What Does The Prayer Really Say?
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Damian Thompson covers and comments on the Pontifical Mass celebrated by His Eminence Dario Card. Castrillon Hoyos in Westminster Cathedral.

My emphases and comments.

Latin Mass to return to England and Wales
By Damian Thompson

The traditional Latin Mass – effectively banned by Rome for 40 years – is to be reintroduced into every Roman Catholic parish in England and Wales, [Get that?]  the senior Vatican cardinal in charge of Latin liturgy said at a press conference in London today.  [This was stated by someone who knows what he is talking about.  He wouldn’t have said it if it was according to the Holy Father’s will.  how can we know this?  He made a similar statement before.  Review this.  If the Secretariat of State or the Holy Father had a problem with what Card. Castrillon said back then, he wouldn’t be saying it in public now.]

In addition, all seminaries will be required to teach trainee priests how to say the old Mass so that they can celebrate it in all parishes.  [Get that?  Will… be… required…. ]

Catholic congregations throughout the world will receive special instruction on how to appreciate the old services, formerly known as the Tridentine Rite.

Yesterday’s announcement by the senior Vatican cardinal in charge of Latin liturgy, Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, speaking on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI, will horrify Catholic liberals, including many bishops of England and Wales.

The Pope upset the liberals last year when he issued a decree removing their power to block the celebration of the old Mass. Yesterday’s move demonstrates that the Vatican intends to go much further in promoting the ancient liturgy.

Asked whether the Latin Mass would be celebrated in many ordinary parishes in future, Cardinal Castrillon said: “Not many parishes – all parishes.  [I can see it now: "What part, My Lord… Your Excellency, of "all" was difficult to understand?"] The Holy Father is offering this not only for the few groups who demand it, but so that everybody knows this way of celebrating the Eucharist.” [Again, not only for those who ask for it, but all… even if they don’t ask for it.  This is consistent with what he said on the DVD made with EWTN by the FSSP and which I linked about above for your review.]

The Cardinal, who heads the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, made his comments as he was preparing to celebrate a traditional Latin Mass at Westminster Cathedral yesterday, the first time a cardinal has done so there for 40 years.

In the traditional rite, the priest faces in the same direction as the people and reads the main prayer of the Mass in Latin, in a voice so low as to be virtually silent. By contrast, in the new rite the priest faces the people and speaks audibly in the local language.

Cardinal Castrillon said that the reverent silence of the traditional rite was one of the “treasures” that Catholics would rediscover, and young worshippers would encounter for the first time.   [Silence = Treasure.  Interesting.]

Pope Benedict will reintroduce the old rite – which will be known as the “Gregorian Rite” – even where the congregation has not asked for it. “People don’t know about it, and therefore they don’t ask for it,” the Cardinal explained.  ["Gregorian Rite"?  I know this is used by some.  I wonder if it will catch on or if this will be so labeled in a document of the Holy See.]

The revised Mass, adopted in 1970 after the Second Vatican Council, had given rise to “many, many, many abuses”, the Cardinal said. He added: “The experience of the last 40 years has not always been so good. Many people have lost their sense of adoration for God, and these abuses mean that many children do not know how to be in the presence of God.”

However, the new rite will not disappear; the Pope wishes to see the two forms of Mass existing side by side.  [Yep.  And then we shall see what happens!  Can you say tertium quid?]

Such sweeping liturgical changes are certain to cause intense controversy. At a press conference, a journalist from the liberal Tablet magazine, which is close to the English bishops, told the Cardinal that the new liturgical changes amounted to “going backwards”.  [But The Tablet is simply wrong.  Wrong, wrong wrong.]

Following last year’s papal decree, liberal bishops in England and America have attempted to limit the takeup of the old Mass by arguing that the rules say it should only be reintroduced when a “stable group” of the faithful request it. But Cardinal Castrillon said that a stable group could consist of as few as three people, [This is what WDTPRS argued all along.] and they need not come from the same parish.

The changes will take a few years to implement fully, he added, just as the Second Vatican Council had taken a long time to absorb. He insisted that the widespread reintroduction of the old Mass did not contradict the teachings of the Council.

I repeat:

“Not many parishes – all parishes"

Damien Thompson has in an report worth paying attention to.  What I find especially interesting is the exploration of some themes we have been presenting here for a long time:

Latin Mass marries beauty and truth
Posted by Damian Thompson on 12 Jun 2008  at 17:11

Last night I attended what may have been the most beautiful religious service of my life.  Fr Julian Large (a former Telegraph journalist) celebrated the traditional Mass in the Little Oratory to mark the publication of Alessandra Borghese’s book In the Footsteps of Joseph Ratzinger. The experience was unforgettable.

This was splendid Roman liturgy on an intimate scale. Fr Julian, wearing a blood-red chasuble embroidered in gold, gave a virtuoso demonstration of the sacred gestures of the traditional Missal, almost hidden at times by great pillars of incense. The effect was solemn, not remotely camp. And, because the priest offered the sacrifice of the Mass ad orientem – facing the same way as the people – his personality become irrelevant.

Princess Borghese’s book, whose publication was sponsored by Sir Rocco Forte, is an intimate and affectionate exploration of Benedict XVI’s Bavarian roots. The Pope would have been delighted that she chose to launch it with a Mass using the older Missal – which is superior in so many ways to the hastily assembled (and barbarously translated) Bugnini Missal forced on the Church in 1970.

A few years ago I read a remarkable article by the Australian Dominican Fr Efraem Chiffley, entitled “Sacrifice and Sacred Space”, which suggested that eastward-facing liturgy is more closely linked to man’s natural orientation to the sacred – manifested even in ceremonies as remote from Christianity as those of the Aborigines – than mundane “chat show” services.

Another Dominican, Fr Aidan Nichols – whom I hope the Holy Father is taking seriously as a candidate to succeed Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor – makes a similar point. “Rites that do not allow a sense of distance deny to the people, paradoxically, a means of appropriating the act of worship, crippling them just at the point where they could be taking off Godward by a leap of religious imagination,” he writes.

There is not much physical distance between priest and people in the Brompton Oratory’s chapel. Yet the sense of cosmic possibility created by the rubric left the worshippers awestruck and perhaps a little unsettled. At dinner afterwards, the conversation kept returning to the Mass we had attended, so great was the impression it created.

Interestingly, in her speech the princess spoke not about the finer points of liturgy but about her personal relationship with Jesus. And listening to her approvingly, I noticed, was none other than Nicky Gumbel, vicar of the distinctly Protestant Holy Trinity Brompton next door.

Gumbel’s Alpha Course has revived parts of the Church of England with modern orthodoxy. Pope Benedict wishes to revive the whole Catholic Church by reintroducing orthodox liturgy to a Church impoverished by the 40-year tyranny of the Sandalistas. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the future of English Catholicism depends on the appointment of an Archbishop of Westminster who shares his vision. But where can we find such a man?

Frankly, they could consider the parish priest of Blackfen.

What are some of the important issues this piece raises?

The priest is not the center, though he is central to the sacred action.  Jesus Christ is the true Actor in Holy Mass.  The priest is alter Christus.  But the priest must not allow himself to become the focus of the action.  Aside from ad orientem worship, the older form of Mass, with its more precise rubrics, has a built in way of controlling the priest.  During the 2005 Synod of Bishops a constant point of reflection was ars celebrandi, the "art of celebrating" the sacred liturgy.  Much depends on the priest, and his manner, but – in a deeper sense – nothing must depend on him insofar as his own force of will or personality is concerned.  The priest must learn a delicate balance.

Ad orientem worship is so important on so many levels.  Not only does it help control the priest, keep his personality out of the way, but it also keeps everyone focused on eschatological dimension of Mass: Christ will come.  I share the opinion of the great liturgist Klaus Gamber, that one of the most damaging changes after the Council was the turning around of altars.  And it was all so unnecessary: the documents did not demand that Mass be celebrated versus populum but over time the impression was given that it was obligatory.  Now, hesitantly… hestitantly… we are working back in the right direction.  Pope Benedict wrote about ad orientem worship, and argued for its superiority to versus populum worship.  However, when he wrote about that years ago, he warned that we should move carefully in the "right direction" without created yet another shock to the Catholic people.   But we have come to the right moment to move forward.

Also, every Mass should direct us toward an encounter with Mystery, should promote "awe at transcendence".  Each rite does this in a different way.  There are times in the Roman Rite when you cannot hear what is going on and others when you cannot see.  The language itself is, should be, separated from daily speech, either because it is in liturgical Latin, or because the translation harks to the Latin original and has vocabulary which is not common to the lowest denominator.  The movement, gestures and words should look beyond the present time and the local space so that you will not be locked within yourself or within your community.  Instead, by giving up that familiarity, you are increased beyond yourself.

 

 

His Hermeneuticalness reports on the doings in his future See of Westminster:

This evening, I had the privilege of attending dinner at the Travellers Club in London with HE Darío Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos and the Committee of the Latin Mass Society, together with the other sacred ministers for tomorrow’s Mass, Frs Wadsworth and Conlon of the diocese of Westminster, and Fr Hudson of the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, together with Fr Ronald Creighton-Jobe of the London Oratory. Fr Christopher Tuckwell, the new administrator of Westminster Cathedral was also there: we are all very grateful to him for his hospitality and for making available some of the Cathedral’s finest vestments and plate for tomorrow’s Pontifical Mass.

After dinner, Julian Chadwick, the LMS Chairman gave a rousing speech in which he noted that the visit of Cardinal Hoyos does much to fulfil the legitimate aspirations for which the society has worked over several decades.

Cardinal Hoyos replied in a moving and heartfelt address in which he expressed the hope that tomorrow’s Mass would be a sign to the Church throughout the world of the personal desire of the Holy Father that the richness of the traditional liturgy of the Church would benefit all. He was glad that the Mass is to be televised by EWTN so that it can be seen by people across the globe. He said that we should not refer to the "old Mass" since we go up to the altar of "God who gives joy to my youth" – he referred to it as the "Gregorian Mass" in order to emphasise its enduring youthfulness. It was evident that the Cardinal’s love for the traditional liturgy was personal and sincere. We toasted him with the "Ad multos annos."

(In the photo above, you can see Cardinal Hoyos in conversation with Fr Andrew Wadsworth, and, to the right, Prince Rupert zu Loewenstein, the Honorary President of the Latin Mass Society.)