The Mass - old and new

I think it is true to say, for many of us, that we do not fully appreciate our parents until after they have gone. When they are with us we take them for granted because they have always been there, reliable and seemingly with an air of surety and permanence. But when they have gone we are left with a huge hole in our lives that for the rest of our days is never adequately filled.

A direct correlation can be drawn with the old rite of Mass. For the great majority of Catholics until 1970, the Mass had always been there. In our parishes we attended every Sunday and Holy Day and occasionally, if the mood took us, on a weekday. There was an established pattern to Catholic life, a sense of purpose and permanence, and we drew great comfort from that. We didn’t bother ourselves too deeply with the ‘why’ and ‘wherefore’ of everything, we simply accepted our good fortune and got on with our lives. After all, are we not but sheep? We have it from the highest authority. Jesus said to His Apostles, “Feed My lambs, feed My sheep”. It is the vocation and responsibility of the clergy to feed His sheep and ours, the sheep, to respond accordingly by living Christian lives, attending Mass, receiving the sacraments and raising our families in the Catholic Faith.

There was a three-pronged contract, unwritten perhaps and unspoken, but clearly understood on the part of the laity, that the clergy would feed and nourish the flock in our churches, that our teachers would teach our children the Catholic Faith in its fullness in our schools, and that the laity would provide the physical and financial support to underpin this arrangement. We were happy and content to send our children to Catholic schools and we accepted without question that we would pay for the upkeep of our parishes and seminaries because we had no reason to do otherwise. The contract was adhered to by all parties and the results were there for all to see. The Catholic population was increasing, new parishes were being established, new Catholic schools were being built, and we were quietly satisfied with our lot. This may indicate a very mundane existence but order is infinitely preferable to disorder and peace of mind is a prize to be treasured.

Such was life in the Catholic Church in the UK in the time leading up to the Second Vatican Council. We were blessed with the knowledge that we were members of the One, True Church; that we were part of an international Church where, no matter where we were in the world, we could attend and follow the Mass – the same Mass of our parents, grandparents and forebears throughout the centuries; the Mass that countless thousands of missionaries had used as their cornerstone to spread the Faith around the globe; the Mass of all the great saints and popes of nearly 1,500 years; and last but certainly not least, the Mass for which the heroic and blessed martyrs of the Reformation gave their lives that it might live. How fortunate we were, and how fortunate would be our children and grandchildren to have such a prized inheritance.

For this reason, to the ordinary Catholic in the pew, time and place held no special significance in the practice of his religion. The Mass was the Mass and would always be the Mass (as we say in the Gloria Patri, “...As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be.”) This is what we believed, all of us. This is what we had been taught from the day we could first walk and talk. In St. Peter’s Basilica or in the smallest village church in the most remote country in the world, the words of the pope or the most newly-ordained priest in his role as another Christ, an alter Christus, would be exactly the same when celebrating the Mass of the day. It was the most precious of all things: sacred, untouchable, divine.

And then, to put it bluntly, the only Mass we had ever known, and which had enriched the lives of countless millions of Catholics down through the ages from all nations and cultures and languages, was taken away from us and we were bereaved. And as with any bereavement we were hurt, confused, angry and bewildered. Even more so because the victim, the Mass, had been in exceptionally good health, or at least appeared to be so in the eyes of the faithful.

In a Church of some 2,000 years of history, the Mass which had nourished and fed the lambs and the sheep and had spread the flock to every corner of the globe was cast aside by the shepherds as if it were some family embarrassment that everyone remembered but was forbidden, virtually under the pain of sin, ever more to speak of. The supposed ‘dead’ language of Latin was ditched without ceremony, explanation or apology, and in direct disobedience to Sacrosanctum Concilium, the liturgy constitution of Vatican II; the newly discovered ‘bad manners’ of the priest in having his back to the people had to be rectified immediately; and the inexcusable ‘exclusion' of the laity from the celebration of ‘the Eucharist’ was corrected with such enthusiasm that sanctuaries had to be enlarged and strengthened to hold all the people who suddenly saw it as their right to stand shoulder to shoulder with the priest when he was ‘presiding’ over the assembly.

The solidity and certainty of 2,000 years was jettisoned by those liturgical ‘experts’ who had, suddenly and miraculously, discovered new insights into the Faith, and who decided that they knew better than the great popes, doctors and saints of the Church. They invented a Church of slogans and jargon. Ad nauseam, we were told we are a pilgrim Church; we are the Easter People; we all have charisms; we all have ministries; we are a Church on the move. Well at least these ‘experts’ got one thing right; we are a Church on the move. Unfortunately, literally millions have moved in the wrong direction – to the exits. This has been the overwhelming tragedy of the past forty years. Too many of our liturgical shepherds have been (and still are) so wrapped up in themselves and their new ‘insights’ that they seem oblivious to the fact that the flock has scattered. The fact that the Good Shepherd left His flock to retrieve the missing one sheep is obviously an irrelevance to our modern liturgical gurus. The arrogance of these ‘experts’ can be summed up in a comment from a priest who said recently, “Unfortunately, the clergy have not yet given the laity the Church that they need”. Those who do not agree with the new ways are expendable. What we will have, claim the experts, will be perhaps a smaller Church but one which contains a better, more tolerant, type of Catholic: people committed to the new ideas; people who have abandoned the liturgical and theological dead wood of pre-Vatican II days, and who are enlightened, ecumenical and forward looking.

The worry is, of course, that with the present rate of defection, we will not have a Church left at all. The catastrophic level of lapsation shows no sign of diminishing. The evidence of devastation is everywhere in failing congregations, redundant churches, falling vocations, and empty seminaries and convents. And this is described as renewal! How scattered does the flock have to become before any of our liturgical masters displays even a tinge of doubt or regret about the loss of the great majority of their sheep? Is there a point at which this liturgical experiment (because this is what it is) will be abandoned?

For the moment it would appear not. There is a real problem here – not that the shepherds have abandoned their sheep, which they have, but that the sheep have now lost faith in their shepherds. The sheep are now leaderless and are milling about in a perpetual state of confusion, desperately searching for direction and certainty. And such is this deep sense of betrayal and abandonment by those who are supposed to be their guides, that the laity are now wary of anything that falls from the lips of their ‘pastors’, and trust and respect has evaporated.

This combination of abandonment by the shepherds and resentment by the sheep has fuelled a disintegration of the Catholic Faith on a scale never witnessed in the history of the Church. The leaders no longer lead and anarchy is often the norm at diocesan and parish level where individual ‘creativity’ is now rampant. The clergy and the laity now inhabit different worlds. The bishops, in particular, cling to a world of their own creation, a world in which they are so wrapped up in social and political initiatives outside their own legitimate sphere of church goverance and spiritual authority that they manage to ignore the fact that the people for whom they are directly responsible are disappearing like the snow in spring.

In recent years there has been some recognition in the Vatican that things at diocesan and parish level are in a parlous state, for instance in August 1997, the Holy See issued its Instruction on Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priests. Clear, unambiguous guidance was given for the resolution of abuses, but, though it was signed by the highest authorities in the Church, it was treated with indifference by the bishops’ conferences around the world and disappeared without trace. One English bishop even said to one of his priests that anything he gets from Rome he just throws into a bottom drawer. Such is the institutionalised disobedience of our shepherds!

But what about the Mass? I think it is particularly significant that in pre-Vatican II years with the universal Latin Roman rite, people said they were going to Mass. It was quite specific. Nowadays, with the multi-form, multi-lingual, multi-vocal new rite, the more common expression is that they are going to church – perhaps, because, since they are not quite sure what awaits them when they get there, it is best not to be too specific! To repeat the question: What about the Mass? The Novus Ordo Missae of 1969 is undoubtedly a valid Mass in itself. Unfortunately, as we all know, it allows such freedom to the celebrating priest that many Masses in the intervening years have strayed so far from the rubrics, and abuses are so rife, that many ‘celebrations’ are completely unrecognisable as ‘the Mass’ to those of us who attend the traditional Latin rite. We traditional Catholics believe there is no comparison between the traditional rite and whatever variation of the new rite is being offered in our parishes at any particular time by any particular priest. The accusation is often made that we are old fogies who will not move with the times and who are locked into a particular period like liturgical fossils. In fact, the opposite applies; those who understand Tradition have a greater appreciation of the immensity of our Church and its great sweep of history over two millennia. It is the modernists who are locked into one period of time – their own. Such is the legitimacy and doctrinal depth of the traditional rite that it has attracted over the years ever increasing numbers of young men, women and converts who have discovered the beauty, dignity and sheer sacredness of the old Latin rite and have marvelled at what they have found.

The Mass of the traditional Roman rite, as promulgated in the Missal of Pope John XXIII (1962 edition), is a work of literature that encapsulates the clarity and precision of the Catholic Faith in every prayer and phrase. It has been refined over centuries by the greatest writers, doctors and saints of Holy Mother Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. It contains not only the clarity and precision of our Faith but is celebrated in Latin, an angelic language described by Pope John XXIII in Veterum Sapientiae (1962) as having “proved so admirable a means for the spreading of Christianity throughout the West.” It refreshes the soul and creates a common link not only with fellow Catholics in every country but with every member of Holy Mother Church down the centuries and back to Christ Himself. At Easter we are reminded in the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ that Pilate had an inscription placed on the Cross in Hebrew, Latin and Greek. The traditional Roman rite also includes Hebrew, Latin and Greek and so it transports us back to the very Cross of Sacrifice on which our Saviour gave His life for us.

Pope John XXIII also said in Veterum Sapientiae that, “The Church…values especially the Greek and Latin languages, in which wisdom itself is cloaked, as it were, in a vesture of gold.” He went on, “Thus if the truths of the Catholic Church were entrusted to an unspecified number of [vernacular languages], the meaning of these truths, varied as they are, would not be manifested to everyone with sufficient clarity and precision.” The Missal of Pope John XXIII of 1962 is “true, right, noble and beautiful” and the truths contained therein are conveyed with absolute “clarity and precision.” For this reason alone it must not be lost to our Church and the faithful.

It is now beyond dispute that with each passing day the crisis in our Church and parishes is growing worse. Our bishops and priests, in the main, seem to be helpless or indifferent in the face of this terrible malaise. There is no point in the laity standing on the sidelines bewailing their plight. We are members of the Church Militant and we must do what we can within the boundaries of faith, hope and charity to further the cause of the restoration of true Catholic liturgy; the heart and soul of the faith.

The recent document from Rome, Redemptionis Sacramentum, to correct abuses in the new rite, may have some mild impact but, sadly, the rot is now too deep and widespread for it to have any notable success. Rome must grasp the nettle and admit that nothing will change until abuse is replaced by obedience and respect for legitimate authority; until disorder is replaced by order; until shabby ways are replaced by dignity; until local and personal whim is rejected in favour of love and respect for the universal Church. And where will the antidote be found? I suggest it is encapsulated in the traditional rite of the Mass, the traditional Sacraments and traditional popular devotions. In other words, allow any priest the freedom to celebrate the traditional Mass alongside the modern. Remove the shackles from the traditional priestly orders such as the Fraternity of St Peter and the Institute of Christ the King, Sovereign Priest, and let them exercise their ministry among the faithful. They have been ordained to feed Christ’s sheep; let them do so without restriction.

The Mass of the traditional Roman rite is indeed the most beautiful treasure there has ever been. Is it not remarkable that the ‘old’ Mass contains all the things praised by Pope John XXIII and that in 1961, the year before the Second Vatican Council, he described the Church as “a Church vibrant with vitality.”? And is it not even more remarkable that the ‘new’ rite of Mass includes those things specifically condemned by him and that by 1968, only seven years later when vernacularism had already taken hold, his successor Pope Paul VI bemoaned the fact that the Church was in a process of self-destruction?

The Holy See must fully restore the traditional Roman rite to our altars and sanctuaries and remove all restrictions on its celebration. And this must be done for the sake of our children and future generations. The Mass of Pope John XXIII, of Pope St Pius V, and of Pope St Gregory the Great cast its blessings over untold generations in the past. Let us not deny future generations the blessings we ourselves have experienced. The restoration of the Mass of Ages which unified and nourished the Church for 1,500 years would be only the first step, but it would be a huge step on the road to recovery.

And now, in March 2004, after much speculation and anticipation, Rome has issued yet another document, Redemptionis Sacramentum, in an attempt to rectify world-wide abuses in the liturgy, this time concerning the Holy Eucharist. The very fact that the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments should find it necessary to produce a document consisting of 8 chapters and 186 paragraphs to eradicate just the major abuses surrounding the Blessed Sacrament, the most precious jewel in the Catholic Church, should give even the most rabid and self-indulgent liturgist pause for thought. One would imagine that the various bodies of episcopal conferences around the world would be giving a huge collective sigh of relief that someone has attempted to solve their problems and that they can pin the blame for pulling everyone back into line on someone else. However, such is the now-ingrained hostility to Rome on any and every matter, the bishops will no doubt reject this gift horse and carry on with their disobedient and self-satisfied ways, and just ignore it. After all, they have been doing it now for nearly 40 years and no one has been sacked so why worry too much about yet another unwelcome instruction.

Paragraph 184 of Redemptionis Sacramentum does exhort any Catholic, whether priest, deacon or lay member to lodge complaints regarding liturgical abuses to their bishop or the Apostolic See but how many at parish level will do this; especially when the first complaint has to be submitted to the diocesan bishop who often is primarily responsible for sanctioning the abuses in the first place. Why should the might of Rome delegate responsibility for eradicating abuses to the poor individual lay person in the pew? From the hundreds of thousands of pleading letters it has received over the years Rome knows full well what is going on, where it is going on, and who is doing it. Why, then, does it not act DECISIVELY and instruct its nuncios to do their duty and inform the Holy See about all abuses that are ongoing in their respective countries. All erring prelates should be summoned to Rome, asked for obedience and if none is forthcoming, their resignation demanded. This type of action would be lauded from the rooftops by a longsuffering laity who simply will not get involved in actively reporting abuses. Abuses are covered in canon law – let canon law be applied.

"The worry is, of course, that with the present rate of defection, we will not have a Church left at all. The catastrophic level of lapsation shows no sign of diminishing. The evidence of devastation is everywhere in failing congregations, redundant churches, falling vocations, and empty seminaries and convents. And this is described as renewal!"

As you have no shame about posting the same nonsense over and over again, I likewise feel that repetition, in my case is also justified. The following passage was posted by me on another thread several days ago. I repost it here in view of your above italicized comment.

As a public service to lurkers and others who may be interested and in the interests of fairness and balance, allow me to quote the statistics from the latest Pontifical Yearbook to which I have access.

The 2004 Yearbook which quotes figures from the year 2002 shows an increase in diocesan priests and a continuing decrease in the number of religious-order priests and women religious.

There are 4,217,572 persons engaged in pastoral activity, down 1.2% from the previous year's tally of 4,270,069. That number was broken down as follows:

4,695 bishops, 405,058 priests (267,334 of whom are diocesan), 30,097 permanent deacons, 54,828 religious (not priests), 782,932 women religious (51,371 of whom are contemplative nuns), 28,766 members of secular institutes, 143,745 lay missionaries, and 2,767,451 catechists.

Compared with year-earlier figures, the total number of priests has remained stable (405,067 in 2001). The number of diocesan priests rose to 267,334 from 266,448 in 2001. The number of religious-order priests fell to 137,724 from 138,619 a year earlier. The number of women religious slightly decreased.

Major seminarians numbered 112,982, up from 112,244 a year earlier. Candidates to the priesthood rose 5.8% in Africa, 1.4% in the Americas. In Europe and Asia their number slightly decreased.

Of course, there will be variations from diocese to diocese. My own (Savannah) for instance, is doing rather well. Others, most likely those where the spirit of the world has replaced the Gospel, will be doing rather poorly. That's as it always was and will be.

Carry on.

in the interests of fairness and balance, allow me to quote the statistics from the latest Pontifical Yearbook to which I have access.

Rather than "fairness and balance," you are presenting a very tendentious view of the facts. The "Index of Leading Catholic Indicators" presented an entire book of statisitics on the numbers of priests and religious and their direction since Vatican II. You can find the information here:

UVA Interviews Ken Jones, Author of Index of Leading Catholic Indicators

"I can only agree with what Cardinal Ratzinger said: “We find ourselves faced with a progressive process of decadence. ... It is incontrovertible that this period has definitely been unfavorable for the Catholic Church.” Since Cardinal Ratzinger made these remarks in 1984, the crisis in the Church has accelerated. In every area that is statistically verifiable – for example, the number of priests, seminarians, priestless parishes, nuns, Mass attendance, converts and annulments – the “process of decadence” is undeniable.

Pat Buchanan: An Index of Catholicism's Decline

"Thirty-seven years after the end of the only church council of the 20th century, the jury has come in with its verdict: Vatican II appears to have been an unrelieved disaster for Roman Catholicism. Liars may figure, but figures do not lie. Kenneth C. Jones of St. Louis has pulled together a slim volume of statistics he has titled Index of Leading Catholic Indicators: The Church Since Vatican II. His findings make prophets of Catholic traditionalists who warned that Vatican II would prove a blunder of historic dimensions, and those same findings expose as foolish and naive those who believed a council could reconcile Catholicism and modernity. When Pope John XXIII threw open the windows of the church, all the poisonous vapors of modernity entered, along with the Devil himself.

Seattle Catholic Springtime Decay by David Sonnier

"Being a mathematician, however, I was not content to just read his book cover to cover. Mr. Jones' analysis was good, but he did not view his data the same way a mathematician does. Instantly I saw linear functions, exponential functions, and patterns that we can use to model and make predictions... The exponential decrease from 1965 onward appears similar to a graph of radioactive decay; as it turns out, this period can be modeled by what is commonly called an exponential decay function. Since this period of the Church is commonly called the "Springtime," we shall refer to this function as the Springtime Decay Function... It is clear from this brief analysis of the data relating to the number of seminarians over the past eighty years that several things are true: That the decline is not showing any signs of reversal, despite the assertions of many bishops and priests to the contrary.

Let's make a quick reality check to see whose statistics are more accurate -- what do we see happening all around us in dioceses like Boston and many other dioceses? Hundreds of parishes being closed because they can no longer be staffed with priests. Here is an item from just this past week which documents the tragic nature of the situation:

FreeRepublic "Bishop tells parishioners to prepare for fewer priests"

"Bishop Donald Wuerl is calling on the people of the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh to prepare for a future with fewer priests. The number of Pittsburgh's active diocesan priests has dropped from 520 in 1984 to 411 in 1994 to 314 in 2004. Five years ago, the diocese projected that it would have 308 priests in 2004 and 240 in 2009.
Ten years ago, Wuerl said that if it were not for a sweeping 1992-94 reorganization that reduced the number of parishes from 333 to 218, he would have had 75 priestless parishes by 1995.

Since you view the Catholic Church as a new religion and are hence in schism, this matter simply does not concern you. Please stop posting your bigoted anti-Catholic article.s

As an ex-Catholic protestant, I have interest in my 'roots' so I find articles of this nature fascinating (although this one is a bit too windy for me to do more than scan ... and read in more detail later)

I do find your 'response' rather interesting, as if Freepers is reserved for RCC purebreads only. Goodness. Further, although this writeup may present something that is 'anethema' to the RCC, it is still presented as anything but what you describe it as. I would save your 'policing' efforts for a newsgroup reserved for only the most loyal pure (whatever the Pope says) RCC newslist and not post such comments on Freepers who are very much interested in fair and open discourse on such matters.

For whatever reason, the liberals hijacked the 2nd Vatican Council and pushed their snowball of change down the proverbial hill and it became a juggernaut that nobody could stop. The more you think about it, the more amazing it becomes that the Catholic Church could go from such splendor, such enormous authority and power, and such a rich and deep culture of ancient tradition, and then turn so suddenly into what it is today; a caricature of her former self, spiritually and financially impoverished, priests in disgrace, closing her doors, not enough priests, shoddy attendence, traditions replaced with novelties.

While few are willing to admit it, what has happened to our great and beloved Church since Vatican II is akin to what happened to Rome after they allowed decadence to set in. While it's certain that the Church will one day reappear in all her glory, it's still tragic that so many "Catholics" today are satisfied with things as they are. Indeed, they even fight to keep things as they are.

I am well aware of the statistics which have accumulated over the last 4 decades. I do not deny that these speak to a crisis of faith. What I take issue with is the theory that the Church will soon collapse in a pile of dust amidst loud cheering from those who long to see this happen.

Many of the conclusions presented in the links which you posted are based on trends. They take a rate of decline over the last 30 or 40 years, apply it to the next time frame and assume, that in year x this or that will happen. Furthermore, the statistics, in true American fashion, look solely at the USA. It also needs to be said that even if statistics take an almighty upturn over the next few years, they will still not reach 1960 levels for a long time, which means that the 1960-"now" comparisons will still look miserable for some time and still be useful for "the Church is collapsing" people even if the current trend is sharply upward. Which is why I posted the most recent stats.

As I wrote in my original post "Of course, there will be variations from diocese to diocese. My own (Savannah) for instance, is doing rather well. Others, most likely those where the spirit of the world has replaced the Gospel, will be doing rather poorly. That's as it always was and will be.

This is true not only for dioceses but also for countries.

In summary, current levels of vocations are nowhere near 1960 levels but they are also far from supporting the thesis put forward in post #2. Indeed, they give signs for hope.

Ping : )

(((((Yawn))))) ... it's her daily dose of catholic bashing. ASP has limited her reading to a streamlined list of radical 'traditionalist' web sites, that have clouded her sense of reason.

As Msgr. Arthur Burton Calkins notes in "The Errors of Extreme "Traditionalists"

" ... the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith points out what many of the Council Fathers were particularly concerned about:

that the celebration of the old liturgy had slipped too much into the domain of the individual and the private, and that the communion between priests and faithful was insufficient.
This should be seen particularly as a comment on the ordinary way in which the Low Mass was celebrated, which could be done with very little reference to the people on the other side of the communion rail. Indeed, it should be noted that the great majority of the Bishops at the council, including the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, were convinced that a certain reform of the liturgy was highly desirable and willingly signed the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. The matter of its implementation is a separate question."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.