Pope Benedict XVI: A Father of Reconciliation

Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI, a voice of reconciliation.

I presently have about four posts half-written; so forgive me if I begin another and for a moment indulge my inner fanboy and let loose a cheer for our pope.

As I’ve been writing, there has been a longstanding conflict between Traditionalist Catholics and the Mother Church over the reforms of Vatican II, with the Traditionalist Society of St. Pius X having been out of communion with Rome since 1988. Pope Benedict has been in close, but tense, talks with the SSPX since the beginning of his pontificate. In 2009 he lifted the excommunications of the surviving SSPX bishops. Now, it is rumored and widely believed that reconciliation between the SSPX and the Vatican is at hand.

I think Pope Benedict is brilliant. As much as Pope John Paul II was a voice of reconciliation and healing through love and comfort and welcome — through sheer goodness — Pope Benedict XVI is a voice of reconciliation, healing, and reconstruction through intellect, reasoning, and enlightened leadership. Since the beginning of his papacy, he has sought to return a sharp edge to Catholic doctrine and theology — not the bloody axe many expected from him as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — the formal successor to the Inquisition — but the finely honed, elegant sword of precise argument that has made the Catholic Church historically great. He has sought to clarify the points of doctrinal contention stemming from Vatican II, to re-declare the truth of Catholic orthodoxy, and to trumpet the continuity of our tradition rather than the rupture some, like the SSPX, have seen.

David G. Bonagura, Jr. gives a splendid analysis of the SSPX reconciliation in this column: what it means and what it doesn’t mean. As I have been witnessing, Pope Benedict is not rolling back Vatican II, but through everything he does, affirming the continuity of the Council Fathers with Tradition. What the pope is rejecting is the “spirit of Vatican II” through which modernists and liberals have tried to break with the Church’s foundations. Rather than “attacking nuns,” as many in the liberal American media have portrayed the Vatican’s investigation of the LCWR, Benedict is reaching out to both the SSPX, drifting to the right, and the LCWR, drifting to the left, in an aim to restore both to full communion. The restored SSPX, so ardent in promoting the traditions of the Church, will only add to the movement within the Church that is already gaining momentum: the revitalization and reinvigoration of liturgy and tradition and evangelization.

So much in this piece makes me want to cheer, or passionately underline with my blue pen. But this part sums up my joy:

. . . The reconciliation speaks volumes about the nature of Benedict’s pontificate and the character of Benedict the man. . . . Benedict, despite the many contrary voices in the Curia, is personally making reconciliation a reality, at his speed and on his terms.

We have already seen the beginnings of reconciliation with Protestant sects under this pope, and an ever-growing wave in the past quarter-century of individual Protestants returning home to Rome. It is my daily prayer that under Pope Benedict’s leadership, we will see this tide of reconciliation mount higher and higher, toward the reunification of all Christians.

Traditional Latin Mass

Latin Mass

Tridentine Mass in a chapel of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, Boston. (Wikipedia)

Last Sunday I attended my first traditional Latin Mass, at a local parish in Alabama while I was home visiting my parents. I had been meaning to check it out for a while. It was considerably different than what I’ve been used to; though I could still observe the basic form of the Mass. I wanted to briefly share my thoughts and observations.

What is commonly referred to as the “traditional” Latin Mass is also known as the Tridentine Mass (Tridentine from Tridentinus, belonging to the city of Tridentum — or Trent) — the Mass that was in use from the Council of Trent (1545–1563) until the revision of the Mass following the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). The Mass liturgy we use today is known as the Mass of Paul VI. There is actually a bit of disagreement about what to call the pre–Vatican II Mass. The Catholics who hosted this Mass I attended were Traditionalists, and so referred to it as the “Traditional Latin Mass.”

But “Traditional Latin Mass” is something of a misnomer, I discovered. The liturgy was traditional, certainly; but the form that was presented was essentially 1962 frozen in time. I was kind of expecting something more ancient — traditional music and chant forms, in particular — but the music felt like the 1950s. It was pretty, don’t get me wrong; but it wasn’t “traditional.” My parish, especially before the recent Mass revisions, was much more traditional in its music.

Mantilla

Something like this.

It was immediately apparent, as soon as I entered the church, that these people were Traditionalists. All of the women wore headcoverings, mostly in the form of lace mantillas. This was kind of neat; though besides it being in the Bible (1 Corinthians 11), I don’t understand the reasons for doing it. (Is that the only reason? They argue that the requirement of headcoverings is still binding today.) If the idea of headcoverings is modesty, I must confess, like many modest fashions, I found it rather alluring, wondering what the ladies’ hair and faces looked like underneath their headcoverings.

Another thing I noticed is that the church was packed. It wasn’t a very large church, but the pews were mostly full. A man was leading the Rosary. At my church, we also pray the Rosary about thirty minutes before Mass, but there are usually only a handful of people there then. Here, everyone was praying. It was rather moving.

But here I noticed another aspect of Traditionalism: at every iteration of the Glory Be, the orator invoked the “Holy Ghost,” rather than the “Holy Spirit” as I’m used to. Throughout the entire meeting, the name “Holy Ghost” was consistently used in English (in the priest’s homily, too — this was Pentecost, so he talked about the “Holy Ghost” quite a lot). This seems to me a rather pointless traditionalism just for the sake of traditionalism. Why insist on the Germanic “ghost” rather than the Latinate “spirit” — when the Latin of the Mass, which this gathering was supposed to preserve, refers to the Spiritus Sanctus?

A couple of other aspects of the priest’s homily grated on me. He referred several times to Pentecost as the birth of the Catholic Church, and to the Holy Spirit as a gift to Catholicism; he never once used the word “Christian.” His words seemed chosen specifically to separate and exclude all others but Catholics from the celebration of the Holy Spirit — and, I suspect, he would have privileged Traditionalists if he’d had the chance.

On to the Mass itself: I picked up a little booklet that contained the Latin liturgy and an English translation on the opposite page. Now, my Latin is fairly good, though pretty rusty. But the priest celebrated the Mass ad orientem, and spoke his Latin very fluidly and not distinctly. I was almost immediately lost, and struggled to keep up in the book throughout the liturgy. I wasn’t in a very good position to see what he was doing, either, since he was facing away and I wasn’t very close, so I didn’t have any visual cues. It was very much like experiencing a liturgy in an unknown foreign language. I suppose that those who attend Latin Mass every week probably have a much easier time following and understanding — looking around, none of the regulars had the little liturgy books — but I didn’t feel that I had taken much of a part.

But that’s just it — no one really did. It was true what I had heard — that before Vatican II, the congregation didn’t really have much to do or say; that they mainly just watched the priest. The liturgical reforms of Vatican II restored many of prayers and responses of the faithful that had fallen into disuse and been transferred to the priest over the centuries; in this Mass, he said nearly all of them. The main response the people consistently had was to answer “Et cum spiritu tuo” (“And with your spirit”) to the priest’s “Pax vobiscum” (“Peace be with you”). At several other places — the Pater Noster, the Credo — the choir sang, and the faithful could sing along if they liked, but not many people did.

I also didn’t get the feeling that even the priest was speaking the Latin with a grasp or appreciation for its sense and meaning. The words were rote, for both the priest and the people. They may have known what they meant, but they didn’t act like it. A prime example that stood out to me: When the priest spoke, “Oremus” (“Let us pray”), he didn’t actually pause for anybody to pray. He did this consistently throughout the liturgy.

In the second part of the Mass, the Mass of the Faithful (so called because the non-baptized were once excluded from it; in some places they still are) — what’s known in today’s Mass as the Liturgy of the Eucharist — the priest more or less conducted the liturgy privately. His prayers were low and inaudible (at least from where I was sitting), and the sense was that he was praying for the consecration of the Host in his own intimate communion with God. The faithful weren’t a part of this.

And that, I think, is what bothered me the most. The participation of the faithful throughout the Mass — and most especially at that intimate moment of consecration — is one of the most important aspects of the Mass to me. It’s at that moment that I feel the most connected, the most in communion, with the Church and with her members and with all believers over the ages. I respect the mystery of the liturgy; I know that in the medieval church, the rood screen separated the people in the nave from the priest in the sanctuary, and that Orthodox churches have an even more solid separation in the iconostatis — but I feel, as the Vatican II Council Fathers felt, that the people should not be excluded from the liturgy. The liturgy is the work of the people; we are the people of Christ. I go to Mass to be a participant, to practice my worship actively; not to be a spectator.

One thing I liked, and this is minor, and not exclusive to a Traditionalist Mass: in receiving Communion, we went to kneel at the altar rail, and the priest walked by to communicate us. It was much more solemn and humble than our usual habit of lining up, efficient though it may be.

Missale Romanum

Overall, my experience at the “Traditionalist” Latin Mass was one of intriguing cultural reconnaissance, and a peek into the past, though it was the not-too-distant past: the way a Catholic would have experienced Mass in 1962. I decidedly prefer today’s Mass, especially since the recent revision. The Tridentine Mass is beautiful, and its tradition is valuable — but tradition shouldn’t stand in the way of the faithful approaching God. I think, in some basic respects, the Mass of Paul VI is more conducive to our corporate worship.

I don’t understand the Traditionalists’ objections; I admittedly haven’t read much about that. But I get the feeling that they object to change just because it is change. I do think the intentions of the Vatican II Council Fathers were good, that the reforms were needed, and that the letter of their voices in the documents is true and faithful to the tradition of the Church. The Church today is making steady progress to undo the abuses and mistakes that were wrought by modernists “in the spirit of Vatican II.”

On the Place of Latin in Our Liturgy

I value the Latin of the liturgy a lot. Contrary to popular conceptions, Vatican II didn’t eliminate Latin as the language of the Mass. Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, firmly states (36),

Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites. But since the use of the [vernacular] tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. . . . These norms being observed, it is for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority . . . to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular language is to be used . . .

“In the spirit of Vatican II,” modernists have run a lot further with this than they should have. The use of the vernacular language is certainly advantageous to the people. The faithful need to understand and take part in our worship and devotion. But the Latin of the Mass is our glory and our heritage, and it should be preserved and celebrated. Again, Sacrosanctum Concilium (54):

In Masses which are celebrated with the people, a suitable place may be allotted to their [vernacular] tongue. . . . Nevertheless steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.

When I first started attending Mass in my parish, this is what we did. We sang in Latin, in traditional chant forms, much of the Ordinary of the Mass: the Kyrie (in Greek), the Sanctus, and the Agnus Dei. And the people loved it and embraced it; it was never an impediment but an ornament to our worship. Now, since the new Mass settings ordered by our bishop, we only have the Agnus Dei in Latin. (We also still sing the Salve Regina and the other seasonal Marian antiphons in Latin.) But I would love so much to reincorporate more Latin.

What I would really like to experience, in fact — and I don’t know of anybody around here who does this — is the whole of the ordinary form of the Mass celebrated in its underlying Latin.

Advent, and the New English Translation of the Missal

AdventToday is the beginning of Advent, the liturgical season of expectation and preparation for the Nativity of Christ on Christmas. I’ve never celebrated Advent before, that I recall. (I remember the celebration of Advent from the year or two we attended the United Methodist church when I was a child. We had an Advent wreath at home. But I don’t remember any personal participation or devotion to it.) So this will be a new experience for me, discovering the prayers and the mindset and heartset of the expectation of Christ, as I continue to be molded to Christ and to the life of the Church.

The church distributed our Little Blue Advent Books a couple of weeks ago at RCIA. I’m looking forward to its devotional guidance. Last year I followed the Little Books for Lent and Easter, and grew more as a Christian during those seasons than I think I ever have before. It was during that time that God confirmed that my path was leading into the Church.

Advent also marks the beginning of the liturgical year, and so accordingly, we moved as a whole church body into the long-heralded new English translation of the Roman Missal. We’ve been transitioning slowly for some time. As a diocese, we adopted new musical settings of the propers of the Mass in September; since October, Father Joe has been gradually introducing more and more of the new translation into our weekday daily Masses. This morning was the first time the whole church used the new translation in its entirety; it was the first time I had used the new Confiteor and Credo. By and large, it went off without a hitch. I heard some people who, all through the Mass, kept slipping up and giving the responses they knew by heart (admittedly, I slipped up right along with them). For many, these words were what they’d known all their lives.

Missale RomanumThe more I’ve gotten used to it, the more I like and prefer the new translation; the more I read about its rationale, the more I value it. As a Latinist and traditionalist, I certainly value a return to closer adherence with the Latin Mass in all its catholicity.  That is, I’m a little-t traditionalist, meaning someone who is faithful to Church tradition, as opposed to a big-T Traditionalist, meaning someone who perceives rupture in the Church since Vatican II and demands reversion. Speaking of Traditionalists: I wonder how they are taking this? This new translation, as I understand it, is in fact a reversion, a turning back of many of the mistaken and misguided departures the English translation of the Mass made from the Latin. It strives to be a return to unity and catholicity, doctrinally and liturgically, with the rest of the Catholic world.

Will any of the Traditionalists be appeased? Will any of the schismatic ones return to communion with the Church? It’s times like these I wish I wasn’t so overwhelmed by the blogosphere, and was more in touch with prominent bloggers of different liturgical positions. (For that matter, I wish I wasn’t so overwhelmed by different positions. Right now, I’m still trying to bring myself to orthodoxy with the Church.) I tend to think that some who found issue with the substantial departures in the previous English translation from the Latin might find the new translation more acceptable. As much as I love Latin and value it in the Church and in the Mass, those Traditionalists who cling unyieldingly to the Latin Mass itself, rejecting any liturgical use of the vernacular at all, seem about as unreasonable to me as the Protestant King James Only adherents. I suppose there were other changes between the Tridentine Mass (the traditional Latin Mass) and the Mass of Paul VI (introduced in 1969) to which some Traditionalists object. I haven’t researched this. Can any reader key me in?

A piece I heard on NPR the other day about this was food for thought. I thought it did a good job of presenting both sides without bias. But I must say I was amazed at the ignorance — or is it willful innovation? — of the dissenting positions represented. I quote:

Trautman says sometimes the new translation is not faithful to the Bible. For example, it has Jesus, a poor carpenter, sipping from a precious chalice during the Last Supper.

“Any Greek dictionary will tell you, it’s a drinking cup,” Trautman says, “It’s a vessel. It’s not a chalice.”

Trautman says even Indiana Jones got that one right; the rugged historian selected a rough cup as the Holy Grail.

This is where churchmen should not take their Bible scholarship from Hollywood. Trautman is correct that the original Greek text of the Bible uses the word ποτήριον (potērion) in the accounts of Last Supper, from the Greek verb to drink, cognate with English potable, etc., and meaning literally, according to the LSJ and BDAG, a cup or drinking vessel. But if Trautman wants to take issue with the use of the word chalice in English, he should take it up with St. Jerome, not with anyone today. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate translates ποτήριον, in all four accounts (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and 1 Corinthians), as calix, from which chalice is a direct translation. Calix also translates literally, according to Lewis and Short, as a cup or drinking vessel. It’s only in English, liturgical usage that chalice has come to connote an ornate or luxurious cup; in Latin, it was just a simple cup.

(For what it’s worth, and this is extra: Latin calix derives from a different Greek word, κύλιξ [kulix], which still means a cup, especially a wine cup. So this was certainly a defensible translation choice for St. Jerome. A more direct translation from the Greek would have been poculum, which, similar to ποτήριον, derives from the verb to drink [poto].)

But Trautman’s concerns also go beyond vocabulary to theology. He cites where the new translation says Jesus died “for you and for many.”

“In preaching, we will hear that Jesus died for all people, but at the altar we will hear it Jesus died for many,” he notes. “For whom did he not die?”

Again, I wonder if this guy has ever actually read the Bible (or spoken to a Calvinist). Matthew’s Gospel, at Matthew 26:28, and most modern translations, both Protestant and Catholic, agree, reads “this is my blood of the covenant, which will is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (ESV). The Greek, without dispute, reads περὶ πολλῶν, for many. Christians can debate the theological significance of this, but that’s what the Bible says.

The Rev. Michael Ryan, the pastor of St. James Cathedral in Seattle, has similar reservations. “It seems that the Latin is more important than the theology; that’s a pity,” Ryan says.

This is the part that troubles me. The last time I checked, the Church Fathers, and churchmen of all the ages, including the pope today, have written our theology in Latin. What theology is he concerned about apart from Latin? Is not closer adherence to the Latin also closer adherence to orthodox theology?

“The Second Vatican Council talked about language that would exhibit ‘noble simplicity,’ ” Ryan says. “This is anything but that. No, it’s a total move away from the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.”

Personally, I find a lot of “noble simplicity” in this new English translation. The “noble simplicity” is inherent in the original text, and this translation grasps it even more fully than the previous one. If anything, we had lost that “noble simplicity” before for vagueness and fuzziness. If this is a “total move” away from Vatican II, it’s only from the mistaken “spirit of Vatican II” that some modernists have interpreted.

“We’re dealing with a power play on the part of certain people in Rome who wanted to make changes in order, I think, to bring under greater control people in the English-speaking world.”

If this is designed to bring anyone “back into line,” it’s because some liberals have taken the “spirit of Vatican II” and the flawed, older English translation of the Mass and taken the Church in directions she wasn’t meant to go.