Holy Smoke: Traditional Mass 'for all the parishes'

This is a followup article to the one posted here on FR yesterday about Castillon Hoyos' comments on the "Gregorian Rite." It, and Fr. Zuhlsdorf's blog, seem to confirm this enormous announcement as legitimate. Fr. Zuhlsdorf's comments can be found here http://wdtprs.com/blog/2008/06/uk-card-castrillon-hoyos-tlm-in-%E2%80%9Cnot-many-parishes-%E2%80%93-all-parishes/

As a non-Catholic who appreciates the majesty of the Catholic Latin Mass, could you please explain some of the implications of this?

It's good, but it looks to me, now that I see the extended comments, that he was just expressing his hope rather than anything the Pope is going to mandate in any way. And the bishops will just ignore it again.

I liked this and I wish we had priests (and bishops) who would do it: If the parish priest selects an hour, on Sundays, to celebrate the Mass, and prepare with catechesis the community to understand it, to appreciate the power of the silence, the power of the sacred way in front of God, the deep theology, to discover how and why the priests represents the person of Christ and to pray with the priest.

Theoretically, general permission was given last summer for any priest to celebrate the Gregorian mass any time he wanted to do so, without permission from the bishop, and the laypeople who asked for it were to be granted a Gregorian mass in their parish. However, the bishops (not all, just the more left-wing ones) have attempted to prevent this from taking place and have either specifically forbidden it, put so many restrictions on it that it’s impossible, or simply acted as if they were deaf to the Pope, the priests and the people. This is complicated by the fact that the Mass is in Latin and Latin has not been taught in many seminaries for 40 years, and although the Latin Mass is easily learned (since it is, after all, just reading the same text time after time), most priests do not know it and are vulnerable on this score.

My bishop, for example, is very opposed and has done everything possible to prevent it, even being arrogantly insulting to the Pope in doing so.

However, if Cdl Castrillon is talking about the Gregorian mass being in “all parishes,” then it sounds as if the Pope has gotten tired of the stalling tactics of the bishops and is going to mandate it. This is, unfortunately, the only way it will ever be brought back. The thing that has had people confused is whether the Cardinal was simply speaking of this as a future hope or objective, or whether there are actual plans to require it.

Well, first of all, it is clear from the article itself and common-sense that this will take a while to implement. "A few years" seems to be what the Cardinal has in mind. Most currently active priests never learned or celebrated the TLM, and they will have to get up to speed on a sufficient amount of Latin study to do this. Current and future seminarians, it is clear, will be expected to undertake sufficient study of Latin before their priestly ordinations.

Second, the articles and commentary thus far really don't get into this much, but what will develop from this will be - effectively - two Roman Rites. Generally, throughout Church history, it is most irregular that two distinct rites are celebrated routinely in the same church building by the same priest(s) associated with that church. While, certainly, we may wind-up with all Western priests becoming effectively bi-ritual, it also might be the case that Benedict is setting the stage for the eventual creation of a separate hierarchy (bishops, priests and deacons) dedicated solely to the Gregorian Rite. Hard to tell right now.

As a practical matter, what should pan-out from this, say, five to ten years down the road, is that any Catholic in the Western Church should be able to attend a Gregorian Rite Mass in any parish. I would imagine that there will be a mandate from Benedict that at least one Sunday Mass in each parish will have to be reserved for this Rite. Of course, there will be a lot of foot-dragging and histrionics from a large number of individual bishops and some bishops' conferences, but, if Benedict can stay alive and reasonably healthy for another 5+ years, he has already demonstrated that he has the required backbone to see it through. To mollify the reluctant, perhaps he will amend the Traditional Mass liturgical calendar to include at least some of the large number of saints canonized since the last Tridentine Missal edition of 1962. This will also entail the creation of new prayers specific to Masses involving the new saints' feast days.

To me, the real, potentially HUGE news is in the sudden name change from "Extraordinary Form" to "Gregorian Rite." Words mean things, especially with these guys. Benedict originally relabelled the TLM in last year's Motu proprio as the "Extraordinary Form" precisely to indicate that the Western Church still had only one Rite of Mass, with two expressions of it. Now, in less than a full year, he is authorizing a second name change, with the word "Rite" clearly stated in it, implying a bifurcation of the Mass into two distinct Rites in the West, rather than the previous construction. That is why I wonder if the next step is to create a second hierarchy, and make the Gregorian Rite Catholics a second and distinct Western Church, on a par with the Melkites, the Maronites, the Copts, and, yes, the Novus Ordo incarnation of the Roman Church. If this is in fact what eventually happens, the Gregorian Rite Catholics would become the 23rd Church with sui-iuris self-determination capability in the overall Catholic Church.

Actually, I think the significance of “Rite” here is simply “Ordo,” the way the Novus Ordo of Paul VI was orginally translated as the “New Rite of Mass,” although nobody uses that term anymore. I think BXVI does not want to create another administrative jurisdiction, because that will lead to the creation of a small and marginalized group that could not conceivably have a mass in all parishes, ever. I am Byzantine Rite, and I can tell you all you need to know about the marginalization of the other rites in places where another rite (understood as an administrative jurisdiction) is the majority, particularly since the Novus Ordo Latin Rite people here regard the other (administrative) rites as too conservative and would certainly regard any rite using the 1962 Missal as way, way out of line. I don’t think BXVI wants to segregate the Gregorian Rite (understood as the Ordo of the 1962 Missal or earlier) even more, but wants to integrate it naturally into every parish, which certainly couldn’t happen if there are two jurisdictions.

There will probably be some kind of committee or office to see to liturgical matters, including training, specifically relating to the Gregorian Rite, however, just as there are offices for dealing with matters affecting the Novus Ordo.

Personally, I think the Pope foresees the withering away of the Novus Ordo, which is exactly what I think will happen. The fact that the US bishops are vigorously objecting to any changes or improvements that could be made to it (better translation, for example) and that Rome is insisting but not very vigorously indicates to me that there is a general attitude that devoting a lot of attention to the Novus Ordo is counterproductive. Or perhaps I should say a waste of time.

Finally, I think the term Gregorian Rite effectively separates it from relying only on the 1962 missal and opens it up, as another, regulated order or rite of the Mass, for specific changes (such as the new saints) but also permits it to keep certain things that are not liturgical practice per se but are related to the calendar, the Lectionary, etc. In some ways, I think what the Pope is doing is quietly creating a REAL “novus ordo” or new order of the Mass that will do the things that the artificial “new order” of Bugnini cut short: perhaps some parts in the vernacular, the restoration of Gregorian chant, better celebration by priests, etc.

If the Novus Ordo hangs on, I suspect it will do so as sort of a modern form of “low mass,” although even in that case, I suspect it is going to be significantly modified (for example, use of the Roman canon only, priest ad orientem, etc.) to conform to the Gregorian mass, and perhaps the calendar and lectionary will also be conformed to an adjustment between the two. Of course, this won’t happen overnight! I think it’s going to happen faster than we expect, though, particularly if there will be some statement telling all parishes that by a certain date, they must offer at least one Gregorian mass per week (per Sunday, probably). I can dream...

Within a generation or two this is all going to become academic anyway — when “Novus Ordo” parishes continue to shut down and churches aren’t even big enough to accommodate the crowds that attend Tridentine Masses.

I have to disagree with you a bit on the significance of the change in wording. Benedict used "Extraordinary Form" to emphasize that he was not creating a second Rite. Once coining the terminology, he would have had good motive to keep everyone else on-page with that terminology. Yet, we see Benedict's Number Two using a wording that contradicts the tenor of the previous usage (and, apparently, not for the first time!). Unless a new direction is being signalled, it would seem highly counterproductive to move away from an already highly artificial construct designed to appease the fears of the lefties. No, I think this new wording is very significant in its own right, and is a harbinger of much more "development" to come.

It has been whispered for a while that Benedict is not very happy with the reception his Motu Proprio has received, and the stalling and whining associated with its implementation. I think this London press conference is the unveiling of the fruit of Benedict's "displeasure." He may at least use the implied threat of a separate hierachy to get the boys in line. If they don't, the hierachy is established. If they do, he still has his mandate for the Gregorian Rite's usage in every parish. In that event, I agree with you that, over time, the Novus Ordo will slide into the footnotes of the more obscure, dust-covered volumes of church history. With apologies to Nero in "Quo Vadis": History will wonder if the Novus Ordo every existed.

This world may not survive another generation.

I know that a number of people who have been working diligently for the “improvement” of the Novus Ordo over the last years are gradually losing interest in the project, simply because there is a growing perception that with the reintroduction of the Gregorian Rite, the days of the Novus Ordo are limited anyway. It’s not going to go without a fight, of course, because think of all the music publishing houses, shoddy church-design firms and others that make their living off of it. Not to mention the priests and bishops who really don’t want to go to the effort of learning the Gregorian Rite or explaining it to their people.

How long, O Lord, how long...

In the area where I live I now have a CHOICE of which church I can travel to in order to attend a Tridentine Mass every Sunday.

If you had told me even just five years ago that this would be the case, I would have called you crazy.