iacobusm The Church

A Hand Slap to the Traditional Latin Mass

Introibo ad altare Dei ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam. “I will go up to the altar of God, to God who makes joyful my youth” – Psalm 43:4

There is a well-known story about Canute, King of England and much of Scandinavia in the 11th century, who wanted to illustrate insignificance of human authority:

When he was at the height of his ascendancy, [Canute] ordered his chair to be placed on the sea-shore as the tide was coming in. Then he said to the rising tide, “You are subject to me, as the land on which I am sitting is mine, and no one has resisted my overlordship with impunity. I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master.” But the sea came up as usual, and disrespectfully drenched the king’s feet and shins. So jumping back, the king cried, “Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws.” (from Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum)

If only all princes were equally aware of the limits of their power.

You have probably already heard that the rumored blow against the Traditonal Latin Mass (TLM) has finally fallen in the form of Pope Francis’ motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. It is actually harsher than what the rumors anticipated.  The fear was that Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu propio Summorum Pontificum would be revoked, which would return the TLM to the somewhat more restricted status that existed under Pope St. John Paul II.  Traditionis Custodes goes much further, revoking every papal intervention favorable to the traditional Mass over the past half century.  As Francis explains in the letter that accompanies the document:

I take the firm decision to abrogate all the norms, instructions, permissions and customs that precede the present Motu proprio, and declare that the liturgical books promulgated by the saintly Pontiffs Paul VI and John Paul II [i.e., the post Vatican II Mass], in conformity with the decrees of Vatican Council II, constitute the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite.

The Pope also makes it clear that when he says the new Mass should “constitute the unique expression”, he means that the end result he envisions is that the TLM should eventually cease altogether (my bold):

St. Paul VI, recalling that the work of adaptation of the Roman Missal had already been initiated by Pius XII, declared that the revision of the Roman Missal, carried out in the light of ancient liturgical sources, had the goal of permitting the Church to raise up, in the variety of languages, “a single and identical prayer,” that expressed her unity. This unity I intend to re-establish throughout the Church of the Roman Rite.

     I’ll leave it to those more competent than myself to examine the document in detail (here are  a few I’ve seen so far:  a good explanation of its provisions here at Life Site News, another here at The Pillar, and an informative ongoing discussion on Fr. Z’s blog). It will be helpful, however, to look at a few of the main takeaways. Summorum Pontificum had allowed priests to offer the TLM without asking permission, and had encouraged local ordinaries to provide the Latin Mass to “stable” groups of the faithful who desired it.  The new promulgation requires priests to obtain permission from their bishop (and newly ordained priests to receive permission from the Vatican itself). Another new provision is that parish churches should no longer be used; bishops should establish “one or more locations” for the celebration of the TLM in their dioceses (numerous commentators have wondered where these locations will be if parish churches are off the table).  Traditionis Custodes does not provide any transitional period for implementing these and other changes, but stipulates that they come into force “immediately”, a provision  Fr. John Zuhlsdorf justly describes as “cruel”.

Cardinal Robert Sarah celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass (image from Gloria.tv)

     As sweeping as the changes in Traditionis Custodes seem to be, however, it is not at all clear how much impact the motu proprio will actually have.  The implementation is being left up to each bishop in his own diocese:

It is up to you to authorize in your Churches, as local Ordinaries, the use of the Missale Romanum of 1962, applying the norms of the present Motu proprio. It is up to you to proceed in such a way as to return to a unitary form of celebration, and to determine case by case the reality of the groups which celebrate with this Missale Romanum.

Pope Francis cited the results of a survey of bishops in his letter.  It’s unclear how many urged him to move against the TLM, but we know that some bishops are hostile (very often the same ones who resist confronting Catholics who publicly defy Church teaching: see here and here). At the same time, I find it very hard to believe that a majority of bishops favor this scheme. No doubt the hostile bishops will make the most of the new restrictions, but little will change for the present in many, maybe most, dioceses.  Fr. Z has already posted letters from several bishops to the effect that, for now, the TLM will continue as it has been.

     Of more immediate concern is the deleterious effect on the morale of the troops in the Church Militant.  When I first heard the news about Traditionis Custodes I immediately thought of Justice Byron White’s description of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which instantly wiped away all abortion laws in all 50 states.  White famously referred to the notorious ruling as “an exercise in raw judicial power.” Pope Francis’s motu proprio is no less an exercise in raw papal power, and, like Roe v. Wade, can’t help but deepen and inflame the divisions it purports to heal.  It’s likely that one immediate effect will be to drive more Catholics into the Society of St. Pius X which, although it has never been in actual schism, continues to enjoy an irregular relationship with the Universal Church.  That is hardly the way to bring about the “unity” the Pope claims to be aiming for.

     Despite that, I remain convinced that the long-term goal of shutting down the TLM completely is out of reach.  In fact, this move may have the opposite effect of making it even more attractive to the most committed Catholics. In a previous post (“Finding the Future in the Past: Why The Latin Mass is not Going Away”) I compared the then-rumored revocation of Summorum Pontificum to World War II’s Battle of the Bulge, a last-ditch effort by an already beaten power that could hope only to forestall inevitable defeat. The losing army in this case is the “Spirit” of Vatican II, whose advocates enjoy outsized influence in chanceries and in structures like the USCCB bureaucracy, but have much less (and dwindling) support among Catholics who are young or devout, and among the younger priests and bishops.  The most fervent and dynamic Catholics, lay and clerical, cannot be browbeaten into embracing  a vision of the Church as this-worldly social services agency or into loving a Eucharistic liturgy that is more evocative of a secular business meeting than of the choirs of heaven.

     Nonetheless, the beautiful traditional Mass may become less available for a time.  There is one thing, however, that Pope Francis says in his letter that we can use for the benefit both of those who want to attend the TLM but can’t, and those who simply attend the post Vatican II Mass:

At the same time, I am saddened by abuses in the celebration of the liturgy on all sides. In common with Benedict XVI, I deplore the fact that “in many places the prescriptions of the new Missal are not observed in celebration, but indeed come to be interpreted as an authorization for or even a requirement of creativity, which leads to almost unbearable distortions”.

The opening of Vatican II, 1962

     There you have it: Pope Francis is on record that he doesn’t like abuses of the new Missal. I say we hold him to it. As it happens, it is possible to celebrate the Novus Ordo Mass according to the rubrics and have something that is much more like the TLM than what most Catholics see today, and is in fact much closer to the reformed liturgy envisioned in the documents of Vatican II (one of the Pope’s reasons for restricting the TLM was because he believes it encourages a rejection of  Vatican II). There is no stipulation in the rubrics, for instance, that the priest face the congregation, instead of facing the altar with the people. There is no reason why we can’t encourage Catholics to receive communion on the tongue (kneeling, while we’re at it), with an altar server holding a paten under the chin.  Latin is still the official language of the Mass, and a priest doesn’t need anybody’s permission to say even the post-Vatican II Mass in Latin (for any of you who don’t know Latin, by the way, it’s never too late to start learning).  There is a vast store of beautiful sacred music that can be restored to parish churches everywhere. None of these things are abuses or distortions, and all of them make a more reverent Mass, a Mass much closer to the TLM in appearance and in spirit.  

     Most of us, of course, aren’t priests or bishops, and it’s up to the clergy to offer up the Mass.  We are all capable of making our voices heard, however, respectfully and positively, but insistently:

Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?  (Matthew 7:7-10)

     We need to keep asking for bread and fish, directly and indirectly, individually and in groups.

     This is not to say, by the way, that I am advocating giving up on the TLM: far from it.  I am saying that now is the time for the vox populi to be heard: we need to make it clear that we need a holy, reverent, spiritually nourishing  divine liturgy that shows gives us a glimpse here on Earth of the liturgy that, God willing, awaits us in Heaven.  As I said above, the TLM isn’t going away, whatever the aging veterans of the Spirit of Vatican II may wish.  At the same time, it doesn’t require any interventions from Rome to offer Catholics attending what Benedict XVI referred to as the Ordinary Form of the Mass something much more beautiful and inspiring than what they’re getting now. I’ve seen it done at a couple of faithful Catholic Colleges, I’ve seen it done in a diocesan Cathedral.

     Understandably, many of us feel shocked and saddened, even betrayed, by the Pope’s intervention.  I’ll let the first Pope have the last word::

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 1:6-7)

iacobusm Faith and Politics

What Do We Do When Our Priest Is A Communist? (Part II)

    In my prior post, “What Do We Do When Our Priest Is A Communist? (Part I)” we saw that the true Church is not reducible to the people who occupy its offices at any particular point in time, not even to those in the highest positions of authority.  The true Church is the Mystical Body of Christ extending through time. We depend upon that Church for our salvation, and we can’t abandon it because of the malfeasance of its temporary caretakers, whether they are priests, bishops, or even (if you can believe it) popes.

Bad popes: “Pope Formosus and Stephen VII”
by Jean-Paul Laurens, 1870

     At the same time, while the immorality and infidelity of bad clerics can’t unmake the Church itself, it can do a lot of damage to members of the Church, and Church institutions, in particular times and places.  It can cause souls to be lost.  That was in fact the concern of the original comment that led to these posts.  A father was afraid that the bad example and erroneous teaching of certain prominent churchmen (including some at a decidedly higher pay grade than his parish priest) would damage the faith of his children, and that he might need to leave the Church for their protection.

     His concern is real.  Our culture has become toxic, and it is actively hostile to Christian belief and practice.  Not only that, the toxicity has infected a large part of the institutional Church. What can we do if leaving the Catholic Church itself is not an option?

       I had mentioned to the original commenter that God tends to raise up his greatest saints at times when the institutional Church is at its worst . . . but that’s not really practical advice, is it? After all, it took decades, or even centuries, for the work begun by St. Benedict or St. Francis to bear fruit beyond the circle of their closest followers. Of course, they and the rest of our holy predecessors can intercede for us, and we ought to be asking them to do so. But there’s also something else the saints, the obscure as well as the great, have to offer: their example.  Léon Bloy said, “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” And in fact our Lord himself tells us: “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48)

“St. Benedict Preaching to the Peasants” by Sodoma (Giovanni Antonio Bazzi), 1505

     I don’t mean to get hung up on the word in this passage usually translated into English as “perfect”: Jesus surely isn’t demanding of us the sort of absolute perfection that belongs to God alone.  The Greek word is τέλειοι, the basic meaning of which is “complete, finished, entire”; from there it came to mean “pure, unblemished”, particularly in reference to a sacrificial animal that fulfills all the highest standards of its kind.*  In Matthew’s Gospel we find Jesus speaking these words in the Sermon on the Mount, after a series of examples showing how his disciples are to go beyond or even against the current moral understanding, culminating in:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven . . .” (Matthew 5:43-45)

     Jesus is telling his disciples not to settle for what passes for wisdom in their world, but to carry the Gospel to completeness, to fulfillment, in their lives.  They themselves need to be τέλειοι, complete, as in completely committed . . .  even if it gets them in trouble with society at large. As to this last point, he had told them moments before “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” (Matthew 5:11)  Now he applies to them the same word commonly used to describe a worthy sacrificial victim.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence.

     This is the essence of sanctity, and this complete devotion to Christ, as opposed to submission  to the World, is what we most honor in the saints.  It is also what we most need to emulate, however unworthy we might think we are (and I speak as someone who is definitely not ready to claim a day on the Liturgical Calendar).  Again, it’s not a coincidence that working to build our lives on the rock foundation of Christ and not on the shifting sand of the World is also the best thing we can do, in very practical terms, for our children. I’d like to share a few ideas below on how we can do that, drawing in part on my own family’s experience.

     First, the aforementioned problem of having Fr. Karl Marx for a pastor. The Church allows us great flexibility in choosing our parish. It’s worth taking the time to travel, if necessary, to find an orthodox, reverent Mass.  We know a family (with more than a few small children) that makes a four hour round trip every Sunday to attend a Latin Mass. That heroic level of commitment is probably required of very few of us, although it’s worth noting that our forerunners in the faith often used to spend their entire Sunday in prayer; we can spend extra car time praying the rosary together, singing hymns, and so on.  In any case, there’s likely to be a holy and wholesome Mass (and it needn’t be a Latin Mass) closer than two hours away.  We have lived in various parts of one of the more liberal, and most unchurched, parts of the U.S., and we have never had to drive more than 40 minutes to find an acceptable (or better) liturgy.

     Speaking of the Latin Mass, do go if you can.  I’ve you’ve never attended, or have gone once or twice but don’t “get it”, prepare yourself with a little research first. In and of itself the traditional liturgy can bring you to deeper immersion in the Faith and, as an added bonus, attending the traditional liturgy, even if it’s only occasionally, will enrich your family’s experience and understanding of the  Ordinary Form.  Even watching a live streamed Latin Mass can be helpful; Fr. John Zuhlsdorf (a.k.a. Fr. Z) sometimes live streams his daily Extraordinary Form Masses and, trust me, you won’t catch him preaching communism from the pulpit.

“Evening Prayer” by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, 1846

     I also recommend making it a priority to go to church for more than Sunday Masses.  In addition to daily Masses there are also Holy Week services, holy days, parish missions, saints’ relics on tour, Vespers services, etc.  As simple a thing as hanging around and talking to people after Mass can have a big impact on your children.  Most parishes will have opportunities to put the faith into practice such as outreach and charitable projects. For centuries in the early Church even laypeople were expected to be there in person for morning and evening prayer, if they could manage it.  It’s a great way to remind ourselves where our priorities ought to be, and to show our children that being a Christian is not a part-time job.

     Let’s bear in mind as well that we are meant to carry what we have experienced and learned in church out into our everyday life. Accordingly, we speak of the home as the domestic church, and, as Pope St. John Paul II tells us, “Parents are the first and most important educators of their own children, and they also possess a fundamental competence in this area” (Letter to Families, #16). Nobody knows and loves your children like you do, and the most fundamental lessons are learned in the family (whether or not we realize that we’re teaching them).  Daily prayer together as a family is essential, but your children should also know that their father and mother have a personal prayer life.  I began daily recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours when my children were very young, and several of them have continued the practice on their own at college.

     Taking charge of our own childrens’ faith formation is also important. In our case, my wife and I chose to educate our children at home, even though I was teaching at a highly regarded Catholic school.  Our reasoning was that, even if all the teachers were faithful Catholics (and it’s a rare Catholic school indeed where even all the religion teachers are faithful Catholics, much less the faculty in general), those who attend are formed at least as much by the other students as they are by their instructors, and most of the students are formed in the toxic culture described above.  If you decide that you can’t home school your children, and even if you find a solid, orthodox Catholic school, understand that the most the school can do, at best, is to supplement the foundation in faith that you build up in your domestic church at home. The parents are the primary teachers of the Faith.

     As for higher education, I can’t think of a more direct road to hell than that provided by most institutions of what passes for “higher learning” today, and that includes most self-described Catholic colleges. We still receive the alumni magazine for the allegedly Catholic institution that my wife and I attended and, well, let’s just say that my reaction to said magazine is generally unprintable.  We told our children that they could go there if they wanted, but we couldn’t in good conscience do anything to help or encourage their attendance at such an institution.  Fortunately, they weren’t interested. They have had very positive experiences with two of the colleges on the very short list prepared by the Cardinal Newman Society. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that going to most other institutions puts their souls at grave risk. Really.

     There is much more that can be said on this topic; I expect it will come up in this space again. I can’t think of a more important issue than the matter of how we conduct our own lives and raise our families in the light of the Faith as handed down by the Apostles.  Truly making Christ the foundation of our lives will have a much bigger impact on our children than the ranting of any misguided cleric, however elevated his pulpit.

*There’s a lot more that could be said about this word as it’s used here.  Maybe another article . . .

iacobusm Faith and Politics

What Do We Do When Our Priest Is A Communist? (Part I)

“Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68)

Your parish priest?

We live in scary times.  It looks like our secular institutions in the West are collapsing, to be replaced by mob rule (which really means, as always, a tyranny of the elite who manipulate the mob).  More frightening still for Catholics, the institutional Church appears to be experiencing a parallel slide.  A commenter on my post about the Trappists and Icarians  expressed his unhappiness at attending Mass where, as he put it, the priest “preaches communism.”  He was not just concerned, however, that many Catholic clerics, from parish priest on up, are abandoning the Faith for a poisonous brand of politics, but also, on a more practical level, that the Catholic Church itself was not a safe place for his children.

The commenter raises some valid and important points, which deserve a better answer than I can give off the cuff in a social media combox. I’m finding it hard, in fact, to limit the discussion to even a single blog post, so today I’ll take a look at why leaving the Church is not the answer, and next weekend discuss some practical considerations, including my own family’s experience.

I was thinking about how to approach this topic Friday morning, when I received some timely help from the daily Mass readings.  In the first reading, for instance, St. Paul says to those gathered in the synagogue in Antioch:

“My brothers, children of the family of Abraham,
and those others among you who are God-fearing,
to us this word of salvation has been sent.
The inhabitants of Jerusalem and their leaders failed to recognize him,
and by condemning him they fulfilled the oracles of the prophets
that are read sabbath after sabbath.“ (Acts 13:26-29)

Now, we might rightly point out that Paul is talking about religious leaders under the Old Covenant, not the New. At the same time, they were ministers of a true religion who had been given a sacred duty to carry out the will of God.  It is clear in all the Gospel accounts that the religious leaders in Jerusalem were instead acting out of concern for their institutional prerogatives: as it says in Mark’s Gospel, “And the chief priests and the scribes heard it and sought a way to destroy him: for the feared him, for all the multitude was astonished at his teaching.” (Mark 11:18) We don’t  need to look very far through Church history to find plenty of Christian leaders, including some at the highest levels, who “failed to recognize him.”

     The fallibility of even legitimate religious leaders reminds us that the structures of the Church don’t exist for their own sake, but in order to lead us to Jesus Christ.  The same day’s Gospel helps point us in the right direction:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled.
You have faith in God; have faith also in me. . .
Thomas said to him,
“Master, we do not know where you are going;
how can we know the way?”
Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14: 1; 5-6)

Now, St. Thomas had Jesus himself right in front of him in bodily form.  Where do we encounter Jesus?  In the Church he founded (see Matthew 16:18) which alone can bring us the the True Body, the Verum Corpus, of Christ in the Eucharist.  The Church itself has also been called the Body of Christ, the  Mystical Body, a term first used by the Church Fathers but drawing on St. Paul’s Letters  (1 Corinthians 12:12-31 and Romans 12:3-8). St. Paul tells the Corinthians  that “by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free” (Corinthians 12-13). The Apostle is clear that the Church is not a body in the ordinary sense of the in which we can apply it to any group of people ; here he’s using it in a very specific sense (italics mine): “Now you are the Body of Christ and individually members of it.” (1 Corinthians 12:27) In this body Christ is the Head, and all the rest of us have specialized roles that we carry out, not by and for ourselves, but in cooperation with the other members.  That very much includes all the members of the hierarchy, up to and including the Pope.  Nobody exercises authority on his own behalf.

Not even the Pope . . . in fact, explicitly not the Pope.  One of the most misunderstood Catholic doctrines is the teaching on papal infallibility.  The First Vatican Council (1869-1870) didn’t take up the question of the Pope’s infallible teaching authority in order to create a new doctrine but to define (that is, to establish clear boundaries for) a belief that had already been held for centuries.  The conciliar document Pastor Aeternus makes it clear that Papal infallibilty can be exercised only in extremely limited circumstances, and can never extend to promulgating new doctrine:

For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the Revelation, the Deposit of Faith, delivered through the Apostles.

“Vergil and Dante meet Pope Boniface VIII in Hell” by Gustav Dore (c. 1855)

The Pope’s role is to preserve and pass on what he has received; infallibility means that he has the authority to clarify, not create.  It is authority that is invoked very rarely.  In fact, it is generally agreed that there has been only one papal pronouncement since 1870 that meets the standard set in Aeternus Pastor (Pius XII’s definition of the Assumption in 1950), and only one prior to Vatican I (The Immaculate Conception in 1854).  Any papal attempt to create a brand new teaching would have no binding force. The Pope himself, strictly speaking, is fallible; true doctrine alone is infallible. This is the Church established by Jesus Christ and no Pope can unmake it, however hard he tries.

That also means that fleeing from the Catholic Church, even if it’s because of real transgressions committed by its members (up to and including the Supreme Pontiff), necessarily means giving up the Body of Christ for a body composed of mere men.  As Peter replies when Jesus asks “Will you also go away?”: “”Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:67-68).  

But even if there’s nowhere else to go, what about the very real danger of one’s children being corrupted by priests (and, um, others in the Church) preaching communism or some other heresy?  I’ll take up that question in detail in next week’s post.

Features image above: “St. Paul Preaching in Athens” by Raphael (1515)