REFLECTIONS ON OUR FAITH AND ITS PRACTICES

Structures Reflect the Tridentine Liturgy


By Elizabeth Lev

ROME, JULY 19, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI's long-awaited apostolic letter "Summorum Pontificum" on the use of the missal promulgated by John XXIII finally came out this month to a myriad of reactions and commentary. Some have been offering Masses of thanksgiving since July 7, the day the letter was released, some have been openly critical, and others think that really not much will change.

In this document, the Holy Father decreed that any Roman Catholic priest is permitted to celebrate Tridentine Mass. Parishioners may request Masses celebrated in the "old" form.

Last week, on the anniversary of the apostolic constitution "Quo Primum," issued July 14, 1570, as a papal bull by Pius V, it struck me how many of Rome's astounding churches were built after the codification of the Tridentine Mass.

In this light, the return of the older form of the liturgy can help to understand and appreciate the grandeur of these churches.

In the wake of the Council of Trent, 50 new churches were built in Rome. But the one that best represents the Tridentine age is the Gesù built from 1568-1584.

Fruit of the collaboration between the newly-formed Jesuit order and Cardinal Alexander Farnese, the Gesù embodies St. Charles Borromeo's prescriptions for sacred edifices to showcase the new spirit of the liturgy.

One of the primary concerns was acoustics, as the solemn Masses were completely sung and the sound of the chants was meant to fill the church. Trent's decision to retain Latin as the sole language of liturgical prayer underscored the universality of the Mass in a world of ever-expanding horizons. The rites in Asia, America, Europe and Africa used the same language as Rome and linked the most far-flung areas to the See of Peter.

Sound also mattered because preaching became more important during this period. The Jesuits were instrumental in introducing greater emphasis on homilies and in the huge nave of the Gesù, there was space for hundreds to gather around the pulpit to hear their stirring preachers.

Rood screens, which separated the presbytery from the nave, were removed after Trent, to allow the congregation to see the altar and liturgy more clearly. The altar was raised up on steps and the sanctuary defined by a low rail. The faithful were awed to see the majesty of the Mass; the priest, deacon and sub deacon lined up at the altar, the clouds of incense sweetening the air and the elaborate marble tabernacle nestled in the apse. For the Rome of 1585, the Gesù was a revolutionary structure while still respecting the tradition of the early Christian Church.

The liturgy and the Church worked together to emphasize the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Christ. At the altar, placed against the wall, the celebrant recited the Eucharistic prayer in silence. From the nave, the faithful saw the priest's numerous gestures; 27 signs of the cross, five genuflections and most significantly, the raising of the Host amid incense and ringing bells.

The altar was a block of stone, resembling a tomb or sepulcher, vividly reminding the flock of Christ's death and burial. In the Gesù, Giovanni Battista Gaulli frescoed the initials of the Latin translation of Holy Name of Jesus -- "IHS" -- in a burst of light above the altar. This glorious image helped the people to understand Christ's triumph over sin and death.

With the same intensity of St. Ignatius' spiritual exercises, the Tridentine churches and liturgies invoked all the senses, exhorting the faithful to " love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength" (Mark 12:30).

I made a note of this item yesterday, but now I have the time to 'lift' it, complete with pictures. It's really an extension of the above article on structures that reflect the Tridentine liturgy. While some contemporary examples may not do that literally, the good and well-intended ones do illustrate the transcendence and the elevation of spirit towards God that being inside a Church should inspire in the believer. Whereas the lamentable ones seem to try very hard to banalize the structure, to make it seem like anything but a place of worship, to make it as common-looking and prosaic as possible, as if God did not deserve anything better, anything special, anything out of the ordinary. And so, the rite of worship for God performed within such structures usually matches this utter lack of distinction.

This photo-essay posted earlier this week by Robert Kumpel on his blog stjohnsvaldosta.blogspot.com/
is a reflection on form and function.


WHAT MAKES A CATHOLIC CHURCH?
By Robert Kumpel

First and foremost, the Catholic Church is the people of God. But, judging from a couple of the more emotional responses in a previous story on church architecture, I am painfully aware that the kind of building we worship in affects our perceptions about what Mass truly is.

Instead of commenting on my ideals for a Catholic Church, I chose to comment on the photos of churches below. Some you will recognize, some you will not. I chose churches from the Diocese of Savannah (my current home diocese) and the Diocese of San Diego (my hometown diocese) to show that there are beautiful, ugly and bland churches everywhere. Enjoy the tour and PLEASE feel free to comment.


This church doesn't give any sense of a Catholic identity. It has that "at least we got a building" look and would suit any denomination. Is this from Home Depot's basic "build a church" kit?


Obviously built during the golden age of American church architecture, this magnificent structure has verticality. It points upward and lifts one's thoughts toward God.


This church looks like a prison from a science fiction film.


This church points upward, but no further upward than Snoopy's A-framed doghouse. It's a blah reminder of the emptiness of the Vietnam era.


More of the same.


Built in the early to mid 60's, it looks Catholic, but is a bit bland. I can almost smell the indoor-outdoor carpeting.


This looks exactly like a public library that the nuns would walk my first grade class to as a child.


A church where no expense was spared: Only the best for God, and it shows. Beauty, style and verticality combine to make an imposing structure that demands your notice. The white illuminates a landscape where too many other churches have the same red brick facing.


Simpler, but still beautiful and unmistakably Catholic.


It's almost suffocating to look at this church. Where are the windows? Perhaps not ugly, but very dull. As depressing as the gray sky behind it.


Is this a church or a performing arts center?


The much overused "theater in the round" design that dominated the 60's and 70's. Bell bottom pants are always welcome.


I chose an interior shot for this church because an exterior would be a dead giveaway. Built by poor people in poor times, beautiful artworks were collected over the years which complement its Franciscan simplicity, while not detracting from it.


Was this the church that Matt Groenig used as his model for the Springfield Community Church on The Simpsons? Ugh.


Finally, we can all rest assured that each time one of these buildings was completed, there was somebody asking another, "Isn't it beautiful?"

Here was one comment to the blog:

Anonymous said...
I have visited Catholic churches all over America and Mexico. It seems the older the church the more it resembles a Holy place of worship. I once went to a remodled church in Salinas CA and it looked like they could take the pews out and turn it into a rodeo.

The priest got up and told us they now had a church that is modern and a progressive church. The priest said if we desire to see statues we can go in the rectory and take the sheets off the many statues lined up in a small room. There was no crucifix only a cross on a banner on his pulpit.

The other church, my parish, had the Tabernacle in another room next to the altar. They are either afraid of the Blessed Sacrament or they don't believe in it, I fear. That church is a rotunda looking like it could be a meeting room for the United Nations. My favorite church was modernized even though 12 people on the parish council voted against the change. The pastor voted the other way and of course the church not being a democracy went with the pastor's vote. When they were done, the Baptists would have been jealous of this Protestant wonder....


A few days earlier, Gumpel had posted this:

2007-07-13
It CAN Be Done



The Old Church: It might as well be the Department of Motor Vehicles


The New Church: Wow! Now THAT'S A Catholic Church!

All over the world and especially in the United States, there are hopeful signs that our Catholic leaders have finally figured out that the 60's are over. After 40 years of needless renovations and empty postmodern design, new parishes are choosing architecture that inspires and connects us to our rich heritage.

In Farragut, Tennessee (Diocese of Knoxville), architects HDB/Cram and Ferguson were hired to build the new church for St John Neumann Parish. They have not disappointed, designing a Romanesque style church that will be visually stunning and more appropriate for the solemnity of Holy Mass.

The old church is pictured above the design for the new one. Which building would YOU rather go into? Which would YOU rather worship in?

The most common argument for the mediocre architecture that Catholics have settled for is that it's just too expensive to build a traditional-styled church. A

rchitect Ethan Anthony, who designed the church, said that it costs no more to build a classicly-styled church than a modern church -about $500 per square foot. If that's the case, why are there so many ugly churches out there? Why are we settling for fast food when we can eat gourmet?

Some "liturgical experts" have gone so far as to suggest that people who need religious art and traditional architecture are spiritually weak, since they can't focus on the Mass in the bare sanctuaries that most new churches are.

If that's the case, I'll admit it - I'M WEAK! Like anyone else, I get distracted at Mass. Churches filled with beautiful paintings, stained glass and statues have constant visual reminders that bring me back to why I am at Mass in the first place.

So the spiritually advanced can celebrate, meditate or do whatever they do in their existentialist temples, but the rest of us spiritual weaklings could use a little visual relief! (A sense of God's awesomeness helps too!)

There are several parishes in our diocese that will be erecting church buildings in the future. If you know anyone in those parishes, forward this to them - they need to know that they don't have to settle for ugliness and emptiness any longer.

Kudos to the good people of St. John Neumann Parish and their bishop, Joseph Kurtz (now the new bishop of Louisville, Kentucky) for their good taste and courage in acknowledging their past to create an exciting future!

Thanks to Curt Jester, who calls attention to this article by Bishop Robert Vasa, of the Archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, published in this week's Catholic Sentinel, its weekly newspaper established in 1870.

Thoughts on differentiating
the ‘Church’ from ‘churches’
By Bishop Robert Vasa
07/20/2007


Prior to his being elected to the Office of Saint Peter, Pope Benedict XVI made it clear that one of the great dangers facing the Church was what he termed 'the dictatorship of relativism'. He used this phrase in contradistinction to the other types of worldly dictatorships which have attempted to destroy the Church over the centuries.

Perhaps before I continue, a brief statement about the meaning of relativism would be in order. Relativism comes in many shapes and sizes. At its core it is a mindset which judges the truth or reality of a thought or event or thing on the basis of subjective feelings, attitudes or personal values.

Those afflicted with the disease of relativism attempt to ignore the fact that there is such a thing as objective truth. In fact, they often despise and disparage the very concept of truth.

Perhaps you have heard the refrain from relativistic friends, “Well, that may be true for you but it certainly is not true for me!” Obviously there is great confusion about the meaning of the very word truth itself.

There are ways in which the phrase used above would make perfect sense. For example, I can recall as a child being informed that liver tasted good. That claim was not consistent with my personal experience.

Looking at the claim that liver tasted good I later realized that the claim should have been phrased by the liver lover, “I like liver.” This is a clear subjective, personal statement. It is not a universal claim of objective truth. I am, at the same time, perfectly free, while preserving the philosophical reality of truth, to make the contrary statement, “I do not like liver.”

It is, however, important to note that there are certain objective things which can be said about liver. It provides a certain, quantifiable level of nutrients, vitamins, minerals and the like, and so one could make the statement, if liver does in fact provide some of these things, that liver is good for you. This is something which is true or not true regardless of whether I happen to like liver or not.

In our seriously misspoken and relativistic age we have otherwise good and faithful Catholics making subjective statements, that is statements which they hold personally to be true, but they make them in absolute ways. Thus we hear, “The Church is wrong in her teaching about the sinfulness of contraception.” The speaker is making a definitive declaration but doing so does not establish a fact.

In truth, what the person means is that they do not accept, understand or intend to follow this clear teaching of the Church. A rejection of the teaching authority of the Church or a rejection of the truth of the teaching is a lot different than an acknowledgement of both the authority and the teaching and a subsequent recognition that one is not personally disposed to give assent to that teaching.

I bring this up at this time in order to try to understand the vehement outrage at one of Pope Benedict’s recent clarifications issued through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. According to news reports the document states: "Christ established here on earth only one church."

The necessary conclusion drawn in the document is that the other Christian communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession - the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles.

This clarification of the theology of the Catholic Church is described as having a 'harsh tone' which is another ploy of relativists. When something is said that is difficult for them to accept, rather than engage in substantive discussion about the truths at stake the whole matter can be dismissed because it might make some people feel bad.

The Holy Father notes that dialogue between the Catholic Church and other Christian denominations, in order to be constructive, "must involve not just the mutual openness of the participants but also fidelity to the identity of the Catholic faith." In other words, there are truths which cannot be ignored in the name of simply wanting to get along.

As I understand the statement, its internal logic goes something like this. Jesus came to save us from sin and to establish a Church which would continue His saving work.

'Church' is the word used to identify this very specific Christ-established reality. This “Church” has an objective God-given reality.

While we often use the word church in a very generic, non-specific fashion, the truth remains that the formal and proper use of the word 'Church' has a meaning given to it by Christ Himself. Giving formal recognition to other churches, as 'Churches' implies that they do, in fact, completely fulfill the definition of Church intended by Christ.

Since we believe that Christ established only one Church, then either all of the churches equally fulfill the intention of Christ and are really 'one Church' - or there is one true Church and those which are not substantially identified with that one Church are really something else altogether.

In our relativistic age in which feelings take precedence over objective reality, it is judged that such a claim is 'harsh', lacking in sensitivity and unnecessarily divisive. In this view it is better to bury a truth, allow people to continue to coexist in a beautiful relativistic complacency and avoid the tough questions.

The common tendency is to create a new definition of church, meet that definition and then make the claim that we are all one big happy church.

If church is a coming together of various people to give praise to God, then this is certainly a very good thing but such a church has little need for Jesus.

If church is a coming together of like-minded people to provide charitable service to the poor, then this is again a very good thing but this does not require the passion, death or resurrection of Jesus.

If church is a gathering of people whom God’s word has convoked and who are themselves, by virtue of being nourished with the real Body and Blood of Christ, constituted as the Body of Christ, then we have something more closely identifiable with the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church about which the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has spoken.

This column by Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz, who was recently appointed Archbishop of Louisville, was written for the July 22 edition of the East Tennessee Catholic of the Diocese of Knoxville, Tenn. The column has been made available for publication in The Record, newspaper of the Archdiocese of Louisville.

Pope Benedict’s document on
the use of the traditional Latin Mass
By Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz
Archbishop of Louisville


The Motu Proprio of Pope Benedict on the use of the Roman liturgy prior to the reform of 1970 has just been released. The Latin phrase “Motu Proprio” means that it is presented at his own initiative.

For months there has been a great amount of discussion both for and against the letter that addresses the use of the traditional Latin Mass and what effect these new papal directions will have on the life of the faithful. I wish to give you my perspective.

First of all, I believe that our Holy Father has presented a well crafted and pastorally sound direction. He makes it clear that his instruction does not establish a new rite in the Church but rather acknowledges that there is an ordinary and an extraordinary way in which the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church is celebrated.

We are familiar with that distinction of ordinary and extraordinary. The most common is the description of those lay persons who assist in distributing Holy Communion as “'Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion'.

In this case it means that these ministers never take the place of the ordinary ministers (priests and deacons) but have a rightful pastoral use. The terms are used to describe the ordinary ministers of Baptism and Confirmation (priest/deacon and bishop, respectively) and the pastoral allowance for extraordinary circumstances.

In the new instructions, the bishop continues to have the responsibility to ensure good order within the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries of the Holy Eucharist in a diocese. Because it is an extraordinary use, any public Mass using the Missal of Blessed John XXIII (promulgated in 1962) requires the bishop's judgment that there is sufficient pastoral need to justify the use of this missal and pastoral ability to provide for that need. [I find this statement very strange, especially from someone like Archbishop Burke - the MP is quite clear that it is the parish priest who determines this, and that the bishop only helps if the parish priest should be unable to comply with the request!]

Currently, we in the Diocese of Knoxville have the practice of a Mass using the Missal of Blessed John XXIII each Sunday.

The frequency of these celebrations depends on the pastoral need and our ability to respond to that need. The Instruction also allows for priests who are properly prepared to celebrate Mass using the Missal of Blessed John XXIII to do so privately without special permission.
The faithful who on their own and spontaneously join in this Mass do so with the blessing of our Holy Father.

The ordinary celebration of the Holy Eucharist makes use of the Missal of Paul VI and once an approved translation of the new Roman Missal of 2000 is available, it will be know as the Missal of John Paul II.

Our Holy Father gives three reasons for approving the use of the Missal of Blessed John XXIII: [1] a way of making a path for those who have separated themselves from the Church because of the new liturgy (a path that will require those separated to embrace the fullness of truth of the Catholic Church on their return); [2] a means of accommodating the reasonable aspirations of the faithful who yearn for the reverence that is associated with the celebration from 1962 [3] and a preserving of the deep and rich heritage of the Church.

He also says, and I strongly agree, that this Instruction is a call for all to participate each Sunday (and even daily) in the Holy Eucharist in a manner that is both reverent and joyful.

While the experience of my trip to Rome is still fresh in my mind and heart [Archbishop Burke was one of the Metropolitan appointees who received the pallium from the Holy Father last June 29],I find it fruitful to reflect on the Mass with our Holy Father as well as the missionary theme of the recent readings from Sunday Mass.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the word 'Catholic' as having two meanings: the universality of Christ present in his Church, and the missionary command to all in the Church. First, there is the sense of universality, in which we are convinced in faith that Jesus Christ permeates the Church and so we proclaim in faith that, where the Church is, there is Christ.

This is especially true as I recall my visit to our Holy Father in Rome (Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia). The special charism of authority which our Holy Father exercises is one of unity in Christ. At the special Mass on the Solemnity of SS. Peter and Paul in front of the main altar was placed a special bronze depiction of St. Peter kneeling before Christ and receiving the key from Him.

As I knelt before our Holy Father to receive the pallium, I prayed that Pope Benedict’s humility in serving Christ might rub off on me. So, too, the universality of the Church is seen in the mandate for each of us baptized into Christ Jesus to become His missionaries. This missionary theme has been expressed so well in the recent readings from Sunday Mass, especially the sending forth of the 72 by Jesus.


NB: In the column, Archbishop Kurtz refers to the celebration of a Mass using the Missal of Blessed John XXIII in the Diocese of Knoxville. In the Archdiocese of Louisville, a Tridentine Mass is celebrated at 12:30 p.m. on Sundays and at 5:30 p.m. on holy days at St. Martin of Tours Church in Louisville.


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The second piece, in the form of a pastoral letter, is from Archbishop Raymond Burke of St. Louis, from the website of the Arhdiocese. As does Father Z, who has this on his blog with commentary, I am omitting what the Archbishop writes about Natural Family Planning.

Be not afraid!
Two forms of the Rite of the Mass
by Archbishop Raymond L. Burke


In writing to you this week, I want to address two different but related subjects of concern to us all. The first is the recent publication of new liturgical norms pertaining to the celebration of two forms of the Rite of the Mass, the form used by all until 1970 and the new form introduced by Pope Paul VI.

The new norms, given by Pope Benedict XVI on July 7, have been the subject of much discussion in the media. For your better understanding of the new norms, I want to offer you my reflections on the norms and their implementation in the Archdiocese of St. Louis.

...

By his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI has provided for the easier use of the form of the Rite of the Mass until 1970, which was published by Blessed Pope John XXIII in 1962, in addition to the use of the Rite of the Mass, which was published by Pope Paul VI in 1970 and with which we are all quite familiar.

The first form is sometimes popularly called the Tridentine Rite of the Mass, referring to the fact that, in its essentials, it remained the same from the time of the reforms introduced by the Council of Trent (Tridentine is the adjective for Trent). Changes were introduced into the rite over the centuries, including the changes made in the 1962 edition of the Roman Missal, but the greater part of the rite remained unchanged.

The second form is called the Novus Ordo or New Order of the Mass. It also retains the essential elements found in the Tridentine Rite but introduces a somewhat radical simplification of the rite. It is, however, one and the same Rite of the Mass.

With the norms promulgated by Pope Benedict XVI, the Novus Ordo remains the ordinary form in which the Rite of the Mass is to be celebrated. The Order of the Mass in force before the changes introduced by the Novus Ordo is now the extraordinary form, which may be celebrated by any priest, without special permission, under the conditions set forth by the Holy Father.

In establishing the extraordinary form of the Rite of the Mass, our Holy Father reminds us that, in fact, the use of the Roman Missal of Blessed Pope John XXIII "was never juridically abrogated and, consequently, in principle, was always permitted" (Letter of Pope Benedict XVI Accompanying the Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, July 7, 2007, paragraph 6).

As he observes, there was a greater attachment to the former rite than perhaps was anticipated, especially among the faithful "with a notable liturgical formation and a deep, personal familiarity with the earlier form of the liturgical celebration" (Ibid.).

An interest in and attachment to the former Rite of the Mass also developed among the faithful in circumstances in which the reforms of the Novus Ordo were not implemented with fidelity but were falsely seen to permit or even require a creative interpretation on the part of the priest. Such circumstances, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, "led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear" (Ibid.). Our Holy Father reflects upon his own experience of the confusion and hurt which sometimes accompanied the implementation of the Novus Ordo.

Not infrequently, I meet young people who are attracted to the former Order of the Mass, even though they had no experience of it when they were growing up. What attracts them is the beauty and reverence, which the earlier form very much fosters.

Such beauty and reverence should also be evident in the celebration of the Novus Ordo. Because the ordinary form is greatly simplified, the priest and those who assist him must be attentive to the divine action taking place and not give way to an informality and familiarity which is offensive to the nature of the Sacred Liturgy.

Through Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI makes the former Order of the Mass more available to the faithful who are attached to it. At the same time, he maintains the Novus Ordo as the ordinary form of the celebration of the Mass. It is the expressed hope of our Holy Father that the use of the extraordinary form will support the faithful celebration of the Mass according to the Novus Ordo.

Implementation of the new norms
in the archdiocese

Some of the faithful of the archdiocese have expressed the fears that the use of the vernacular in the celebration of the Mass will be taken away and that the use of the extraordinary form of the Mass will be imposed upon them, while they, in fact, are attached to the ordinary form. Both fears are unfounded.

The celebration of the extraordinary form in parishes must be requested by a group of the faithful and is to be scheduled in such a way as to permit the other faithful the use of the ordinary form. Priests, when they celebrate the Mass without a congregation, that is, when they are on vacation or away from a parochial assignment, may choose either form. Members of the faithful can, of course, assist at the Mass, no matter in which form it is celebrated.

At present, the Archdiocese of St. Louis has a most effective apostolate on behalf of the faithful who are attached to the extraordinary form of the Rite of the Mass, that is the Roman Missal of Blessed Pope John XXIII.

St. Francis de Sales Oratory is the center of the apostolate and serves well the faithful who desire the celebration of the Mass and of the other sacraments according to the rites which were in force in 1962. The Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem also provide Sunday and holy day Masses at the Chapel of the Passionist Nuns in Ellisville. In addition, the Canons Regular, as befits their form of religious life, celebrate daily and publicly the Liturgy of the Hours in the chapel of their Priory in Chesterfield.

If additional requests of the regular celebration of the extraordinary form of the Rite of the Mass are received, I will work with the parish priests in responding appropriately and generously to the requests.

Also, courses of liturgical formation pertaining to the Roman Missal of Blessed Pope John XXIII will be provided for priests who desire it. The seminarians at Kenrick-Glennon Seminary will be provided the liturgical formation necessary to celebrate the Mass according to the extraordinary form. Their studies of Latin will also give attention to the texts of the extraordinary form.

Gratitude for the richness
of the forms of the Sacred Liturgy

In concluding my brief reflections on Summorum Pontificum, I express, in the name of us all, deepest gratitude to Pope Benedict XVI for providing so richly and well for the worthy and beautiful celebration of the Sacred Liturgy, especially the Holy Mass.

With Pope Benedict XVI, I am certain that the richer possibilities for the celebration of the Mass and the other sacraments will lead us all to a deeper appreciation of the immeasurable love of God for us and to a deeper response of love, on our part.


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NB: I have taken the lead of Father Z for the above two letters, as well as the two posts that follow. Thank you, Father!

The Latin Mass is not
a cause for contention
By Lorraine V. Murray
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/21/07


In the sixties, hippies shunned their elders' traditions, including their approach to paying bills, which involved jobs. With time, however, many hippies traded love beads for suits and realized that working beat living on the streets.

Hippies are long gone, but the anti-tradition crowd lives on and reared its head recently when Pope Benedict XVI announced that the Latin Mass would be more widely offered to Catholics.

Some folks protested that the Church was moving backward instead of forward, but what's wrong with that? [What's wrong is the way you put it rather thoughtlessly! The Church is not moving backward at all! It's continuing with a hallowed and most worthy tradition, but introducing some necessary changes and adaptations at the same time - and that's what tradition is: its basis remains the same, but some features may and do evolve.]

First, a little background: The liturgy of the Tridentine Mass, usually celebrated in Latin, dates back to the sixth century.

And it was the only option for Catholics until the Second Vatican Council rolled out an updated Mass in the vernacular in the 1960s.

Although the Latin Mass was still celebrated after that, it became rarer than the proverbial hen's tooth and today might exist in one parish among hundreds of others.

That one parish for Atlanta's Catholics is in Mableton, where the pews at St. Francis de Sales are filled with parishioners from all over the city, as well as adjacent states.

Clearly, there are people who love this reverent and ancient liturgy and will travel far to find it.

Which may baffle advocates of the newer Mass.

After all, isn't a Latin liturgy confusing and unintelligible? And doesn't the priest show disrespect to the congregation by turning his back toward them during these Masses?

No on both scores: Catholics who cherish tradition find beauty in Latin, which is an unchanging language. And even children follow along at Latin Masses without confusion, since the missals post the vernacular side by side with Latin.

Another wonderful thing about the Latin liturgy is that Catholics can attend Mass anywhere in the world and worship God just like at home, since Latin remains fixed in Nigeria, Paris or Idaho.

As for those critics who claim the priest is disrespecting the people in the pews: He and the entire congregation traditionally faced East, which symbolizes the risen Christ.

I grew up with the Latin liturgy, and when I stepped into the sanctuary, I entered another dimension entirely.

One that was serene and dignified, fragrant with incense and echoing with Gregorian chant.

Before long, I knew all the prayers in Latin by heart, so when the priest said, "Dominus vobiscum," I knew he meant, "The Lord be with you."

Unfortunately, the post-Vatican II Mass has led to some egregious problems.

Traditional Gregorian chant gave way in some parishes to awful, folksy, feel-good music. Organs gathered dust, while guitars and drum machines took center stage.

Obviously, I favor the traditional Mass, but I see no reason to turn Benedict's proclamation into a war between conservatives and liberals. Instead of girding for battle, let's look at the larger picture.

For one, the pope is not doing anything radical. He is merely giving Roman Catholics greater access to something that is their birthright, since the Latin liturgy was standard for many centuries.

After Vatican II, it took a bishop's permission for such a Mass to be offered, but, thanks to Benedict, all that's needed now is a willing pastor in one's local parish.

People who favor Mass in their local language are not being asked to give it up. But those who have sat longingly in the pews, missing the powerful liturgy their ancestors enjoyed, now can have their day. In a church that prides itself on being universal, this is definitely a step in the right direction.


Lorraine V. Murray is the author of "Grace Notes. Embracing the Joy of Christ in a Broken World" and "Why Me? Why Now? Finding Hope When You Have Breast Cancer." She works in the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University. Web site: www.lorrainevmurray.com


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A Shepherd’s Message

By Archbishop Daniel N. DiNardo
Archbishop of Galveston-Houston
The Texas Catholic Herald
(Archidocesan newspaper)

On July 7 the Holy Father issued an Apostolic Letter accompanied by a personal letter concerning the use of what has become known as the Tridentine Mass or the Tridentine Missal.

The Pope does not use that terminology; rather, he emphasizes the unity of the Roman Rite. In doing so he seeks to clarify the continuity in the Roman Rite, particularly with the publication of the Roman Missal by Pope Paul VI in 1970. He writes that both Missals are expressions of the one “law of Prayer” (lex orandi) in the Church.

The Missal of Paul VI in 1970 is to be regarded as the ordinary form of the law of praying while that of the Missal of Pope Paul V in 1570, whose last edition was in 1962 under Blessed Pope John XXIII, is to be considered the extraordinary form of that same law of praying. It is a twofold use of one and the same rite.

In doing this the Holy Father has permitted a more generous use of the older Missal particularly for those who have been and remain attached with love and affection to that previous liturgical form.

In his personal letter accompanying his Motu Proprio, the Pope mentions that John Paul II had already granted use of the older form of the Rite in 1988 but had not given any detailed prescriptions or precise canonical norms on its use. Pope Benedict is supplying such norms by his new decree and also supplies norms to avoid divisions within parish communities.

The Pope also hopes that the use of the older form will allow the new Missal, still the ordinary form of the Roman Rite, to be celebrated with great reverence in greater harmony with the liturgical directives contained in the new Missal.

The Holy Father also explains that his positive motivation for doing this was to come to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church. He wants to offer a way to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity within the Church so that divisions do not harden on these liturgical matters.

"In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture. What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too…..It behooves all of us to preserve the riches which have developed in the Church’s faith and prayer, and to give them their proper place."

The Pope’s decree contains 12 articles on the use of the 1962 Missal. They are given in this issue of The Texas Catholic Herald on page five.

As the local Shepherd of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, I certainly want to see the law and spirit of the Pope’s decree upheld. We already have a weekly celebration of the older Rite at Annunciation Parish in downtown Houston.

It must be admitted, as the Holy Father himself writes, that there are not many who have the formation in Latin to understand the older forms. That would also include many of our priests. Further, a large number of our priests have never celebrated the older rite.

Finally, the multiple celebrations of the Eucharist on Sunday in our parishes already due to our growing population and the number of Masses on weekends that our pastors and priests are already celebrating creates a series of “logistical” issues for many, if not most, of our parishes.

We will have to see how requests for the older rite from a 'stable' group of the faithful will work out in practice. I am also not opposed to the possibility of the erection of a personal parish for celebrations of the older form of the Roman Rite.

Mass is already celebrated in 14 or more languages each weekend in our archdiocese. In addition, there are 5 different Eastern Rites in our archdiocesan territory: the Ruthenian Byzantine, Ukrainian Byzantine, Maronite, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara, plus a chapel of the Melkite Byzantine Rite as well as occasional celebrations of the Ethiopian Rite by one of our priests for some members of that Eastern Rite community. Finally there is a parish of what is called “Anglican Rite Usage,” for those Catholics who have come to us from the Anglican communion. We have incredible variety.

This is why the unity of faith, the 'handing on of what we have received', as St. Paul states it, is so crucial and so much a part of what I see as my own responsibility in this magnificent local Church of Galveston-Houston.

The unity of our Catholic Profession of Faith and our communion with the Holy Father is all the more crucial given such rich diversity in this part of God’s Kingdom in southeast Texas.

May the ancient “law of believing” (lex credendi) and “law of praying” (lex orandi) be both so saturated by charity, witness and outreach, especially to the poor and the stranger, that we will be a most credible sign of the Catholic Church.

I'm leaving this as a temporary marker to be revisited!
Did you know there was a transitional form of the Mass between 1965-1970? This site tells you all about it.

traditionalromanmass.blogspot.com/

It's the weekend, and it's a slow Benedict newsday, so I have an opportunity to navigate about a bit and pick up things I otherwise would be ignorant about. Like the Anglican Use rite. This article, however, provides us with a whole new insight into a special category of Catholic converts - Episcopal or Anglican clergymen.

It's from the June issue of Crisis magazine, and is by one such priest who has since become an active voice in US Catholic circles.


The Anglican Right
By Rev. Dwight Longenecker

In the late 1970s, a group of Episcopal clergymen with typical American chutzpah wrote to Pope Paul VI. They said they wanted to become Catholics, and wished for their priestly ministry to be fulfilled by being ordained as Catholic priests. The only problem was that they had wives and children.

Paul VI received their petition, and they heard nothing. In the autumn of 1978, the pope died; then another pope died, and John Paul II took charge. The little group of Episcopal priests waited with crossed fingers and bated breath while Rome made a decision.

In 1980 they finally had an answer: A procedure was to be established whereby former Episcopal priests could be ordained as Catholic priests, even if they were married. Individual bishops would apply to a papal delegate for a dispensation from the vow of celibacy, and after suitable training the Episcopal priests could be ordained as fully functioning Catholic priests.

Since 1983, about 75 married former Episcopalian priests have been ordained in the United States. When the Anglican Church was splitting over women’s ordination in the early 1990s, the English Catholic bishops also appealed to Rome for permission to ordain married former Anglicans. Permission was granted, and the English bishops set up their own procedure.

No one is certain of the exact numbers, but since the early 1990s about 600 former Anglican priests have been ordained in England, of whom about 150 are married. Married former Anglican priests have also been ordained in Scotland and in Spain.

Rev. William Stetson is the priest who assists Archbishop John Myers of Newark in administering the Pastoral Provision. I asked him why, if Anglican orders are null and void, Episcopalians and Anglicans get special treatment. Why couldn’t a married Baptist minister convert be ordained as a Catholic priest?

Father Stetson explained that there is a special situation for men from the Anglican communion—not because their orders are more acceptable, but because their priestly experience, theological training, and spiritual formation is closer to Catholicism.

Indeed, married converts from other denominations have been accepted for ordination as well. Jim Anderson of the Coming Home Network reports that in the United States, Catholic men who came into full communion from the Lutheran, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Charismatic Episcopal, and Continuing Anglican churches have also been ordained as Catholic priests.

Dom Bartholomew Leon, O.S.B., pastor of the Maronite congregation in Greenville, South Carolina, observes that the Eastern Rite churches have had married priests for ages, and that the exception for former Anglicans doesn’t seem so unusual for them.

So what’s up? Is Rome changing the celibacy discipline by stealth? Are the Vatican officials testing the water to see how married priests work before they make a wholesale change? Not really.

The truth, as G. K. Chesterton observes, is often just what it seems. There’s no conspiracy. Rome is not changing the celibacy rule. It is simply making an exception to Church discipline in order to encourage Christians who are separated from full communion to “come home to Rome.” If you like, Rome is sending a very practical message to Anglicans: “We are willing to be flexible and do everything possible to facilitate your journey home.”

Linked with this explanation is a proper concern for evangelization: Rome hopes the Anglicans who come in will continue to be an example and minister to other Christians who seek full communion with the ancient Church of the apostles.

When the Pastoral Provision was first established in 1980, permission for married Protestant pastors to be ordained was only part of the plan. In addition to allowing married Episcopal priests to be ordained, Rome set up a program for whole parishes to come into the Catholic Church. Not only could their married ministers be ordained, but congregations of former Episcopalians were permitted to worship according to their own traditions.

The provision for their own liturgy is sometimes called the Anglican Rite. To be precise, it’s really the Anglican Usage of the Roman Rite. This is to distinguish it from the Eastern Rite churches like the Maronites, Melkites, and Malabars that enjoy union with Rome with not only their own liturgy, but their own hierarchy as well.

The Anglican Usage remains part of the Latin Rite, since the English were historically part of the Latin Church. Their unusual liturgy is simply one form of the liturgy authorized for use in the Latin Church.

The Anglican Use parishes use the Book of Divine Worship, which is based on the 16th-century Book of Common Prayer written by Thomas Cranmer. The Book of Divine Worship is a total resource for former Anglicans. Cranmer’s version of the Psalms is retained, and traditional Anglican services like Morning and Evening Prayer are authorized for use. In the liturgy of the Eucharist, most of Cranmer’s memorable and beautiful prayers are retained, but placed in the correct order and subjected to the doctrinal demands of Catholic liturgy.

Anglican Use priests celebrate the Mass facing the altar; communicants kneel to receive the Eucharist; and they claim that their liturgy is a faithful 16th-century translation of the Latin Mass.

A look at the Book of Divine Worship makes one realize that a huge amount of effort and concern has gone into the production of a way forward for troubled Episcopalians. Has there been a huge positive response? Not so far. Only seven Anglican Use parishes have been established. Of these, only a few are thriving.

Our Lady of the Atonement in San Antonio and Our Lady of Walsingham in Houston have both built new churches and are supported by growing congregations. The other Anglican Use parishes either worship in existing Catholic parishes or exist as small missions.

The most recent Anglican Use congregation is the Society of St. Thomas More in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Made up of about 20 families and their former Episcopal pastor, Rev. Eric Bergman, the members of the society left the Episcopal Church and were received into full communion by Rev. Charles Connor, the pastor of St. Peter’s cathedral, in October 2005. Since then, Father Bergman has been ordained, and the congregation worships according to the Anglican Use in St. Clare’s Church.

Father Bergman explained why there has been so little take-up of the Anglican Use so far: For an Anglican Use parish to be established, an Episcopal priest has to convert with a good number of his congregation. They have to step out in faith together, without a building and without financial support for their married priest.

After converting, they have to wait for permission from Rome for their priest to be ordained. Because of the difficulties involved, some congregations have wanted to become Anglican Use parishes but their priest was not willing, and vice versa.

A possible new change in the rules promises a more positive response in the future. Father Bergman explained that in November 2006, the leaders of the Anglican Use communities, the Pastoral Provision Office staff, and Archbishop Myers, the ecclesiastical delegate, met to discuss how the Pastoral Provision might be more fully implemented in communities in the United States. Two task forces were created to draw up proposals for Archbishop Myers, who took them to Rome for approval in April 2007.

The first proposal concerns raising money for men and groups in transition from Anglicanism to Catholicism. The Anglican Use Society will be used to collect money and will then distribute it in consultation with their bishop. The second suggestion is to create guidelines to match a priest to a group of Anglicans desiring to take advantage of the Pastoral Provision.

Through these new guidelines, it is hoped that a priest can be ordained for the Anglican Use, even though he is not affiliated with a particular congregation. If approved, it is possible that willing priests and congregations could be matched by late 2007.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about these new proposals, however. When given the Anglican Use option, the English Catholic bishops rejected the possibility outright.

Most of the former Episcopal priests who have been ordained under the terms of the Pastoral Provision serve as ordinary diocesan priests within the Roman Rite. They simply resigned from the Episcopal Church to join the Catholic mainstream. Many of them perceive the Anglican Use with benign indifference. They see the Book of Divine Worship as a liturgical curiosity, while others regard the whole thing as an unfortunate ecclesiastical eccentricity.

The $64,000 question is: Do enough Episcopalians really want their own little churches in communion with Rome that use the old 16th-century liturgy? Father Bergman thinks so. He believes the growth in popularity of the Tridentine Mass indicates a surge in demand for traditional, formal, and beautiful liturgy.

In addition to this, the large number of Anglican breakaway churches use some form of the traditional liturgy, and the Anglican Use provides a bridge for them to come into full communion with the Catholic Church.

Father Bergman also points out that Anglican Use parishes have become a refuge for cradle Catholics from the stranger liberal liturgical experiments.

"The established Anglican Use communities have many cradle Catholics who come to the Anglican Use Mass because they appreciate the beauty of the music, the reverence of the liturgy, and the orthodoxy of the priest," he explains. Rev. Christopher Phillips, the pastor of the Church of the Atonement in San Antonio, reports that about 60 percent of its members are reverts to the Catholic Faith or cradle Catholics who have returned for what they perceive to be a proper liturgy. People who actually converted to Catholicism represent only 40 percent of the large Anglican Use parishes in Texas.

Rather than being an ecclesiastical eccentricity, it could be that the Anglican Use parishes will provide a safe haven for shipwrecked Anglicans, as well as a home for Catholics who are refugees from clown Masses, new age rituals, and the whole range of goofy liturgical abuses found within the American Catholic Church.

Critics of the Anglican Use argue that the whole thing is a waste of time and energy. If people want to convert to the Catholic Church, let them convert and join their local parish. Why should Episcopalians get special treatment? What’s the point?

Defenders argue that the Pastoral Provision and Anglican Use parishes are part of a larger ecumenical and evangelistic plan. If the Catholic Church is serious about unity, then she should be making every effort possible to reconcile different groups in a multitude of different ways. The Anglican Use, they say, is a tool for evangelization and reconciliation.

The Anglican Use “bridge” is not only a way across the Tiber for Episcopalians; there are an increasing number of Anglican and Episcopal breakaway churches. To date, there are nearly 100 independent Anglican denominations. As the worldwide Anglican communion goes into meltdown, there is a real possibility that whole provinces of the Anglican Church will break away. Could a breakaway denomination or a whole Anglican province convert and use the Pastoral Provision and Anglican Use in order to come into full communion with Rome?

Father Bergman explained that the Pastoral Provision can only be fully implemented in those countries where the national conference of Catholic bishops approves its implementation. So far, only the United States conference has done so. Some moves are being made for bishops’ conferences in other English-speaking countries to do the same, and there is a dream that the growth of the Anglican Use will one day justify the creation of a personal prelature or an apostolic administration.

If this were to take place, there could be a real opportunity for Anglican Use parishes to exist in many places around the world where the Anglican communion now has a presence. Some Anglican provinces in Africa and Asia are both Anglo-Catholic and orthodox in doctrine, and such an option may very well be a way forward as they seek to disentangle themselves from the irreformably liberal Anglican regimes of Canterbury and New York.

Despite pulling the word 'Protestant' from their name 30 years ago, the vast majority of the Episcopal Church of the United States is Protestant through and through. They don’t object to the Catholic Church these days with the old cry of “No popery!” Nor do they react against Rome because they hold to Protestant doctrine.

They object to Rome now because Rome is against feminism, homosexuality, and the dictatorship of relativism. Most Episcopalians are far from the banks of the Tiber, but there are still many faithful Episcopalians who are distressed by the direction their church has taken and who do not wish to move sideways into one of the many Episcopalian splinter groups.

Why are these priests and people so slow to investigate the Anglican Use option? It could be that part of the problem is a lack of publicity and promotion. Faithful Episcopalians still have many questions and problems about Catholic faith and practice. They have many prejudices and concerns about just what it means to be Catholic in the 21st century. A place for them to discuss their concerns is vitally needed.

One of the forums available is the Coming Home Network. In 1993, former Presbyterian minister Marcus Grodi founded a small apostolate to tend to fellow Protestant ministers whose faith pilgrimage was bringing them close to the Catholic Church. The Coming Home Network has grown enormously since then, thanks to Grodi’s successful program on EWTN. The greatest portion of clergy converts it deals with are Episcopalians. Grodi’s organization offers books, resources, and personal mentoring from others who have already made the journey. It also offers assistance and advice as clergymen give up their livelihood to come into full communion with the Catholic Church.

Coming Home Network’s older sister is the English-based St. Barnabas Society. Founded at the end of the 19th century, when a large number of Anglican clergymen were coming into the Catholic Church, the St. Barnabas Society offers pastoral and financial support to convert clergy and their families. As an established English charity, its scope is not yet international, but its leadership is aware of the Anglican Use and follows the developments with interest.

In Pennsylvania, Father Bergman has taken the call to evangelization seriously and has started an annual conference on the Anglican Use. The first conference last year attracted 120 participants, 40 of whom were clergy. The theme of last year’s conference was 'Conversion to Catholicism', and convert Avery Cardinal Dulles was the key-note speaker.

This year the conference theme is 'The Catholic Priesthood'. Slated for early this month in Washington, D.C., Father Bergman’s conference offers Episcopalians a chance to network, as well as the opportunity to meet people and clergy who have taken the step toward Rome. Episcopalians will gain encouragement as they speak with those who have blazed the trail, and will begin to see the move as a viable option.

In addition to the conferences, Web sites, and literature, the Office of Pastoral Provision has hired a convert from the Episcopal priesthood, Taylor Marshall, to help process all the men who are taking advantage of the Pastoral Provision.

Father Bergman says that the numbers are growing, and there are more men following this path every year. The Anglican Use is part of the overall movement toward Rome. "Everywhere an Anglican Use community is established it reconciles many to the Church."

He calls on the Catholic faithful to be open to this unusual new development, to let others know about the Pastoral Provision, and to be generous in donations to help more Anglican priests take the courageous step to be reconciled to the Catholic Church.

The Pastoral Provision has been in existence for 25 years. Since then, only a handful of Anglican Use parishes have been established, and the number of married Episcopal priests to be ordained is currently less than 100.

Is this really a movement to be reckoned with? Is it the stroke of genius that it seems? Have these first 25 years been a time of quiet foundation-building for a great tidal wave of Anglican clergy and laity into the Catholic Church, or is the whole movement just an interesting idea promoted by a few eccentric enthusiasts?

Much depends on the success of the newly reformed and updated Pastoral Provision Office - whether it will continue to be proactive in promoting the Pastoral Provision; whether it will be able to publicize and promote this creative option successfully, along with committed men like Father Bergman; whether it receives support from the conferences of bishops and the Vatican; and whether it will be given the resources to reach out confidently to the various Anglican groups worldwide.

If so, what it has done so far may well be a solid foundation for an exciting development in the Catholic Church’s relationship with worldwide Anglicanism. If not, the Anglican Use will become merely an interesting footnote in the history of ecumenism.


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Rev. Dwight Longenecker was ordained through the Pastoral Provision in December 2006 and serves as chaplain to St. Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville, South Carolina, and as weekend assistant in the parish of St. Mary’s, Greenville. He is the author of ten books on conversion and the Catholic Faith.

Thanks, of course, to Father Z, one of whose readers called his attention to this piece from The Scotsman on 7/15/07. Much as I enjoy Mr. Warner's highly literate and thoroughly rousing celebratory romp, I hope he calms down long enough to 'live and let live', be thankful for Benedict and that we are where we are now - a level playing field almost - with the trad-Mass, and pray that the 'rivalry' will make everyone more conscientious about what Mass should be, whichever rite you are attending.


The Mass of All Time
will outlive the Sixties revolutionaries
By GERALD WARNER


'AND then how shall I lie through centuries,/And hear the blessed mutter of the Mass," exulted Browning's bishop ordering his tomb at Saint Praxed's church, in the well-known poem. His repose would have come to a raucous end in 1969, when the New Mass was imposed on the Catholic faithful; but he might have relapsed into contentment from next September 14, when the motu proprio of Benedict XVI restoring the Latin 'Tridentine' Mass comes into effect.

Not since 1850, when Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman hurled his pastoral letter 'From Out the Flaminian Gate' like a grenade into the heart of the British establishment, proclaiming the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales, has a Roman document provoked such consternation among the ungodly.

It is important, however, to keep this development in perspective. Benedict XVI is not the awaited Pope of Tradition who will fully restore the Church; but he is a holy man of deeply orthodox convictions who is paving the way.

On the other hand, the motu proprio may be a modest step, but it has significance far beyond its actual contents - beyond even the Catholic Church. For the first time in living memory, a major institution is reforming itself by turning back to earlier precepts: David Cameron might profitably take note.

The bishops of England and Wales tried furiously to prevent the liberalisation of access to the Traditional Mass, lobbying the Vatican against it, although they had recently approved the regular celebration of a Mass for homosexuals.

On the eve of the publication of the Papal document, Bishop Kieran Conry, of Arundel and Brighton, said: "Any liberalisation of the use of the rite may prove seriously divisive. It could encourage those who want to turn the clock back throughout the Church." So, a liberal opposes liberalisation - why are we not surprised?

As for turning the clock back throughout the Church, it is the only possible remedy for the crisis that has afflicted it since the Second Vatican Catastrophe. The Novus Ordo (New Order of Mass) was invented by Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, assisted by six Protestant pastors, after the Vatican Council. When this appalling confection was presented to the 1967 Synod of Bishops it was indignantly rejected. Yet two years later it was universally imposed. Bugnini described it in 1974 as "a major conquest of the Catholic Church".

Strange language from a Catholic bishop; but there were stranger things to come. In July, 1975 Bugnini was abruptly sacked after Pope Paul VI was shown evidence he was a Freemason. Bugnini denied the fact, but when the register of Italian Freemasonry came to light in 1976, it recorded Bugnini as having been initiated on April 23, 1963, with the esoteric code name 'Buan'.

So, even during the Vatican Council, Bugnini was already under automatic excommunication for Masonic membership. What possessed Paul VI to sack the author of the New Mass, but retain his liturgy for universal use? At least this episode throws light on the handshake at the 'kiss of peace' in the new rite.

For decades now, the assorted Lollards, Shakers and Fifth Monarchy Men who have capered in Catholic sanctuaries have used the Bugnini Mass as their plaything. It is at its bleakest when, on high days and holidays, it attempts to mimic past solemnities, the concelebrants in minimalist vestments fronted by a communion table rather than an altar - three dentists behind an ironing-board. It is the New Mass that is now on the danger list. The Vatican talks about "reform of the reform"; but the "reform" is beyond reformation.

For 40 years frenzied efforts have been made to stamp out the Traditional Mass and yet it has flourished. It is now past the point where there is the remotest prospect of extinguishing it. As Pope Benedict said in his explanatory letter accompanying the motu proprio Summorum Pontificum ("Of Supreme Pontiffs"), one of his reasons for freeing the Old Mass was the number of young people now flocking to it.

That is what the faded 1960s trendies who are now bishops and seminary rectors fear: the impossibility of maintaining a revolution that has burned itself out. The Second Vatican Council means as little to today's youth as the Council of Chalcedon. Its elderly adherents are like dads dancing at the school disco. Many young people are seeking the mystical and the numinous. The Mass of All Time answers that need.

Within the past month the Vatican has issued two other documents: one restoring the requirement for a two-thirds majority at Papal conclaves, which rules out the future election of an extreme radical; and a reassertion of the doctrine that the Protestant sects cannot be recognised as 'churches'. It will not damage ecumenism, because that died long ago. Its premise was that Rome must endlessly divest, while Canterbury ordained priestesses and moved ever further from Catholicism. When you see a Church of Scotland congregation praying the rosary you may believe ecumenism is a two-way process.

The task facing traditionalists is to claw back, inch by inch, everything that was lost in the 1960s, until the Church is restored to its full integrity. It will mean trench warfare for decades, probably generations; but, for the first time, the heretics are on the defensive and they will be defeated.

There is a revived spirit infusing the Church, a spirit once defined by GK Chesterton: "I am very proud of my religion; I am especially proud of those parts of it that are most commonly called superstition. I am proud of being fettered by antiquated dogmas and enslaved by dead creeds (as my journalistic friends repeat with so much pertinacity)... I am very proud of being orthodox about the mysteries of the Trinity or the Mass; I am proud of believing in the Confessional; I am proud of believing in the Papacy."

Triumphalism, so monotonously condemned by the Catholic agnostics, is the only logical response to the glory of the Resurrection. Tremble, all Modernists and you who presumptuously claim We Are Church - the spirit of Trent is abroad once more. Welcome to the Counter-Reformation.

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If anyone is aware of more facts about Archbishop Bugnini and his role in the fabrication of the Novus Ordo, please share your info here!

How the liturgy fell apart:
the enigma of Archbishop Bugnini
Michael Davies
From AD2000
June 1989

Michael Davies was an English convert to Catholicism and a prolific writer on liturgical issues, including his trilogy 'Liturgical revolution.' He was head of Una Voce and died in September 2004.


Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who died in Rome on 3 July 1982, was described in an obituary in The Times as "one of the most unusual figures in the Vatican's diplomatic service." It would be more than euphemistic to describe the Archbishop's career as simply "unusual". There can be no doubt at all that the entire ethos of Catholicism within the Roman Rite has been changed profoundly by the liturgical revolution which has followed the Second Vatican Council.

As Father Kenneth Baker SJ remarked in his editorial in the February 1979 issue of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review: "We have been overwhelmed with changes in the Church at all levels, but it is the liturgical revolution which touches all of us intimately and immediately."

Commentators from every shade of theological opinion have argued that we have undergone a revolution rather than a reform since the Council. Professor Peter L. Berger, a Lutheran sociologist, insists that no other term will do, adding: "If a thoroughly malicious sociologist, bent on injuring the Catholic community as much as possible had been an adviser to the Church, he could hardly have done a better job."

Professor Dietrich von Hildebrand expressed himself in even more forthright terms: "Truly, if one of the devils in C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters had been entrusted with the ruin of the liturgy he could not have done it better."

Major Conquest
Archbishop Bugnini was the most influential figure in the implementation of this liturgical revolution, which he described in 1974 as "a major conquest of the Catholic Church."

The Archbishop was born in Civitella de Lego, Italy, in 1912. He was ordained into the Congregation for the Missions (Vincentians) in 1936, did parish work for ten years, in 1947 he became active in the field of specialised liturgical studies, was appointed Secretary to Pope Pius Xll's Commission for Liturgical Reform in 1948, a Consultor to the Sacred Congregation of Rites in 1956; and in 1957 he was appointed Professor of Sacred Liturgy in the Lateran University.

In 1960 Father Bugnini was placed in a position which enabled him to exert a decisive influence on the future of the Catholic Liturgy: he was appointed Secretary to the Preparatory Commission for the Liturgy of the Second Vatican Council.

He was the moving spirit behind the drafting of the preparatory schema, the draft document which was to be placed before the Council Fathers for discussion. It was referred to as the "Bugnini schema" by his admirers, and was accepted by a plenary session of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission in a vote taken on 13 January 1962.

The Liturgy Constitution for which the Council Fathers eventually voted was substantially identical to the draft schema which Father Bugnini had steered successfully through the Preparatory Commission in the face of considerable misgivings on the part of Cardinal Gaetano Cicognani, President of the Commission.

Within a few weeks of Father Bugnini's triumph his supporters were stunned when he was summarily dismissed from his chair at the Lateran University and from the secretaryship of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission.

In his posthumous La Riforma Liturgica, Archbishop Bugnini blames Cardinal Arcadio Larraona for this action, which, he claims, was unjust and based on unsubstantiated allegations. "The first exile of P. Bugnini" he commented (p.41).

The dismissal of a figure as influential as Father Bugnini could not have taken place without the approval of Pope John XXIII, and, although the reasons have never been disclosed, they must have been of a very serious nature.

Father Bugnini was the only secretary of a preparatory commission who was not confirmed as secretary of the conciliar commission. Cardinals Lercaro and Bea intervened with the Pope on his behalf, without success.

The Liturgy Constitution, based loosely on the Bugnini schema, contained much generalised and, in places ambiguous terminology. Those who had the power to interpret it were certain to have considerable scope for reading their own ideas into the conciliar text.

Cardinal Heenan of Westminster mentioned in his autobiography A Crown of Thorns that the Council Fathers were given the opportunity of discussing only general principles:

"Subsequent changes were more radical than those intended by Pope John and the bishops who passed the decree on the Liturgy. His sermon at the end of the first session shows that Pope John did not suspect what was being planned by the liturgical experts." The Cardinal could hardly have been more explicit.

The experts (periti) who had drafted the text intended to use the ambiguous terminology they had inserted in a manner that the Pope and the Bishops did not even suspect. The English Cardinal warned the Council Fathers of the manner in which the periti could draft texts capable "of both an orthodox and modernistic interpretation."

He told them that he feared the periti, and dreaded the possibility of their obtaining the power to interpret the Council to the world. "God forbid that this should happen!" he exclaimed, but happen it did.

On 26 June 1966 The Tablet reported the creation of five commissions to interpret and implement the Council's decrees. The members of these commissions were, the report stated, chosen "for the most part from the ranks the Council periti".

The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy was the first document passed by the Council Fathers (4 December 1963), and the commission to implement it (the Consilium) had been established in 1964.

In a gesture which it is very hard to understand, Pope Paul Vl appointed to the key post of Secretary the very man his predecessor had dismissed from the same position on the Preparatory Commission, Father Annibale Bugnini. Father Bugnini was now in a unique and powerful position to interpret the Liturgy Constitution in precisely the manner he had intended when he masterminded its drafting.

In theory, the Consilium was no more than an advisory body, and the reforms it devised had to be approved by the appropriate Roman Congregation. In his Apostolic Constitution, Sacrum Rituum Congregatio (8 May 1969), Pope Paul Vl ended the existence of the Consilium as a separate body and incorporated it into the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship.

Father Bugnini was appointed Secretary to the Congregation, and became more powerful than ever. He was now in the most influential position possible to consolidate and extend the revolution behind which he had been the moving spirit and principle of continuity.
Nominal heads of the Consilium and congregations came and went, Cardinals Lercaro, Gut, Tabera, Knox, but Father Bugnini always remained. His services were rewarded by his consecration as an Archbishop in 1972.

In 1974 he felt able to make his celebrated boast that the reform of the liturgy had been a "major conquest of the Catholic Church". He also announced in the same year that his reform was about to enter into its final stage: "The adaptation or 'incarnation' of the Roman form of the liturgy into the, usages and mentality of each individual Church."

In India this "incarnation" has reached the extent of making the Mass in some centres appear more reminiscent of Hindu rites than the Christian Sacrifice.

Then, in July 1975, at the very moment when his power had reached its zenith, Archbishop Bugnini was summarily dismissed from his post to the dismay of liberal Catholics throughout the world. Not only was he dismissed but his entire Congregation was dissolved and merged with the Congregation for the Sacraments.

Desmond O'Grady expressed the outrage felt by liberals when he wrote in the 30 August 1972 issue of The Tablet: "Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, who as Secretary of the abolished Congregation for Divine Worship, was the key figure in the Church's liturgical reform, is not a member of the new congregation. Nor, despite his lengthy experience, was he consulted in the planning of it. He heard of its creation while on holiday in Fiuggi ... the abrupt way in which this was done does not augur well for the Bugnini line of encouragement for reform in collaboration with local hierarchies ... Mgr Bugnini conceived the next ten years' work as concerned principally with the incorporation of local usages into the liturgy ... He represented the continuity of the post-conciliar liturgical reform."

The 15 January 1976 issue of L'Osservatore Romano announced that Archbishop Bugnini had been appointed Apostolic Pro Nuncio in Iran. This was his second and final exile.

Rumours soon began to circulate that the Archbishop had been exiled to Iran because the Pope had been given evidence proving him to be a Freemason. This accusation was made public in April 1976 by Tito Casini, one of Italy's leading Catholic writers. The accusation was repeated in other journals, and gained credence as the months passed and the Vatican did not intervene to deny the allegations. (Of course, whether or not Archbishop Bugnini was a Freemason, in a sense, is a side issue compared with the central issue - the nature and purpose of his liturgical innovations.)

As I wished to comment on the allegation in my book Pope John's Council, I made a very careful investigation of the facts, and I published them in that book and in far greater detail in Chapter XXIV of its sequel, Pope Paul's New Mass, where all the necessary documentation to substantiate this article is available.

This prompted a somewhat violent attack upon me by the Archbishop in a letter published in the May issue of the Homiletic and Pastoral Review, in which he claimed that I was a calumniator, and that I had colleagues who were "calumniators by profession".

I found this attack rather surprising as I alleged no more in Pope John's Council than Archbishop Bugnini subsequently admitted in La Riforma Liturgica. I have never claimed to have proof that Archbishop Bugnini was a Freemason. What I have claimed is that Pope Paul Vl dismissed him because he believed him to be a Freemason - the distinction is an important one. It is possible that the evidence was not genuine and that the Pope was deceived.

The sequence of events was as follows. A Roman priest of the very highest reputation came into possession of what he considered to be evidence proving Mgr Bugnini to be a Mason. He had this information placed in the hands of Pope Paul Vl by a cardinal, with a warning that if action were not taken at once he would be bound in conscience to make the matter public. The dismissal and exile of the Archbishop followed.

In La Riforma Liturgica, Mgr Bugnini states that he has never known for certain what induced the Pope to take such a drastic and unexpected decision, even after "having understandably knocked at a good many doors at all levels in the distressing situation that prevailed" (p. 100).

He did discover that "a very high-ranking cardinal, who was not at all enthusiastic about the liturgical reform, disclosed the existence of a 'dossier', which he himself had seen (or placed) on the Pope's desk, bringing evidence to support the affiliation of Mgr Bugnini to Freemasonry (p.101). This is precisely what I stated in my book, and I have not gone beyond these facts. I will thus repeat that Pope Paul Vl dismissed Archbishop Bugnini because he believed him to be a Mason.

The question which then arises is whether the Archbishop was a conspirator or the victim of a conspiracy. He was adamant that it was the latter: "The disclosure was made in great secrecy, but it was known that the rumour was already circulating in the Curia. It was an absurdity, a pernicious slander. This time, in order to attack the purity of the liturgical reform, they tried morally to tarnish the purity of the secretary of the reform" (p.101-102).

Archbishop Bugnini wrote a letter to the Pope on 22 October 1975 denying any involvement with Freemasonry, or any knowledge of its nature or its aims. The Pope did not reply. This is of some significance in view of their close and frequent collaboration from 1964.

The great personal esteem that the Pope had felt for the Archbishop is proved by his decision to appoint him as Secretary to the Consilium, and later to the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship, despite the action taken against him during the previous pontificate.

It is also very significant that the Vatican has never given any reason for the dismissal of Archbishop Bugnini, despite the sensation it caused, and it has never denied the allegations of Masonic affiliation. If no such affiliation had been involved in Mgr Bugnini's dismissal, it would have been outrageous on the part of the Vatican to allow the charge to be made in public without saying so much as a word to exonerate the Archbishop.

I was able to establish contact with the priest who had arranged for the "Bugnini dossier" to be placed into the hands of Pope Paul Vl, and I urged him to make the evidence public. He replied: "I regret that I am unable to comply with your request. The secret which must surround the denunciation (in consequence of which Mgr Bugnini had to go!) is top secret and such it has to remain. For many reasons. The single fact that the above mentioned Monsignore was immediately dismissed from his post is sufficient. This means that the arguments were more than convincing."

I very much regret that the question of Mgr Bugnini's possible Masonic affiliation was ever raised as it tends to distract attention from the liturgical revolution which he masterminded.

The important question is not whether Mgr Bugnini was a Mason but whether the manner in which Mass is celebrated in most parishes today truly raises the minds and hearts of the faithful up to almighty God more effectively than did the pre-conciliar celebrations.

The traditional Mass of the Roman Rite is, as Father Faber expressed it, "the most beautiful thing this side of heaven." The very idea that men of the second half of the twentieth century could replace it with something better, is, as Dietrich von Hildebrand has remarked, ludicrous.

The liturgical heritage of the Roman Rite may well be the most precious treasure of our entire Western civilisation, something to be cherished and preserved for future generations.

The Liturgy Constitution of the Second Vatican Council stated that: "In faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that Holy Mother Church holds all lawfully recognised rites to be of equal right and dignity, that she wishes to preserve them in future and foster them in every way."

How has this command of the Council been obeyed? The answer can be obtained from Father Joseph Gelineau SJ, a Council peritus, and an enthusiastic proponent of the postconciliar revolution.

In his book Demain la liturgie, he stated with commendable honesty, concerning the Mass as most Catholics know it today: "To tell the truth it is a different liturgy of the Mass. This needs to be said without ambiguity: the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed."

Even Archbishop Bugnini would have found it difficult to explain how something can be preserved and fostered by destroying it.

=====================================================================

I promise if I find an article with the opposite viewpoint, I will post it too. This is when I wish Ouija boards worked, and I would ask Pope Paul VI - Why did you let Bugnini ride herd on the liturgy the way you did?

Or, tell me how adding all those readings from the Old Testament can help a Catholic who has absolutely no knowledge of the Bible or Jewish history, or add anything to the way a person participates in the Sacrifice of the Mass! In whatever language it is said, an Old Testament story out of all context - and never commented on or explained in the course of the service - is more worthless than spit. It has just become another pretext for meaningless 'participation' - just because it calls on a member of the congregation to read it! Has a priest ever polled the congregation afterwards to find out if they understood the First Reading?

I have enough problems understanding many of the Jesus stories, without having to wonder who were Elijah and Elisha and what do they have to do with me. And I am not particularly stupid. I realized this problem more than ever when I started posting the daily Mass Readings. It didn't bother me so much when I only had to deal with it once a week, but when day after day, I come across stories and passages that leave me stumped, I have to ask - can I possibly be the most stupid person among all the 1.1 billion Catholics alive? I must be, because I have heard nobody else complain about this!

And believe me, I've tried the other way: Don't try to understand anything. Just listen or just read. You'll get it. Well, not so far.

When I do understand what's happening, like in the past week, about Joseph and his brothers, then I ask myself, what does a reading of one episode in this complex family saga convey to the congregation? (I myself only happen to be 'familiar' with this particular story because I read Thomas Mann). Do they really listen to it? How many 'messages' is one supposed to be getting at Mass?

Wasn't it all so much simpler when there was only one Gospel to listen to? Even as a child, I never had any problem with the Gradual, the Offertory, the Communion, all the other variable parts of the traditional Mass which use Old Testament text - because they were generally short prayers or psalms; and even the Epistles (usually Paul or the Prophets) have a familiar form - mini-sermons that said what they have to say in forceful and no uncertain terms.

So there. I hope one of you who are well-versed in the Novus Ordo can help enlighten me.

AND WHY PAUL VI AGREED TO 'PROTESTANTIZE' THE MASS

This is from an article by Robert Moynihan in INSIDE THE VATICAN, May 1996, and it seems to answer my most troubling question about Paul VI.

=====================================================================

THE BITTER STRUGGLE

Was Annibale Bugnini, the chief architect of the liturgical reform, a Freemason? New evidence suggests he was not, but that he was, in any case, deeply influenced by modern secular humanism.

The following report deals with Annibale Bugnini, the man generally seen as the mastermind behind the unprecedented liturgical changes that followed Vatican II.

Praised by liberals for rapidly revamping centuries-old Catholic rites, criticized by moderates for exceeding the mandate for change given by the Council, and condemned by conservatives for secularizing the sacred, Bugnini's career ended under a cloud when Paul VI, in effect, fired him from his post. Here, the most serious charges against Bugnini and his own responses to these charges are analyzed.

In addition, a liturgist who worked alongside Bugnini for many years offers an insider's view of what went on. For the first time, Abbot Boniface Luykx, who has recently completed a book, to be published soon, on the history of Vatican II and what it has meant for the Church, entitled Vatican II Revisited, speaks frankly on what lay behind the greatest liturgical revolution in the history of Christianity and the motivation of the architect of that change, Archbishop Bugnini.


BY ROBERT MOYNIHAN


One of the great unsolved puzzles in the history of the Church in the post-Vatican II period is Paul VI's precise attitude toward the reform of the liturgy, and, in particular, his attitude toward the work of the man who was arguably the "chief architect" of that reform, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini (1912-1982), General Secretary of the Consilium which drafted the Novus Ordo Missae, the so-called "New Mass" of Paul VI.

In order to approach a deeper understanding of this enigma, the starting point must be the book Bugnini himself wrote in the years before his death in 1982, which only appeared in English in 1990 as The Reform of the Liturgy 1948-1975 (Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, USA).

In this large tome (974 pages), Bugnini (the name is pronounced with a silent "g" as "Boon-yeen-y") recounts the history of the liturgical reform from his own perspective. The book is a gold-mine of information, but it must be used in conjunction with the original documents and with other studies.

One fascinating aspect of the book is how clear it makes the centrality of Bugnini's role. Over 27 years, Bugnini was named to key post after key post as the Church planned, then implemented, the conciliar liturgical reforms.

* On May 28, 1948, Pius XII named Bugnini Secretary of the Commission for Liturgical Reform;

* On July 11, 1960, John XXIII appointed Bugnini Secretary of the Preparatory Conciliar Commission on the Liturgy set up to prepare for the Second Vatican Council;

* In October 1962[1], John XXIII included Bugnini among the "periti" or "experts" named to advise the Conciliar Commission on the Liturgy during the Council itself;

* On January 3, 1964, Bugnini was informed by Cardinal Amleto Cicognani, Secretary of State, that Paul VI had chosen him to be Secretary of the Consilium, the body set up to implement the Council's teaching on the liturgy; the official announcement was dated January 13, 1964, and made public on January 28, 1964;

* Finally, in the apostolic constitution Sacra Rituum Congregatio, made public on May 8, 1969, Paul VI created a new Congregation to oversee the liturgy, the Congregation for Divine Worship; Bugnini was named its Secretary.

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[1]What Moynihan omits to mention here is the ff. - taken from Michael Davies's account:[Bugnini prepared a draft of the prposed liturgical reform with the Liturgical Preparatory Commission approved in January 1962] Within a few weeks of Father Bugnini's triumph his supporters were stunned when he was summarily dismissed from his chair at the Lateran University and from the secretaryship of the Liturgical Preparatory Commission... The dismissal of a figure as influential as Father Bugnini could not have taken place without the approval of Pope John XXIII, and, although the reasons have never been disclosed, they must have been of a very serious nature... Father Bugnini was the only secretary of a preparatory commission who was not confirmed as secretary of the conciliar commission.
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It is evident from Bugnini's own account that he was a key figure - perhaps the key figure - in the entire process of liturgical reform over those 27 years.

Bugnini's accounts of his audiences with Paul VI are striking, as they show Bugnini attempting to persuade a hesitant Pope to accept various proposed changes put forward by the various liturgical commissions Bugnini represented over the years.

This is what makes the ultimate outcome of Bugnini's career so perplexing.

[I will omit the whole discussion of whether Bugnini was a Freemason or not. What he turned out to be - ideologically - is far more troubling! I will jump forward to Moynihan's interview with the litury expert who worked with Bugnini at the Council.]


ABBOT BONIFACE: Archbishop Bugnini, as a private man, was extremely charming, and very capable to bring people together. He was very pleasant to work with. He always made everyone feel welcome and at home in the meetings we had. But I think that he was political as well, and mostly for himself, for personal power. That is also a fact in Rome: that some ecclesiastics long to rise up the clerical ladder, and seek to use each post they reach as a springboard to another. This is very human and understandable, but sometimes it is not very edifying.

Then there was his worldview, his view of the liturgy and of our task in reforming it. I was at the Council as a peritus ("expert") for Cardinal Joseph Malula, the archbishop of Kinshasha, Zaire, who recently passed away.

Bugnini once told Malula that the norm for the liturgy and for Church renewal is modern Western man, because he is the perfect man, and the final man, and the everlasting man, because he is the perfect and normative man. And he made clear that, for him, "acculturation" or adapting to Western culture is the great work in Church liturgical reform and renewal, and in theology, and in all other aspects of Church life.

Secularization was, for him, a necessary process, something the Church needed to accept and embrace.


But how could a priest and monsignor, whose whole life bears witness to the fact that the sacred transcends the secular, that the divine transcends the human even as it condescends to embrace human nature, and to save it - how could he have embraced secularism in this way?

ABBOT BONIFACE: He accepted and embraced secularism because he said it was reality, and it was necessary to accept reality. He held to the modern philosophical view that man is made without God, and does not need God...


Did he actually say this to you?

ABBOT BONIFACE: Say what?


That man is made without God and does not need God...

ABBOT BONIFACE: He never would have written anything like that. And even when he talked, he did not do so imprudently. He may never have spoken those words exactly, but that was his meaning, as his repeated answers to Bishop Malula revealed.


Did you know him well? Did you have many meetings with him to discuss these matters?

ABBOT BONIFACE: I did meet with him many times, and we were often together when there were official meals and snacks. And I thought he was very charming, and a very good man. And that is why he was abused, I think, and why all those charges were made against him.

You know, he had a very high opinion of himself. He wanted to reach the very highest levels, to become a cardinal, to reach the higher levels of power.


What responsibility did Paul VI have in choosing a man like Bugnini to carry forward the work of liturgical renewal? Should he not have chosen a different man?

ABBOT BONIFACE: Paul VI was a very great Pope, but he was a weak man. He had great difficulty in taking a decision. For example, he had the New Order of the Mass on his desk for three years - three years! - before promulgating it. And he took many unusual decisions to avoid that final decision. And one of his decisions was inviting in the six Protestant theologians to review the document before publication to ensure that Protestant sensibilities would not be offended. And it was this decision that caused the greatest problems.

Paul chose Bugnini and kept Bugnini at his post all those years because he liked him and trusted him, and this is understandable, because he was a likeable and competent man.


And he did not lessen this trust when he saw the Novus Ordo Mass which Bugnini's Consilium prepared?

ABBOT BONIFACE: No. Paul approved the new Mass because his advisors told him that the Protestants would come closer to the Catholic Church as a result.

That was his main reason, because it really did take on some of the aspects of a Protestant service; that is why the Anglican and Lutherans and others are so favorable to the New Mass. And that was the way Paul wanted it. He had a vision of the Church re-uniting after centuries of bloodshed and division.


Looking back on it today, from the vantage point of more than 30 years, how do you assess the liturgical work you helped produce in the 1960s?

ABBOT BONIFACE: I believe there have been three main periods in this era of Church crisis. There was first the period of distortion, when individual theologians distorted what the Council had said and intended.

Then there was open rebellion against the Council.

And finally there was open rebellion against everything, from God to the central tenets of Christianity.

We are now in that third period, and it is indeed a time of terrible trial for the Church.

I have just written a long reply to the above articles. It took me an hour to do. Again it has become lost in cyber space, although I did all the right things. I really give up hope now. DAMMIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!


====================================================================

AWWWW...I feel terrible for you. Imagine going through it several times a day as I have to! If I were just a casual user, or a less committed Forum member, I'd have quit the Forum weeks ago for all the aggravation - and the WASTE OF TIME - this horrible 'update' has meant for me!!!!

I don't know if they will ever de-bug this system, but 9 times out of 10 - and I do multiple posts a day - any new post I do does not stick the first time, and I have to go through the exercise once or twice before I get the post in....It's not so bad when editing a post, then maybe 4 out of 10 times, the edit does not go in the first time [imagine how frustrating it is just to add a two-line update to the SECTION UPDATE thread!]....The worst part is sometimes I forget my own 'MUST COPY FIRST' rule, and I still lose some translations that way - it took me three days to put in my translation of Spaemann's interview on the MP, because the first time I worked on it, it was like 2 a.m., and I lost it twice in a row!, so I just gave up for the day - and didn't tackle it again until I had free time early in my workday where I was not going to risk doing any stupid oversight because I'm too worn out!.....

If the 'COPY FIRST' hassle is too much, then just type out your post on WORD first and then paste it on to the message box.

I have more than enough tearing-my-hair-out episodes daily with this new system that I've also noticed this:

If when you post - Reply or Modify - and the screen does not change into the current page with your new or modified post on, it means it didn't take!

What usually happens is you get another empty post box (or if you're editing, you get your original post without the edit). When this happens, hit the back button - and this will usually take you to the post you just did (new or edited). Then you can try hitting Reply or Modify again. Sometimes it works. Sometimes, you still have to re-paste your post or edit from your 'copy'.

BUT IT SHOULDN'T BE THIS WAY AT ALL - IT WAS NOT, BEFORE THE UPDATE!

Teresa

Return of Latin mass
sparks old vestment hunt
By Philip Pullella




ROME, July 24 (Reuters) - A decree this month by Pope Benedict allowing wider use of the old Latin mass has spawned a veritable cottage industry in helping Roman Catholic priests learn how to celebrate the centuries-old rite.

A Web site, helpline, DVDs and a training course at Oxford are among resources springing up for priests who want to celebrate the old-style mass but aren't sure which vestments to wear or where to get them, when to genuflect, how deep to bow, or how to clasp their hands in prayer.

"There will be priests who will say: 'Oh my God, I want to celebrate the old rite but I'm not sure of one or two things'," said Pietro Siffi, a 37-old Italian devotee of the old Latin rite who plans to offer free online and phone support.

"We will help them find the answer."

Before the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Catholic mass was an elaborate ritual led in Latin by a priest who faced east with the rest of the congregation, meaning they faced his back.

Vatican II reduced the formality and had the priest face the faithful to pray in their local language.

The old rite also includes hair-splitting specifics on which vestments can be used, what material they must be made of, where the candles should be placed on the altar, and the precise position of the priest's hands at various points in the liturgy.

The Latin Mass Society of England and Wales (LMSEW) is planning a three-day "major training conference" at Merton College at Oxford University in late August: "There has been an explosion of interest," its general manager John Medlin said.

"The aim is to give a firmly grounded taster in how to celebrate the traditional mass and the background information you need to do it with knowledge and devotion," he said by phone.

For those unable to travel, the Society of Saint Pius X, the traditionalist group whose leaders excommunicated themselves from the church after they disobeyed the late Pope John Paul II, has a self-teach option.

It has produced a slick DVD in eight languages showing a priest celebrating the old rite with a running commentary on everything including the precise position - down to centimeters - of the priest's hands, altar cloths, chalices and candles.

It tells the priests the exact order in which to don the several layers of vestments. An X for "no" suddenly appears on the screen when the priest makes a false move.

And Siffi plans to expand his Web site, www.tridentinum.com, to help priests find the right equipment. He may also offer courses, which will be charged at cost. "I'm not in this to make money," he said. "This is a labor of love."

Indeed, Siffi recently took on the task of updating the so-called "Trimelloni Guide," an 850-page compendium of liturgical rules and regulations governing all aspects of the old rite.

Medlin, Soffi and others say there is today a growing interest in the old rite from young people disaffected with a superficial, consumerist world and looking for something sacred.

After the old rite was phased out to be replaced in some churches by sing-along hymns and guitar music, many people missed the Latin rite's sense of mystery and awe and the centuries-old Gregorian chant that went with it.

"It's because young people no longer buy the claim that the supernatural is dead. They have discovered the opposite is true, that the supernatural is alive and the existential was a mere time-bound way of looking at the world that was in its heyday in the 1960s and is now well past its 'sell by' date," Medlin said.

Those who favor the old rite Latin mass realize they will always be a minority in the church, but they are content that now there is a choice for young and old.

"We must understand that most people are happy with the new rite and it's not for us to make them feel like second-class citizens in the way that we were made to feel for so many years," Medlin said.

But finding equipment remains a challenge. Some is so specific to the traditional rite it is out of production.

Both Siffi and Medlin are involved in de facto traditionalist "matchmaking," linking people who have old vestments or other paraphernalia with those seeking them.

After the changes in the 1960s and 1970s much of the material was thrown out, sold to antiquarians or stashed away in dusty cupboards of rectories or church attics.

"Gradually, these objects are being made available for use again," said Medlin.

One hard-to-find item is the "burse": a stiff, cardboard pocket between nine and twelve inches square. It must be covered in silk and of a color to match the mass vestments.

The burse, which fell out of use after the Second Vatican Council, is effectively a pouch which holds the "corporal," a square piece of white linen cloth on which the chalice is placed during the mass.

Another piece of paraphernalia now being sought is the "maniple," a napkin-like vestment which hangs from the priest's left forearm during mass.

The black biretta, a square cap worn by the priest celebrating the old rite as he approaches the altar before mass and on leaving at the end, also fell into disuse.

If the problem is not so much the equipment as the language, the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales also publishes a "teach yourself Latin" course based on Church Latin used in the traditional rite.

"You don't need to be able to converse about the weather in Latin in order to be able to say the Latin mass," Medlin said.

===================================================================

A sidebar about the vestments referred to would be in order. When I have time, I'll probably at least insert relevant pictures into this post.

Two pieces I meant to post yesterday morning but could not because the server was in its slowest snail-mode, and afterwards, there were other priorities to post. But very good reading...


Reinstated Latin Mass will reduce nonsense
by MICHAEL OVERALL
Tulsa World
7/24/2007


One priest wore an orange wig with a red clown nose and performed magic tricks during the homily. In another video, people brought their pets to church for a K-9 Mass, where dogs surrounded the altar while the priest consecrated the Sacred Host.

Don't throw pearls before swine, the Bible tells us. But it doesn't say anything about Labrador retrievers.

Thank God, I've never seen this kind of silliness in my own church, but only on YouTube, where traditionalist Catholics have put together a "Hall of Shame" for liturgical abuse.

Another video shows several parishioners leaving in disgust as a nun - at least, allegedly a nun - dances down the aisle in a leopard-print leotard.

I wouldn't have walked out of that service. I would've run. God doesn't send down hellfire and brimstone often, but when it comes, it comes fast.

Ecumenical foolishness: Buffoonery, of course, is not a uniquely Catholic sin. I was backstage once at a non-denominational "worship center."

The word "church," you know, sounds too churchy. We have convention centers and sports centers and shopping centers, so why not "worship centers?"

The stage hands wore headsets to get cues from a director in the sound booth.

"Spot lights on three . . . two . . . one. Now the smoke machine!"

It was like Jesus on Broadway. Or more like Jesus in Branson, Mo. "America's Got Talent," and so does the congregation.

Did the disciples give a standing ovation after the Sermon on the Mount? Did St. Paul use dry ice when he preached to the Corinthians?

But I was never more tempted to leave a church service than in Waco, Texas, where I lived after college. New in town, I went to the parish nearest my apartment, and I didn't notice the sign out front was in Spanish.

Mass is an interactive ritual - the priest speaks; you respond.

It helps to know the language.

I could've slipped discreetly out the door. But the mysterious beauty of the service - a modern Mass, but celebrated with old-fashioned solemnity - kept me in the pew.

This must have been something like going to church before the reforms of Vatican II, when you could understand what was happening even if you couldn't understand the words.

The fragile wisp of incense. Sunlight filtered through stained-glass. A hushed reverence as the priest lifts the bread over his head. The silence broken by a crystal-clear bell to announce that Christ himself has come to us.

I didn't need to hear it in English. I knew to get on my knees.

Back to the future: This month, Pope Benedict XVI issued a papal decision that will make the old Latin Mass more widely available around the world. The pope doesn't want to drag the church back to the 1950s - Latin will remain an exception, and the vernacular will remain the rule.

Instead, I think, the pope wants to use the old liturgy as a kind of fertilizer, sprinkling a little Latin through the church to nourish a sense of wonder.

Or rather, he wants it to be a kind of poison, a weed-killer, to uproot the childishness that has been disgracing too many parishes in recent years.

Clowns behind the pulpit. Nuns in leotards. Worshipers bringing Fido with them. And some critics are worried that Latin will distract people?

Benedict just wants to give every Catholic what I'm already blessed to have in Tulsa - a church where grown-ups worship like adults. [And children learn to, from the adults!]


The next one is a mixed bag, really, from TIME:


I Confess, I Want Latin
By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen
Friday, Jul. 20, 2007


Bless me, father, for I have sinned. It has been three months since I last attended Mass. I have instead spent Sunday mornings attending total-body workout classes at the gym, after which I have been attending brunch. In other words, no uncommon circumstances kept me from coming to church. I expect as penance a boatload of Hail Marys.

I come today having heard that Pope Benedict XVI has just removed restrictions on celebrating Mass in Latin. Many of those who favor a return to the Tridentine Mass were born before 1930 and long for it out of conservative nostalgia. Not me. I confess: I want to hear Mass sung in a language I don't understand because too often I don't like what I hear in English.

Father, I attend Mass for reasons familiar to any good Roman Catholic: habit and guilt. Never did a Sunday go by in my youth without an hour slouched on a wooden pew. You see, my father was once one of you. Like many Irish-American boys of his generation, he joined the seminary as a teen and wore the collar until his mid-30s.

On his mission in Japan, he met a lovely young Buddhist whom he successfully converted. After he wrote to the Vatican and renounced his priesthood, she in turn successfully converted him into a husband. I am one of four offspring of a former priest and a convert who overcame great odds - even scandal - to marry in the faith. Mass for us was not a scheduling option.

Though I was born after Vatican II, I did not grow up comprehending the liturgy. In Japan, Mass was said in a traditional form of Japanese too obscure for me to grasp. Twelve years of Sunday school -held inexplicably and inconveniently on Saturdays - did not help clarify all the mysteries of the missal.

My father instructed us to spend the time in prayer. I inspected Jesus on the Cross and wondered what he thought of my life. I inspected the boy across the aisle and wondered what he thought of my hair. There were times I thought I would pass out from boredom. There were times I probably did. Not understanding all the words spoken during the endless sermons, I had little choice but to spend the time in thought about myself, my family, my God.

There's something to be said for that, isn't there? Mass became for me an hour-long meditation in the community of the faithful, reaffirming ancient beliefs in familiar if inscrutable chant. I'm not so sure that isn't what the Apostles intended.

This changed when I came to America. At first I was too busy jamming to the guitar band at my parish to notice; I even joined the tambourine section. Eventually, though, the newly comprehensible sermons began to sink in. I clearly remember one involving a newborn baby left in a Dumpster that somehow in the end advocated against laws allowing abortion. There was that time you beseeched us, Father, to write letters of protest to a Senator who supported stem-cell research. Not long ago, your homily excoriated divorce. You used as your rhetorical cornerstone the 1998 Lindsay Lohan vehicle The Parent Trap. As if that were not galling enough, you failed to note that, as previously divorced people, the characters played by Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson would be denied communion in the Catholic Church.

It almost goes without saying that as a young, progressive-minded American Catholic, I'm at odds with many of the church's rules and with much of its politics. You might thus infer that my generation instinctively rejects the age-old traditions of the church. That would be wrong.

In a world unmoored by violence and uncertainty, there is something deeply soothing about participating in ancient rituals practiced by so many. Whatever our issues with the tenets of Catholicism the religion, we still cling to what unites us in Catholicism the faith: our devotion to the celebration of the Eucharist.

I confess I adore the rich minutiae of the Mass: the frankincense, the Kyrie, the droning of creeds in a sacred space. It comforts me to know that my family around the globe takes part in the same weekly rites. The common purpose of shared ceremony helps me reflect on the Holy Spirit. With apologies, Father, homilies based on your Netflix queue do not.

Once I thought I had all the time in the world to mull over my quarrels with the church. The thing is, Father, I don't. My mother has fought cancer for years now, and it is spreading fast. This is not a good time for me to deny myself the support of spiritual community and inspiriting ritual.

In my desire to return to church, I see the Latin Mass as an acceptable solution: With your back to the congregation and speaking in a dead language, you would find it difficult to tell me how to vote. Allow me to experience the joy of communion without the anguish of our modern-day differences. Bring back the Latin, and bring back an embattled believer.

I really like this place. Been there twice. Still wear a little pin with a tiny mustard seed encased in a plastic bubble that I bought at the gift shop there.




U.S. Franciscan monastery offers pilgrims a glimpse of Holy Land

By Jacob Buckenmeyer
7/25/2007
Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Since 1899, a Franciscan monastery in the Brookland neighborhood of Washington has been a popular stop for pilgrims who want a glimpse of the Holy Land.

The grounds of the monastery feature dozens of replicas of significant Christian sites from Europe and the Holy Land, including many surrounding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The friars of Mount St. Sepulcher Franciscan Monastery and Commissariat of the Holy Land represent the Christian interest in the Holy Land, and it shows in the beauty of their church and the surrounding gardens.

Brother Maximilian Wojciechowski, a friar of the monastery since 1994, said the places surrounding Jesus' life can sometimes seem surreal when they appear in scripture. He said the monastery brings new life to the gospel.

He said the appeal of the Holy Land to Christians is that "it's actually where Christ was born and died and raised."

The church is the dominant structure on the grounds. It is not a replica of any one structure found in the Holy Land, but was designed with a number of architectural influences found in buildings there. Within, beneath and around the church are full-size reproductions of actual Holy Land sites, including churches, memorials, shrines, tombs and historical monuments.

The grounds in Brookland were dedicated in 1899 after Father Godfrey Schilling purchased the land and commissioned the building of the monastery and church. Architect Aristide Leonori visited the Holy Land, taking measurements and photographs of the sites, which were then replicated on the grounds between 1900 and 1930.

A bronze baldacchino covers the main altar in the center of the church with the Twelve Apostles carved on its pillars. The dome above reflects Byzantine and Italian Renaissance and Romanesque styles. The floor plan of the church is that of a Jerusalem cross, one large cross surrounded by four smaller crosses, one in each corner. Staircases lead to four raised altars at the ends of the church.

At the east end, below the altar of Thabor and a depiction of the Transfiguration, is a reproduction of the Holy Sepulcher, the tomb where Jesus' body was buried. This is one of the Holy Land sites Leonori visited and measured to ensure the accuracy of its dimensions. Stucco reliefs covered in silver and bronze adorn the chambers of the sepulcher.

Across from the sepulcher is the altar of Calvary and a life-size depiction of the Crucifixion spanning the wall. The altar is constructed to appear as it does over the true Crucifixion site, and the base of the altar is raised to the exact height of Mount Calvary in Jerusalem. The church's interior is filled with paintings, reliefs and brilliant stained glass.

Beneath the church lie passageways modeled after the catacombs in Rome. This section of the church is accessible only on 45-minute guided tours the monastery provides.

Darkened corridors go between reproductions of the tombs of Sts. Cecilia and Sebastian, found in the 900-mile expanse of the catacombs in Rome. The remains of Sts. Benignus and Innocent are also preserved beneath the church.

The memorials and reproductions at the monastery in Brookland are part of a worldwide undertaking to promote and preserve the Christian presence in the Holy Land, the birthplace of Christianity. More than 330 Franciscans work in 74 sanctuaries, 16 schools and 29 parishes throughout Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, lower Egypt and Cyprus.

The monastery's work and the Franciscan presence in the Holy Land depend on donations provided by a national Good Friday collection and on private contributions from patrons who visit the order's commissariats around the world.

The Franciscan order has maintained a presence in the Holy Land since 1219 when the Franciscan order's general chapter established the province of the Holy Land.

Brother Maximilian, who works in the monastery gift shop, said Franciscans are drawn from all over the world to serve in the Holy Land, then return to their home countries to work in places similar to the Brookland monastery.

Brother Maximilian is from Buffalo, N.Y., and had his mind set on entering another seminary, but, he said, "when I first came in through the front gate, my eyes just lit up. This was it."

The church is surrounded by a rosary portico with 15 chapels containing mosaics of each of the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. The Hail Mary is printed on tablets in nearly 200 languages around the portico. Statues of Father Schilling and Sts. Francis and Christopher are surrounded by roses and a variety of other flowers in front of the church.

Alongside the church is a full-size reproduction of the fourth-century church outside Assisi, called the Portiuncula chapel, which St. Francis repaired personally. This chapel was measured by Leonori to ensure an accurate model, inside and out.

The monastery gardens south of the church contain more replicas of Holy Land sites, dispersed among the Stations of the Cross that wind their way through the bushes, flowers and trees. Like the catacombs replica, the Lourdes grotto is an exception from the Holy Land focus. It is an exact copy and appears just as it does in southern France where Mary appeared to 14-year-old Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

Aside from the architectural and historical features, the monastery also hosts organ concerts, confession, daily Mass and vespers with the friars.

All the monastery's friars at some point have served in the Holy Land, where they worked in schools and ministered to the poor. Each year, those friars lead several pilgrimages through Europe and the Holy Land.

=====================================================================

What a great idea! But I feel so ashamed. I lived in DC for almost a year in 1970 and I never even heard of Brookland! At least now, I know what to visit first on my next trip to DC. The 'mustard seed' pin is so ... what shall I say, Christologic? I love it!

Teresa

OR WHY WE GO TO MASS


Thanks to Argent by the Tiber for this post dated 7/18/07 from
www.realclearpolitics.com/
which is mostly concerned with American political news, and probably Republican, though they present news about the Democrats as well.

Among other things in this extremely well-written short piece, I like the writer's use of the word 'restoration' in this context. 'Restore' was the verb I preferred and used myself to describe what the Pope did in the Motu Proprio - he restored the traditional Mass to its rightful place as a valid Roman rite that was never abrogated.

And 'righting itself' is a felicitous term for what Pope Benedict XVI is doing in reasserting Vatican-II for what it really was, against the perverse self-serving distortions perpetrated by Church progressives.


Restoration in the Catholic Church
By David Warren

It is because we in the West have cultivated - collectively, if not individually - an extraordinary insensitivity to religion, that we fail to grasp the seriousness of the radical 'Islamist' challenge to our being. I am not going to discuss that today, but begin by mentioning it, to bring home the importance of the subject I will discuss.

Ignorance of, or indifference to, religious motivations in much human behaviour, is something that can hurt you. It leaves one blind, uncomprehending, and powerless in an immense field of potential good and evil. It may even leave one blind towards one's own motivations, which are often not as plain as first appears.

And it is from the same insensitivity, even insensibility, that we might overlook the importance of the Pope's Motu Proprio last week, removing some obstacles to the celebration of the old Catholic Mass.

I think the writing of that document may prove the most important act in the pontificate of Benedict XVI, and that its consequences may go far beyond the immediately visible ones. Yet it is also part of something larger than any individual, including any Pope: part, I think, of the operation by which the Catholic Church is righting itself, after having been thrown on its beam ends in the 1960s and '70s.

As the Pope was at pains to explain in the letter that accompanied the long-awaited Motu Proprio, its immediate end is modest. ("Motu proprio" means "of his own accord" in Latin, and is a papal decree. The reasons for the decree are always stated openly.) For many years now, Catholic priests have actually required the permission of their bishop, to celebrate the Mass in the traditional way, in which it had been celebrated over many, many centuries. This restriction is cautiously removed.

The alternative, Novus Ordo form of the Mass, which emerged in the heady days after Vatican II, was and remains the new standard. But it is a stripped-down version, translated often unworthily into the various modern languages; and simply by scanning differently from the old, universal Latin, it obviates the Church's magnificently rich musical inheritance, if not much else.

The Novus Ordo is a valid Mass, as Pope Benedict again assured us, but to my mind and that of many faithful Catholics, it is also a concession to the times, to the Zeitgeist. And because the times are out of joint with Catholic faith and practice, we might almost think, a painful concession.

Liturgy is "just words," and sometimes music, in the received post-modern view, which immediately overlooks dress, gesture, censing, intonation, and the spiritual atmosphere.

To the contrary, we do not go to church of a Sunday only to see and be seen, nor strictly as a "memorial" of the Last Supper, nor as a healthy habit on the analogy of bran muffins. All of these things count, too, but the Mass combines such incidentals into something larger and simpler and therefore harder to express.

At its centre is an act of Communion, with the Christ. Which is to say, with God. It is not, in the Catholic view (shared by many other Christians), a looking back to the Gospels through history. It is a participation, a dipping, a step out of current time, into the eternal.

Why am I telling you all this? In the hope that even if my reader is repelled, he may try to understand what is going on in Catholic churches, where far more than a billion of the earth's inhabitants go to pray, if they go anywhere. Likewise, though not myself a Muslim, I have tried to imagine what goes on in a mosque. For I must do that if I am to understand anything at all about Islam.

Practically, I explain this in the hope of making my sceptical reader understand why liturgy might be so important. I do not imply by this that good works are not important, that Christian life is not exhibited in faith, hope, and charity; in prayerful humility, and a bold willingness to suffer with Christ.

I am only saying that from the Catholic view, love is not a nothing. It springs from a fount, and in this world we go to the Mass as to that fount. That is what sustains our spirits, just as food sustains our bodies.

The significance of the Motu Proprio, in current affairs, is in where it points. Catholics recovering their heritage will make a huge difference in the world.

otiosus@sympatico.ca

For some reason, the British Catholic weekly newspaper The Tablet is making all of its current issue accessible online this week even to non-subscribers. This is only one of many noteworthy articles in the issue. I have posted the others in appropriate threads. Considering that The Tablet wrote a scathing editorial agaionst the Motu Proprio when it came out, I can only thank them for accommodating a different view.


A MOMENT OF RECONCILIATION
By MICHAEL McMAHON
The Tablet
July 28, 2007


Mass celebrated for young offenders, together with the Pope’s motu proprio,
reminds a former chairman of the Latin Mass Society of the real meaning of communion.



On 7 July I went to Mass in what we must now call the “Ordinary” rite, though it was not celebrated in ordinary circumstances. There were bars on the windows of the chapel, the congregation was searched before being allowed in, and the door was locked behind us.

In the world outside, 7 July was a Saturday, but for the prisoners of the Young Offenders Institution in which I work it was a Sunday, the day on which our chaplain comes in to say weekly Mass. They look forward to it, and so does he.

The atmosphere is upliftingly prayerful. That Saturday, like every other Saturday, 15 young men slipped easily into the spirit of a simple, worshipful liturgy in which they articipated with unaffected fervour and commitment.

When the lad who read the first eading stumbled over a word, someone in he front row helped him out. At the sign f peace, they shook hands not only with each other, but also with the officer appointed to watch over them from the back. During the period of thanksgiving after Communion, there was a stillness that ran deeper than silence. Those young men were serving all kinds of sentences, but for that hour, every one of them was free.

It’s a real gift to be able to go to a Mass like that, though I never thought I’d find myself saying so. For most of my adult life, I attended the old Tridentine Mass whenever it was practically possible, going to the new rite only when I had no other choice.

Three decades ago, I was chairman of the Latin Mass Society. Today, I am an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist. If anyone had predicted that, even a couple of years ago, I’d have told them they were daft. But I haven’t abandoned my devotion to the old liturgy, and I would love to be able to teach the prisoners I serve how to appreciate it. I am sure they would rise to it.

On Saturday 7 July, the time that might happen came significantly nearer with the publication of the Pope’s motu proprio on the use of the 1962 Missal. When I got home I immediately logged on to the Internet. I wanted to find out what Benedict XVI had written.

What I read filled me with unqualified delight. For years, there has been a standoff between “traditional” and “progressive” elements within Roman Catholicism, though our Christian vocation (and the documents of the Second Vatican Council) requires us to embrace both.

Summorum Pontificum points this out clearly. With one legislative act, the Pope has shown that to reject our liturgical inheritance is as unacceptable as to deny the possibility of liturgical development.

This document permits freely; it imposes nothing, except tolerance. The only thing it takes away is the right for anyone to claim that a person or a community that declares an attachment to the former liturgy is ipso facto out of step with the Church – though “priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books”.

There will, alas, be some devotees of the older use who find that condition unacceptable; but after Summorum Pontificum, there can only be fewer than before, because the document declares that there is only one Roman Rite and that the 1962 and 1970 Missals are both expressions of it.

For anyone wishing to remain loyal to the Holy See, it is now impossible to argue that the Church’s traditional eucharistic doctrines have been extinguished by the latter, if the former is acknowledged as having equal standing.

Responses to the motu proprio have, of course, been mixed. Some bishops have welcomed it in the generous spirit in which it was issued; others have attempted to neutralise its impact by the cynical use of spin.

Only time will tell what this act will bring and what chance of reconciliation there will be. I hope and pray that the motu proprio will bless us all with better liturgy, which is one of its intentions, for much of what has been done in the name of liturgical renewal seems to me off-beam and deeply damaging.

The Pope makes the point unambiguously in the letter to the bishops that accompanied Summorum Pontificum: “ … in many places celebrations were not faithful to the prescriptions of the new Missal, but the latter actually was understood as authorising or even requiring creativity, which frequently led to deformations of the liturgy which were hard to bear. I am speaking from experience, since I too lived through that period with all its hopes and its confusion. And I have seen how arbitrary deformations of the liturgy caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church.”

That pain and those deformations continue, but this thoroughly modern Pope sees that the way to achieve healing now and maintain unity in the future is to honour the past. In that same letter he gives the “positive reason” that motivated his decision to issue it:

“It is a matter of coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church. Looking back over the past, to the divisions which in the course of the centuries have rent the Body of Christ, one continually has the impression that, at critical moments when divisions were coming about, not enough was done by the Church’s leaders to maintain or regain reconciliation and unity. One has the impression that omissions on the part of the Church have had their share of blame for the fact that these divisions were able to harden. This glance at the past imposes an obligation on us today: to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew.”

Reading that paragraph reminded me of one of the most beautiful prayers the prisoners and I hear at Mass every Saturday: “Lord Jesus Christ, you said to your apostles: I leave you peace, my peace I give you. Look not on our sins, but on the faith of your Church, and grant us the peace and unity of your kingdom where you live for ever and ever.” The same prayer occurs in the Missal of 1962.

Michael McMahon is a lay chaplain in a provincial prison.

Oh, I feel like knocking some heads together - those that creat5e problems where there need not be!

The Pope Reopens a Portal to Eternity,
via the 1950s
By LAWRENCE DOWNES
CHICAGO
July 29, 2007
The New York Times
Editorial Observer


To a child in a Roman Catholic family, the rhythm of the Mass is absorbed into the body well before understanding reaches the brain. It becomes as lullingly familiar as a weekly drive to a relative’s house: opening prayers like quick turns though local streets, long freeway stretches of readings, homily and Eucharistic prayers, the quietude of communion and then — thanks be to God — the final blessing, a song and home to pancakes and the Sunday comics.

Last Sunday, I drove through a strange liturgical neighborhood. I attended a Tridentine Low Mass, the Latin rite that took hold in the 16th century, was abandoned in the 1960s for Mass in the local language and is poised for a revival now that Pope Benedict XVI has swept away the last bureaucratic obstacles to its use.

If you don’t remember L.B.J., you don’t remember the Latin Mass. At 42, I had never seen, heard or smelled one. Then a family trip took me to Chicago last weekend, and curiosity took me early Sunday morning to St. John Cantius, an old Polish parish on the Near West Side.

I went up the steps of the Renaissance-baroque church, through a stone doorway and back into my dimmest memories. Amid the grandeur of beeswax candles and golden statuary, the congregation was saying the rosary. I sat behind an older couple wearing scapulars as big as credit cards. I saw women with lace mantillas and a clutch of seminarians in the front rows, in black cassocks and crisp white surplices.

The sanctuary, behind a long communion rail, looked oddly barren because it lacked the modern altar on which a priest, facing the people, prepares the Eucharistic meal. The priest entered, led by altar boys. He wore a green and gold chasuble and a biretta, a black tufted hat, that he placed on a side table. His shaved head and stately movements gave the Mass a military bearing.

I couldn’t hear a thing.

I strained to listen, waited and, finally, in my dimness, realized that there was nothing to hear.

At a Low Mass, the priest prays unamplified or silently. The people do not speak or sing. They watch and read. All around me, people’s heads were buried in thick black missals. I flipped through my little red Latin-English paperback, trying to keep up. Had it been 50 years ago, I would have had every step memorized. But I didn’t know any of it.

I felt sheepish, particularly because I was surrounded by far more competent flock.

I also felt shaken and, irrationally, angry. Catholics are told that the church is the people of God, but from my silent pew, the people seemed irrelevant. This Mass belonged to Father and his altar boys, and it seemed that I could submit to that arrangement or leave. For the first time, I understood viscerally how some Catholics felt in the ’60s, when the Mass they loved went away.

I called Eugene Kennedy, professor, author and former priest, an old Chicagoan and eloquent critic of church matters. He is a scourge of the Catholic hierarchy, which he considers grasping and autocratic. But he spoke fondly of the old Mass, of the majesty to be unearthed by learning and praying it, like reading Proust in French. It contains a profound sense of mystery, he said, which is what religion is all about.

But he said he wouldn’t want it back. Priests aren’t ready; it takes years to learn. And forget about the laity, he said, which is accustomed to a half-century of liturgical participation and rudimentary parish democracy. He seemed certain that most Catholics would never go for it.

But St. John Cantius, once given up for dead, is thriving with an influx of new parishioners. In his homily, the pastor, the Rev. C. Frank Phillips, spoke proudly about the Latin Mass, which his parish was the first in Chicago to revive. He announced that it would soon be training priests in the old rite, which he vowed would restore the Catholic church to its place leading the world back to Christ.

Father Frank does not disparage the contemporary Mass, nor could he, lest he cast doubt on the legitimacy of the last 40 years of Catholic worship. But other traditionalists do not always share his tact. Their delight at the Latin revival can seem inseparable from their scorn for the Mass that eclipsed it, which they ridicule for its singing, handshaking and mushy modernity.

They’re right that Mass can be listless, with little solemnity and multiple sources of irritation: parents sedating children with Cheerios; priests preaching refrigerator-magnet truisms; amateur guitar strumming that was lame in 1973; teenagers slumping back after communion, hands in pockets, as if wishing they had been given gum instead.

Pope Benedict insists he is not taking the church on a nostalgia trip. He wants to re-energize it, and hopes that the Latin Mass, like an immense celestial object, will exert gravitational pull on the faithful.

Unless the church, which once had a problem with the law of gravity, can repeal inertia, too, then silent, submissive worship won’t go over well. Laypeople, women especially, have kept this battered institution going in a secular, distracted age. Reasserting the unchallenged authority of ordained men may fit the papal scheme for a purer church. But to hand its highest form of public worship entirely back to Father makes Latin illiterates like me irate. [This man completely misses the point about the Mass as an act of worship led by a celebrant who is ordained to be 'in persona Christi!]

It’s easy enough to see where this is going: same God, same church, but separate camps, each with an affinity for vernacular or Latin, John XXIII or Benedict XVI. [Excuse me! The traditional Mass authorized for use is the John XXIII Mass. You mean you don't even know the New Mass you advocate is the Paul VI Mass?]

Smart, devout, ambitious Catholics — ecclesial young Republicans, home-schoolers, seminarians and other shock troops of the faith — will have their Mass. The rest of us — a lumpy assortment of cafeteria Catholics, guilty parents, peace-’n’-justice lefties, stubborn Vatican II die-hards — will have ours. We’ll have to prod our snoozing pewmates when to sit and stand; they’ll have to rein in their zealots.

And we probably won’t see one another on Sunday mornings, if ever.
[And there's no need to. Sunday Mass is not a social gathering - it's a communal act of worship, and the more 'communal' the congregation, the more 'comfortable' it is for everyone concerned. So stay with your Mass, and forget the other, if you can't stand it. No one's asking you to 'endure' anything that should be a joy and a consolation. ]

70 or 70 x 7?

By Fr. Richard John Neuhaus
First Things
Friday, July 27, 2007, 5:51 AM

The New American Bible (NAB), an unfortunate translation episcopally imposed upon Catholics for readings at Mass, has prompted earlier comment in First Things. The problem keeps coming back, not least in pastoral counseling. Take the woman who had had it with her husband’s lying to her. I mentioned to her Our Lord’s admonition to forgive “seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22). That’s the way it reads in every widely used English translation, including the Douay-Rheims, an earlier English translation used by Catholics. Jesus obviously intended hyperbole, indicating that forgiveness is open-ended. Keep on forgiving as you are forgiven by God, for God’s forgiving is beyond measure or counting.

But this woman had been reading her NAB, according to which Jesus said we should forgive not “seventy times seven,” but “seventy times.” She had been keeping count, and her husband was well over his quota. Then there is Matt. 5:32 and 19:9, where in both passages Jesus says: “But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress.” In other widely used English translations, it is “unfaithfulness” or “marital unfaithfulness.” The Douay-Rheims says “excepting in the case of fornication.”

In both passages, the NAB puts it this way: “But I say to you, whoever divorces his wife (unless the marriage is unlawful) causes her to commit adultery.” Meaning a previous marriage had not been annulled by the diocesan marriage tribunal? Whatever.

Now to be perfectly fair, in the three passages mentioned there are ancient authorities that lend some support for the NAB translation. For instance, some ancient texts of Matthew 19 read “he who marries a divorced woman commits adultery,” which is closer to the NAB version. But in the tradition of translation, scholars have overwhelmingly decided that the manuscripts referring to unchastity or unfaithfulness are to be preferred.

Again and again, when manuscript authorities differ from one another, the NAB chooses against the scholarly consensus and the centuries-old tradition of English translation. Why is that? Is the purpose to deliberately destabilize the faithful’s already shaky familiarity with biblical texts? Maybe the idea is just to be different. What’s the point of a new translation if it isn’t very different from other translations?

The NAB is a banal, linguistically inept, and misleading translation. Why did the bishops force it upon the Catholic people, demanding that it and it alone be used in the readings of the Mass? Various answers are given: Because it was produced by the guild of Catholic biblical scholars and, while it may not be very good, at least it is ours. Because the bishops hold the copyright, and charges for using the NAB in Mass guides and elsewhere is a cash cow for the financially strapped bishops conference. Because the bishops really don’t care whether Catholics use a worthy and reliable translation of the Bible.

Whatever the reason, it is a continuing scandal that the bishops do not permit the use of other translations that are more reliable, readable, intelligible, and worthy of the written word of God. The best of them is the Revised Standard Version (RSV), but there are others. (For personal and group Bible study, the Catholic edition of the RSV, published by Ignatius Press, is recommended.)

It is worth noting that the NAB, unlike a number of other translations, is used only by Catholics in the United States and used only by them because they are required to use it in the liturgy. In their own writings, Catholic biblical scholars and other writers generally avoid the NAB. Not surprisingly, the NAB is defended by those who are responsible for producing it, and people who choose to do so are free to use it. It is quite another thing for the bishops to impose the exclusive use of a grievously flawed Bible translation upon the Catholic faithful at Mass.

Yet, on this and other matters, one prays for endurance, taking comfort from Saint Paul’s memorable and bracing words to Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have run the race, I have kept the faith.” One hopes to be able to say at the end of one’s days, “I have fought the good fight.” Or, as the NAB puts it, “I have competed well.”

Chant Leaves the Ivory Tower

By Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker
Crisis Magazine
July/August, 2007


In November 2006, Francis Cardinal Arinze, the head of the Congregation for Divine Worship, came to St. Louis, Missouri, the home of the musical revolution of the early 1970s, and delivered a blunt message to American parishes. “It is not true that the lay faithful do not want to sing the Gregorian chant,” he announced. “What they are asking for are priests and monks and nuns who will share this treasure with them.”

His comments go to the heart of the objection that one is most likely to hear when it comes to reform in liturgical music, namely that chant is for experts and snobs, not common people in the pews. Cardinal Arinze, by virtue of his position in the Curia, was speaking on behalf of the pope.

Gregorian chant is “marked by a moving meditative cadence,” he said. “It touches the depths of the soul. It shows joy, sorrow, repentance, petition, hope, praise or thanksgiving, as the particular feast, part of the Mass or other prayer may indicate. It makes the Psalms come alive. It has a universal appeal which makes it suitable for all cultures and peoples.”

Cardinal Arinze continued to explain that the Second Vatican Council did not do away with chant, but rather the opposite: It sought to universalize it in the Roman Rite. He cited Church documents, Canon Law, and the writings and speeches of popes. He urged every parish to use it, for theological, artistic, and pastoral reasons. His speech was inspiring, sweeping, and unmistakably clear: Parishes are the rightful home of chant.

Parishes Take the Step
Encouraged by new writings, a new push from the Vatican, and a growing sense of how tiresome liturgical folk music has become, many parishes around the country are discovering Gregorian chant, or at least taking the first steps in that direction. The National Registry of Gregorian Scholas, maintained by the Church Music Association of America, has 140 scholas listed to date, most of them formed within the last two years. Workshops on chant are not only proliferating; they are filling to capacity months in advance.

But new scholas quickly find that mastering the music requires more rehearsal time than they might have thought. And this is not the only or even the most significant challenge, which involves all the considerations that are lumped together under the category of “pastoral,” since it is not only the schola that is learning but also the celebrant, the parish leadership, as well as the congregation. There are huge barriers to overcome, and doing so requires hard work and decisive leadership.

The challenges are large enough, in fact, that Michael Joncas, in his influential book From Sacred Song to Ritual Music (OSB, 1997), wrote that he seriously doubts that chant could ever make a return. Many agree. But here they are as wrong as those who doubted that the Jewish people could ever regain Hebrew as a working language. Enough love of the Faith and the medium in question can and does make the difference. Together they can make a language speak and sing again as an integral part of Catholic liturgy.

Consider the point at which we are beginning this journey. For many decades, Gregorian chant has largely been the province of two sectors: performance art and academic specialization. In art, chant made a notable resurgence in the 1990s in a series of high-quality recordings of monastic singing that soared to the top of the sales charts. It might be tempting to dismiss this event as little more than a temporary fad for new-sounding mood music to be consumed by a generation raised on New Age spirituality. And yet such a dismissal is too quick. While it is true that its text and purpose were probably lost on many who purchased the music, it still provides a window into the sound of the sacred that one is unlikely to find anywhere else in the culture. It also gave a boost to the emerging market for recordings of 16th-century polyphony. The marketing of chant contributed to a greater emphasis on “authentic” performances that integrated chant propers with polyphonic motets and ordinary parts of the Mass for a complete liturgical reconstruction.

As beautiful and wonderful as many of these recordings are, they can also serve to intimidate singers at the parish level, leading people to believe that this music can only be sung by professionals or monks, not by average musicians. Only the wealthiest of parishes can afford to hire specialists to sing week in and week out, and so they would seem to have no choice but to continue what they are currently doing.

There is a further problem with contracting out sacred music. In order for chant to be a part of parish life again, it is not enough that people hear specialists alone demonstrating its glories. This can introduce the danger of a performance ethos to the chant. In order to truly take part and feel a sense of ownership, people must involve themselves in the singing, or at least develop a spiritual appreciation for what is taking place. A greater integration of the work of the schola and the congregation is required.

Out of the Ivory Tower
As for academia, chant has remained a narrow specialization for many decades. The emerging consensus among most academics has not been favorable to a restoration of chant in liturgy. These specialists would rather write and study as a purely academic exercise. For a musicologist to be a partisan for public performance is to expose a bias that supposedly cuts against academic distance.

What’s more, for decades academics have been severely critical of the old restoration efforts undertaken by the monks of Solesmes, which, with their rhythmic markings, are the one viable source for chant editions available to average Church musicians. It presumes that the rhythm and notes of chant are accessible to regular people and provides a method by which anyone who can match pitch can sing chant in his or her own parish. The method worked well for a century and continues to be the basis of chant in liturgical music.

But the academic fashion for semiology—the science of signs—has claimed that the rhythmic signs of the old Solesmes scholars have no strong historical basis, and that rigorous scholarship must once again return to the earliest possible manuscripts. There is no fixed rhythm to chant, they claim, and the chant cannot be read from current editions. In effect, this means starting from scratch.

Absurdly, the findings of the semiological school are sometimes invoked as the reason—or, rather, the excuse—for why parishes should not attempt to sing the chant. And because there are very few editions available that accord with the findings of semiologists, singers are left with no editions at all. The irony is palpable: Higher criticism and detailed scholarly investigation are being used to discredit any attempt to revive Gregorian chant, and the word “semiology” is being tossed around as the catch-all excuse for being satisfied with a substandard status quo. A recent issue of a widely read liturgical planning guide cited this reason to support the idea that parishes must continue to use contemporary music, at least or until semiologically correct editions are produced.

A Method for All Time
The Solesmes method, which rightly gained the official approval of the Vatican, was developed with a specific purpose in mind. The goal of the turn-of-the-century restoration was to re-enliven the music for use in liturgy, not merely to develop critical editions for scholars. The use of the rhythmic markings, the choice of chant editions to use, and even its original typography (at once medieval and innovative) served this purpose. The goal was to create a universal standard so that singers from all over the world could gather and read and sing the same musical language. In this respect, the restoration was a spectacular success, and the results have never been more useful than they are today.

When Solesmes began this restoration, chant editions were in disarray, and had been for two centuries. In setting out to restore them, they had loftier goals than merely transcribing tenth-century manuscripts. They wanted to elevate them and point to a new and more perfect ideal. This goal is wholly justifiable. When one goes to visit Jefferson’s home, do we really want to see it as it was when Jefferson lived in it, or do we want to see it as he imagined it could be, with gardens in bloom and mechanical parts that work? So it is with chant editions: What Solesmes created is more glorious than anything that had existed previously.

This is where the semiological critique of the older Solesmes school misses the mark. The official editions of chant that we have today are not designed primarily for academic use. They serve the purpose of keeping larger groups of singers together so that the chant can be more beautiful. In this respect, the method is brilliant and essential for parishes today. Whether the editions precisely re-create the chant style of the tenth century—which we are not really in a position to say either way—is beside the point, especially for music that seeks timelessness.

But there is another issue: Most parishes are missing the appropriate artistic sensibility that is a precondition for consistent use of chant in line with what the Church is asking of us.

The Sound and Feel
The most dramatic change that comes with a step toward chant, whether in English or Latin, is due to the sound and feel of “free rhythm” as opposed to the metered rhythm of contemporary (and this includes 19th-century) hymnody. The metered style is grounded in a strict beat, such as that found in any popular music. The free-rhythm style of plainchant has an underlying pulse but it is not forced into blocks of three (as in a waltz), four (as is most typical), or five (yes, some contemporary standards use music in 5/4). Free-rhythm style permits the music to take flight and lifts the sung prayer in a vertical way as it is presented at the altar of God.

The Christian choice of unmetered music is not an accident of history. “It would seem as if the first Christians deliberately avoided poems in meter,” writes Adrian Fortescue in Pange Lingua. “They must have been familiar with them. Both the Greek and the Latin languages had an abundance of lyric poetry before the time of Christ. It would have been easy to write religious verse in those meters. But they did not.” And why? Fortescue writes that metered music and poetry were associated with worldly concern and didn’t reflect the worshipful piety and freedom of the Psalms.

And what did the early Christian sing? “There is no doubt as to what he sang, in the first place. He sang the Psalms of David. Christians had one book that was, at first, their whole literature, the Bible. . . . They sang the Psalms, of course, in Greek. To them psalms were what they are to us, prose divided into short paragraphs. So in awe they sang the threatening Psalms; when they were joyful they sang the happy ones . . . . None of these verses shows any trace of meter in the Greek.”

It takes only one listen to discern the musicological difference between metered hymns and plainsong. What the early Christians intuited turns out to have dominated the large part of Christian history: We have always sung with prose that is untied from strict meter. The goal of the community in its sung worship has not been to bring about toe-tapping but to lift up our hearts, away from worldly concerns into heavenly ones. We sing plainsong rather than toe-tapping music for the same reason that the Eucharistic prayer is in the form of poetic prose rather a memorable limerick. The former is more fitting for elevated worship.

From Theory to Practice
Today, however, most parishes need to be re-acculturated into this free style of singing music, and an excellent place to begin is with English chant in the core of the people’s parts in the ordinary of the Mass. This is arguably a more important first step than taking on the issue of language or anything else. People must again develop an association of free rhythm with Christian worship. The Sanctus is the ideal beginning. A setting such as the following provides an excellent entry point to the sound and feel of free rhythm:
This tune is the most basic of all English settings, the one found in the Sacramentary.

Chant has a weightlessness to it that points heavenward. Its tune and style place the worshipper in a fitting mode of prayer precisely at the point in the Mass when it is most essential to leave time and enter a liturgical eternity. A setting such as this prepares the faithful to undertake more difficult settings in Latin (the Church has provided 18 settings of the ordinary chants for the faithful to sing).

The simplicity of this chant, especially sung unaccompanied, is palpable; it illustrates how holiness and solemnity in liturgical music can be achieved without the complications of academic debates. This takes the intimidation element out of the far-reaching agenda of Cardinal Arinze. It further illustrates how music can and should be another means of prayer, an extension and lifting up of the spoken word.

The next steps take us through the Agnus Dei, the Kyrie, the responses of the people, and to simple settings of the proper parts of the Mass. The congregation can begin learning traditional Latin hymnody, and the schola can explore the eternal glories of the Solesmes edition of the Graduale Romanum. There are years and years of practice and exploration here, always striving toward a new and fitting ideal.

That is no small point. The ideal is what provides the incentive to push forward and the benchmark against which the practice can be measured. We must be clear on this point: What is at issue here is not the introduction of chant as a means to achieve greater “diversity” of style within the parish. The case for chant has nothing to do with appeals to this or that interest group and its aesthetic preferences. Liturgy is an act of the people directed to God, not the “community” and its particular interests, as in Babel. What gives us a sense of community is not our earthly identity, tastes, and preferences but our common goal of worshipping God.

This is why the Church speaks of Gregorian chant as having “primacy of place.” It is the ideal against which all other music must be measured, and the perfection of the goal we should strive to achieve. It preexists and extends beyond liberal and conservative musical tastes and thereby bypasses that dead-end debate entirely.

And what of the problem of skill level? During Advent last year, some cloistered nuns made their singing of the O Antiphons publicly available. They were beautiful but imperfect. Indeed, there were moments in the recording in which some sisters missed the notes completely. Yet the sister who made it available wrote that they are not embarrassed by the imperfections, since “we know that the angels fix our mistakes and make our music perfect before presenting it at the throne of God.”

What a beautiful image. It brings two points home: First, the music we sing in liturgy is heaven-bound, always and ever directed toward the goal of presentation at the throne of God. The sound, style, feel, and text of the music, then, must be fitting to that goal. Second, it shows us that it is possible to have ideals without the ability or even the opportunity to perfect them. Our gifts to God will never be perfectly suitable, but that doesn’t mean that we should despair. We must proceed with courage and hard work to do what Cardinal Arinze is asking, to work toward the ideals mapped out by the Church—not only since Vatican II but since the earliest years of Christian music-making.

There is no reason to wait for the cathedrals to give direction or for the bishop or the pope to intervene with mandates. Genuine progress in this regard begins right at the parish level. Here is the home of simple Christian folk doing something truly beautiful for God.


Arlene Oost-Zinner and Jeffrey Tucker are directors of the St. Cecilia Schola Cantorum in Auburn, Alabama. Contact them at contact@ceciliaschola.org.