Posted on 03/07/2005 10:01:29 AM PST by Cato1
Yearning for the Latin Mass
by Kevin Starr
Courtesy of the San Francisco "Examiner" (Copyright SF Examiner 1978)
A goodly number of pseudo-reformist movements these days consists of powerful elites telling the majority of people what to do. Elites grab control of an agency, an institution, a political body, then proceed to legislate without regard to majority opinion. Take the matter of the Latin Mass. A recent Gallup poll shows 64 percent of American Catholics prefer the return of the Latin Mass.
Sixty-four percent! That's a solid majority, for sure! Among Catholics with a college education, the figure jumps to 73 per-cent-nearly a two-thirds majority. Roughly 10 percent of the Catholics polled had no opinion. Only 26 percent were opposed. Splitting the difference of the no-opinion group, we come up with the fact that roughly 80 percent of American Catholics prefer the return of the oldstyle, Tridentine Latin Mass. After 15 years, in other words, of guitar music, pseudo-folksongs, banal translations, hand-clapping, the kissing of perfect strangers during the offertory in an orgy of dishonest sentiment, most Catholics yearn for the dignity and mystery of the Latin Mass. We've had circus masses with clowns on the altar, where they played "Send in the Clown" during the offertory. You were supposed to leave Church, I suppose, feeling glowy all over. We've had radical masses where the consecration was ushered in with a folksy protest song by Pete Seeger. We've witnessed with-it priests in psychedelic vestments (most of them on the verge of resigning the priesthood) consecrate loaves of sourdough French bread and Gallo Hearty Burgundy. Also used: Ry-Krisp, Wonder Bread (for that homey feeling), Syrian bread (for that archaeologically exact feeling), and Kasanoff's Jewish Rye (for that feeling of ethnic brotherhood). Of late an English-language liturgy of heroic banality has been forced on us, rivaling the Unitarian worship service for sheer avoidance of Catholicity of sentiment, reference or symbolism.
What is the result of all this tasteless disregard for the necessity of aesthetic transcendence in liturgy? What is the result of telling two-thirds of the Roman Catholics in America that they cannot, must not, worship in the manner of their youth: that the way the Church prayed for more than a thousand years was now forbidden? On Holy Thursday I stood in St. Ignatius Church with a sparse and pitiable crowd and tried as much as possible to attend to a liturgy stripped of its transcendence and grandeur. We were, say, a congregation of no more than 300-mainly older women. Twenty years ago the Church would have been filled to its 1,500 seat capacity. Now on Sunday mornings in the Catholic parishes of San Francisco, you could set up an indoor volleyball game in the center of the Church without bothering the sparse gathering of aged parishioners.
All knowledge of God, St. Thomas Aquinas tells us, is by analogy-with the exception of infused contemplation and certain rare forms of mystical prayer. What St. Thomas means is that God is unknowable in Himself. He is eternal and transcendent. We are finite. We try to bridge the gap between God's awful majesty and our own insecure finitude in a variety of ways-prayer, contemplation, good works, and above all else, through sacramental worship. According to Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and responsible Protestant Episcopalian belief, the celebration of the Eucharist is our most powerful link with the Godhead. It recreates the Last Supper of Jesus Christ and Christ's death on Calvary in a way that is at once profoundly symbolic and profoundly true. In reference, then, to St. Thomas' statement about knowing God through analogy, the Eucharist-called the Mass by Roman Catholics-constitutes our most daring flight towards the Godhead, and Almighty God's most generous intersection with us-through the imminent presence of His Son Jesus Christ in the eucharistic sacrifice. According to Catholic belief, the Mass recreates the grand drama of Calvary. It is not a hootenany. It is not a touchy-feely Esalen session designed to make you feel tingly and sincere all over your body.
It took the Latin Church 500 years to evolve a worship service equal to this awesome, compelling leap to the Godhead through die risen, eucharistic Christ. For a thousand years Catholics prayed this way at Mass. In the 16th century Council of Trent, this 1,000 year-old Mass was standardized, codified, made the norm of the Universal Church. Another 400 more years went by-400 years of dignified, compelling worship. In great cathedrals of Europe, the Latin Mass was celebrated by archbishops and cardinals in splendid robes, accompanied by orchestras and trained choirs; in jungle outposts, it was celebrated by sweat-stained missionaries, accompanied by prayers in a thousand different tongues. But wherever it was celebrated-in cathedrals in ancient abbeys, in frontier parishes, in jungle out-posts, it was the same Latin Mass. Every Catholic over 35 in America grew up to its rich cadences. We followed its intricacies in our missals. We bowed our heads in awful silence as the priest bent over the host and the chalice, intoning the ancient words of consecration.
The day the Latin Mass was outlawed by the elitists, the day 80 percent of the Catholics of America were told they could no longer worship in the manner their ancestors worshipped since time immemorial, I was having dinner in New York with another Catholic-novelist Anthony Burgess. "In 10 years time Catholic churches will be empty," Burgess said. "For when you destroy the Mass, you destroy the faith. We English Catholics know this. We literally went to the stake for the Latin Mass."
Anthony Burgess was right. The elite reformers destroyed the Latin Mass. Now the churches are empty. Now no one believes.
That's because the 70ish year olds were cool 40ish year olds in 1970... that's that 30 - 40 yo age group that forced the divorce rate to skyrocket and embraced birth control... passed the same values down to the kids.
Kenneth Jones' study of Church statistics--which came out two years ago, reports far different figures. A 1958 Gallup poll reported that three out of four Catholics attended Mass on Sundays. A recent Notre Dame University study found that only one out of four Catholics now attend Mass. I've seen statistics that place the preconciliar attendance rate higher and the postconciliar rate lower. But Jones' report is considered the most accurate index of leading indicators.
Here are my memories of 1978:
In 1978, the altar rails were mostly gone, but you're right on the other things. No EEMs, no altar girls, no female lectors, and at least a modicum of Catholic tradition still remained.
You saw a lot more hats on the ladies back then -- even a dozen or so chapel caps (I wore one then, too, and still do -- but in 1978 nobody ribbed me about it. Today I do get ribbed -- sometimes even by the PRIESTS!)
The music had taken a nosedive by then and we were suddenly singing "Blowin' In The Wind" and "Day By Day" in church instead of the traditional hymns.
Political Correctness hadn't QUITE taken hold yet -- they hadn't started screwing around with the words to songs and ALL the priests still said, "For us men and our salvation..." (Not all of them do these days.)
My brother made was Confirmed in 1978 (I had made mine a few years earlier). Everyone was still expected to kiss the Bishop's ring, and NOBODY called him Bishop Bob (or Tom or Joe).
We actually still learned ALL of the Ten Commandments. We were still expected to learn a proper Act of Contrition. We could tell you the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Heavenly Virtues and the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost.
Even if you went to public school and CCD, if Sister didn't see you at Mass on Sunday, she made a phone call home to ask your mother when you might be needing Father so he could administer the Last Rites. (That was the ONLY excuse for missing Mass on Sunday.)
And speaking of Sunday...that was the day you satisfied your Sunday obligation. Not on Saturday.
Baptisms were generally performed on one baby at a time (multiple births, siblings or other infant cousins were the exceptions), in private, with a proper excorcism and a GREAT deal of dignity. Nobody but NOBODY suggested we sing "If You're Catholic And You Know It, Clap Your Hands."
The Holy Eucharist was received on the tongue, but as I said, most altar rails had been removed so we received it standing. (I was scandalized by that even then.)
Your mother, father, next door neighbor, one of the Sisters, and even a perfect stranger would admonish you to be quiet if you got chatty while inside the church. I don't even like to think what would have happened to us had we been so bold as to kick the pew in front of us or (Heaven forbid!) GET UP and run around while in church!
All in all, things WERE better in 1978.
But they were better still in 1968.
And better than that in 1964.
I know. I was there and saw it all happen right before my very eyes.
Regards,
My mother says that many in her generation (she is in her late 70's) fear being thought of as "not with it", or fuddy duddys.
"...those same people who are still living today tend to either not care or have completely accepted the NO. "
Not this old codger.
I would tak the TLM in a heartbeat, if it were available.
I will always resent the pastors and nuns who told me that Latin had been outlawed or "frowned upon" by the Church.
Your assertion that spike was post-concillar is false. The peak was post-concillar, but the sharpest increases proportionally were in the late 50s and early 60s. By 1990, the rate had fallen below 1965 levels, even though few cases where the preist had died were reported. (Meaning any 1965 priest that didn't survive the next THIRTY-EIGHT years was not counted.)
So how can you blame the council for a crisis that was in full swing by the council? It's like trying to blame President George H W Bush for AIDS, or Ronald Reagen for early-80s recession.
SSPV is plainly schismatic, so is simply not Catholic. Indult masses are still performed by N.O. priests in N.O. churches, so are part of the N.O. church. Note that the first thing that happens any of the several times an idult priest gets caught having sex with boys, the first thing every one points out is "Oh, they're N.O. priests."
That leaves SSPX as being the prinary Catholic, but not N.O. group. I was decidedly leaving the SSPX as part of the Catholic church, so I wasn't trying to start a debate about them, but finding them insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
SSPX can claim high attendance levels for the simple reason new Protestant churches can: almost by definition, their members attend church.
Ah but those Protestant churches can't claim vocations. Out of 280 or so families, St. Jude's Chapel in PA has 7 vocations.
Bumpus ad summum
Frankly I would be inclined to agree with you!!!!
As much as I personally prefer the TLM, I well remember the 1965 missal - which was really an excellant textbook trasnlation of the Tridentine Rite into English, with all of the rubrics preserved to the letter. When I was an altar boy I said the prayers at the foot of the altar in Enaglish, kneeling with the priest, as the Processional Hymn/INtroit was sung. All else was identical with the Tridentine.
You also have my total agreement that things were so mugh better in 1978 then now. Most churches still had altar rails, and looked like Catholic churches. There were stilla few place which actually had traditional devotions, public recitation of the rosary (led by a priest !!!), and Benediction. The decline since then has been logrithmic, and horrific.
I was confirmed in 1969 in NYC, by an Archbishop, wearing fiddleback vestments in a nearly century old German Gothic Church. The rite used was the 1965 hybrid rite - which was the Tridentine Mass in a "textbook" English translation.
The building was a jewel of Victorian Architecture, seating 1200 - meticulously maintained......the back wall of the church - behind the reredos of the altar was painted in a mosiac or more properly iconic style with images from the Apocalypse.
The three altars were of white marble; the floors were of marble tiles and terrazo. The altar rail, and the framed screenwork which srrounded the entrance to the sactirsties were of dark oak. So too was the pulpit - complete with a nearly 20' tall "tester" (canopy) which hung from the ceiling over it. A huge antique oriental rug covered the santuary steps.
Above the santuary, suspended from the ceiling was a "Holy Rood" - a crucifixion scene with the three figues of Mary, St. John ,and the crucified Christ - freestanding wooden sculptures in a classical style.
Stained glass by Mayer of Germany dating from 1886 gving much light to the triple aisled nave which was decorated in muted tans, reds, gold, bronze, and a touch of silver in subtle stencilling.
In short, this noble church, built by working class people bespoke silently its identity as a temple of the Living God.
Once - after school while making a visit to the church, I once recall a Jewish man - yamulke and all - come into the church.......over come by its beauty. He did not know what to do.....but saw an old lady genuflect and enter a pew. He did likewise. Looked around in childlike awe....and then began quietly chanting in Hebrew......out of reverence.
It was Confirmation "outside of mass" - which would be rare today. It was followed by Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. There was no choir - we children sang all the hymns and chants, which were most traditional, in English, accompanied by a large pipe organ.
Nobody had to stand over us with a whip to keep us in order - we were well rehearsed (and well behaved!). The solemnity of the occasion moved us to conduct ourselves with gravity. The ceremony of Confirmation itself was simple but impressive. The Archbishop gave each of us a light slap on the cheek - to remind us that we were now "soliers of Christ, and should be prepared to risk all, even offer our lives for His sake. This was very moving to me.
The ceremonies were crowned with Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament. Everybody knelt to witness what is perhaps the most beutiful 5 minute ceremony on earth. Nobody could miss the obvious symbolism - that Christ was blessing these children - a new generation of the Church Militant.
When we processed down the aisle to the strains of a stentorian organ postlude, my friend, a tall red-haired boy remarked to me...with a gulp in his throat: "it really feels like something happened".
He was right.
And wherever in the world that boy is now - if he is still alive - no matter what he has done in life, he did most certainly receive the Seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost on that day. Even if they be dormant in him, they may be easily renewed - and likewise his soul - to be again a Soldier for Christ. All he need do is to ask in prayer.
I wish I could say the same is true of children Confirmed today. But with the subsequent altering of the rite - normally performed with great sloppiness, irreverence,somtimes with gross liturgical abuses, and the most disgusting music possible......not to mention the frightful lack of sacramental education of the children......
.....I do not think that most - if not many of them - could make the comment my friend made all of those years ago.
I was stationed in Italy during the three Popes events.....lots of bells and local TV's watching the smoke stack at the Vatican. I was also on the USSS/TSD detail for the Popes visit to AZ in 88 and CO in 93.........he's cool.
He really likes "cake"..... I mean he really really really likes cake. The archdiocese (sp?) in Denver where he stayed overnight must have had 30 cakes made for him. We x-rayed the cakes, searched his quarters, all of the church and a retreat up in the mountains he stayed at for a while. We also did all of Tempe stadium in AZ and the stage for the world youth day in CO.
I remember he wore nike tennis shoes while he walked around the grounds of the retreat by himself. Kinda funny to see the pope in tennies.
..... His aides gave each of us a rosary and a certificate of thanks before he departed. I kept it for many years and then gave it to a friend who was retired navy and a devout catholic. I kept the certificate for my I love me wall.....:o)
My personal memories of my time around the 3 popes.......
You are just flat-out wrong. The John Jay study commissioned by the Bishops Conference and released by the National Review Board indicates a huge spike of reported sex abuse incidents concerning minors and clergy beginning with the early 60s and peaking in the mid-80s. There are many graphs that can be checked. The number of incidents during the 50s was relatively miniscule. The sharpest peak was in 1985 when the media began exposing the scandals. After this there is a gradual tapering-off in the 90s, but still a much higher number of incidents reported than in the 50s. There was one brief spike in 1960 with the election of the liberal John XXIII--which was probably why that pontiff issued the decree prohibiting gays from the priesthood, a proscription totally ignored with disastrous consequences. As for the 50s you can check the charts yourself. There were very few incidents. The study is available at the following site:
http://www.usccb.org/nrb/johnjaystudy/prev1.pdf
The above site is not to the charts I mentioned. Here is a better link:
http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/churchstudy/_pdffiles/prev3.pdf
"Now I know that you read what you wrote in a commentary or something similar -- Saint Basil has over 250 letters and it took me over 8 hours to read them..."
Basil's letters are available at the CCEL website, and since you kindly listed your source, (no sarcasm, I appreciate it) I was able to read the entire letter 61, which is short. I didn't need to read all 250. I happen to have some knowledge of the Arian heresy, and that Athanasius was the chief orthodox opponent of it. It is surprising that Basil would write to him and give him support?
"The commentaries writer say Basil uses hyperbole -- he exagerates -- that is to say he lies -- that is to say he words don't mean crap -- that is to say we will tell you what he he means ignore his words".
I disagree with this logic. Hyperbole or exaggeration is not synonomous with lying. You go too far...
Otherwise, explain Jesus Himself using it "...If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell..." Mt 5:29.
Is Jesus then a liar, too, and that "...his words don't mean crap...", as you state?
Regards
"That's the thing about Catholics, you never know if you're going to hell or not".
Two things to say here that you should consider...
1. don't be presumptuous. If we KNEW, what would be the point of hope that Paul and the rest speak of?
2. Paul, being a good catholic, thought the same thing:
1 Cor 9:24-27
Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
If Paul was a once-saved/always-saved Christian, he had a funny way of describing his possible disqualification from the imperishable reward.
Regards
"That's the thing about Catholics, you never know if you're going to hell or not".
Two things to say here that you should consider...
1. don't be presumptuous. If we KNEW, what would be the point of hope that Paul and the rest speak of?
2. Paul, being a good catholic, thought the same thing:
1 Cor 9:24-27
Do you not know that in a race all the runners compete, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
If Paul was a once-saved/always-saved Christian, he had a funny way of describing his possible disqualification from the imperishable reward.
Regards
I also grew up in the Archdiocese of NY. From what I have read and observed, it seems us NY'ers were preserved from a lot of the NO nonsense for a longer time than some other places. I think it wasn't until the late '80's that NY began to catch up to the crap going on elsewhere. Even at my age (almost 26), I can remember when most men wore suits and women dresses/hats to Mass, and all the music was traditional. I never recall seeing nuns out of habit. When we moved upstate (Dutchess Co), then we observed for the first time how one church can be liberal and another conservative. Whatever the case, by 1990, we were attending the TLM. Since then, the NO of today is SO different from the NO of say 1988. In fact, I would say a "conservative or traditional type of NO Mass" today would be an exact replica of the 1980's NO. Our gauge of acceptability continues to move leftward.
Last night I was watching the Contender, with Sly Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard. I've always really liked to watch boxing matches, I have to shield my eyes when an exceptional blow is landed, but I'm intrigued by what motivates a man to take up this sport. I use to watch boxing with my Dad and brothers when I was younger; I'm sure one of the reasons I'm attached to it is it reminds me of the days when I used to sit at this feet, alongside my brothers (I'm an only girl) and watch for the next great, white, Italian hope.
Anyway, one of the Contenders was described as a Devout Catholic, and he hails from Virginia. Didn't see him spar so I can't say how good he is, and of course, I'm pulling for him.
Listening to the boxers talk, you could hear the echo of this Scripture in their words. It's a holy quest for a lot of them, and that sometimes seems hard to reconcile given the nature of the Sport. It's an interesting study in which what seems base is transcended into a fleeting glimpse of the sublime.
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