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.
Proving my point. Vatican II opened in 1962. The scandals peaked in the 70s and 80s.
So your point is that it was the convening of the council itself, before any works were published, that caused all the priests to go pedophile?
despiet his scathing rebuke -- Rome is the most studied . . . How would it not be? It's the seat of the Church. Are writers going to spend all threir energy writing about the defunct church of jerusalem or the defunct church at antioch or the defunct church at alexandria? Are writers going to spend energy on the eastern othodox church that has little influence or power when you have a church that made kings and ruled the word for centuries and is still a power to be reconed with?
That's like comparing Rush to O'Reily -- O'Reily get some press but nothing like rush does.
St. John Chrysostom -- his remark is far more damning then saying theri is a grave respocibility for a bishop -- he is saying that the bishops have made a highway to hell for their followers -- not heretics not unbeleivers but the bishops those who are supposed to be sanctified.
He is saying that NOT all, but a great number -- it takes more than two or three to pave hell were themselves corrupt and their teaching by extension were corrupt and therefore their followers were corrupted.
If these sources all say to go back to the ancients to get past the corruption pray tell who's writings are they saying are uncorrupted?
Tertullian?
Justin Martyr?
Clement of Rome?
The field is not exactly full of candidates
Or would these men be talking about getting off the waywards traditions because they saw that were shifting sand and back to the rock of the Gospels and the Epistles?
You need to decide the answer -- what are all these guys talking about as the ancients and the place the church needed to return to?
Next question is there any evidence documentary wise to indicate that the chruch repented and returned to the God of their fathers like israel of old or are they like the catholic church today that this article rails against that are hijacking the religion because they can and the laity be damned?
Its tough stuff becasue we are talking about faith Ideals and what we were taught as children -- see but when we are asking the dems to see the light and examine where the party went -- it works best with people who lived through all that.
The hard nut DUers are all young children who have grown up since Clinton was first elected.
To these guys there was no change that's all ancient history.
Also it is not my intent to convert catholics to protestantism.
If you look up my name you will see that I am very hard on a lot of protestant practices and church leaders as well and I spend far more time on them than the catholics.
The truth is that you are no less a christian than them and I can and do base that on scripture.
The truth is that without the catholic church as things stand Jesus and the Apostles would have been in the harvard classics as ancient greek and hebrew legends.
There is a lot of water under the bridge that neither you and I can do anything with. We can't change it not Luther, No calvin not Pope gregory. Bad decissions were made bad doctrines were created and like government agencies once created they live on forever becaseu every scholar and teach quote them and then wants to rewrite them and put there own two cents in.
Thirty years ago I knew a bunch of catholic charimatics in White plains new york every week I met them in a building on chruch property and we prayed and read the bible together it was wonderful these people loved God from head to foot. Never in a year did we speak about any of the merits for or against any catholic doctrine.
I remember brother Phil with fond memories and some of the sisters there.
They spoke of sharing the light with others and how the church had grown cold. they spoke of renewal through prayer worship and reading the bible.
40%? Show me, please. I think it's more like 17%. You also fail to make note of the fact that most communicants today no longer believe in the Real Presence. And more people have the attitude that sin is no big deal. The consequence is a higher ratio of communicants at Mass--but a lower number of overall attendees.
To the extent the Council reduced discipline within the Church, yes. My point was the higher reception of gays into the priesthood, the lower standards for morality on the part of bishops, the cronyism of the bishops themselves and the weakening of Vatican control over wayward bishops, the teaching of a liberalized moral theology in the seminaries that implicitly affirmed deviant sexuality, and the diminishment of the faith overall in the conciliar Church, gave impetus to the corruption that resulted.
Oh the Irony! That today if you put out a PP&M CD, and simultaneously a Gregorian Chant CD, you'd probably sell more of the Chant. People are HUNGRY for the music of the Angels.
All of these things you are talking about would have taken years to occur, after promulgation of Vatican II. Instead, you are saying that events which were already in full swing by the START of the council were caused by RESULTS of the council. Not possible.
>> My point was the higher reception of gays into the priesthood,... the teaching of a liberalized moral theology in the seminaries that implicitly affirmed deviant sexuality,<<
Most of the pedophile priests had long exited seminaries by 1962. Only a tiny portion of the cases were committed by priests who went through post-concillar seminaries.
>>the cronyism of the bishops themselves<<
This is undeniably a part of the problem.
BTW, Constantine was eventually a Christian but not a Catholic. He was not baptized until he was on his deathbed and then by a heretic priest whom Constantine kept handy for the occasion. The apparent theory was that he could live like a pagan so long as he died baptized. If you have been baptized, you are probably not imagining yourself Catholic. Neither was Constantine.
It is, therefore, the job of the Pontiff and the College of Cardinals to bring the heretics back into line. That they don't indicates a wishy-washy attitude to me.
Of course, if as many were familiar today with the Tridentine Mass as it was said before 1960 as were still familiar with it in the late 1970s, there might be even more demand for its restoration.
God bless you and yours.
A recent Gallup poll showed 50%, actually. With certain Protestant groups, it is fairly easy to discern the level of poll inflation caused by self-reporters fibbing, so I think other estimates I've heard cited by dioceses of 40% sound much more plausible, and in line with other polling.
Under-30 Catholic attendance is closer to your initial 20-something percent. Other church groups have seen these people return to church-going when they had children, but as other articles pointed out, there is some problem with that expectation.
Actually, I notice, as a general trend, where the Catholic population is youngest, attendance seems to be highest, so I have been optimistic of a reversal.
No. It does not.
Oh I don't doubt that the "church" will exist, but without worshipers, what's the point?
In fact, St. Malachy's list also has an ellipsis (.....) between Glory of the Olive and Peter the Roman aka Peter the Omega. The ellipsis suggests an indeterminate number of popes between Glory of the Olive and Peter the Roman and that there will be at the very least one.
First off, please make some effort to type reasonably. I make plenty of typos, I'm sure, but I can barely read your letters because they are so overwhelmed by typos and spelling errors.
Where did you ever get the notion that the Catholic Church considered Bishops to be less vulnerable to hell? If anything they are the people most vulnerable in the world: Their sins have the gravest consequences, and they best know better than to sin!
>> He is saying that NOT all, but a great number -- it takes more than two or three to pave hell were themselves corrupt and their teaching by extension were corrupt and therefore their followers were corrupted. If these sources all say to go back to the ancients to get past the corruption pray tell who's writings are they saying are uncorrupted? <<
He is writing about false innovations which were being made in the 4th century. The consistency of the Catholic faith is its protection against heresy. he is saying that the bishops were promulgating false doctrine. But read what doctrines he is calling false, and which he is upholding: He upheld the Roman Catholic doctrine! And who re-established the RC doctrine: The Papacy!
>> Next question is there any evidence documentary wise to indicate that the chruch repented and returned to the God of their fathers like israel of old or are they like the catholic church today that this article rails against that are hijacking the religion because they can and the laity be damned? <<
Absolutely. St. John is one of the most legendary Catholic saints there are. There are many works on him, and you know what he wrote because the Church labored to keep it. Then again, there is also the bible, which is the source of all these doctrine; it guarantees that such corruption cannot befall the church. (of course, Protestants must pretend that for 1500 years, such corruption blotted out all historical record of true doctrine.)
>> Thirty years ago I knew a bunch of catholic charimatics in White plains new york every week I met them in a building on chruch property and we prayed and read the bible together it was wonderful these people loved God from head to foot. Never in a year did we speak about any of the merits for or against any catholic doctrine. <<
I'm glad to hear it, but it makes we wonder why you inserted such things into a Catholic discussion where it hardly fit the topic.
Dangus: Rocketman believes in Jack Chick. You cannot confuse him with the facts nor can you convert him with the facts. He is in love with fairy tales.
From 80% to 22% huh? That's some imagination you have there. No wonder you have embraced the SSPX schism. The late great Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said: "If I believed what the Church's enemies believed, I would not be a Catholic either." Luther, Jack Chick, Marcel, whoever!
And you get the idea that the Roman Catholic Church is without worshipers from what false source????? We number in excess of 1 billion. How blind are those who do not notice 1/6 of mankind wile living in a nation where Roman Catholics outnumber any other denomination by a substantial margin
There are also those who imagine that schism and excommunication are no big deal. Go figure!
Gee 64%. That can not be, I read it here on FR that very few people want the old Mass back. I am sure I read that no one will attend the old Mass. I must be misreading something ping.
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