By Anthony Esolen.

But first a note from Robert Royal: We all know that we need to overcome the deep divisions that plague us all these days in the Church and society. But there are many things - and Professor Esolen points sharply to several of them here below - that cannot be resolved merely by goodwill. They need to be examined. Debated. Resolved. And properly. Here at The Catholic Thing, we've been in that business for closing in on twenty years now. And who knows where the Church and world would be if we and others had given up on these struggles? We didn't. And we won't. But we need you. Frankly, these first days of our mid-year fundraiser are a little softer than I'd like them to be. I need you to step up, bigger, and again if you already have. The work is long and the day is late. Please, play your part in facing the big challenges that we face. Click the button. Support the work of The Catholic Thing.

Now for today's column...

Bishop Michael Martin of Charlotte has made news with his order, if I may be permitted a metaphor, that the Vetus Ordo be celebrated only in a certain broom closet in Swannanoa. It seems also that he was about to ban some of the features of the TLM that tradition-minded people who attend the Novus Ordo favor, such as kneeling to receive the Sacrament, or facing the Risen Christ as we pray ad orientem. After the uproar about the latter - not the former, Martin has backed away, assuring people that there will be no big changes - until at least October.

Meanwhile, at the website of those music men the Saint Louis Jesuits, I've read a short piece in which once-priest Bob Dufford describes how much he loved Hollywood musicals when he was a boy, naming Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Lerner and Lowe, as his most significant influences.

I thought as much. The "folk" music common at Mass has little or nothing to do, in melody or lyrics, with any folk tradition anywhere in the world. Such songs as Dufford's "Like a Shepherd" or Dan Schutte's "Here I Am" are show tunes. They are not like medieval plainsong, or the Scottish Psalter, or the Lutheran hymns that Bach arranged, or American revival hymns, or English carols.

Folk melodies are often hauntingly beautiful: Picardy ("Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence"), Slane ("Be Thou My Vision"), St. Elisabeth ("Jesus, the Very Thought of Thee"). They can be sung by people of all ages and both sexes, together. They are not for soloists. They do not sport bizarre tempos and oddball intervals. Their lyrics come in stanzas with recognizable structure. They are thus easy to remember.

Show tunes! It's as if we're all supposed to sing, for Mass, some adaptation of "I Feel Pretty" from West Side Story, or of the overblown and narcissistic "Climb Every Mountain" from The Sound of Music.

Yet one of the common criticisms of the Novus Ordo as celebrated is just this inclination toward narcissism, with a little effeminacy for spice, and a blithe carelessness about whether the congregation, as a whole, men and women both, boys and girls, can sing the show tunes or will bother to try.

Let the battle be engaged, then, on the specifics. I attend the Novus Ordo; my reasons are private. But I'm eager to hear those who detest the old rite try to justify each change and each new liturgical habit, one by one.

Suppose someone says, "I attend the old rite because I want to hear the Last Gospel at the end of every high Mass"

What response? Why was that suppressed?

Or, "The old calendar makes more sense to me, and helps me order my days. That includes the time of Epiphany, which the new rite eliminated, and Septuagesima. It also includes the Octave of Pentecost. Why does that birthday of the Church not merit its octave along with Christmas and Easter?"

What possible response? Justify the sudden leap from Ordinary Time to Lent, without preparation. Justify that downgrading of Pentecost.

Or, "Man is united by what transcends him. At the old rite, I don't feel chatty. I save that for after ...