The trenchantly traditionalist Catholic website Rorate Cæli had an article the other day drawing upon A Bitter Trial, the published correspondence between two very great Catholics, Cardinal John Heenan and Evelyn Waugh, about the liturgical changes that began in the 1950s and culminated in the 1970 Novus Ordo Missal. By then Waugh had died and the Cardinal was in weakening health and died in 1975. It is in many ways a sad book to read, two very different men linked by a deep understanding of the traditional liturgy witnessing its mauling and abandonment.
The Rorate Cæli article however sees signs of hope in the letters in the context of our own times and in the wake of Traditionis Custodes and its implementation. The fact that Catholics are now prepared to voice their dissent and also that there are clergy ready and willing to celebrate when they can the traditional forms of the historic liturgy are seen as more positive than the situation was in the 1960s.
Furthermore it reminds the reader that it was through Cardinal Heenan that the Agatha Christie Indult came about. Nil desperandum.
The article can be read at Evelyn Waugh and "The Bitter Trial" of the Council: What is Old Is New
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