ITE, MISSA INLICITA EST?

Pope Francis’s recently-published limitations on the use of the Tridentine (Latin) liturgy for the Mass appear to have occasioned exactly the reactions he was doubtless expecting and may have hoped for: joy among the modernists, outrage among the “tradis”. It is useful to remember that he has not cancelled the Latin Mass, or Benedict XVI’s decree permitting its use. He has merely subjected its use in any parish or community to the authority of the local bishop. 

            Apparently, Francis decided on this measure out of alarm at what he saw as being an incipient schismatic cleavage in the Church, especially in America where the increasing political polarization of society is now seen as augmenting the existing divisions within the Catholic community – to the point where liturgy was being weaponized in the struggle about other things such as abortion, the role of women in the Church, gay marriage and so forth. What he either did not realise or weighed but found worth while is that he hemself, with this decree, is doing exactly the same thing, and thus in a sense already conceding a victory to his adversaries. 

            Exceedingly interesting in this regard is the 2018-9 study of Fr Donald Kloster, a Connecticut priest from the Diocese of Bridgeport who specialises in the study of the traditionalist movement, and who found that 99% of the those favouring the Tridentine Mass attended every week, whole of those favouring the modern Mass only 22% did so. Moreover, he found that the Tridentine Mass was particularly favoured by the 18-39-year-olds – which contradicts precisely the arguments of those who think that vernacular, familiar, happy-clappy liturgies will appeal to the young. Of the reasons given by the Millennials and Gen Z lovers of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) by far the most important (35%) was “reverence”.

            One of the rules of life that were dinned into me at an early age was “It’s rude to say ‘I told you so’”. Yet it is very tempting in this case to utter those words. I have been trying to tell people for decades that the continual modernizing and de-solemnizing of the liturgy, so far from counteracting the emptying of churches, encourages and increases it. Certainly, some people prefer a jolly, informal, cheerful Mass or Eucharist; but at least as many, if not more, people of faith love and long for a sense of reverence, or solemnity, of significant form. And this is every bit as true for Anglicans/Episcopalians as it is for Roman Catholics. 

            What seems to me of crucial importance is that, first, we should abandon the terminology of “modernists” vs. “traditionalists” when referring to liturgy and replace it with something like “informalists” vs. “formalists” or “proponents of togetherness” vs “proponents of reverence/solemnity”. Second, and even more important: all sides should be brought to agree to divorce discussions of liturgy from discussions of other aspects of religion in society. It is perfectly possible to love solemnity and reverence and tradition in a celebration of the Eucharist while accepting that such a celebration may be performed by a female priest or a gay priest, either or both of them married, and believing that abortion, while always sad and often traumatic, is permissible and not a sin. 

            Finally, a word to Anglicans and Episcopalians. While we do not use the ancient Latin liturgy, we have an equivalent. Like the Latin texts, the sixteenth/seventeenth-century words of the Book of Common Prayer (1662) are in a language that, while comprehensible, is distant from everyday modern usage and was specifically designed to convey the reverence of the older Latin. Moreover, even more than Latin, this liturgical language has shaped English usage for over three centuries: “to have and to hold”, “till death us depart”, “we are as the beasts that perish”, “devices and desires”, “peace in our time”, “sudden death”, “the kindly fruits of the earth”, “our bounden duty and service” – centuries of worshippers have repeated and loved these words so that they have acquired the patina and glow of handed-down family treasures. And thus and so, they allow us to combine reverence and solemnity with familiarity in a way that destroys and cancels neither.

            

 

SEX, TERSE, AND NONES

The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof published a column on Sept. 4 titled "What Religion Would Jesus Belong To?" After noting that great religions often migrate far from the idea(l)s of their founders, and pointing out the staggering religious illiteracy among Americans who call themselves Christians, the column unsurprisingly moved to defending action above doctrine.

And in the age of Pope Francis -- who nevertheless, at the beginning of his pontificate, stressed that the Church's mission is not to become a religiously-tinted NGO -- this seems to be the way even the Catholic Church is tending. The Anglican church, of course, has been churning steadily in this direction for decades. Meanwhile, not only is church attendance falling but, as Kristof notes, the percentage of "nones", those who when asked their religion answer "none", is growing by leaps and bounds. In the very religious USA, it is now at 25% and among millennials at one-third; in Once-Catholic France it is not far from 50%.

Some clergy insist that this is not a problem. What is falling away, they say, is merely the churchgoing, and the adherence, out of habit; what is left is the core of true believers, real disciples, who are the essence of the church (and who, some though not many still claim, will some day change and convince the world by their faith and action). Others do see it as a crisis but persist in believing that the solution lies in "reaching out" ever more to the young and the unbelievers by "updating" the church, its doctrines and practices, and putting it "in tune" with contemporary life. Their explanation for the emptying of pews and the growth of the "nones" is that the church is old-fashioned, bourgeois, stick-in-the-mud, reactionary and unable to cope with the issues that really concern thinking people in our time.

As an Anglo-Catholic living in ever-more-aggressively-secularist France among Vatican-II-raised Roman Catholics, I have ample time, occasion and reason to ponder these issues. And over the years (because I am now numbered definitively among the Elderly if not the Elders) I have come to a few conclusions which contradict both the positions described above.

To the "thank goodness we are now left just with the core of true disciples" clergy I say the following: if bad habits can eventually ruin us, as we all know, why may good habits not eventually save us? I am convinced that those who went habitually to church every Sunday morning, slept through mediocre sermons delivered without microphones, were rarely offered, and rarely took, Communion, but knew the texts of Matins, Evensong and a number of Psalms by heart, were extremely fortunate. Because when a crisis struck their mind, body or estate, they were surrounded and held up, if not by a small group of active well-wishers, certainly by a deeply-integrated body of words and doctrine become habit, by a parish that still observed feasts and fasts, and suprisingly often by a good and compassionate vicar or Rector. What, now, in like situations sustains the 3/4 of  their children become Nones? The 1/4 who have become True Disciples have prayer, fasting, and helping Syrian refugees to sustain them, as well as the knowledge that their church approves; but the others are foolish virgins at best, no oil in their lamps, no wedding-garment on a Monday. Who, moreover, are made to feel that the church doesn't really want them, not as they are anyway. In any case, the new/alternative/common-worship services they might go to are all geared to touch them to the heart and call them to action in everyday language, not recognising the fact that they might prefer to be left in peace in their pews with the comfort of age-old glorious English and their own quietly but urgently recited prayers.

Which leads me to the second class of clerical opinion: that the church must be in tune with the times, holding (as the current Archbishop of Canterbury put it) "the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other". Each church service must be attuned to the casual None passer-by, to draw her in with instantly-comprehensible language and gestures, with clearly-expressed involvement in current public issues, with catchy music, and with well-organised child-care. In the first place, this ignores the fact that a congregation, a parish, is a group of baptised and confirmed adults (with their families, if any) that meets as a body to meet its Maker and Saviour, and that its "family" meetings are not necessarily Mission services. No family organises its every family birthday, Christmas or Sunday dinner in view of the first casual passer-by. Secondly, this view ignores, and so by implication contemns, those whose ecclesiastical needs are expressed in a mood of collective reverence and awe that best incarnates itself in great ancient music and texts, in visual beauty and in much stillness. At best such people, in the Anglican Church, are given the sop of a spare and minimal 8 a.m. BCP service; in the RC church they are mostly given nothing at all.

Beer comes to mind. Many years ago Carlsberg, with Tuborg a fine Danish lager much prized by connoisseurs, proudly announced to Canadian beer-lovers that it would henceforth be brewed under licence in Canada and thus be much more, and more cheaply, available. We then found that Canadian-brewed Carlsberg had a quite different taste and had become simply another Canadian beer, like Molson's. When I mentioned this to a brewery executive, he smiled and said: "The original Carlsberg had maybe 25,000 customers in Canada. The new Carlsberg has a million and a half. Why should they care about the original 25,000?" Why should the modern Church care about what they think is the minority to whom faith is expressed in awe and reverence and ancient beauty?

Except that there is no million of new customers, and the Nones flourish. So my conclusion is this: is the thought not at least envisageable to those in charge of Church doctrine, education and worship that the Church has been driving away as many people as, if not more people than, it attracts? I personally know a number of Roman Catholics who have been alienated from their Church, and consequently from their faith, by an unfortunate remark by a trusted priest. I also know a number of both Roman and Anglican Catholics who no longer feel at home in modern liturgies and resent being pushed into early-morning corners. And I know several of both kinds who need their faith, and who need their church, without necessarily wanting to be lectured to, at every turn, on the absolute cost of, yet the imperative need for, True Discipleship.

Christ had twelve disciples. But He touched and healed many -- dozens, hundreds, thousands. What happened to them? They saw and treated, I'm sure, their troublesome neighbour a different way. They prayed with more thanksgiving when they woke up and went to bed. It was perhaps for them that St Bernard wrote, "Whoever loves God even a little, and loves his neighbour even a little, is united to God." It seems a shame to let them drift off into Nonehood.

Finally, the answer to doctrinal illiteracy is not, surely, to ignore it as long as there is enough admirable social action. Christ spent much of His time teaching. He taught in synagogues, He taught on beaches, He taught on the slopes of green hills. He taught over lunch with tax-collectors and over dinner with Pharisees. Should the Church now renounce its teaching function because doctrine is difficult and sometimes breeds discomfort? No, an epistle is not a female apostle. No, Joan of Arc was not Adam's wife. Yes, the Eucharist is a stupendous mystery but not therefore impossible to comprehend. Not all teaching is or should be about sex. If there have been different theologies of the Holy Spirit, that does not mean it's better not to bother with Him at all. And as for Good Works, let us remember the title, as well as the content, of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical: Caritas in Veritate -- Charity, in Truth.

ANTI-GRAVITY?

"SOLEMN" (Oxford English Dictionary)

1.   a.  Associated or connected with religious rites or observances; performed with      due ceremony and reverence; having a religious character; sacred.

The seruice daylie doon..so deuoute, solempne, and full of Armonye. (Thos. Cromwell)

3.   a. Performed with, accompanied by, due formality or ceremony; of a formal or ceremonious character.

Watching the glorious Kristin Scott Thomas perform Sophocles’ ‘Electra’ recently, I was reminded of the Catholic Mass as practiced in the village churches in my area in rural France. The theatre performance was filled with passion, vast floods of it; there were occasional flashes of humour, but the semiotic of the whole production was “(Greek) Tragedy is Passion” – rip-roaring, throat-tearing, rolling-on-the-ground passion.  The Mass – the modern, post-Vatican-II Mass as presided over by our hyperactive, charming, big-hearted Algerian priest – has, obviously, a different kind of passion, but that is not its main characteristic. Its main feature is upbeat intimacy: the semiotic here is “the Mass is a family get-together – God’s family”. There are flashes of humour, and the moment of the Peace, where the liturgy is interrupted while everyone shakes hands with or kisses neighbours, here is not nearly as invasive an interruption as in some more formal Masses: it preserves the mood that has been there all along.

            Well, so what? In Electra, we are caught up in an uncontrollable hatred and grief; in the village Mass, we are absorbed into a good-humoured communal celebration. And yet, and yet. In both manifestations, something huge and important is missing, and it is the same thing: solemnity. Greek tragedies were solemn occasions, not religious services but performed and beheld with reverence and gravity. The performers wore masks. The ending comprised katharsis, a cleansing, a purification of the emotions of pity and terror that the story had called forth.

            The Mass is a religious service. It is the supreme moment of meeting between man and God, between Man and God-made-Man, between an ordinary person and the Resurrected Christ. Few people have said this better that John Henry Newman, the Anglican who became a Roman Catholic – and what he wrote is equally true for Anglo-Catholics:

To me nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, said as it is among us. I could attend Masses forever, and not be tired. It is not a mere form of words -- it is a great action, the greatest action that can be on earth. It is not the invocation merely, but, if I dare use the word, the evocation of the Eternal. Here becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble. This is that awful event which is the scope, and the interpretation, of every part of the solemnity.

Words are necessary, but as means, not as ends; they are not mere addresses to the throne of grace, they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on, as if impatient to fulfill their mission. Quickly they go, the whole is quick, for they are all parts of one integral action, for they are awful words of sacrifice, they are a work too great to delay upon, as when it was said in the beginning, "What thou doest, do quickly".

Quickly they pass, for the Lord Jesus goes with them, as He passed along the lake in the days of His flesh, quickly calling first one and then another. Quickly they pass, because as the lightning which shineth from one part of the heaven into the other, so is the coming of the Son of Man. Quickly they pass, for they are as the words of Moses, when the Lord came down in the cloud, calling on the name of the Lord as He passed by, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth". And as Moses on the mountain, so we too "make haste to bow our heads to the earth, and adore".

So we, all around, each in his place, look out for the great Advent, "waiting for the moving of the water", each in his place, with his own heart, with his own wants, with his own thoughts, with his own intentions, with his own prayers, separate but concordant, watching what is going on, watching its progress, uniting in its consummation; not painfully and hopelessly, following a hard form of prayer from beginning to end, but, like a concert of musical instruments, each different, but concurring in a sweet harmony, we take our place with God's priest, supporting him, yet guided by him.

There are little children there, and old men, and simple laborers, and students in seminaries, priests preparing for Mass, priests making their thanksgiving, there are innocent maidens, and there are penitent sinners; but out of these many minds rises one Eucharistic hymn, and the great Action is the measure and the scope of it.

What Newman wrote still supposes a congregation, a community; but it is a congregation united in a joy that is solemn, in a solemn hour of celebration. “Here becomes present on the altar in flesh and blood, before whom angels bow and devils tremble.” I have seldom if ever attended a post-Vatican-II Mass, or indeed an Anglican Common Worship Eucharist, where this sense was expressed. Solemnity is not boring, nor is it old-fashioned: it is gravitas, the expression of the respect and awe due to what is greater than our sloppy humanity. An expression that picks up and involves our sloppy human selves and catches us up, for all too short a moment, into the portals of eternity. Please, can we have our solemnity back?