A NON-DEBATE ON THE LATIN MASS
Dear Friend of Catholic Answers:
Regarding yesterday: Does it seem odd only to me that a day on which Americans stay home and take it easy is titled with the verb "labor"?
Maybe the name was thought up by the same guy who decided that "parkway" is where you drive and "driveway" is where you park.
THE OLD MASS: CON AND CON
I'll start with the admission that I like a good debate. In fact, there was a time, years ago, when I used to engage in public debates with some regularity. Though I got away from being a participant, I still enjoy being an observer, whether the debate is in a public hall or in print.
When I first learned that "The Tidings," the newspaper of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, was printing an exchange between two priests on the Tridentine Mass, I said to myself, "Well, now we'll see an interesting set-to."
When I further learned that one priest was youngish (ordained in 1986) and the other not so much so (ordained in 1963), I figured that the older priest would grouse about the old Mass while the younger would extol its benefits.
I should have known better.
The first little essay was by the younger priest, Peter J. Daly. He begins by saying that the next parish over has been celebrating the old Mass for 15 years, and "Almost nobody comes." The attendance is about 30 people, even though this "is the only Latin Mass for at least 40 miles around in an area that encompasses more than 20 parishes."
Daly then says that most of the attendees are old, that occasionally-visiting young people do not seem to take an interest in the Tridentine Mass, and that the priest himself is weary of it. "It means a lot of work for him. Under the old liturgy the priest did just about everything. The people who come to the Latin Mass like that part of the tradition just fine. They don't think they should have to do anything but show up. After all, it is the priest who says Mass. They are just spectators."
That kind of condescension fills Daly's essay. At the end, referring to the Pope's motu proprio, he asks, "Will there be big crowds at the Latin Mass? Will more parishes start to offer it? I doubt it. ... Almost nobody is pressing for it. ... I think my neighbor's experience will be the experience of the Church. We can offer it. But almost no one will come."
THE OTHER SIDE, SORT OF
Hmmm. That was the side of the exchange that I expected to be supportive, rather than dismissive, of the old Mass. Maybe my expectation was wrong. Maybe it would be the older priest and not the younger who would take that side of the debate.
But no. It turned out there was no debate. I should have known better, since both priests are columnists for the Catholic News Service. I should have seen that it is antecedently unlikely that columnists for CNS actually would be in favor of the old Mass.
The second essay was by Eugene Hemrick. He starts by saying that in antediluvian times--which is to say the 1960s--he celebrated Mass in Latin and actually liked it. He and other priests of the era took a lot of time to learn how to celebrate the Mass correctly. Not only did they have to learn Latin, but they had to learn a complicated set of rubrics: genuflections, bowings, signs of the cross, and just-so positioning of the hands.
The problem nowadays, says Hemrick, is that few priests know Latin or have been trained in the old rubrics. "What concerns me ... is the manner in which the Tridentine Mass will be celebrated. ... What concerns me is a younger generation that is not Latinized enough to make the Tridentine Mass truly reverent and meaningful. Most have not endured the rigors of learning Latin, speaking and studying it. The language and culture of Cicero and the early Church are foreign to them." Hemrick is afraid that priests taking up the old Mass for the first time will end up play-acting, and that's a bad thing.
Yes, it is a bad thing. We wouldn't want priests who simply mouth the words of the canon, with no idea what those words mean. If you set a page of Czech before me, I can read the words aloud, but I won't be able to tell you their proper sense, since I don't know much Czech. We wouldn't want the equivalent at Mass.
And that is what we're likely to get, suggests Hemrick, if we have at the altar priests who have not absorbed "the language and culture of Cicero." Reading between the lines, this means: Better no old Mass than one celebrated by a priest who isn't sufficiently up on his classics.
Once I finished reading the two short essays, I realized that "The Tidings" was accurate in its titling of the exchange: "The Tridentine Mass: The Views of Two Priests."
I mistakenly had read it as "The Tridentine Mass: The Views of Two Priests Who Disagree with One Another." In fact, Daly and Hemrick pretty much agree. The one says it's unlikely that priests will celebrate the old Mass well. The others says that no one will come anyway. The result is about the same, at the level of praxis.
The two essays, then, complement one another, even as they seem, with each passing day, to have less and less connection with what is happening in the field.
OUT ON THE HUSTINGS
The problem with Hemrick's argument is that there is no need for priests to be expert in the classics or even in Latin. I know any number of priests who celebrate the new Mass in Spanish, even though they hardly can get through a Spanish homily (which they laboriously write out beforehand) and cannot at all get through a Spanish conversation. But they celebrate Mass just fine. They know what is going on, what the words of the Mass mean, and even how to pronounce them reasonably well.
If that works for one language, why not for another?
When I was young, the Latin Mass had an Irish lilt to it, so many of the local priests being Irish. No one seemed to mind (Cicero was not sitting in the last pew, doing a critique). I think today's priests, if they are interested in using the old form, will not have any more trouble getting up to speed with Latin than with some foreign language that is used with the new Mass.
My own pastor, for example, has been hitting the books and will attend a course at which priests are instructed not only in proper Latin pronunciation but in proper rubrics. Such courses are being held around the country now, but there is a problem: There are waiting lists. There just isn't enough room to accommodate all the priests, young and not so young, who want to prepare themselves for September 14, the date the motu proprio takes effect.
So, on the one hand, events already seem to be proving Hemrick wrong: There will be plenty of priests who are well enough prepared for celebrating in Latin, even if they would have trouble scoring well on the Advanced Placement Exam in that language.
As for Daly, events will determine whether his prediction is right. Will almost no one attend? That may be the case in some parts of the country, but what about in your part or mine?
When we look at the situation five years from now, we might say that Daly was prescient. We might ... but that's not where I'm placing my bets.
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