February 2023
They say you can never go back. Especially nowadays, in the age of new normal creepiness. But, sometimes you have to step back to go forward again. In 1982, in Today Magazine’s April issue, Anne Roche penned this beautiful description of the way things used to be and the way they surely will be again, in God’s good time. A reprint of the article was recently discovered in an early 1980s edition of Approaches, long published by the late, great Hamish Fraser. It clearly sowed the seeds for Anne Roche Muggeridge's masterwork, The Desolate City: Revolution in the Catholic Church.
Inclusive, Multiracial Worship
The argument for introducing a new Mass, back in 1970, was that Catholics would absorb it better in their own languages. Reference was made to Vatican II, but that had really decreed “the Latin language is to be preserved”, whilst simply allowing a bishop to extend use of the vernacular as seen fit.
Yet the worldwide versions of Novus Ordo are as novel as its paradoxically Latin title suggests. Existing translations of the Tridentine rite were adulterated, abridged, altered or axed, notably the Last Gospel. The reform encouraged liturgical innovations that ranged from leaving bells and birettas in the sacristy to removing pulpits and altar-rails, not to mention introducing lay readers and ministers of both sexes who, with the priest, faced the congregation. Worst of all, a table replaced the altar of sacrifice.
Even without the overwhelming doctrinal and liturgical case for the rite standardised by St Pius V in 1570, it is a fallacy to suggest that Catholics of this or earlier eras could not follow the Mass because it was in Latin. There are a good eight practical objections, given that worshippers know from the catechism that the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass represents both the Last Supper and Crucifixion.
Setting aside that there was no need to change private Masses anyway, let us start by disposing of the Vatican fathers’ not unreasonable concern that churchgoers should appreciate what was being spoken. The Church had already addressed this long before 1970, because the officiant at Sunday Mass, having just intoned the Epistle and Gospel at the altar, would read it in English or whatever from the pulpit before giving his sermon.
Now, those are not only important readings, since they contain messages about behaviour and passages from Christ’s life; they are simply the two longest of the old rite’s seven variable passages that are recited out loud, as also a dozen minor amendments to the Common Preface for certain seasons or occasions. Besides, the sermon may well cover what is in those readings. For example, on Whit Sunday the power of the “Holy Spirit” is inserted into the preface, words repeated in the Communion and Post Communion prayers.
Four-fifths of the old Mass remains the same in its year of 364 days, bar special occasions like funerals. It is common sense that a teenager will be familiar with the Mass after 52 weeks, and proof is in young altar-servers who recite Latin responses as much on cue as actors.
Then, the most widely spoken group of languages is derived from Latin, and they retain enough similarities for them to show through in a score of words like apostolos, baptisma, gloria, spiritu, tabernacula, virgine… Pater and credo have even gained a meaning as English. All this must help, with key words surely enough calling to mind what was learnt in catechism: the Lord’s Prayer ... the short Apostles’ Creed … the penitent’s Confession.
In any case, the celebrant recites almost half of the Mass under his breath, and those passages are after the Creed when the congregation is meant to heed what he does more than what he says. Indeed, the whole order of Mass is an action — on four parts of the sanctuary. It opens with the first of many visible Signs of the Cross whose last imparts the Final Blessing, which is also one of six times when the priest briefly addresses the people. They assist too by standing, kneeling and genuflecting even if not taking Holy Communion. Nor is Latin needed for crossing oneself or beating one’s breast, because the custom is not commanded. This is active worship, unlike a prayer meeting of some Protestant sect or even the vernacular Rosary, however devout.
In the nature of things, there is also an acoustic factor. As the phrase goes, we hear Mass, but many of the congregation could not distinguish the spoken words in a large church or cathedral thanks to distance from the altar or due to approaching deafness. So the language remains irrelevant. On the other hand, Gregorian plainchant would be audible, while the long lost High Mass with its singing and incense was a godsend for the blind.
Likewise, the liturgy is not a lecture where hearers dare not miss a word, and can even ask a question or request a repeat. Take the 364+ versions of the brief Communion and Post Communion whose imagery and symbolism might not be grasped instantly even in translation. Compare state, legal or parliamentary proclamations that are obscure to outsiders, even though they recognise the occasions.
The strongest evidence that Catholic laity gladly flocked to the ancient Mass is that, for 16 centuries, most were too uneducated for even a translation, let alone the Latin itself. Even nobles had only basic schooling for more than a millennium after the western Church switched from Greek round about AD 215, which is a reminder that ordinary holidaymakers in the Aegean pick up phrases as short as our Kyrie eleison incorporated from the Byzantine era. Likewise, even simple people may put a line of Latin on gravestones or they know the meaning of Latin mottos for their school, college or regiment, not to mention Alleluia and Hosanna, retained in Hebrew by both eastern and western liturgies.
Anyhow, when Rome codified the Tridentine rite, some nine Europeans out of ten were illiterate, and printing had merely encouraged Protestants to read the Bible. Even during the nineteenth century, while industrial societies were obliging education to become universal, only colleges and seminaries taught Latin. Yet again, when the new Mass was imposed in 1970, half of the Catholics in Africa still could not even read, while one South American in five remained illiterate.
What all that means is that any local language has long been irrelevant for one reason or another, especially since texts would have faced continual updating, as witness the glossaries required for Dante, Shakespeare, Molière and Cervantes. On the other hand, widespread literacy encouraged bilingual guides to the Mass more than a century ago, including Missels from Tours, Limoges and Turnhout. Dom Anselm Schott’s Das Messbuch was into its 42nd edition by 1936.
Next came pocket-sized ones, smaller and lighter than today’s smartphones. Burns Oates in London published a Small Missal in 1924, running to fourteen editions by 1947, while a Small Roman Missal also in hardback, came from Widdowson in 1930. Eight years later, the Confraternity of the Precious Blood in Brooklyn produced My Sunday Missal, with all nine variable parts only in English. Similarly in paperback was El Breve Misal, smaller than the Misal Completo of 1943, printed in Spain.
Indeed, were there a true need for Mass in the vernacular, the obvious solution would have been to use the translation already alongside Latin in a comprehensive Messale or Mszł or livro de Messa or Leabhar Aifrinn. Incidentally, Latin had been preferred for converting Ireland despite its being a beacon of civilization during the Dark Ages, so that it became a land of saints as well as scholars, whereas a recent attempt to impose Masses in Gaelic is proving a fiasco. See praytellblog.com.
One way or another, generation after generation of Catholics easily followed the Traditional rite, as proven by the rising figures for parishes, attendance and conversions. Unlettered people followed the action, with youngsters learning from elders. A few did know Latin, and later explained the Mass in schools. And most Catholics could use bilingual Missals long before Vatican II, after which the statistics show universal or accelerated downturns.
Then, the very timing of the Novus Ordo exposes a logistical oversight in Rome’s thinking, if not the calculated ignoring of linguistic realities. The best time for translating would have been in, well, 1570 when Europe was divided into nation-states with static populations, yet spreading four of several mature languages to other continents. The Council of Trent, however, wisely opted to unify what, even in Latin, had developed local variations.
The new Mass arrived just when rapid travel and mass tourism were creating multilingual cities and multiracial societies on top of the obvious fact that many countries, from the Philippines to Paraguay, not to mention several African lands, were already bilingual or more. Work out how many baptised were among World Tourism Organization’s 165 million arrivals, businessmen included, in 1970 — a figure since increased tenfold. In many places or on many occasions, there simply is no “mother-tongue” as Vatican II called it. That includes Rome, Lourdes and Fatima where I have watched a succession of layfolk, stepping up to say a bidding prayer in their native languages. Moreover, priests continue to be posted to foreign countries, either as missionaries or auxiliaries.
Logically, this babel invalidates Traditionis Custodes that claims "to promote the concord and unity of the Church" by suppressing the Mass of centuries in favour of different versions, including English updated in 2011 and French in 2017. Being universal in time and space, the old Mass in Latin inclusively bonds all people that on Earth do dwell.