DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - 'Summorum Pontificum', Young Catholics And The Roman Rite

[UPDATE] Georgetown's Professor Cole on enabling executive overreach at the Justice Department.

[UPDATE] Out of touch? Hardly. Pope pulls massive crowds and donations nearly double.

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column in the Record newspaper is on Pope Benedict XVI's motu proprio SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM: On the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to the Reform of 1970.

:: BEING HEARD ‘To God, The Joy Of My Youth’ ::

By John Heard

“Immediately after the Second Vatican Council it was presumed that requests for the use of the 1962 Missal would be limited to the older generation which had grown up with it, but in the meantime it has clearly been demonstrated that young persons too have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them.”

- Pope Benedict XVI, Letter to Bishops on Summorum Pontificum: on the Use of the Roman Liturgy Prior to 1970

“P. Introibo ad altare Dei. S. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.” [P. I will go to the altar of God. S. To God, the joy of my youth].

- from the 1962 Missal of Blessed John XXIII

It results from exaggeration surely, but many young Catholics have a distinct sense that things were better, purer, or else more beautiful ‘in the old days’.

In particular, the ‘Latin Mass, the ‘old Mass’, the ‘Tridentine Rite’ or the ‘Classical Roman Rite’ - all more properly known as the usus antiquior* or the Roman Rite according to the 1962 Missal of Blessed John XXIII – has always seemed rather mysterious and therefore deeply attractive.

Known to young people primarily through its association with an ancient language and the remarkably uniform esteem of our elders, the way Catholics celebrated Mass for almost fifteen centuries remained, however, part of someone else’s glittering memories. It has not been a regular part of contemporary life.

That is about to change.

The Pope has liberalised (via a letter given in the form motu proprio) the use of the liturgical books written before Vatican II and young Catholics, on a scale previously unthinkable, will be increasingly exposed to the 1962 Missal.

We are ready.

Indeed, not a few of us have longed to experience the Latin Mass.

Certainly, listening to a sustained lament^ over the loss of certain ancient forms has meant that young Catholics have grown up with a nagging sense of liturgical inheritance denied. Intense forty hours' devotion, churches stuffed with flowers and candles, Benediction with ear-ringing Latin and eye-stinging incense, whispered prayers and booming hymns – all described a veritable phantasmagoria that was within cultural memory but usually outside contemporary experience.

In my own case, these generational feelings only intensified when, as a young boy, my mother let me have the Sunday Missal she had used at a convent school in the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties. Inside the worn, well-loved pages a haul of liturgical treasures, a rich catch of theological meaning, teemed.

My Young Person’s Guide to the [New Rite of the] Mass, a fairly hokey document, couldn’t compete.

The maniple, for instance, fascinated me. Formerly worn by most priests at Mass, it was a vestment proper to a sub-deacon and therefore rare indeed after that order was suppressed post Vatican II. The possibility that this piece of ostensible frippery, it is after all an ornamental handkerchief derived from a Roman soldier’s sweat towel, could after a little study prove to be rich with overlapping resonances – it turned out to be a symbol of Christ’s bound hands, to be associated with the tears of a sincere penitent and to be a reminder of the sufferings of the good priest and his eventual reward – opened something up.

I began to wonder why we had, as it were, thrown in the maniple. I was not alone.

Certainly, even before the Pope’s motu proprio, many young people had developed a sense of alarm about liturgical reform. Faced with what the Pope has called ‘arbitrary deformations of the liturgy’ in the years since Vatican II, young people have looked at the Catholic liturgical past and sometimes regretted the way our liturgical present fails to match up.

We are, after all, the generation who grew up with the Clown Mass, too many emcee-style priests and homoactivist protesters inside the cathedral.

That the 1970 Missal proved to be vulnerable in the hands of such people has been a cause of great concern but not a reason to doubt the Council itself. Rather, it spoke to a necessary ‘reform of the reform’, an ongoing process of education and discipline, but not a reactionary break.

By liberalising the use of the 1962 Missal, the object is not then the scrapping of the ‘new’ Mass, rather a perfecting of the Roman Rite as a whole and a way of more perfectly implementing the teachings of Vatican II on the liturgy, in their entirety.

This is something the Pope makes very clear in a letter to bishops that accompanies his motu proprio. By liberalising use of the Missal of 1962 the Church hopes to perfect the Missal of 1970 and encourage a ‘mutually enriching’ interaction between both the ‘extraordinary’ and 'ordinary' form of the Roman Rite.

It is only natural then that, as the Pope rightly points out, many young people have felt the attraction of a liturgical form, the 1962 Missal, that has proven consistently profound and profoundly Catholic.

:: The Upshot ::

No longer to be considered ‘young fogeys’, the Pope’s move validates a more general feeling among young Catholics and will go some way to helping restore the liturgical wonder we long to encounter.

:: Resources ::

NB Under the norms published in Summorum Pontificum, the Easter Triduum (i.e., the services for Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil) would only be celebrated according to the 1970 Missal. Those who are getting upset about prayers relating to Jews appear to have missed the fact that the 'perfidious' references were already deleted from the 1962 Missal by Pope John XXIII. Other sensitivities will, no doubt, be appropriately addressed according to the 'mutally enriching' process Pope Benedict XVI outlined in his motu proprio. Remember, the 'Pope is Good News for Jews'.

- Missal of Blessed John XXIII (1962);

- Missal of Pope Paul VI (1970);

- 2002 GIRM of the Missale Romanum (USCCB);

- Apostolic Constitution Missale Romanum of Pope Paul VI (1969);

- Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri (Priestly Fraternity of St Peter);

- Documents Related to the Use of the 1962 Missal (FSSP);

- Apostolic Letter (in the form motu proprio) Ecclesia Dei of Pope John Paul the Great;

- Apostolic Letter (in the form motu proprio) Summorum Pontificum of Pope Benedict XVI (USCCB English Translation - Unofficial);

- Fr Jim Tucker's Seven Tips for Participating in the Traditional Mass; and

- Attend a licit 1962 Missal Mass.#

* (This formulation, in Latin, was used by the Pope in his accompanying letter explaining the new rules. Usus translates as ‘usage’ here referring to the Mass according to the 1962 Missal of Blessed John XXIII and antiquior is a superlative form of the adjective antiquus meaning ‘ancient’, ‘former’ and ‘old / old fashioned’ but also, and the stress increases with the superlative form, meaning ‘honest’, ‘illustrious’ and indeed ‘most important’).

^ (Certainly, while serving as an altar boy, it was frequently the case that priests and others would share with me a particular regret: ‘oh for Corpus Christi done right’, they’d sigh, or else they’d wax lyrical about the myriad special symbolisms – the hand-binding associated with the old ordination rite, for instance – that once characterised Catholic worship. ‘Now that was heavenly!’ The implication was often that if things were not exactly done wrong now, then at least they were too often done in a manner that was less than heavenly. The wider point was that our generation had missed out).

# (Take heed: despite hopes for reconciliation, the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) and the Society of St Pius V (SSPV) are in varying states of dispute or indeed outright schism with the Catholic Church. It is best to attend a FSSP Mass or a service you know is celebrated according to juridical norms and with the blessing of your Bishop/ordinary).