The Catholic Religion Didnt Eant People to Read
Guest Essay
Pope Francis Is Tearing the Catholic Church building Apart
Mr. Dougherty, a senior author at National Review, has written extensively about faith and the Roman Catholic Church.
In the summer of 2001, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to detect what we called "the traditional Latin Mass," the form of Roman Catholic worship that stretched dorsum centuries and was last authorized in 1962, before the Second Vatican Council changed everything. Back and so, conservative Catholics chosen people who sought it out "schismatics" and "Rad Trads."
The Mass-goers there weren't exactly a community; we were a clandestine network of romantics, haters of Pope John Paul II, people who had been jilted past the mainstream church building and — I believe — some saints.
There I learned that the Latin language was non the just distinguishing feature of this form of worship. The entire ritual was different from the mail service-Vatican II Mass. It wasn't a mere translation into the modernistic colloquial; less than 20 percent of the Latin Mass survived into the new.
It took me a month to adjust to its rhythm. But in that thick Baronial air, the long silence before the consecration of the host vicious upon my heart, like sunshine landing on the bud of prayer for the very start time.
Years later, Pope Benedict immune devotees of this Mass to flourish in the mainstream of Catholic life, a gesture that began to drain away the traditional movement'south radicalism and reconcile united states with our bishops. Today, it is celebrated in thriving parishes, full of young families.
However this Mass and the modestly growing contingent of Catholics who attend it are seen by Pope Francis as a grave problem. He recently released a document, Traditionis Custodes, accusing Catholics like us of existence subversives. To protect the "unity" of the church building, he abolished the permissions Pope Benedict Xvi gave us in 2007 to celebrate a liturgy, the center of which remains unchanged since the seventh century.
For those of united states of america who travel long distances to participate in it, its perseverance is a religious duty. For the pope, its suppression is a religious priority. The ferocity of his campaign will push button these immature families and communities toward the radicalism I imbibed years ago in Poughkeepsie, before Benedict. It volition push them toward the conventionalities that the new Mass represents a new religion, one dedicated to the unity of man on earth rather than the love of Christ.
In the Latin Mass, the priest faces the altar with the people. It never had oddities, as you lot sometimes encounter in a modernistic Mass, like balloons, guitar music or adulation. The gabby religious talk-show host way of priest is gone. In his place, a priest who does his business quietly, a workmanlike sculptor. By directing the priest toward the drama at the chantry, the old Mass opens up infinite for our ain prayer and contemplation.
In the years afterward Pope Benedict liberalized the quondam rite, parishes began to bring dorsum the mystical tones of Gregorian dirge, the sacred polyphony written past long-dead composers like Orlando Lassus and Thomas Tallis as well as contemporary composers similar Nicholas Wilton and David Hughes.
These cultural offshoots of the Latin Mass are why, after Vatican 2, the English language novelists Agatha Christie and Nancy Mitford and other British cultural luminaries sent a letter to Pope Paul Half dozen asking that it continue. Their alphabetic character doesn't even pretend to be from believing Christians. "The rite in question, in its magnificent Latin text, has as well inspired a host of priceless achievements in the arts — not just mystical works, merely works by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture likewise every bit to churchmen and formal Christians."
But the Vatican Council had called for a revision of every attribute of the cardinal act of worship, so the altar rails, tabernacles and baldachins were torn upward in countless parishes. This ferment was accompanied by radical new theologies around the Mass. A freshman religious studies major would know that revising all the song and physical aspects of a anniversary and changing the rationale for information technology constitutes a true change of faith. Simply overconfident Catholic bishops could imagine otherwise.
The most candid progressives agreed with the radical traditionalists that the quango constituted a break with the past. They called Vatican II "a new Pentecost" — an "Event" — that had given the church a new self-understanding. They believed their revolution had been stalled in 1968 when Pope Paul Half dozen issued "Humanae Vitae," affirming the church'due south opposition to artificial contraception, and and so put information technology on water ice in 1978 with the election of Pope John Paul Two.
To stamp out the quondam Latin Mass, Pope Francis is using the papacy in precisely the way that progressives once claimed to deplore: He centralizes ability in Rome, usurps the local bishop's prerogatives and institutes a micromanaging way that is motivated by paranoia of disloyalty and heresy. Perchance it'south to protect his deepest behavior.
Pope Francis envisions that nosotros will return to the new Mass. My children cannot return to it; it is non their religious formation. Frankly, the new Mass is not their religion. In countless alterations, the conventionalities that the Mass was a real cede and that the bread and vino, once consecrated, became the trunk and blood of our Lord was downplayed or replaced in it. With the priest facing the people, the chantry was severed from the tabernacle. The prescribed prayers of the new Mass tended never even to refer to that construction anymore as an altar only as the Lord'due south tabular array. The prayers that pointed to the Lord's real presence in the sacrament were conspicuously replaced with ones emphasizing the Lord's spiritual presence in the assembled congregation.
The prayers of the traditional Mass emphasized that the priest was re-presenting the same sacrifice Christ made at Calvary, i that propitiated God's wrath at sin and reconciled humanity to God. The new Mass portrayed itself every bit a narrative and historical remembrance of the events recalled in Scripture, and the offering and cede was not of Christ, merely of the assembled people, every bit the most commonly used Eucharistic prayer in the new Mass says, "from age to historic period you gather a people to Thyself, in order that from east to west a perfect offering may be made."
For Catholics, how nosotros pray shapes what we believe. The old ritual physically aims u.s.a. toward an chantry and tabernacle. In that manner it points the states to the cantankerous and to heaven every bit the ultimate horizon of man's existence. By doing so, information technology shows that God graciously loves u.s. and redeems us despite our sins. And the proof is in the civilization this ritual produces. Call back of Mozart's great rendition of religion in the Eucharist: "Ave Verum Corpus" (Hail True Body).
The new ritual points the states toward a bare tabular array, and information technology consistently posits the unity of humankind as the ultimate horizon of our existence. In the new Mass, God owes man salvation, because of the innate dignity of humanity. Where in that location was religion, now presumption. Where in that location was love, now mere affirmation, which is indistinguishable from indifference. It inspires weightless ditties like "Gather Us In." Let'due south sing virtually us!
I believe the practice of the new Mass forms people to a new faith: To become truly Christian, one must terminate to be Christian at all. Where the new organized religion is adept with a zealous spirit — as in Frg now — bishops and priests want to conform the religion'due south teaching to the moral norms of the nonbelieving society around them. When the new organized religion was young, later the council, it expressed itself in violent up the statues, the ceremonies and religious devotions that existed before.
I don't know if bishops will adopt Francis' zeal to vanquish the Latin Mass. I don't know how painful they are willing to make our religious life. If they exercise, they volition create — or reveal — more than sectionalisation in the church. The quondam slogan of the traditional Latin Mass motion comes to mind: Nosotros resist you to the face.
I take religion that one day, even secular historians will look upon what was wrought afterwards Vatican 2 and see it for what information technology was: the worst spasm of iconoclasm in the church building'due south history — dwarfing the Byzantine iconoclasm of the 9th century and the Protestant Reformation.
Pope Benedict had temporarily immune us to begin repairing the damage. What Pope Francis proposes with his crackdown is a new embrace-up.
Michael Brendan Dougherty, a senior writer at National Review and a visiting swain for the social, cultural and constitutional studies division at the American Enterprise Institute, is the writer of "My Male parent Left Me Ireland: An American Son's Search for Dwelling."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/12/opinion/pope-francis-latin-mass.html
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