Dedicato a te
I don’t really remember very much about the Latin Mass. I became an altar-boy a short time before the transition to the celebration of Mass in the vernacular and so the development of my faith life has been almost entirely through a language that I fully understand. But I do recall my training as an altar-boy and those Masses when I served and which were said in Latin. And what I remember from those times, both during my training and then in serving Mass, was that I had not a clue of what was being said by the priest and in truth, I didn’t know what I was saying when I uttered the responses. By the time I came to study Latin in secondary school, my memories of the Latin Mass were gone and while I enjoyed reading of Hannibal and many other characters, having some knowledge of the language in no way gave me any insight at all into what had been taking places at those Masses some years earlier. The Latin Mass was, and remained, a mystery.
The movement within the Catholic Church for a return to this rite has always puzzled me. I have so many questions and have never received a sensible answer to any of them. For example, why do people want to go to one specific time in church history and to the use of a rite authorised at that time. Why not go back to a much earlier time? Advocates of the Latin Mass make claims about how the rite brings people especially near to God and that the rubrics somehow contribute to all of this? Really! And then there those who tell us that young people are clamouring for the return of the Latin Mass. Where are they?
And that is one of the problems about the Latin Mass – it is built on mystery and mystique and it extends to what those who support it would have us believe. And at the end, I am someone who is not taken in by any of this. Some of the nonsense around the whole idea is apparent in the industry that is building up around it – DVD’s to teach priests how to celebrate the Latin Mass, a training course at Oxford so that the priest knows the precise position of his hands at various points in the liturgy, and so on. As if ANY of this is at all relevant to the spiritual experience of those who attend Mass.
To return to the subject of young people. I work in a small way with young people and while I would not claim to be an expert (notwithstanding the fact that I have two teenage daughters and another in her twenties) I can say that none of these young people see the Latin Mass as something they are seeking in order to deepen their faith or strengthen their connection with the church.
Going backwards is rarely a good way to go forwards. And there is no doubt that the church needs to progress. It needs to find new ways of being relevant in the world, new ways of speaking to young people, new ways to challenge an increasingly materialistic view of the world, new ways to speak up for and influence the debate on justice and peace.
And perhaps this above all is the reason why I believe that this is the wrong thing for the church to be doing at this time. The church of the Latin Mass was one that stood apart from the community, a church that was very much of the “us” and “them” variety, a church that sided all too often with those who had power and wealth. Of course, I am not suggesting that the good that the church does is undone in this one act but for those who are challenged to find the new ways of which I write and who have found the going too tough, it allows them to retreat into a cosier life of church where everyone knew his or her place, authority wasn’t questioned and when all we had to do was make the right sounds at the right time and not worry about what it all meant.
Surely it is about a lot more than this – Latin is an unnecessary distraction.
Monday, July 30th, 2007 and is filed under Rome, Thoughts & Questions, Views on News.
You can leave a comment.
Ciarán Says:
It is a ‘us’ and ‘them’. We are the one true Church they are not. I also suggest you go the the Latin Mass on a Sunday and you will find more you people there than any othe church around the island: fact.
December 12th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Micahel Says:
I believe that of the great blunders of the Second Vatican Council was the downgrading of the Latin Mass, the re-ordering of altars and so on whilst failing to address issues which are still outstanding. One only has to look at the Eastern Orthodox churches particularly in some of the ex-Communist states where the Divine Service is sung for over three hours in Glagolithic and is attended by large congregations with great reverence including Mr. Putin! Pope Bendedict has expressed concern at the quality of the Liturgy and of Liturgical Music. Fortunately there are still some churches where Benediction and Mass are celebrated albeit in a mixture of Latin and English.
Rather than going backwards, the increased use of Latin and the literal translation of the Latin Rite will amount to the restoration of the
dignity and solelmity which is so often lacking in clap-happy folkish services today. The “unnecessary distraction” stems from the continual failure to address reforms which would make the Church “relevant in the world”
December 23rd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
Gervase Says:
To respond to the question about “where” the young people are who are attracted to the Latin Mass-you can find those young people by attending almost any published Latin Mass-At St. Agnes in Manhattan less than 30% of the attendants at the Sunday Latin Mass are old enough to have ever attended the Mass before the Novus Ordo. If the young people you know have no desire for the Latin Mass it could be simply their “preference” but it may also be because they have not been exposed to it.
As far as your not understanding your Latin responses as an altar server, that has much more to do with your failure to study the missal than the use of the vernacular.
June 9th, 2008 at 6:49 pm