Last night at dinner, a priest asked me if I’d seen this piece in Time magazine, about the Latin mass. I confessed: no. So I sought it out online this morning.

It’s a mixed bag. While the author’s appreciation of the old rite seems sincere, it sounds like she’s just tired of hearing homilies that actually have something to do with modern life:

Eventually, though, the newly comprehensible sermons began to sink in. I clearly remember one involving a newborn baby left in a Dumpster that somehow in the end advocated against laws allowing abortion. There was that time you beseeched us, Father, to write letters of protest to a Senator who supported stem-cell research. Not long ago, your homily excoriated divorce. You used as your rhetorical cornerstone the 1998 Lindsay Lohan vehicle The Parent Trap. As if that were not galling enough, you failed to note that, as previously divorced people, the characters played by Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson would be denied communion in the Catholic Church.

It almost goes without saying that as a young, progressive-minded American Catholic, I’m at odds with many of the church’s rules and with much of its politics. You might thus infer that my generation instinctively rejects the age-old traditions of the church. That would be wrong. In a world unmoored by violence and uncertainty, there is something deeply soothing about participating in ancient rituals practiced by so many. Whatever our issues with the tenets of Catholicism the religion, we still cling to what unites us in Catholicism the faith: our devotion to the celebration of the Eucharist. I confess I adore the rich minutiae of the Mass: the frankincense, the Kyrie, the droning of creeds in a sacred space. It comforts me to know that my family around the globe takes part in the same weekly rites. The common purpose of shared ceremony helps me reflect on the Holy Spirit. With apologies, Father, homilies based on your Netflix queue do not.

Okay, the snark factor there is pretty high. I’d be curious to hear from her just what subjects she’d like broached in homilies, and how.

A couple weeks ago, I heard Mike Hayes from Busted Halo deliver an intriguing Theology on Tap: he spoke about 20-somethings who have witnessed so much dissonance and pain in life — everything from Columbine to 9/11, Iraq and Virginia Tech — that they desperately want worship experiences that are quiet and comforting. In a world of uncertainty, they hunger for what is certain, and to hold fast to something solid. The Tridentine rite, I submit, offers that. (Of course, so does the Novus Ordo, when done properly and faithfully.)

But this writer sounds like she’s looking to the Mass to help her escape from the world, not be engaged in it. She’s looking for something transcendent.

As are we all. But I can’t help but feel, when I read her take on this, that something is missing.