Posted on 05/18/2003 3:07:07 PM PDT by Polycarp
May 17, 2003
A fad for young fogeys, or the authentic spirit of Catholicism?
By Bess Twiston Davies
Forty years after the reforms of Vatican II, the old-rite Latin Mass is enjoying a renaissance in the Catholic Church
INCENSE swirls through the sanctuary, enveloping the neat row of altar servers kneeling on the marble altar steps. A bishop towering above them raises a gold chalice, proclaiming in Latin that it holds the blood of Christ. He is reaching the climax of the Tridentine liturgy, the Mass once standard in the Catholic Church. It includes lengthy Latin prayers, lacunae of silence, an extra Gospel after communion. The priests pray with their backs to the congregation, occasionally breaking into complex bows to the left and right of the altar. To the modern Catholic, it’s a bit of a mystery. Most under 40 grew up with the new rite, which replaced the Tridentine Mass in 1969, dropping Latin for the vernacular and obliging the priest to face his congregation, rather than east — the direction in which Christ is thought to have ascended to Heaven. To the average Catholic, today’s Mass at St James’s, Spanish Place, in Central London seems a scene from another age.
Yet a startling proportion of the priests at the altar look younger than 40. A quick survey of the congregation reveals an equally mixed age group: middle-aged matrons in hats and headscarves sitting next to tiny girls in lace mantillas, elderly men in tweed or blazers wedged between earnest boys, pressing their straightened hands in prayer. All seem plunged into intense, reverent concentration, disturbed only by the odd squeal from a recalcitrant toddler.
The age range reveals the Tridentine Mass to be enjoying a renaissance with younger Catholics. More significantly, it is also producing vocations. Last year, 81 men sought 16 places at the US seminary of the Fraternal Society of St Peter, an order founded in 1988 by the Vatican to train old-rite priests. “We don’t do selfpromotion,” claims Father Arnaud Devillers, the society’s superior. Such statistics have been noted in Rome. Forthcoming Vatican guidelines on liturgy will advocate wider use of the old rite, possibly weekly, say reports in Inside the Vatican magazine.
Until now, whether to allow or forbid the old Mass has been decided by diocesan bishops. “There is a certain idea among bishops that interest in the traditional rite represents the Church of the past, a mentality we don’t want now. We still have to convince them that values important in the Tridentine-rite liturgy, such as reverence, adoration of Christ, and the Mass as sacrifice, can be fruitful for the Church,” argues Loic Merian, founder of Ciel, Le Centre Internationale d’Études Liturgiques, a forum devoted to studying the old rite. “There is a great gulf now between the will of Rome and the bishops. Rome may impose a solution.”
There are signs that it already has: the guest speaker at this year’s annual conference of Ciel UK, Ciel’s English offshoot, is Dom Fernando Areas Rifan, leader of the world’s only Tridentine diocese. Rifan is bishop of the Apostolic Administration of St John Vianney in Campos, northern Brazil.
Under a unique agreement with the Holy See in January 2002, the 30,000 Catholics and 26 priests of Campos now have exclusive permission to celebrate Mass and Sacraments in Latin, using pre-Vatican II liturgy. They had left the Church 21 years previously, after the Bishop of Campos at the time banned the old Mass, imposing the new.
In exile, the Campos Catholics joined forces with the Society of St Pius X (SSPX), Tridentinist schismatics who refuse to attend the new rite. In 1988 the Pope excommunicated the society’s leader, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Now, impressed by the piety of SSPX members visiting Rome, he is wooing them back. Plans are afoot for a Tridentine-rite parish in Berlin run by Tridentine-rite priests in conjunction with priests belonging to the traditional but mainstream Congregation of St Philip Neri.
These developments are not universally welcome. Most Catholics are utterly indifferent to the Tridentine rite, claims Father Bruno Healy, parish priest at St Joseph’s, Bunhill Row, in the City of London. “The Tridentine Mass would interest only 5 per cent or perhaps 1 per cent of the people in the pews,” he says. “There are young fogeys who like it but I think they are just chasing something esoteric. Their interest mystifies and saddens me. They talk of the old Mass, but every Mass is new, fresh and unique. I put my heart and soul into every Mass I say, and I think most priests would say that it is wonderful to speak to people in their own tongue.”
Thirty-two-year-old Brian McCall disagrees: “The Tridentine Mass teaches humility, being conscious of sinfulness, obedience. I went for 25 years to the new Mass and I didn’t think any of those things had anything to do with being Catholic.” He worships at St Bede’s, Clapham Park, in London, one of the rare English parishes to offer Tridentine Masses daily and on Sundays.
“There is a tendency to allow Tridentine masses at 3pm on a Sunday,” says Dom Andrew Southwell, a priest from St Bede’s who serves old-rite Catholics outside London. “This is given as a way containing traditionalists who are seen as an eccentric fringe group, but there is a crying pastoral need to respond to young families.”
Once a month, St Bede’s organises a family day, including a sung Tridentine Mass, doctrinal talk and vespers. Colette Oliver is one of the 200 who attend with her four children. Despite the Latin, she finds the old-rite Mass child- friendly. “In church my children are angelic, they are not immaculately behaved outside and used to be horrible in the new-rite Mass. People often say that the trappings and the incense are boring and too much for children. This isn’t true — they capture the kids’ imagination.”
“I was amazed when the families started coming to the old-rite Mass,” says St Bede’s parish priest, Father Christopher Basden. “It went against all our 1970s assumptions that what modern Catholics wanted was a liturgy that was relaxed, contemporary, a bit jazzy.”
www.ciel-uk.org
The Modernists talking point response. And yet, to avoid the issue, they ruthlessley have tried to supress the Tridentine Rite for 40 years. This is FEAR talking. This is the same issue fought every generation in the Church, Man centric or God centric. The Modernist Man-Centric are in a panic. As they should be.
The Modernists talking point response. And yet, to avoid the issue, they ruthlessley have tried to supress the Tridentine Rite for 40 years.
Amazing, narses, how you managed to hit the nail on the head. I have seen email documentation of the fact that the very priest who was quoted in this article, Fr. Bruno Healy, himself destroyed a Latin Mass community and turned it from a thriving parish into a shell of its former self. HE certainly wants to destroy the traditional liturgy of the Catholic Church, but it's not clear that the laity want to go along with him. Here's an example of Fr. Healy's other activities when he's not bad-mouthing the Catholic Mass:
"Fr Bruno has led one of a series of ecumenical pilgrimages with the Methodists entitled "Seeing and Believing in Stillness" (where is this is in the Catholic creeds!). All the other participants in the series were women in the pretend orders of various protestant denominations."
Father Healy, your lack of interest mystifies and saddens me.
What a lack of interest!!
/sarcasm off
It's going to take a lot of prayer and fasting for what you say to come to pass. Unless what comes out of the Vatican is encouraged and enforced by the bishops, let's face it, most priests will continue on "as you were." I haven't heard a whisper about this stuff in my own parish. And I am at Mass 3 times per week, Adoration twice during the Friday morning 2 1/2 hours we have it, and any grunt job that I can do. Nary a word.
Fogey bump. Not saying whether I'm of the old, young, or middle aged variety. Harumph!
Des, I agree. My husband and I have dropped out of all our choir obligations (as well as cantor), and are now attending a quiet, reflective dialogue mass at 7:30 on Sunday morning, with nothing musical but an occasional closing hymn on a special feast day, and have come to enjoy the silent prayer offered much more than we ever did the continual pop tunes and organ noodling of the noisy 10:30 Mass. We would welcome the Old Rite, and fortunately, we have a priest who would, also. We are truly blessed!
Pray that this be so! I have even begun to correct the ugliest and most glaring ICEL mistranslations in my Christian Prayer book. I was brought up short by the use of "families of peoples" in place of "nations" in one Psalm a couple of weeks ago. I hate to write in the book, but I'm tired of having the flow of psalms I've taken the time to memorize being jerked up short when I scan a word or phrase that not only doesn't fit, but is a weak, ugly replacement, and isn't even a translation of the original. I wouldn't mind English prayers, if they were CAREFUL TRANSLATIONS of the Latin. But the silly, toothless, politically-correct replacement of powerful and expressive prayers is enough to make one stop praying the Divine Office! (/rant)
ICEL: Buh-BYE!!
We have been praying persistently, daily, for the restoration of Holy Mother Church and her Mass. We see a lot of reasons to hope that our prayers are being heard and answered at last.
We have a monthly sung High Mass in Latin on First Saturdays. It is in its third year, and we are seeing a steady increase in the number of people who attend. We began with about six people, and had 25 at the last one. Father makes the invitation from the pulpit faithfully, a week ahead.
Anyhow, much to my sadness, I realized then that there is indeed, an AmChurch existing side by side with the Roman Catholic Church. And the AmChurch men (and women - most nuns around here are more progressive then the priests are) have decided that they are more fit to interpret doctrine and rubics than Rome is fit to do.
There has not been a day when I have not offered some prayer or a rosary for this poor priest, and those who agree with him.
That's what's needed - stuff that goes "against all our 1970s assumptions."
narses wrote: “The Tridentine Mass would interest only 5 per cent or perhaps 1 per cent of the people in the pews,” The Modernists talking point response. And yet, to avoid the issue, they ruthlessley have tried to supress the Tridentine Rite for 40 years. This is FEAR talking. This is the same issue fought every generation in the Church, Man centric or God centric. The Modernist Man-Centric are in a panic. As they should be.
It also has to do with the fact that most liberals and modernists do not know Latin. When competent knowledge of Latin (and a great many other things like theology, church history, and philosophy) was dropped as a requirement, a lot of damage resulted just from plain ignorance and intellectual laziness among the "New Class" clergy. They are afraid of the Latin Mass to a large degree because they just don't know the language.
It's a little odd when a diocesan bureaucrat announces there is no demand for the Tridentine Latin Mass and then does everything to try to frustrate lay Catholics from finding out where and when it is said. This is the social engineering of a lack of interest in the Latin Mass. They will say there is "no demand" for or "no interest" in the Latin Mass. Then they will say, well, "very few" Catholics will attend. Then, only "old people" are interested in this. When over 500 people show up, they then begin suggesting, well, these are not genuinely "Catholic" people who accept Vatican II but reactionaries, extremists, and mean-spirited traditionalists or conservatives with an anti-liberal, anti-modern agenda. One thing about modernists - they need to study logic again (and preferably as taught by a trained Aristotelian or Thomist).
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