From the useful Crisis with my emphases and comments:
Worship Worthy of God
MICHAEL J. ORTIZJuly 7 is [already!] the tenth anniversary of Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum, a decree that allows priests to celebrate the form of the liturgy of the Mass before it was reformed in 1970. [aka The Emancipation Proclamation] For most Catholics, this will likely fall into the category of ecclesiastical arcana, and pass unnoticed. Yet this same decree’s widespread obscurity—enacted primarily to insure “worship worthy of God” throughout the Church— [Yes, that is the primary purpose. It had little or nothing to do with the dopey “nostagia” claim that libs throw in the teeth of good people to whom they feel morally superior. Whenever you hear the claim of “nostalgia”, know that you have heard some snug virtue signaling.] implicitly shows that Catholic liturgy following the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) did undergo significant changes, some marking a departure from centuries of tradition. [In direct violation of the Council Father’s manifest desire that the reforms NOT be a departure.] Successful revolutions, after all, usually involve a loss of memory before the year zero, the inauguration of a new era. [And to think that Kark Rahner (SJ) thought that V2 was tantamount to a new “Council of Jerusalem, and Küng thought V2 didn’t go nearly far enough. Imagine the horror show we would have today… which we don’t have yet.]
It’s hard today for many Catholics to imagine a Mass spoken in Latin, or chanted in Gregorian chant, with the priest facing liturgical east, because so many Catholics now worship with a different orientation[some, in more ways than one] than before the reforms of Paul VI, the pope who brought Vatican II to a close, and implemented the liturgical innovations he felt necessary to bring the Church more in tune with the modern world. [That’s one way to phrase it.]
Yet Benedict’s decree has taken root. [It has, and it is growing and producing fruit.] In the late 1970s, there were, in the United States, less than a dozen communities celebrating the old rite, usually without canonical recognition by a local bishop. Today, there are over 400 parishes (admittedly a small fraction of the total number) that regularly offer the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, as Pope Benedict called it in 2007. This growth is significant for a number of reasons.
One reason is the old rite is suffused with a sense of the sacred. [It is hard-wired into the rite itself. Part of what helps that sense of the sacred is that the rite keeps the priest under control.] Part of this involves the amount of silence woven into the old Mass. [Certain for Low Mass. However, Low Mass isn’t supposed to be the norm. The Missa cantata and the Solemn Mass are not Low Mass with things added. The Missa cantata and Low Mass are Masses with lots of things stripped out. Ideally we should aim for me Solemn Masses and, better, Pontifical Masses as we do where I lurk.]Those who have tasted this sacred silence don’t easily forget it. Many unknowingly yearn for it. Last week at my parish, for instance, I noticed after Communion many in the pews—parents, grandparents, some singles—virtually trying to wrap themselves in silence, with hands to their faces, seemingly saddened, as if they could not reach further into the mysterious embrace to which they had been called. I think I know what they were missing, though I dare not speak for them. I only say, look at this ancient Mass, see what has been taken away from you, perhaps even before you were born. [A good point. Dear readers, this is our patrimony, our inheritance, lovingly polished through the centuries and handed down. It has been kept from you. You have been robbed. You should demand it back. It’s yours.]
I realize that when the Extraordinary Form was simply the Roman rite, it wasn’t paradise in every parish in the Catholic Church. There was, after all, the “Here comes everybody” reality, which is how it should be: Christ died for everyone, not simply those sensitive to aesthetic values. But the ancient form of the Mass should hardly be considered only for those with so-called highbrow tastes, for the benefit this liturgy brings is for everyone.
In his recent book, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise, [US HERE – UK HERE], Cardinal Robert Sarah put his finger on the fevered pulse of our contemporary culture: “The tragedy of our world is never better summed up than in the fury of senseless noise that stubbornly hates silence. This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter, wonder and kneeling before God.” [That’s is. It is in the hard moments of silence where we encounter mystery.] Having in many places lost this sacredness of the liturgy, is it any surprise that, as Cardinal Sarah notes, we see a world increasingly incapable of wonder, of silent awe in the presence of God?
Aidan Nichols, in his Looking at Liturgy, in 1996, explains how a desire to increase the understanding and participation of the laity in the Mass did so on faulty sociological theories. Citing Dominican liturgiologist Irenee-Henri Dalmais, Nichols shows that, contrary to many of the Fathers of Vatican II’s experts, liturgy “belongs in the order of doing (ergon), not of knowing (logos). Logical thought cannot get far with it; liturgical actions yield their intelligibility in their performance, and this performance takes place at the level of sensible realities … capable of awakening the mind and heart to acceptance of realities belonging to a different order.” The theme of noble simplicity, one of the principle axioms of Vatican II’s liturgical reforms, in this light appears somewhat naïve, [at the very least] excluding as it does methods of perception proper to the human person that are wider than Enlightenment epistemology can obtain or even account for. [Can you spell “apophatic”?]
Additionally, the new form of the Mass today in the vernacular instead of Latin robs Catholics of a universal language of worship as our global village grows smaller. Marked by numerous options, the new Mass also includes opportunities for ad hoc remarks or emphasis by the celebrant (see George Weigel’s “It’s Howdy Dowdy Time!” at First Things for a recent example), [That was a good one.] standing in stark contrast to the older rite, with its self-effacing demands that the personality of the celebrant yields to the larger sanctity of the Mass itself. [As I said, the older rite keeps the priest under control.] Is it any wonder that many Catholics today succumb to emotionalism or sentimentality when it comes to addressing moral issues when our Novus Ordo liturgies are often marked by the same ethos?
In other words, the new rite shows all the marks of the 1970s, while the older rite is rich in the silence of slow time, [An analogy: the difference in satisfaction one has from fast food or slow food.] or, as in a sung Mass, the otherworldly harmonies of Gregorian chant, now a rarity in many parishes that use only the reformed Mass. Which is not to say they are incompatible. Benedict XVI wished each could strengthen the other in a complementary manner. Justice Scalia’s funeral Mass last year, for instance, was a widely-noted model of this, with its Gregorian chanting in Latin of antiphons rich with sacred solemnity.
So the Mass that inspired Dante, Bocaccio, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Fra Angelico, Bernini, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Rubens, Titian, Vazquez, da Vinci, Cezanne, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Waugh, Tolkien, and others too numerous to name, thanks to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, has been on something of a comeback in the last decade. [And even non-Catholic, such as the famous intervention with Paul VI that included Agatha Christie.] Yet there are bishops who are hostile to the ancient liturgy, as if it is somehow inappropriate for our ever advancing post-modernity. [It is astonishing to me that bishops would be hostile to the traditional rite. That’s like hating your parents and grandparents and their parents, etc., and all they accomplished for your benefit.]
Nevertheless, given the old rite’s disproportionate shaping of culture and art for more than 1000 years, its demonstrable beauty, and power to nurture souls in tune with natural and supernatural gifts, it is still too rarely known in parishes. This is tragic, and a betrayal of the deepest sources of Catholic life and sanity. As we have learned to our regret, W.B. Yeats was profoundly right in asking, “How, but in custom and ceremony / Are innocence and beauty born?”
In his recent book, Fr. Z kudos. He gets it.
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Thank you. A fitting testimony to Summorum Pontificum’s Anniversary . I was priviledged to be in attendance for that first celebration at Mater Ecclesiae in Berlin NJ.
Father Robert Pasley ( as Father Zed knows well) lead a large group of holy priests in the Te Deum after a stunningly beautiful and mystical Mass .
There was not a dry eye to be found. In the still, small silence of my heart, I KNEW Christ was there.
The only thing that would have made it perfect was if Josef Ratzinger was there to see his dream realized at the parish level.
Mater Ecclesiae is a model parish with a model pastor.
Mater Ecclesiae, Ora pro nobis.
One thing that I’ve noticed recently is that people who attend the Extraordinary Form seem to be more intelligent than those in the Ordinary Form. For some reason, EF people seem to be able to figure out when to sit / stand / kneel all by themselves. Meanwhile, during the OF Masses we have to say “Let us rise” or “Please be seated”.
Yes, Mater Ecclesiae and Fr. Pasley are great. I was there yesterday. Wish there were more of those parishes across the country.
On September 14th, Bishop Joseph Perry of Chicago will celebrate a Pontifical Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of Sts. Peter and Paul in Philadelphia, on what will be the 10th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum’s implementation and the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, as announced on http://www.latinmassphila.org . We’re very blessed to have gotten to this point since Summorum Pontificum.
Well, after many….many of the current seminarians are ordained, the ancient Mass of the saints will become more and more readily available throughout. We are already seeing this by the fruits and labors of the newly ordained priests from just the past few years: Regular TLM offerers, ad orientem Novus Ordo’s, Latin, chant, etc.
Yesterday I was blessed to attend a newly ordained priest’s First Solemn Mass of Thanksgiving in the Extraordinary Form. Three weeks before this he had had his first Ordinary Form Mass in this same church. I did not attend that one but I viewed photos of that Mass. I would say that the church was just as full for the EF Mass!
At the reception afterwards I spoke to two current seminarians who are looking forward to being able to offer the Traditional Latin Mass. And they say there are more like them at the seminary.
Many thanks, Fr Z, for the commentary and kudos. Reading your blog over the years has certainly done a ton to help me “get it”!
Fr Z said: “the rite keeps the priest under control.” Yes, yes, and yes! We lay people have had a lot to endure from priests who monkey around with the liturgy. Even some good (I mean orthodox) priests do this. They don’t seem to “get it” that the Mass is not theirs to change. I believe that the nature of the novus ordo simply lends itself to this, giving some priests a blind spot about how inappropriate it is.
“…while the older rite is rich in the silence of slow time”
That immediately brought to mind Keats’ “thou foster child of silence and slow time”. I’m sure that’s what the author was referencing. And then Yeats’ beautiful “custom and ceremony” at the end. An Irish low-church Anglican manages, unwittingly, to find the perfect description of the genius of the Roman Rite (EF, needless to remark)!
Good Shepherd in Golden Valley, MN my spiritual director’s parish, is having Missa Cantata on July 8th at 8:30 am, for the anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, followed by light refreshments and a conversation about what just happened.
Jaykay,
Keats is right!
I’m no expert in the Summa or St. Thomas, but didn’t the Angelic Doctor say that intellect comes before will inasmuch as the will is directed towards some “good”, which must first be perceived as good by the intellect?
Why do I mention this? Because the resistance to ad orientem worship and to the usus antiquior has its origin in the perception that a “good” shall be lost, namely, the “good” of fellowship or togetherness. The perceived loss of a “good”, faulty as that perception may be, comes before the willful resistance.
So, if I’m right, the challenge is in convincing Christ’s people – from the shepherds of the Church down to Joe and Mary Catholic in the pews – that the “good” of fellowship and togetherness will NOT be lost as a result of embracing plainchant and ad orientem worship but that true and fruitful fellowship will actually be fostered and buttressed by means of right worship.
If the Mass of 1962 isn’t suppressed again, my heart tells me it will continue to grow and grow and finally become the Liturgy of the Church again. I may be off my rocker, but one can always pray. After all 15yrs ago who would have thought we would have S.P. of 2007?
Prayer changes things
While we’re celebrating Summorum Pontificum we need to be made aware that there is (at least!) one more critical, related thing to be recovered besides the Mass, and that is the Psalter.
Perhaps you read the other day, as I did, the pope telling cardinals that they were not princes of the Church. If you listen closely to this excellent talk, “Recovering the Christian Psalter” by Dom Benedict Andersen, you will see how even papal understanding on that one issue has been undermined by the loss of our Psalter, but it is a loss that is percolating throughout our liturgy and theology as well.
From Greg Pippo at New Liturgical movement:
I strongly commend to our readers’ attention this excellent talk delivered to the recent Colloquium of the Church Music Association of America by Dom Benedict Maria Andersen OSB, a monk of Silverstream Priory in Ireland. It is entitled “Fulfilled is all that David told”: Recovering the Christian Psalter; by “Christian”, Dom Andersen here means the Psalms according to the Septuagint translation, which was used in the New Testament itself, and received by the Church from the very beginning for liturgical use. He offers a particularly interesting discussion of the importance of certain readings of the Septuagint for Christian theology and liturgy, also noting how the modern presumption in favor of the later Hebrew Massoretic text has led to a significant (and largely unjustified) break with tradition in the recasting of many liturgical texts for use in the Ordinary Form.
Listen to the talk at Silverstream Priory’s Soundcloud channel: https://soundcloud.com/cenacleosb/christian-psalter
High Mass – I agree with you. Not in my lifetime (mid 50’s) but continued growth until it’s the norm.
“…opportunities for ad hoc remarks….by the celebrant…” This is a growing trend at least at the churches I frequent. First we hear “Good Morning”, then a mini homily right after the Sign of the Cross. What’s with this?! It’s too many personal remarks by the priest, even though it might be about the saint of the day. So much talking and not enough silence! I am often reminded of “Mass Confusion” that I read years ago, pointing out many mistakes or abuses that were evident already. Probably I’m a broken record on this blog’s comments; give us back what was taken from us, reverence, more silence, etc. God bless you, Father Z!
High Mass: “If the Mass of 1962 isn’t suppressed again,”
But it never was, as SP pointed out. And, as you – and we all – hope, SP has lit a slow-burning fuse . In fairness, when you say “15yrs ago who would have thought we would have S.P. of 2007?”, I venture to think that St. J. P. II would have done it had he lived longer and/or had not been struck down by his slow crucifixion. As things turned out, he couldn’t but, as things turned out… yaaaay! Speculation, of course, but still… yaaaay! 10 years come VII.VII.MMXVII. A flame that will not be put out.
There’s NOTHING like a well done TLM Mass with beautiful Gregorian Chant! I travel far and wide to attend one whenever I can. Just found an every Sunday 5PM TLM w/chant a few cities over from me. Doesn’t seem like a Sunday without MORNING Mass, however, I will make the sacrifice and go on Sunday.
I noticed as you commented on Rahner and Kung and what they wished has occurred at V2 you said “imagine the horror show……..which we don’t have today -YET” those last three letters are ominous. Other than the rumored concelebration ruling is there something else- even more in the wings. I keep thinking of Matthew 23:15. The desolation sacrilege thingie
They are just saying the black and doing the red, Sandy, and let’s be happy they don’t summon one of the lectors or EMHC’s to do it…
When the Entrance Chant is concluded, the Priest and the faithful, standing, sign themselves with the Sign of the Cross, which the Priest, facing the people, says:
The people reply: Amen.
2. Then the Priest, extending his hands, greets the people, saying:
Or:
Or:
The people reply: And with your spirit.
3. The Priest, or a Deacon or another minister, may very briefly introduce the faithful to the Mass of the day.
4. Then follows the Penitential Act…
I wonder what percentage of Catholics attend “licit” Traditional Masses, and what percentage of Masses are comprised of TLMs?
If it is an sbolutely miniscule proportion, I guess we can go brick b brick for a thousand years, but then there will probably only be 5 million believing Catholics remaining in the world.
[Christ promised that Hell would not prevail. He didn’t promise that what remained would be large.]
Lepidus says: One thing that I’ve noticed recently is that people who attend the Extraordinary Form seem to be more intelligent than those in the Ordinary Form. For some reason, EF people seem to be able to figure out when to sit / stand / kneel all by themselves. Meanwhile, during the OF Masses we have to say “Let us rise” or “Please be seated”.
No, lack of intelligence in the pews isn’t the reason for all the cues. In my experience, there are two things behind it: (1) the influence of low-church Protestantism, which, for reasons passing understanding, “progressive” Catholics seek to imitate; (2) the priest’s failure to stick to the text, creating confusion in the pews when people fail to hear what they are expecting to hear, when they are expecting to hear it.
The changes to the Mass were not made for the purpose of making the Mass more intelligible to the common man. The purpose was to make people lose their faith. The men who masterminded the changes hated the Mass, and hated the Church, and sought to destroy them, pure and simple. If we assume they did not, then what would they have done differently if they did? What you love, you want others also to love, and you don’t seek to remake it according to your own tastes. If the masterminds had loved the Mass, and wanted more people to understand it better, the obvious thing to have done would be carefully and lovingly to preserve the Mass and redouble their efforts to preach and teach and get worship aids, like hand missals, into the hands of as many of the faithful as possible. Instead, they transformed it into something almost totally unrecognizable and virtually unfollowable in a hand missal. Their success has been so overwhelming that, after more than a half century of the Roman rite Mass in the vernacular, we understand it now less than ever.
Today, there are over 400 parishes (admittedly a small fraction of the total number) that regularly offer the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, as Pope Benedict called it in 2007.
Actually, it’s over 500.
Fr. Z:
Re: “astonishing” that many bishops are hostile to the EF…I know that you know this, but the following needs to be said in criticism of the contemporary Church…
It is a mark of the ideology promoting the contemporary Catholic Church of “V2 spirit” to be against tradition.
To be a “V2 Catholic” in these days – since the 1960s revolution in the Church – means to stand against tradition.
This is the indicator of rupture. The mark of falsehood about the “V2 Church,” the people that force our children to drink from the River of Forgetfullness, the Church of the River Lethe, the Church of UN-Memory, the Church of Kasper, Danneels and Pope Francis.
“Part of what helps that sense of the sacred is that the rite keeps the priest under control.”
Not to mention how it keeps the people in the pews under control (and in their seats)!
“It is a mark of the ideology promoting the contemporary Catholic Church of “V2 spirit” to be against tradition.”
In support of this (as if any were needed), I have bought at used book sales volumes of The Summa Theologica tossed out of Maryknoll, volumes of Alphonus Ligiouri’s The Glories of Mary tossed out of a Capuchin seminary, and Cistercian breviaries in Latin tossed out of Gethsemane Abbey.
Already when I was in the Trappists in 1965 ( for three months only) Abbé Armand Jean de Rancé, the founder of the Trappists, was in bad odour. There was nothing of his in the novitiate library nor in any of the materials we studied. For me, he was then and remained until about a year ago a very mysterious figure, like the grandfather about whom no one in the family ever talks. Only a year ago it occurred to me, “Wait! I can solve this mystery with the aid of the internet.
Soon I discovered that he had written a book in 1683, called ( but in French) “On the Sanctity and Duties of the Monastic State.” On Bookfinder I discovered two translations of this work published in 1830( and never re-issued), one for $600, the other for $130. Shortly the latter arrived at my doorstep, and in it were markings from Gethsemane Abbey. They had thrown their patrimony on the used book market!
And no wonder, for compared to his vision of monasticism, that enjoying favor today throughout the Benedictine (and Cistercian) world makes Benedictine monasteries of our time look like St. Benedict’s Home for Devout Catholic Gentlemen. Certainly the Benedictine and Cistercian (formerly Trappist, for they are very keen to throw off the Trappist life) monasteries of today are good and holy institutions, but they are not in the monastic tradition handed down to them.
The Rule of St. Benedict was itself a moderation of eastern monasticism, and the Benedictines of today are not shy about saying that they have substantially mitigated that as well. Indeed they have, for where saints used practically to gush out of monasteries such as Cluny, Citeaux, Clairvaux, etc., it no longer happens. The over-riding goal for Cistercian (formerly Trappist) monasticism today is “contemplation,” whereas for the Desert Fathers, for the Cistercian founders ( St. Stephen Harding, St. Alberic, St. Bernard) it was sanctity, sanctity pursued by living a crucified life. There is a big difference.
So, yes, you could say there was a revolution, a revolt, a devolution, a collapse.
That’s a fine and welcome article.
I only wish Mr. Ortiz had not continued the almost universal EF proponents’ error of attributing the radical liturgical, cultural, and practical changes to near the year 1970. But most transmogrifications were well in progress by the end of 1965. In contrast the imposition of the Novus Ordo five years later was to those of us in the pews a barely noticeable non-event.
Thanks, Mike of Arkansas.
I was very young during the mid-sixties, so I only remember the NO–though with altar rails, kneeling, on-the-tongue Communion. How swiftly all that went away!
I guess from the pews, the reality was as you say, gradual yet from 1965, a shock to those who were paying attention. However, Paul VI’s missal legally went into effect on November 30, 1969. It was published and distributed to bishops all over the world in the spring of 1970.
I also grew up in the 60s. I can’t remember being at a Latin Mass. Ever. I hear and believe that many are passionate about this form, and I’m happy to see that part of our history kept alive. The Mass I came to know and love continues to deepen my faith and guide me in my life. Why are you so opposed to the Mass emerged from Vatican II that also inspires Catholics? Can’t both forms of Mass co-exist peacefully within a diocese and parish? Both are part of our Tradition, right? I can’t understand the “we’re better,” “we’re smarter,” “we’re holier” mentality often voiced here about this topic. It doesn’t attract me to seek out a Latin Mass, if that is what I’d encounter.
But the “silence” spoken of… I do wish there was more silence in Mass. Sometimes I think God gets tired of all our wordy prayers, and maybe wishes to simply be with us in the quiet of our hearts.
Peace to all, whether praying in Latin or English. We’re praying! We’re going to Mass! Rejoice in that!
It’s not primarily about us, the Mass. it’s about a visible joining in to the way to God that God has shown us that over the centuries has taken slowly some of the best in language and music and architecture too to show how we can never show the Lord too much honor, reverence, adoration. Reread the essay; it talks about compatibility, and doesn’t condemn anyone.
AnnTherese asks: “Can’t both forms of Mass co-exist peacefully within a diocese and parish?” Well, no less an authority than Cardinal Sarah apparently thinks so. Here’s what he had to say earlier this year: “I vehemently refuse therefore to waste our time pitting one liturgy against another, or the Missal of Saint Pius V against that of Blessed Paul VI. Rather, it is a question of entering into the great silence of the liturgy, by allowing ourselves to be enriched by all the liturgical forms, whether they are Latin or Eastern.”
(Let me also point out that anyone who attends Mass said according to the ordinary or post-conciliar form of the Roman Rite, aka usus recentior, attends a Latin Mass, inasmuch as the Roman Rite belongs in the Latin Church.)
Thank you Michael Ortiz, George Weigel, and Fr. Z.
If I could highlight two key passages:
“In his recent book Cardinal Robert Sarah put his finger on the fevered pulse of our contemporary culture: “The tragedy of our world is never better summed up than in the fury of senseless noise that stubbornly hates silence. This age detests the things that silence brings us to: encounter, wonder and kneeling before God.” [It is in the hard moments of silence where we encounter mystery.] Having in many places lost this sacredness of the liturgy, is it any surprise that, as Cardinal Sarah notes, we see a world increasingly incapable of wonder, of silent awe in the presence of God?”
And:
“Additionally, the new form of the Mass today in the vernacular instead of Latin robs Catholics of a universal language of worship as our global village grows smaller. Marked by numerous options, the new Mass also includes opportunities for ad hoc remarks or emphasis by the celebrant (see George Weigel’s “It’s Howdy Dowdy Time!” at First Things for a recent example), [That was a good one.] standing in stark contrast to the older rite, with its self-effacing demands that the personality of the celebrant yields to the larger sanctity of the Mass itself. [As I said, the older rite keeps the priest under control.] Is it any wonder that many Catholics today succumb to emotionalism or sentimentality when it comes to addressing moral issues when our Novus Ordo liturgies are often marked by the same ethos?”
Speaking of nurturing souls, Fr. James Jackson’s book “Nothing Superfluous” explains well the “older rite”- the Extraordinary Form.