The Church is a “We”: Reflections on Francis Restricting Mass in Latin

In the summer of 1968, I attended the University of Notre Dame and took the first two courses required for a master’s degree in liturgical studies. One concerned the books and liturgical sources, taught by the Benedictine Father. Aelred Tegels. On several occasions he drew our attention to the fact that almost all of the prayers in these sources were plural – queesumus – “we request.”

The other course was on the Eucharist and taught by Father Benedictine. Aidan Kavanagh. One of his repeated refrains was that the Eucharist as the body of Christ builds up and always serves the body of Christ, the Church.

When I returned to the seminary for my second year of theology, I met the professor of moral theology in the hallway. He said, “Tell me something in the liturgy.

I replied, “Church. This is what I was taught that summer and I have continued to learn and teach to this day. Liturgy and church are inseparable.

I offer here some reflections that contextualize and explore the apostolic letter of Pope Francis of July 16. Traditionis Custodes, which reimposes restrictions on the celebrations of Mass according to the pre-Vatican II Latin rite.

A papal triptych

In the midst of all the talk about the papacy in recent years, I find it helpful to view Saint John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis as a papal triptych. Each brought their particular strengths to the papacy and specifically to the question of the unity of the church.

No pope wants to have a schism as part of his legacy. John Paul II saw in it a serious threat from the disciples of Marcel Lefebvre, who taught that the Missal of Paul VI, published in 1970 after the end of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), was heretical. They also found that the Council’s overtures to other churches, Christian communities and interfaith dialogue were deeply flawed and suspect, in fact heretical.

Therefore, John Paul II extended a very important olive branch to the Lefebvrites in 1988 to celebrate the pre-Vatican II missal under certain restrictions. Overnight, the issue of the revised missal after Vatican II was dismissed.

It is interesting to note that the title of the document giving this authorization is “The Church of God” (Ecclesia Dei) and not for example, “The Liturgy of God”. It is the same name that John Paul II gave to the commission whose competence was to work for reconciliation with the Lefebvrites. The authorization for the mass concerned the church and the restoration of the unity of the church.

Teaching of the Mass and the Church

In the fall of 1996, I was residing at St. Mary Mother of God in downtown Washington, DC. One Sunday morning, I was going for a run on the National Mall. My exit from the building coincided with the arrival of the community, which gathered for the 9 am Tridentine mass in Latin.

A gentleman asked me if I would one day celebrate “their” mass. I replied that I couldn’t because I didn’t have the archbishop’s permission. It turns out that almost all of the attendees were from the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, as then Bishop of Arlington, John Keating, did not allow Tridentine Mass at all.

After Mass, the children took a catechism class but the text was the Baltimore Catechism (first edition 1885). Therefore, there was no teaching from Vatican II or the social encyclicals.

I judge that Francis’s concern for doctrine is very deep and very real. He demands that those who celebrate the Tridentine Mass accept “the binding nature of Vatican II”.

The phrase lex orandi, lex credendi (what we pray is / should be what we believe) had experienced some resurgence in the debates over the English translation of the Roman Missal. In his apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes, Francis reaffirms that the liturgical books approved by Pope Paul VI and Saint John Paul II “constitute the sole expression of lex orandi of the Roman rite. “

Gone are the grammatical acrobatics that required the use of expressions such as “the ordinary form”, “the extraordinary form” and “the novus ordo“- not to mention the sleight of hand when church signs or bulletin headers noted that a” Latin Mass “was available, when in reality they said that the then extraordinary form of the Mass was to be to be celebrated.

“Mutual enrichment”?

When Pope Benedict XVI published his apostolic letter in 2007 Summorum Pontificum, expanding the occasions on which what the Pope called the “extraordinary form of the Mass” could be celebrated, he also issued a letter to accompany the document.

In this letter, Benoît indicated that he could envisage a “mutual enrichment” of the Mass of 1570 and of the Mass of 1970. I read this with total surprise.

Who would decide on what elements and on what basis? Didn’t Benoît severely criticize the “picking and choose” that took place in the 1960s and rightly so? I remember seeing clandestine prayers circulating to replace the texts of the missal of the day. (It was in a Xerox copy culture. I can only imagine what can and does happen in an internet culture.)

Liturgy is like putting your hand in a glove and being in a familiar place and space. It is not about reinventing the wheel according to individual whims and likes or dislikes. The liturgy is.

Honestly, at this time of summary, the wind had come out of the sails about the Tridentine authorization of reconciliation with the Lefebvrites. But it was curious that Benedict noted that a certain number of young people “feel” attracted by this form of the Mass. The expression is “to feel its attraction” (Italian: “reed giovani persone scoprono questa forma liturgica“). Since when does an official church document on the liturgy concern the feelings of a person drawn to Mass A or Mass B?

When the Kennedy Center opened in DC 50 years ago, the first performance was the newly commissioned Mass by Leonard Bernstein. About five minutes after the start of the piece, the orchestra suddenly stops and a soloist sings something that is the exact opposite of mass. He sings: “Make it as you go long.”

It is the complete antithesis of what the liturgy is. In fact, we are not planning any liturgy. We must prepare for each liturgy. Unfortunately, some of the things we should prepare very carefully are things that polls of American Catholics repeatedly criticize: the quality of the homilies and the music.

Among the first examples of the Tridentine Mass celebrated in Washington, it is at the instigation of the Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan in 1992. In his book From the start, Buchanan said that even during the Tridentine Mass, he would read a book during the homily because after Vatican II, the Catholic Church had become “the first Socialist Church of Christ”.

Too bad for the Holy Spirit who guides the bishops as teachers at Vatican II. At the same time, Buchanan may have been ahead of his time by hiring a priest to celebrate “their” mass in a high school chapel. I regret to say this, but I can sadly envision the volume of requests that those who want the (then) extraordinary form to be celebrated will make at schools and seminars.

The fact that a seminarian wishing to celebrate the Tridentine Mass now needs the authorization of the Apostolic See means that the Pope considers this restoration of the Vatican II liturgy to be of the utmost importance. Indeed, this will dry up the supply of priests trained and ready to celebrate the Tridentine Mass.

Some will say (and have blogged before) that this move will cause a schism, the kind of thing John Paul II wanted to avoid in the first place. But my opinion is that whatever actions people take will simply unmask the silent schism that has taken place and continues in the American Catholic Church over a number of things, including liturgical preferences.

Return to Notre-Dame. The basic premises concern the “we” in “we ask” and that the body of Christ in the Eucharist nourishes the body of Christ in the church. Indeed, we are in the same boat.

How is that in a culture that has moved from people to ourselves and presumes the national anthem is “I Did It My Way”?