for polyphonia: better than the fat of rams

[fpb]

And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

Catholic traditionalists are notoriously vocal creatures, and as such are rather overrepresented among bloggers. To hear some bloggers, there is nothing wrong with the Church that could not be resolved by the abolition of the modern Roman missal and the return to Latin and the Tridentine Mass.

They have a certain amount of justification. The (comparatively) new Roman ritual was brought in in a way that was both aggressive and poorly executed. Ecumenical Councils of the Church are as a rule either preceded or followed, or both, by periods of instability, reckless experimentation, and schism. To people who knew church history, the turmoil that followed the Second Vatican Council would have been neither unexpected nor surprising; but the fact is that it took place in a period in which the intoxication of historicism, the notion that the world was changing in every way and that change was good in itself, was at its height. Even among educated clergymen, who should have understood something of church history, the mania for change had taken hold. And so the new ritual was introduced in the sixties in a sudden, bewildering way, accompanied with a virtually complete prohibition of the previous form of Mass which seemed to tell the faithful that the way in which they and their fathers had prayed and received the Eucharist was illegitimate and inferior. It was taken as obligatory to translate the Mass in the vernacular (although the Council had ordered the exact opposite) and the translations were frequently inadequate. The English version was particularly bad. And since then, even though successive Popes have tried to encourage the use of the old rite, a great many Bishops have as good as forbidden it in their dioceses.

In truth, though, the issue has been blown far beyond its real value. It is not only the case that it has attracted all the victims of that particular pathology, the dreamers of golden ages that never existed - people who are unfortunately drawn to the Catholic Church in any case, because of its enormous and resonant antiquity; worse, it has become the focus of a peculiarly subversive rhetoric whose worst excesses are easily comparable to those of the late unlamented Marcel Lefebvre. Natural malcontents identify the crazed abuse of the ritual carried out - especially in the Americas - by foolish ecclesiastics, with the ritual itself; while it should be clear that those who cut and paste the Mass according to their whim, introduce "liturgical dancers", ordinary bread instead of unleavened hosts, and so on and so forth, are acting not according to the new ritual, but against it. The truth is that these people would never be satisfied anywhere; I debated them online, and I think I can say that their problem has no solution. And certainly not that of changing the Liturgy. They would soon be as discontented with the Tridentine Rite as they are with the current one.

It goes without saying that such people reinforce the very resistance they want to break down. They are, in effect, the mirror image of the very modernist zealots who, entrenched in the diocesan bureaucracy, make it difficult or impossible to celebrate one Tridentine Mass anywhere. And the conflict has become, on both sides, unbelievably bitter.

Now, the rumour has spread - don't ask me how or why - that, in the absence of progress at a diocesan level, Pope Benedict is to issue a motu proprio - an edict - ordering the free celebration of the Tridentine Mass in more or less any parish that wishes to do so, in despite of the will of the local Bishop.

This is a strange story on the face of it. The Vatican takes the role of Bishops very seriously; each of them is the successor of the Apostles in his own diocese, and it is only in rare and serious cases that the Vatican interferes even with the worst-managed dioceses. (The Apostles, after all, included Judas.) Such a step can only mean that the Pope is exasperated with mass episcopal resistance to the old ritual; and that he regards the matter as important enough to risk a conflict within the Church.

So there would be reasons to be careful even of the best authenticated rumours. The Vatican is a place of rumours, eighty per cent of which never come true; and this one is unlikelier than many. (Though not than those which Ruth Gledhill of the Times insists on circulating!) However, the bloggers and the Press have all shown all the prudence of a lemming on drugs. For months now, the motu proprio has been confidently predicted within a week or two, and the continuous disappointment has never stopped either the fertility or the confidence of the predictions.

Now if I were the Pope, and if I were meditating such a grave step as an edict depriving the Bishops of their power to decide on a serious matter, I think this attitude would have made me stop and think even further. The disrespect for the modern ritual, which is after all a ritual of celebration of the Mass mandated by the Church of Rome, show a spirit which may be highly contemporary and up-to-date, but is not very Catholic. To be Catholic means basically to accept the teachings of 2000 years, even where you do not necessarily understand their point or even agree with them. And the obsession with the Tridentine Mass shows three ugly features: a focus on the inessential, a tendency to believe historical myths, and a tendency to make all faults into one. For instance, I have lost count of the number of people who, without having any experience of Pope Paul VI's pontificate, treat him as a heretic for imposing the change - forgetting the heroic struggle fought by that unhappy man, almost alone, against the world, the flesh and the Devil, in the matter of sexual ethics and abortion, from Humanae Vitae (1968) to the day of his death. When one considers the desolate solitude in which his defence of Church teachings placed him, and the incredible degree of hatred and vilification to which he was exposed, I very much doubt whether a single one of our heroic traditionalists would have the guts and endurance to stand it. As for failing to distinguish between different faults, Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles is by far the worst offender in liturgical matters; so a certain kind of people are astonished when he fearlessly preaches against abortion. Because of course, if you promote bad liturgy, you must also be a coward in other matters, right? Wrong. And just as a man may be a rotten liturgist but still loyal to the truth in other matters, so, conversely, even if every last liturgical abuse were suppressed, faults without number would still be present in the Church. As for focussing on the inessential, some people speak as though the poverty of the new Mass' English translation did anything to negate its sacredness. But the Lord never said: take and have an impressive aesthetic experience; He said, take, eat, this is My Body. Tell me, what is so hard to understand about "Take, eat; this is My Body" and "Take, drink: This is My Blood" - the words of Consecration throughout the world?

Don't get me wrong. I would love to see the Tridentine rite back. Indeed, I love to see a variety of rites throughout the Church, and I would like to see even more - such as an Anglican Rite preserving as much of the beautiful langauge of the Book of Common Prayer as can be used without heresy. I think it is wonderful that, as a Catholic, you can go to a Byzantine parish and see the famous ritual of St.John Chrisostomos; or to a Syrian parish; and that in all of these a valid offering is given. But the modern Mass, for all its faults, is a true Mass, mandated by the authority to which we Catholics must, in matters of faith and morality, defer. The story says that King Saul thought he had good reason for ignoring the order of the Lord; and, what is more, he was a King, crowned by God Himself - which is more than we can say for any of us. And yet, Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.

Comments

[mercyorbemoaned.livejournal.com]

Excesses like consecration by puppet and male liturgical belly dance are aesthetic nightmares, but that's not the point. The only reason early 20th century holy cards don't make us nauseous is they're better than what we have now. The idea that this is somehow about aesthetics is all over the Catholic blogosphere, which is a good indication of how convert-heavy that blogosphere is. The two hundred years previous to Vatican II produced just as many aesthetic horrorshows as we've had since. The difference is that a saccarhine print of the Mother of God or our Lord, or a grotesque Spanish statue of a dolllike saint covered in gore, or a simpering child's prayerbook, while very very far from providing uplifting aesthetic experiences are still reverent. Not being a convert and being the product of American immigrant Catholicism I have seen plenty cheesy and lame sacramentals, but they are reverent. Their cheesiness and lameness are the result of poverty and poor education. The people who produced them were doing their best. That is NOT the truth of the American Church today and anyone who says that it is is lying to themselves. You are not giving your best to the Church when you dress the choir in polyester because you know no one can be bothered to iron. Felt banners? Not your best. I don't even want to start with the music. IT'S INCREDIBLY IRREVERENT.

[guarani]

I've seen different kinds of abuse in the liturgy... from strange add ons to outrageous doctrinal misinformation/misinterpretation. I think that one of the problems here is that rites have been stripped from their sacred meaning to the point of becoming meaningless, and there's no reason to go on with a meaningless ritual. Thus, the message that the ceremony was intended to pass on is lost.

The main issue here in Paraguay, however, is that people don't really know anything about doctrine and are not interested in changing this situation.

[filialucis]

"...a spirit which may be highly contemporary and up-to-date, but is not very Catholic."

Indeed. I'm sure they would be incensed to hear it said of them, but in many ways the loudest voices clamouring online for the return of the Tridentine rite are themselves the victims of the same "it's all about me, me, me" syndrome they disparage so much in the "progressive" end of the spectrum (by which they generally seem to mean the NO crowd in general), only in reverse. I hate the post-Conciliar Mass, therefore I will make a whining disgruntled nuisance of myself as loudly as possible.

I think your assessment is absolutely correct that these people would be just as discontented if they had unlimited access to the Tridentine Mass; likely their focus would simply shift from angsting about wanting it but not being able to get it to having it and being passive-aggressively insecure about why so few other people want it. I mean, I can't see it generating much mass appeal, if you'll pardon a truly atrocious pun, any time soon; most of the people I know in these parts, no matter how devout they are, just don't want the Latin back because they have no Latin themselves, and just lifting the restriction isn't going to change that.

(Of course, even the vast majority of priests may not have enough Latin these days to make a larger-scale return of the Tridentine rite feasible, and frankly even the FSSP seems to be no exception. Last year I attended an FSSP Mass here in the diocesan capital and was dismayed by the way the priest oscillated between the ecclesiastical and the German pronunciation of Latin several times just within the Nicene creed. I don't want to do him an injustice, but it sounded for all the world as though he'd never paid enough attention to the Latin words to realise how inconsistently he was pronouncing them. And surely, if it's so important to say the words of the liturgy in Latin, it's important enough to say them right?)

"And since then, even though successive Popes have tried to encourage the use of the old rite, a great many Bishops have as good as forbidden it in their dioceses."

Now this is one of the many things I don't understand. How do bishops get away with doing something against the wishes of the Pope? This sounds as though the Church hierarchy were a democracy and decrees from the Vatican carried no greater force than mere recommendations. Why don't (or can't) the Popes tell the bishops what to do, and why don't (or needn't) the bishops do as they're jolly well told?

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

Well, not being Catholic myself, but Protestant, the specifics of what you've outlined here don't have quite as much of an impact for me as I'm sure they do for you. I do, however, sympathize with and understand your dislike of churchgoer's obsession with the superficial and aesthetic elements of a service. There is a similar, equally annoying phenomenon among American Protestants: To discriminate or think low of a church depending on whether they have short services or long, on whether the worship music is traditional organ-music and hymns or a contemporary acoustic or even rock band, on whether to use instruments at all during worship, on whether the pastor should preach topically or expositorally, and many other details which only affect the aesthetic of the experience. But those aesthetic details are often used by people to determine which church they will attend, as if participation in the Body of Christ were like a salad bar, with us able to pick and choose what we like best.

[goreism.livejournal.com]

Hear, hear!

I completely agree that a multiplicity of rites would be a good thing; as you, being a historian, doubtless know far better than I do, liturgical uniformity (as far as it goes) is a fairly modern phenomenon. Also, I think it was Herbert McCabe who noted that the new mass is boring, and that is a good thing. It's like a well-furnished room, in that its beauty lies in the fact that one misses its absence rather than appreciating its presence.

[cheyinka]

It's bitter enough that people either in the "new is always best!" group or the "old is awesome!" group are getting repeatedly banned even from places you'd think would be supportive (on either side). I think a lot of the problems, though, come from people who weren't old enough to have seen the old Mass both in its good and bad aspects - I'd be very surprised if most of the multi-ban folks were more than five years older than I am, and I was born in 1983.

If the moto proprio happens, the wider access to the old Mass will hopefully make the new more reverent, and the new Mass will hopefully keep the old from stagnating. It'll also reveal which of those in favor of it being everywhere now already actually did care about the Mass, and which were using it as a convenient stick with which to beat those who disagreed.

Also, the ghastly (yes, it's pretty bad) hymn that runs "We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord" is one of my favorites, from hearing it at grade school Masses so often. And my favorite church ever was built in the 1990s.