Comment: Waugh to Buckley

At the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, so sure was Evelyn Waugh that the Council wouldn't dare to abrogate the Latin Mass, that he wrote, in part, to William Buckley:

The nature of the Mass is so profoundly mysterious that the most acute and holy men are continually discovering further nuances of significance. It is not a peculiarity of the Roman Church that much which happens at the altar is in varying degrees obscure to most of the worshipers. It is in fact the mark of all the historic, apostolic Churches. I think it highly doubtful whether the average churchgoer either needs or desires to have complete intellectual, verbal comprehension of all that is said. He has come to worship.

[Quoted by Chris Conlee in "The Fever of Vatican II," New Oxford Review (January 2007), p. 34.]