. The old Mass is a very great good and a very great spiritual consolation, and Satan can use it very effectively to draw souls away from God.”

Kendall also says, “This deprivation [the suppression of the old Mass] is, it seems, a means by which God can work with us to bring us to greater spiritual maturity [in the new vernacular Mass], forcing us to live by faith alone without the comfort of beautiful liturgy.”

In the same issue of The Wanderer, Editor Al Matt Jr. says, “For many Catholics, including thousands of Wanderer readers, who have endured the indifference or actual hostility toward the traditional Latin Mass by many priests and bishops, Pope Benedict’s decision [to liberate the Tridentine Mass] will be received with great joy and gratitude.”

Is Kendall saying to thousands of Wanderer readers that “Satan has them exactly where he wants them”?