Archbp. Cordileone writes in favor of the Traditional Latin Mass, Vetus Ordo

At the National Catholic Register, His Excellency Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, has penned a piece in defense not only of the Vetus Ordo, but of the people who desire it.  This is important.   The attacks on the Vetus Ordo are, yes, against the rite of Mass itself, but they stem also in large part for the antipathy help by some who have their hands on the gears of power for the people who desire the traditional forms.  They don’t like the people.  It is to the point that, as we heard lately from key players against the Vetus, such as Andrea Grillo and someone in the Dicastery with whom Card. Müller spoke recently, they see those who desire tradition as being rather thick and, indeed, perhaps sick in the head.

I won’t reproduce Archbp. Cordileone’s piece here, but here are some tastes.  BTW… he starts with the image of how people came together when Notre-Dame of Paris burned.  As I write, I read that the spire of the Notre-Dame in Rouen is burning.  (Coincidence?)  The Archbishop draws a comparison to how diverse groups came unified when Notre Dame burned and now how various people have unified in the UK to sign a letter in favor of preserving the TLM.   Why?  Because, inter alia, it is beautiful.

With my emphases he wrote:

[…]

I am concerned that a skewed impression of lovers of the Latin Mass has taken hold due to a few extremists on the internet. As this petition, and previous petitions, demonstrate, the Latin Mass has a curiously inclusive appeal.

Most who attend the Latin Mass also attend the Novus Ordo (known colloquially as the Mass of Vatican II). They know that to be Catholic means we must remain inside the barque of Peter, however stormy the seas. They plead not against the new Mass but for the form they love, that feeds and inspires them — indeed, to the point that they constitute a visible proportion of those who go on to become creators of new art and beauty in which the world shares and celebrates. This is why the Latin Mass has attracted the support of nonbelievers who understand its crucial role in the creation of Western civilization.

The signers of the most recent petition include many great classical musicians — singers, pianists, cellists, conductors and including, of course, Sir James MacMillan, who spearheaded this petition effort. MacMillan is the most celebrated and most performed Catholic classical music composer of our times. His Stabat Mater was commissioned by the Vatican and performed in the Sistine Chapel.

Other important artists include the celebrated novelist, screenwriter and film director Julian Fellowes, who has won the Academy Award, Emmy Award and the Tony Award. Fellowes is perhaps best known for his role as the creator of the long-running television series Downton Abbey. Another signatory, Andrew Lloyd-Webber, is perhaps the most successful creator of musicals of our age (including CatsEvitaJoseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat and the modern Passion play Jesus Christ Superstar).

The signers of the 1971 “Agatha Christie” petition also included celebrated artists and literary figures, such as poets Robert Lowell, Robert Graves, David Jones and England’s poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis; novelists such as Graham Greene, Nancy Mitford, Djuna Barnes and Julian Green, as well as the most celebrated Argentinian short-story writer Jorge Luis Borges, whose literary work gave birth to the “magic realism” movement of the late-20th century among Spanish writers in the Americas. And beyond this, the signatories included even Anglican Bishops Robert Cecil Mortimer of Exeter and John Moorman of Ripon.

There was a similar petition in 1966, organized by Christine Campo, translator of Marcel Proust (another example of a lapsed Catholic who understood the value of the Latin Mass for preserving civilization even in a secular sense), and addressed to Pope Paul VI, asking that the Latin Mass be maintained at least in monastic communities. It gathered signatures from 37 writers and artists, including two Nobel Prize winners. Among the signers were W.H. Auden, Evelyn Waugh, Jacques Maritain, French Nobel Prize-winning novelist Francois Mauriac, composer Benjamin Britten and Gertrud von Le Fort, the author of the Catholic classic Dialogue of the Carmelites, which later formed the basis of an opera by Francis Poulenc.

The Second Vatican Council taught us to read the signs of the times. One sign staring at us right now in large block letters is: Beauty evangelizes.  

We live in an age when we need to leverage the power of beauty to touch minds, hearts and souls, for beauty has the quality of an inescapably real experience, one that is not subject to argument. The current cultural maxim, “You have your truth and I have my truth” leads to the refusal to recognize even obvious physical and biological reality, whereas beauty circumvents the cognitive process and hits directly to the soul. Sacred beauty lifts us out of the world of time and gives us a glimpse of that which transcends time, of what ultimately lasts, of what our goal and our final home is: the reality of God.

Take the example of filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Even with all of the criticism for his controversial depictions of religious themes, and even of our Lord himself, Scorsese is one modern artist whose imagination was formed by the contrast between what the Latin Mass conveyed and the tough-guy culture of New York streets. As a profile in The New York Times in 2016 put it:

“Inside the old cathedral, it became clear how literally Scorsese has never forgotten — not the splendor of the church, nor the presence of suffering and death, sin and redemption, nearby. The pastor pointed out the details of a renovation: the saints retouched in their original colors, the marble and brass altar fixtures restored to the way they were before a 1970 modernizing effort. Scorsese, who left the neighborhood in 1965, didn’t need a guide. He knew every inch of the place. ‘Picture an 8-year-old boy standing right here in a white cassock, reciting a prayer in Latin,’ he mused aloud. ‘That’s me.’ … I asked him to draw a connection between [his 2016 film] ‘Silence’ and what he was seeing in the old cathedral. He tapped his forehead with two fingers. ‘The connection is that it has never been interrupted. It’s continuous. I never left. In my mind, I am here every day.’

In an age of anxiety and unreason, beauty is thus a largely untapped resource for reaching people, especially young people, with the Gospel message of hope. There is much work to do, but honoring and encouraging the special calling of artists is a key part of this labor.

In a de-Christianized age that is becoming increasingly inhospitable to any traditional sense of religion, the Church needs to operate on all cylinders. The traditional Latin Mass and the beauty it inspires is one of those cylinders. That even nonbelievers can feel an attraction to it in itself proves this point.

Why suppress what is one, among others, successful means for connecting with souls far away from Christ and bringing them into the loving and saving encounter with him within the communion of his Bride, the Church?

I trust and pray that this cri de coeur from the artists and other prominent British figures will be heard and seen it for what it is: that, rather than dividing the world in the name of ideological purity, it is an opportunity to bring the world together for beauty — a path that eventually and inevitably leads to the Beauty ever ancient, Beauty ever new.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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21 Comments

  1. Not says:

    Thank you Archbishop Cordileone !
    I believe the the TLM and the Novus Ordo are so different that they shouldn’t even be put in the same category. And yes, it is about the people.
    TLM people come with quiet reverance. We love the strict rubics. We follow the steps of the Mass in prayer, (no suprises ), until that beautiful crescendo of recieving the Holy Eucharist.

    Novus Ordo , free for all on the Altar, singing, (new songs) dancing, clapping, shaking hands and hugging, also eucharistic ministers??

    I remember 3 protestant women who were converts to the Catholic faith before Vatican II. When they saw the “new Mass”, they replied , “We left that behind when we became Catholic, and they want us to go back to it!”
    Yes, it is about the people.

  2. johntenor says:

    Beauty evangelizes! ?

  3. johntenor says:

    Oops looks like emojis don’t work that was supposed to be a crown.

  4. tzabiega says:

    Unfortunately, the Vatican will use comments like that of Not above to shut down most TLM’s in the world. That is why a local pastor of a parish in our diocese who celebrates the TLM keeps repeating to his parishioners to not write to the bishop and anyone else but let him handle any controversy. And he has done a stupendous job, because of his understanding of diplomacy, in maintaining the TLM. Also, though the TLM is superior, there are many good priests celebrating the Novus Ordo Mass in a reverant and beautiful way, with beautiful music, with disciplined altar boys. In many countries, like Poland or Mexico, this celebrating of the Mass is typical. That in the USA most parishes have become silly does not change the fact that Novus Ordo Masses can be beautiful as well. Denigrating every good priest who celebrates the Novus Ordo and every good Catholic who attends it by exaggerated claims of all Novus Ordo Masses being bad simply helps the devil destroy the TLM because it falsely shows that most TLM Mass goers think that they are better by avoiding the Novus Ordo like the devil avoids Holy Water. The process of transformation is not through denigration but by the process of introducing people to the beauty of the TLM, like introducing people to the beauty of the music of Bach or the art of Bernini. That is why Archbishop Cordileone’s argument is so strong.

  5. mburduck says:

    God Bless the Archbishop.

  6. Adelle Cecilia says:

    “Beauty evangelizes”

    Which I suppose is why Fr. Rupnik’s weird, ugly artwork is so prominent…
    There’s an ever-present diabolical attempt to keep people from becoming Catholic, and making things ugly and aesthetically off-putting isn’t an effective method of authentic evangelization.

  7. Charles E Flynn says:

    James MacMillan has opened his petition to the public, at Change.org:

    Stop the ban on the Traditional Latin Mass

  8. TWF says:

    Not,

    You can draw many distinctions between the two forms of the Mass, but your comments about the people is a major over generalization. There are plenty of “Novus Ordo” congregations around the world where the people are quiet and reverent and the music very traditional. What you describe in your post is not tolerated by my Archbishop nor by many others worldwide.

  9. summorumpontificum777 says:

    Merriam-Webster:
    aptronym noun: : a person’s name that is suited to that person’s profession, personality, etc.

    Cor di leone.

  10. Cincture says:

    Only to see how Archbishop Cordileone too has been buffeted for so many years.
    https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2024/07/11/gill-foundation/

  11. Cincture says:

    Returning from engaement with Dom Lehodey’s Mental Prayer, I see these things involving the fiddling with the Mass of Ages, then and to come, and have no doubt that the fiddling will fizzle, no matter the trials and the stalwarts will persevere.

    Then I see the fiddling with the concept of Moral Art and Beauty, and an under-inquiry Priest and its apparent resounding feared repercussions.

    Since that cries out for Prayer, while Lourdes and the Knights of Columbus are slowly catching up, I must provide here an opinion as to what appears an ideology behind words and pictures which consistency in some public persons’ thoughts and expressions should be noted.

    One can read all the salacious details regarding the allegations pertaining to Fr Rupnik. If borne out, within them are a thread of an ideology. The same may be seen in many which have been permitted to espouse certain ideas.

    One such person, in my opinion, should be equated with sponsorship of the wrong way, and as one seems to likely to be sought to be removed from all Missalettes, etc., is Elizabeth Lev. She may purvey her intelligent art history critiques, as anyone has a right, but to be embraced in certain circles seems to me an outrage.

    2013
    Elizabeth Lev is the daughter of Mary Ann Glendon, the former US Ambassador to the Holy See.

    http://www.lastampa.it/2013/12/05/vaticaninsider/daughter-of-former-us-ambassador-to-the-holy-see-to-marry-disgraced-priest-pWj7ZWUfjbTclotEjA27kM/pagina.html

    https://www.travelersjoy.com/lizandthomas

    2021
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/08/notre-dame-renovation-proposal/

    2024
    EWTN to post its June 27th broadcast, which includes an interview with Lev regarding Rupnik.

    Essentially, Lev says we need to separate the man, his deeds, and his works. And she says she approves of the synodal approach of Rome, where everyone feels that they have been heard.
    Arroyo flat out says, ‘why this crap?’, when we have thousands of years of Catholic art, and it is chosen to put Rupnik’s on Missal covers, at Exhibits, in Churches and other presentations.
    Lev says she saw the element of “simplicity” of his work as why one would appreciate it.
    Arroyo essentially says the word is rather “simplistic”, and Modernism at it’s worst.

    No stones indeed. Separation of man and works, perhaps in context. But to elevate to in-your-face to Catholics, or any to-be-Catholic, what does this message convey…?

    And who do we truly want to convey the message of the Ages?

  12. Not says:

    Let us get down to brass tacks. Pope St. Pius V, Quo Primum.
    Tridentine Mass is the Mass of the Church. Let anyone who changes it be ANATHEMA.
    Catholics defend the Novus Ordo and I don’t know why. How about defending Quo Primum?
    Why were 7 Protesant Ministers asked to write it?
    Why was it forced upon us?
    Why have so many clergy accepted it.

    Yes there are Priest who say a “reverent” Novus Ordo. I know some of them.
    Still the question is WHY?

  13. Sevens Dad says:

    TWF and tzabiega, thank you.

  14. Lurker 59 says:

    ~Not

    I would suggest seeing the NO as a daughter, branch, or a fork of TLM. TLM wasn’t changed into the NO, so Quo Primum is violated, and besides, there have been many minor modifications to TLM since Trent and nobody suggests that those change TLM or violate QP.

    That is how NO, TLM, and QP can be all defended at the same time.

    Further, I would suggest that, because the NO is a daughter/branch/fork of the TLM, any attack on TLM is an attack on the NO, the child, and true defense of the NO defends the parent, TLM.

    Your whys are vastly complicated but is rooted in the deep loss of faith in the supernatural that permeated continental European theology following the Great Wars of the 20th century. The NO is very much a product of its time produced by academics too sure of themselves, who had no confidence in their forefathers, and accepted by a worn and tired populace that was enamored by the change promised by the modernity of the midcentury.

    Why do people accept the NO over TLM? Largely, accessibility — most people don’t have access to TLM. Secondarily, TLM is harder than the NO as the NO tends to gravitate towards self-expression and communal experience and affirmation. TLM requires effort, especially self-sacrificial effort. It is more of an independent experience where you get out of it the amount of energy you are putting into praising God.

    Further, the NO’s modular nature tends to reflect the personalities of the leadership of the local parish – so, given enough local Masses, you can find something that suites your personality. People tend to like that. I go to a parish that is reasonably “conservative” but I am not going to lie to myself and say that it is that way for any other reason than the parish leadership is reasonably “conservative” – it is not that way because of the NO but because the leadership is structuring the NO to be that way. (Having fill-in priests is always fun because they can be less “conservative” and then the Mass for that day is back to being “modern”.)

  15. ex seaxe says:

    Not – WHY? because every Pope since John XXIII has asked us to.
    In England, where every Pope including Paul VI has permitted the TLM to be celebrated, the liturgical scene has had little of the vituperation I see in the USA. We have parishes where Mass is offered daily in VO, Latin NO, and English NO, all of them with the same reverence.
    As to Quo Primum, there were eight, or was it nine, revisions to the rubrics over the 300 years before Paul VI promulgated his NO, do you want to set them aside and go back to a time when it was forbidden to place a tabernacle on the altar?

  16. Not says:

    Yes, there are Novus Ordo that are not as I described, but why should there be any?

  17. Not says:

    Thank you Lurker 39 and exseaxe, for coming up with Why’s.
    I always go back to the fact that VaticanII was a pastoral council. Nothing fron it was doctrinal. You wouldn’t know it by all the changes put forward like Altar girls and eucharistic ministers which are not in VII. There is a question about an elderly Priest taking an extra long time to distribute communion, maybe needing assistance.
    I am not talking about the changes to the TLM that were made properly and with great thought. The NO is a whole new animal.
    What will be the reaction if a new Pope abolishes the Novus Ordo? It hasn’t done what they said it would do, completely the opposite. Fewer Catholics, fewer vocations etc.

  18. palestrinadei says:

    Aptronyms are everywhere these days. Look at Cheatle and Crooks.

  19. Lurker 59 says:

    ~Not

    Given that orthodoxy and orthopraxy cannot be separated, it has always struck me that “Vatican II is only pastoral” is the wrong hook to hang one’s hat on.

    The NO won’t be abolished. Having the Roman Canon abolished is a different story, though.

    One of the reasons why there were a lot of changes that shortened things (whether prayers or obligations) was because it was thought that priests needed to be spending less time praying — that their primary duty was not to pray but to be in the community organizing it, if I might be brief about it.

    Here and now, one of the best things that the laity can do is to pray more, to trust to God, and His grace, to transform us and the world around us, even as He does so with us as His instruments. Less action is needed, and more time spent in Adoration and reparation is needed.

  20. Sevens Dad says:

    TLM is harder than the NO as the NO tends to gravitate towards self-expression and communal experience and affirmation. TLM requires effort, especially self-sacrificial effort.

    –Lurker 59, take 7 kids aged 12 and under to a NO Mass, then talk about how the NO doesn’t require effort and self-sacrificial effort. ALL Masses require that…but YOU have to be willing to do the work. Whether it’s NO, Tridintine, Marionite, Byzantine (those are the 4 rites I’ve attended)…they ALL require effort and self-sacrificial effort.

    –Not everyone that attends a NO Mass is there for the self-expression. I wish my parish priest would speak up about the lay faithful holding their hands in the “orans position” during the Our Father, as well as the “obligatory let’s all hold hands whether or not you want to”. Regarding communal affirmation…I think I see your point there, but I really need my kids to see other Catholics at Mass since they see so few at school or at play. Finally, if you’re not at Mass to worship with other Catholics (the communal experience, right?), then why have Mass at all? Just hole up in your home and have the priest come to you.

    — I come to this blog because Fr. Z isn’t afraid to talk about the tough things (sin, death, the need for confession, among others) that I don’t often hear from my parish priests, but I really don’t feel I have much in common with the VO folks here (except that I’m a Catholic like them, albeit one of the “filty casuals” that doesn’t do it the “rite” way). When I read posts like yours, Lurker 59, I feel looked down upon and frankly, it’s incredibly discouraging…especially since I live in the Northeast where we Catholics cannot risk being divided. The parishes that celebrate the VO seem (and in my exprience so far where I live now) so insular and unwelcoming…and this is coming from a guy who cannot stand having to walk through greeters at his parish. I don’t go to Mass to talk with my friends, at least not until AFTER Mass and never in the sanctuary. Finally, having been to many Tridintine-Rite Masses (if you’re ever in the panhandle of FL, I recommend St. Stephens in Pensacola..Fr. HP is a real spiritual hammer much in the vein of Fr. Z), I will say it will be an absolute disgrace if that Rite is suppressed. The quote from Pope Benedict XVI that’s on the first page of every issue of the Benedictus monthly comes to mind for me.

  21. Lurker 59 says:

    ~Sevens Dad

    My local parish is a NO parish and I have been to a TLM under six times in my life, so no one is looking down upon you.

    If you look at the NO, it structurally has a gravitational pull towards towards self-expression and communal experience and affirmation. Since you have younger kids, I will assume that you are familiar with the USCCB’s “Together for Life” book for designing the NO nuptial Mass. All other Masses are as modular, if not more so as there are additional elements that can be substituted or changed. How do laity navigate these choices other than personal preference and self-expression? Priests should be more spiritually mature and should be able to make liturgical choices that are not reflective of their personality, but in practice, this is very rare and still functions as a gravitational pull. It truly can be the case that a more conservative NO liturgy is that way because of the personality and temperament of those who are doing the choosing. Even orthodox priests suffer from the temptation to let their personalities get in the way and overshadow the personality of Christ and His action in the Mass. It is easy to spot a heterodox succumbing to their temptation, much more difficult to spot an orthodox.

    Can we truly fault a more squishy NO liturgy when it is simply the result of the personality of those doing the choosing within the framework that they are given, where the choice for personal preference is easy and encouraged?

    There is a difference between the intrinsic grace of a Mass and the extrinsic grace of a Mass. (The fullness of grace vs. the degree to which we might and do participate in this grace). This is how all Masses have the fullness of sacramental grace yet people not receive this fullness. Sometimes, I find it useful to look at the NO compared to the Byzantine Rite, rather than TLM. The structural problems with the NO are immediately apparent when you have the texts side by side.

    TLM has a higher barrier to entry than the NO. A lot of non-Catholics are put off by the NO for the same reason a lot of NO are put off by TLM: the esoteric otherness. When we look at VII (and pre VII) desire to do something with TLM, they are talking about this. TLM requires an individual to already be at a reasonable level of spirituality and humility else it is this obtuse exoteric thing. The concern was that people were not getting enough extrinsic grace and there was a need for more “active participation” extrinsically.

    The council’s ideas are reasonable starting places for addressing this issue. Unfortunately, those reasonable starting places are not the starting places for the development of the NO as text. What the NO did to reduce the level of spirituality and humility required by reducing the sacrificial elements of the Mass to make it more akin to the Protestant structures of worship which originated because of similar concerns that the Mass was too obtuse and esoteric and people couldn’t encounter Christ. Protestantism isn’t just a disagreement over the theology of grace, but over how one extrinsically gains grace (or encounters Christ) and the view was that the Mass as sacrafice, both of Christ an of the individual in order to participate, was the problem and a barrier to extrinsic grace.

    Beaten dogs become dogs that bite. TLM communities have not been treated well or with kindness. One should expect them to be insular, suspicious, and closed off.

    I tend to be vocal about very specific TLM stuff not because I am TLM but because I find the current atmosphere that causes division among Catholics (and chiefly between modern-day Catholics and those Catholics now in the Church Suffering and Church Triumphant) to be abhorrent, so I speak as a NO Mass goer in support of TLM.

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