January 30, 2010

• Answering an objection to the Latin Mass

  I received a VERY good question in the comments on my last post, and I thought it was important enough to give at least a “start” of an answer.  First, though, the question:

  ---

  I have a wonder, and it is something that comes out of our experience over the last 8 years of trying to bring the neighborhood kids into the life of the church.  When we are living in a city where there are so many, both young and old, who are almost completely illiterate, even those who are not immigrants, and barely read English let alone being able to follow along in a missal with side-by-side Latin and English, how is the Extraordinary Form better for these people than a liturgy in plain English?  

  ---

  Thanks for the interaction, and especially for raising such an important and serious question!   I need to begin by acknowledging that MUCH more could be said (and deserves to be said) on this topic than what appears below, but for starters at least, here are some preliminary thoughts:

  It is an unquestionable fact of history that most Christians have been illiterate, and have been nourished and lived their faith in the context of a liturgy which was celebrated in a language other than the common speech they used in every-day commerce.   And this is true whether in the West with ecclesiastical Latin, or in the East with “Old Church Slavonic”.  Moreover, without microphones and speaker systems, it is also certainly true that much of the Liturgy, whether in East or in West, was not “heard” per se, unless it was sung by the Schola or choir (often by monastics).  In the West, the Canon, the “core” of the Mass, was said silently.  In the East, most of the “meatier” prayers are said by the Priest in a low voice while the Choir is singing various litanies, completely drowning out the sound of his voice.

  Nevertheless, these poor illiterate Christians did learn parts of the liturgy, not by “studying it” or reading a translation out of a book, but by being catechized, and by experiencing the liturgy from within, intrinsically.  This can be hard for us modern-day rationalists, particulary anyone (like myself) raised in a Protestant setting, because we have absorbed a very rationalistic and “book-centered” idea of what Christianity is, and how it should operate.  However, it simply is a fact that the Church’s primary means of communicating the Faith are and always have been *personal*, not literary, or even (necessarily) intellectual.  Jesus Christ is the Word of God, full stop.  The Word of God is a PERSON.  Even the Scriptures, as important as they are, are not primarily a *written* document, but are more like the “soul” of her Lord, whose teaching still echoes in the ears of the Church.  I believe this is part of what Hebrews (quoting Jeremiah) means when it talks about the New Covenant being written on the heart. 

  And historically this is exactly what we see:  the faith is transmitted primarily through *personal* means: through spoken word and action, not primarily through books and “book-learning”. The example of priests and holy men, combined with their verbal teaching. The mother teaching her children to pray the Rosary.  The Catechist teaching the Catechumens to memorize the Creed, line by line, through spoken repetition. The daily and weekly masses, with the ebb and flow of the liturgical year, *lived* from within, intrinsically.  The art and architecture of Churches: Icons, stained glass, statues of saints. The solemnity and beauty of the liturgical actions, the incense, the vestments.  The kneelings and prostrations.  All these things teach us by personal means, how to worship God, and through this teach us also about the greatness and majesty of the God we are called to worship, and therefore about who we are ourselves as worshipers of this great God.  

  And this is important, because it is through these *personal* means, we can learn the Truth and pass it on to others, in ways that are far deeper and more wholistic than what could be learned merely by reading a book, or intellectually “processing” a theological lecture.  After all, if this weren’t the case, what would be the point of a mentally handicapped person assisting at Mass?

  When one sees it in this light, the historic, traditional liturgy becomes far more compelling, since it communicates so much more, to so much more of the person, than the modern, *even though* it may be in a language which is not used for common, every-day commerce.  In fact, the mere fact that Latin is the common ecclesiastical language, the same in China or Japan, or India or Zimbabwe, as here in America, *itself* teaches something very profound and important about the UNITY and CATHOLICITY of the Church.  And, in a real sense, this teaching is actually *lost* when one celebrates the liturgy in the common, every-day vernacular. Because then all you have is a local, culturally-bound – and chronologically-bound (for living languages change their meaning over time) – liturgy, not a liturgy which is ageless and crosses every cultural and linguistic boundary – in other words, a truly CATHOLIC liturgy.

  It should not go without notice, at this point, that if one is truly interested in having a ethnically and culturally diverse Church which respects the equal dignity of each Christian no matter what language they speak, then one cannot *rightly* argue for a liturgy *in English*, since that will automatically exclude (on this logic) those for whom English is unknown, or, for some reason, distasteful – and the same would go for any other language which represents a currently existing nationality or ethnic group.   Consider, for a moment, the situation in a Europe following the Second World War:  if you were French, would you have wanted to be forced to celebrate or assist at Mass auf Deutsch? how about the reverse en Francais?  And yet, both French and German, as well as English and Italian, can and did celebrate or assist at the Traditional Latin Mass *on an equal footing*.  Because using the Latin language does not favour any particular national, political, or racial entity.  And what better way to teach us that all, whether rich or poor, educated or illiterate, handicapped or whole, Havasupai or Hottentot, are equal before God? 

  To bring this point closer to home, there are two Catholic Churches which celebrate the Latin mass regularly here in Phoenix, one with a Spanish sermon and one with an English sermon.  But the point is, when the Mass is in Latin, it doesn’t matter which one I go to – it’s the same Mass, because it’s the same Catholic Faith.  What unites us is NOT that we share the English language, or the Spanish language, rather the Mass, the liturgy itself becomes a *focus of UNITY and EQUALITY* rather than a *focus of DIVISION and INEQUALITY* which it can easily become when it must be celebrated in the vernacular.  If you must use the vernacular for the liturgy, you are forced to choose to favor one set of people over the other set.   Why should we be forced to discriminate in this way - ESPECIALLY in the liturgy?  If we follow the wisdom of the Historic Catholic Church in using Latin we don’t have to!

  Moreover, as we can see by the seemingly endless political battle over the implementation of the new English translation of the Novus Ordo which was mandated by the Holy See under Pope John Paul II, what happens when you celebrate the liturgy primarily if not exclusively in the local, culturally and chronologically-bound vernacular, is not *just* that you loose the element of CATHOLICITY, but you actually create a situation where people of each generation feel they must *fight* these political battles to hang on to “their” English Mass.  We see this in the reaction of those who are resisting the changes in the English translation of Novus Ordo mandated by the Holy See.  They constantly criticize the changes which the Pope has demanded because those changes don’t fit the prevailing “politically correct” view of language, or are “insensitive” to the “nuances” of the English language, etc., etc., ad nauseam. 

  What has happened to the Novus Ordo, is that because it is primarily celebrated in the local, culturally-bound, and chronologically-bound vernacular, is that it has become itself a political football, a tool of those who have other political and ideological goals than the mission of the Catholic Church.  But even if that weren’t the case, even the best of all possible English translations of the Novus Ordo would eventually wear out, and need to be replaced because the meanings of words in a “living language” like English change over time.  And at that point, you would then start to have these same battles all over again.  Some holding onto the old “familiar” English, and others agitating, some for better and some for worse reasons, for something “new”.

  Question: Granted the *necessity* in this instance for the Holy See to correct the inaccuracies in the English translation, nevertheless, how in ANY way is the type of dispute we are seeing played out over these years since JPII first mandated the changes, meet or *useful* in the mission of the Catholic Church?  I can answer that easily: not in any way at all.  It has become for many, a PURELY a political battle, and it highlights one of the primary reasons WHY we need the Latin Mass – why the Church was RIGHT to establish a COMMON, UNIVERSAL, *CATHOLIC* language for her Creeds, Canons, and Liturgy. Because with Latin you will never need to waste time on these kinds of disputes!  

  At LEAST if the Novus Order were to be celebrated in Latin, those political battles over language and style, as well as the concerns having to do with faulty, inaccurate English translations, go away.  But, of course, if the Novus Ordo is celebrated in Latin, that removes one of the biggest stumbling blocks which people trot out to place in front of the Traditional Latin Mass of the Ages.  Furthermore, once the Novus Ordo in Latin is placed beside the Tradition Latin Mass, the comparison does not favor the Novus Ordo at all.  In terms of depth, profundity, clarity, comprehensiveness, and complete correspondence with the teachings of the Magisterium concerning the nature of the Mass and the priesthood ordained to celebrate it, the Tridentine Latin Mass will win every time in *that* comparison. 

  Perhaps most significantly, the focus of the Traditional Latin Mass is always centered upon the propitiatory Sacrifice of our Saviour on the Cross, made present on the Altar through the ministry of the ordained Priest who stands as an Alter Christus at the head of the faithful, representing them (as Christ himself did) to the Father.  This is reflected in the orientation of the priest ad orientem which is almost never done in the Novus Ordo.  Of course, it is *possible* technically to do a Novus Ordo Mass ad orientem, though doing so removes yet another major stumbling block which is usually toted out to place in front of the Traditional Latin Mass.  Yet even when the Novus Ordo is celebrated ad orientem, there is still a problem with bifurcation of focus, because the musical numbers in the Novus Ordo almost always alternate and *compete* for attention with the focus on the Sacrifice happening at the Altar, whereas, in the Traditional Latin Mass, the chants are *integral* to the liturgy itself (that is why they are called “Propers”!) and they operate as an additional layer, a “parallel track”, NOT alternating and competing for attention with action at the Altar as in the Novus Ordo.

  [Nota Bena: the Propers are one of the elements intrinsic to the liturgy which, simply by complete omission, have been and continue to be, the most often abused in the Novus Ordo as it is celebrated in most parishes today.  No document of the Second Vatican Council ever intimated that these Propers, which are usually Scriptural, should be omitted, and yet they have been and continue to be omitted by most Novus Ordo parishes, in favor of what is usually trite, saccharine, and theologically vacuous popularly-styled "hymns" or choruses.]

  So to answer your question, when all aspects of the question are considered, it turns out that the Catholic Church actually had it right all through the centuries – the Traditional Latin Mass is a far better context in which to communicate the Truth and Grace of the Catholic faith to the whole *person*.  It’s kind of reassuring to know that all those illiterate, non-latin-speaking Christians who lived the faith through all those centuries actually *weren’t* being “gypped” by God by not having access to the Novus Ordo liturgy in the vernacular!

  And it’s wonderful to know that we don’t have to be “gypped” by not having access to the Mass of the Ages, which fortified and consecrated the lives of so many millions of poor, illiterate faithful throughout this planet of ours for so many centuries, for our Holy Father has freed the Traditional Latin Mass – the “Extraordinary Form”, as he calls it (and it IS extraordinary!) – with the desire that it be offered in every parish.  While it will take time for priests and seminarians to learn to celebrate it, the spiritual pay-off, both for priest and lay, for individual and for parish, as well as for the Catholic Church as a whole, is HUGE, and makes it well worth the effort.  Let us pray and work for the day when our Holy Father’s desires for the Mass of the Ages will be realized!
  

  • 3:36 am
  • 6 Comments