On the Latin Mass

I somewhat belatedly purchased National Review's memorial issue for Bill Buckley. Interspersed throughout its pages are collections of brief observations by WFB on various matter. Here's a nice one I came across on his appreciation for the Lain Mass, entitled, appropriately, Hooked on the Latin Mass.

I have always been impatient, and so it was I suppose surprising that I came so quickly to feel at east with the daily Mass, becoming progressively more engrossed in the words and the ritual. The liturgy took hold of me, and I suppose that this means nothing more than that liturgy has theatrical properties. Yes, but something more, I reasonably supposed, and suppose so now. Thirty years later I would write a scorching denunciation of the changes authorized by Vatican II and of the heartbreakingly awful English translations that accompanied the jettisoning of the Latin. The Mass, in Latin, had got to me. They say about alcoholics that they are never "cured." I am a senior citizen and my faith has never left me, and I must suppose that Fr. Sharkey and Fr. Paine and Fr. Manning had something to do with it. They, and the closeness I felt, every morning, to the mystical things that were taking place at the altar.