Where have all the people in the Pews Gone

Old SF Examiner ^ | 1978 | Kevin Starr

[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.

[XR7]

Now the Roman Catholic churches are empty. Now no one believes in the ritual of the Mass.

The church is growing, however. For Jesus proclaimed that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. With the focus on ritual, robes, golden chalices, a dead Christ on a crucifix and other artifacts, many based their faith in religious trappings and ceremony - believing in things - rather than the living Christ. But Jesus Christ remains the same yesterday, today, and forever, Amen.

[BlackElk]

If the Roman Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ upon Peter should die for any reason much less those you allege, it will certainly be a great surprise to Jesus Christ Who guaranteed to be with the Church all das even unto the end of the world. Jesus probably isn't surprised very often.

[BlackElk]

That may well be the Jack Chick Classic Comix version of Church history but no ratuional person with any sense of history or knowledge takes the likes of Jack Chick any more seriously than one would take the Tales of Maria Monk or the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Jack Chick is an example of the terminally ignorant leading the terminally ignorant. As a religious observer, Chick has chosen well his medium--the comic book--which very accurately reflects the depth of his analysis.

[murphE]

Thank-you for sharing your ignorance, boldly, and in large font too.

[ardara]

My Church seats about 600 people.At yesterday's 9:30 Sunday mass all seat were taken.In fact we had about 100 people as usual at today's weekly 9am mass followed by a Bible study group of 35.

[murphE]

ping

[marshmallow]

sinky is.........*cough*.........on "sabbatical", right now.

I believe that he, "ninenot" and "Robert Drobot" were given a little spell in the cooler.

[Rocketman]

I have a friend who is a catholic -- went to a catholic U and is a mmber of an order and I asked him about Pope gregory specifically on these issues and without my leasing he went down the line on that in fact he had done all these things and he told me further that it is beleived he was poisoned because ofthe damage at the time he was doing. He cited bishops that were outraged at his acts.

So the stuff in Jeck T. Chicks track stand.

Months ago I discussedthis same theng with several FR Catholic heavies and one was furious that A catholic would expose theri dirty laundry to a protestant

In so doing he unwittingly admitted all this was true.

Pope Gregory could not have said and did what he did unless what stain basil said indeed happened and the church was indeed overrun and went down from that point their own man- made path.

By the way you do know that the "pre-pope" and all the bishops of rome were rounded up and executed in 256 AD and that one of your said was given the task to give away its scrolls tand givie out its banks to the poor the man was also arrested and executed a week later

So the sucession stopped there -- and its accounts are all certified by the catholic church

[XR7]

Thank-you for sharing your ignorance...

Thank you for your ad hominem attack.
I admit I am ignorant.
Without Christ, I am nothing.
Please pardon my ignorance.
Please enlighten me, however, where I have erred.

[murphE]

Go sell crazy someplace else, no one is buying here.

[murphE]

You make assertions about what Catholics believe that are not true. Go pick up a catechism and enlighten yourself. Then you can make informed arguments.

[XR7]

You make assertions about what Catholics believe that are not true.

It was the writer of your post, not me, who asserted the churches are empty, that noone believes in the Mass anymore.

[american colleen]

So the sucession stopped there -- and its accounts are all certified by the catholic church

Could you provide link(s) please?

[Rocketman]

Try another quote from a bonafied saint. Please explain how this in the Good old days that a Saint could say that the Bishops of his day and prior pave the way to hell?

The floor of Hell is paved with the skulls of bishops. --St. John Chrysostom, Patriarch of Constantinople (347-407)

Or try this . . .

almost all the bishops of the Latin Church fell into heresy, forced by violence or deceived by guile. It was like a fog fallen upon the spirits and hiding which road to take. In order to be safe from this contagious plague, the true disciples of Christ had to prefer the ancient beliefs rather than all the false novelties. --St. Vincent of Lerins (ca. 400-ca. 450)

And pray tell what ancient stuff are they speaki of following -- stuff before Constantine and the last 2-3 popes look at the dates. Is this guy a better jusge of heresy that maybe sonmeone say 1600 years after the fact?

When a foulness invades the whole Church..., we must return to the Church of the past. Vincent of Lerins (ca. 400-ca. 450)

[murphE]

This is an article written by a Catholic to an audience of Catholics. The presumption is that a minimum understanding of Catholicism exists in the reader.

I apologize, I did overreact to your post. I tire of non Catholics chiming in on Catholic threads making irrelevant comments. I'm sure you didn't even realize what you were doing.

There are a few non Catholic freepers who like to troll Catholic threads and interject their uninformed point of view, or condemnations of the Catholic Church. I know there may be some Catholics who do the same on Protestant threads, but I don't.

[Rocketman]

The popes name is Sixus I'm looking what I read a few months ago was he and all the bisops I thing 8 were rounded up at one.

One catholic site I'm reading was they were taken in the catacombs

the emperor was valerian

In this persecution Christian Rome and Carthage lost their leaders: Pope Sixtus was seized on 6 August, 258, in one of the Catacombs and was put to death;

The other saint that handed out the scrolls and money is the saint of bankers -- I'm still looking.

[american colleen]

Just noticed that the article is from 1978... hard to believe more than 25 years ago! I'll wager that the Latin Mass was still a fairly recent memory in those polled at that time but today it'd probably be different.

[jo kus]

"St. Basil the Great regarding the fall of the Church of Rome. The majority of so called beleivers don't study their own church history and instead go by the revisionism that is currently taught."

So you must have heard about something called Arianism, right? That St. Basil uses hyperbole to describe that many Catholics in the East (it was not a major problem in the West) were being won over by Arius is no surprise. However, if you read some more, you will find that both Basil and Athanasius found allies in Pope Sylvester and the enemy at Constantinople and in the East. If you will recall, the Council of Nicea declared Arius a heretic, and the rot that St. Basil spoke of came to an end. Your conclusion does not follow. And all of your quotes taken out of context merely say that the Church was in trouble due to Arianism. It did not fall, as we see it remaining still today.

Regards

[Rocketman]

The popes name is Sixus I'm looking what I read a few months ago was he and all the bisops I thing 8 were rounded up at one.

There are better accounts that specifically say who was taken but here it is

One day when Pope Sixtus was giving a talk to the faithful, the police broke in, arrested Sixtus and his chief clerics, and carried them off to the prefect. On this occasion they do not seem to have bothered about the lay people. According to tradition, the touching scene between St. Sixtus and his chief deacon, St. Lawrence, occurred at this time. Lawrence was absent when the police made their swoop. On hearing the news, he hastened to meet the Pope and asked him, "Where are you going, father, without your son? Where are you going, O priest, without your deacon?" Pope Sixtus replied, "My son, you I am not abandoning. Greater strife awaits you. Stop weeping; you will follow me in three days" (Paul Allard, Les dernieres persecutions du troisieme siecle, p. 91). And so it happened. The police pounced on St. Lawrence and put pressure on him to deliver up the treasures of the Church. St. Lawrence agreed to lead the prefect to the treasures, and since the reserve money of the Church had been distributed to the poor, Lawrence, even as Cornelia pointed to her children as her jewels, pointed to the poor as the Church treasure. The prefect was disappointed. Lawrence met death like a hero.