By Anthony Esolen, The Catholic Thing - Will not “blood” be one of the evangelist’s most crucial motifs? Will not “flesh” be taken up in the very next line? Why must all the mysterious suggestions be reduced to the bald and the banal, as if John were transcribing the minutes for a committee?... If such a thing is held as inseparable from the Novus Ordo, along with the rest of the flattening – if, I say – then novus would be the wrong word. Praeteritus, rather, for a bygone fad, like loud polyester slacks, or that palma Felicis. Bishops, I beg you, take heed.