We'll Take "The Quiet Mass"

Early one Sunday morning, my son, age 3, asked whether we were going to the "quiet Mass" or the "fun Mass." The choice was between the 100-mile drive our family makes once a month to Atlanta to attend a church that offers the Tridentine Rite — the old Latin liturgy that prevailed until 1969, when the Vatican II reforms were implemented — and the quick hop down the road to our local parish church in Auburn, Alabama.

There, we can see friends and neighbors, sing along to bouncy liturgical music, feast on donuts afterward (the Latin Mass in Atlanta offers only hard cookies), and be home in no time. My son was relieved — but also disappointed — to learn that this wasn't the Sunday of the "quiet Mass," when we make our monthly trek to be part of what every Catholic in the world experienced 30 years ago.

Yes, the new Mass (Novus Ordo Missae is its Latin name) is "fun." It's accessible and community-minded. Our local parish isn't one of those where abuses thrive, such as making up our own liturgy or letting lay people preach their own theologies in sermons. Our priests love the faith and adhere strictly to the rubrics that the Church has set forth for the Mass's celebration. Their homilies are not overly politicized. And they do their best to invest the English liturgical text (a victim of a tone-deaf translation committee) with profundity.

Nonetheless, the overall effect of our parish Mass is not so much scandalous as spiritually and aesthetically prosaic. Despite the new liturgy's attempt to reach us where we are, its effect is oddly abstract and distant compared with that of the old. It's great to be with the community and hear a nice homily, but the whole point of the Mass is something very different: that in the sacrifice on the altar, the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord. In the multitude of readings, greetings, and songs in our parish church, that point tends to fade into the distance.

Even my toddler son and my older daughter, age 6 (my youngest is a baby), understand that something is missing at the "fun Mass." I make a point of never disparaging the new rite in my children's presence. That's because I recall a conversation I once had with a fallen-away Catholic. She said, "Oh yes, my father loved the Latin Mass. After Vatican II, he refused to go to church at all." I wondered at the time if her father's stubbornness position inadvertently played a role in his daughter's loss of faith. I didn't want that to happen to my children, so I swore that I would always keep my complaining to myself. I want my children to grow up as faithful Catholics, regardless of which rite they attend.

But can the new rite ensure this as well as the old? The old rite provides theological depth, transcendental complexity, the right mix of exterior and interior textures, and a historical link to the whole of Catholic liturgical tradition. Can a rite designed in 1969 do the same? I'm not taking any chances by denying them exposure to the old rite as well as the new.

I've tried to put myself in their place and deduce why they are attracted to this old-fashioned ritual, which is not inherently child-friendly. Maybe it's the smell of incense and the strange sights and sounds: the clanking chain of the thurible, in which the incense burns; the complicated altar choreography; the high-pitched Sanctus bells. Maybe it's the Gregorian chant, a form of music so intrinsic to the Faith, it seems to evangelize all by itself. Or the silence in the church before and after Mass. Even the very unfamiliarity of the Latin language that challenges their ears.

Most likely, my children treat the old Latin Mass with respect and deference for the same reason my wife and I do: the entire liturgy takes us far away from everyday life, envelops us in a sense of mystery and spiritual solemnity, transports us out of time and place, and feeds our souls. It is not one thing in particular but the whole package, so integrated and thick with meaning, so radically unfamiliar and yet deeply penetrating, that causes us to hope that the Church will no longer treat this Mass as a bone thrown to quirky people willing to drive long distances to attend it, but as a mainstream part of everyday Catholic life, as it once was.

Catholic writers such as Michael Davies have gone to great lengths to demonstrate the theological superiority of the old Mass and its continuity with the practices of the early Church. Philosophers such as Catherine Pickstock of Cambridge University have contended that the old Roman Rite is so significant as a distinct language form that it solves the very riddle of linguistic meaning that the French deconstructionists have raised. She argues that the old liturgy, developed over 10 centuries, emerged as neither pure "text" nor pure revelation from God, but a "middle voice" between time and eternity, one that takes us to truth.

But in the end, such arguments are not as important as the simple fact that the Latin Mass calls me personally and intimately to communion with God, and that everything that happens during that hour is directed toward that goal.

The Tridentine parish in Atlanta that we attend, St. Francis de Sales, opened only last year and is one of the few in the country where all the sacraments are offered in pre-Vatican II form. The pastor, the Rev. Mark Fischer of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a Vatican-approved order dedicated to the Tridentine rite, raised money to purchase a former Baptist church on the outskirts of town — and with its plain red brick exterior, hanging interior ball lights, acoustic ceiling (think public school, circa 1955), and pile carpet, let's just say this is no Chartres.

And yet the people come. There are two Masses on Sunday, and both are three-quarters full and growing.

Children of all ages can be seen at these Masses. In fact, most of the people there seem to be under 40 and over 65, with the generation that came of age during Vatican II conspicuously underrepresented. Many, like us, travel long distances to attend. The congregation includes a broad cross-section of races, ethnic groups, and social classes. What unites us all is a love of the old liturgy and our faith.

Why, if the case for the old Latin Mass is so apparent to so many of all ages, do we have to drive so far to find it? Part of the answer may lie in Church politics (many liturgists have invested heavily in the notion of "reform" that the new rite seems to entail) and part in sheer inertia. The new Mass is now the "tradition" in most parishes, like my own in Auburn.

Still, I'm inclined to think that eventually the majority of Catholics will come to recognize — and reinstate — the beauty and profundity of the "quiet Mass" of the Tridentine rite, which my 3-year-old son can see so clearly.

I have a feeling that in the next couple of weeks we will be going to St. Francis de Sales and then to Mother Angelica's new shrine in Alabama, I am lucky enough to be within a few miles of St. Francis and not all that far from Mother Angelica's. Ikeep thinking about what it was like growing up with the Latin Mass and I do miss it. We have a wonderful small church here and it is very reverent and you can hear a pin drop at any time before and during the Mass but it is not the Latin Mass...

authentic worship experiences that truly express what is wondrously happening in our midst, in Latin or in the vernacular, are few and far between.

This is sad, We spent week after week, when we first moved to the Atlanta area, looking for a Catholic church that we could really feel at home in. In some we left before the service was over, I say service because I don't believe that it was a Mass. When you are brought up with the Latin Mass it's part of being home again...

It does not follow that if the Masses are celebrated in the vernacular that Jesus is any less there or that the Masses are not a legitimate expression of worship.

<> True. Pope Siricius, prior to 400 a.d. changed the Greek Mass into the vernacular Latin.

Mr. Tucker is a smart man but the questions of his 3 y.o. don't ring true to me. In any event, the Pauline Rite I attend is celebrated reverently. Last week, the Priest sermonised about Sanctifying Grace in connection with the Wedding Garment. Frankly, that is the first time I have heard that explained in about forever. That includes all the time I went to the Indult.

I think Mr. Tucker is wise to go to both Liturgies. I do think the Indult will be lifted in the next Papacy. I worry the endless comparisons of the Liturgies have so polarised folks that when the Indult is lifted, those that think they have been "going to a real Mass," might well join the schism.<>

They totally ignored 100 years of development of things like the "dialogue Mass" and created their own concoction out of whole cloth

<> And Pope Paul VI said it was a revision of the old rite. I guess you must be correct:)<>

Christ is present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, at every Catholic mass, whether Novus Ordo or Tridentine.

Good point. Just because the Tridentine is not widely available at this time, that doesn't mean we don't get a complete dose of our blessed Lord.

http://www.cin.org/users/james/files/mass1.htm

<>Every year or so, it does one good to read what Pope Paul VI said about the Mass. I know what he said isn't much heeded by the so-called trads, but his authority might be as great as The Latin Mass magazine or, Heaven forfend, Mr. Michael Davies his ownself<>

The Democrat party supports abortion (as well as triumphalist secularism and various forms of deviancy). Voting Democrat, therefore, is a moral choice.

And that choice, for the Catholic majority that votes Democrat, demonstrates pretty clearly that the voters either do not know or do not care what their Church teaches. This being the case, I fail to see how their support for the NO Mass should carry any weight whatsoever.

If you were to tell me that Teddy Kennedy or Mario Cuomo support the primacy of the N.O., it would carry the same weight.

This is only a non sequitur if you can demonstrate that voting for the Abortion Party is not a moral choice, and that one can still be a good Catholic and vote Democrat. Carrots have nothing to do with it.

Last week, the Priest sermonised about Sanctifying Grace in connection with the Wedding Garment. Frankly, that is the first time I have heard that explained in about forever.

Same here. And I needed that last Sunday. If you look hard enough, you can find this in the NO. It's a matter of putting some effort into it. Some things I don't like about it, but if the homily is good, it makes overlooking the atrocious music a lot easier. And the great thing is that you really don't have to sing along. I quit joining in at offertory. You miss too much with your nose burried in a songbook.

Latin Mass was very much discouraged in my youth. In fact, I've been told I would hate it, but considering the sources, I think pop culture has had a great influence. I'd like to judge for myself, but the only Latin Mass close to me is at an hour I can't get there. If the early Mass somewhere close was Latin, I'd try it.

From your link to "The Mass is the same" - and thank you, by the way!

8. This reform puts an end to uncertainties, to discussions, to arbitrary abuses. It calls us back to that uniformity of rites and feeling proper to the Catholic Church, the heir and continuation of that first Christian community, which was all "one single heart and a single soul" (Acts 4:32). The choral character of the Church's prayer is one of the strengths of her unity and her catholicity. The change about to be made must not break up that choral character or disturb it. It ought to confirm it and make it resound with a new spirit, the spirit of her youth.

I don't think it worked out the way Paul VI envisioned it working out. IMO, of course.

Latin Mass was very much discouraged in my youth. In fact, I've been told I would hate it, but considering the sources, I think pop culture has had a great influence. I'd like to judge for myself, but the only Latin Mass close to me is at an hour I can't get there. If the early Mass somewhere close was Latin, I'd try it.

I tried it at a cathedral in Bratislava, Slovakia. Worthwhile. Plus easier to understand with my Latin education than Slovak.

Regards, Ivan

You know something, Ivan, when I was overseas, I really wished we still had Latin Mass. That way I could have understood what was being said. I was in Germany, Italy, France, Switzerland, Austria... Because I attend Mass weekly, I knew exactly what was happening, but here I am in St. Peter's and I couldn't understand the readings and because it was the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, they were different than the missal.

I do think we should learn it both ways. There has to be some way of compromise.

<> He would agree with you, as would Pope John Paul II. IN an Encyclical,He apologised to me and thee for the abuses. He continuallly calls for the Bishops to fulfill their Duties.For some reason, they don't appear ready to do that yet<>

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