Can we talk about the 'Traditional' Mass?

Silly question: why not? Has this terminology been officially forbidden? No. Has it even been officially criticised? No. Has there been some official push for terminological uniformity? No.

Silly questions get asked, however, and I've replied to a particularly silly example which appeared in the Catholic Herald letters pages a couple of weeks ago: here's my letter in reply.

Fr Leo Chamberlain (Letters, April 1st) takes exception, not for the first time, to the phrase 'the Traditional Mass'. It should be noted that the Motu Proprio is concerned with legal realities, not verbal issues, and nowhere forbids this phrase. Indeed, Cardinal Catrillón Hoyos, as President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei which was given the right to 'exercise the authority of the Holy See' in the application of the Motu Proprio (section 12) immediately introduced a new description, 'the Gregorian Mass', referring to Pope Gregory the Great, whose codification of the Missal was a key moment in the tradition of which the 1962 Missal is the fruit.

If Fr Chamberlain objects to the term 'Traditional Mass' presumably he will object equally to the term 'Gregorian Mass'. Is the 1970 Missal not just as much a fruit of the Gregorian tradition?

It seems not. Normally, each missal published by the Holy See replaces and abrogates the one preceding it. Many argued the 1962 Missal was abrogated in this way. The only alternative is to say that the 1970 Missal is so radically reformed that it establishes something distinct, leaving the 'previous liturgical tradition' (as the Motu Proprio calls it) intact. In other words, there has been a discontinuity in the Church's liturgical tradition.

This argument has been finally and definitively vindicated by the Motu Proprio, and like or not Fr Chamberlain must live with it.

Yours faithfully,

Joseph Shaw
Chairman, The Latin Mass Society

There are many practical reasons for retaining the term 'Traditional Mass' - among other descriptions.

1) It is widely understood.

2) It is not specific to the year 1962. It evidently applies to the 'old' Missal as changed in 2008 (the new Prayer for the Jews), and practices pre-dating 1962 (which are inevitably a staple of pub discussions among trads). It refers to the Mass as developing organically from the time of Pope Gelasius to the present day.

3) 'Traditional' can be applied equally to the Breviary, the other sacraments, and the pre-reform versions of other rites and usages. The Dominican Rite hasn't been made the 'extraordinary form' of anything; the Mozarabic Rite, the Ambrosian Rite and the Carthusian each have two forms, reformed and unreformed, and these aren't officially described as different 'usages'. Are we to talk about 'extraordinary form' Vespers? That would make no legal sense.

4) It also applies naturally to theology and spirituality, and to devotions, which naturally go with the Traditional Mass. Extraordinary form Stations of the Cross, anyone? Usus antiquior theology of the atonement?

5) 'Traditional liturgy' goes logically with the terms 'Traditional Catholics', 'Traditionalist' and so on. These terms describe real phenomena in the Church which we have to talk about from time to time in a clear and descriptive way - whether we like what we are talking about or not.

Finally, and perhaps this is because I am an academic trained in analytic philosophy, it drives me nuts to hear endless disputes about words. The important thing is that people know what the words mean. If we can have a discussion without ambiguity and equivocation, it matters not a jot what words are used. In theology some concepts can only clearly be expressed by words which have been more or less invented (or redefined) for the purpose (transubstantiation, consubstantial, incarnation), but that is not at issue here. Merely verbal disputes are childish.

More letters in the Catholic Herald

On Friday I was at a reception given by the Catholic Herald in honour of the Papal Visit, and saw two people who had letters next to mine in the letters page. Well it's a small world!

Last week I had a letter quoting extensively from official documents to back up the point for which I have been criticised: that liturgical abuses have been a major cause of lapsation, and that the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite - the 'Traditional Mass' - is part of the solution to the problem which we face. My point was that it is not just me saying this - it is the Holy Father, who notes the pain caused by abuses, and goes on to express the hope that the Traditional Mass will influence the way that the New Mass is said. Why? Because the abuses are typically an attack on the sacrality of the Mass, and the Traditional Mass is particularly noted (by the Holy Father) for its sacrality. This is all in the letter accompanying the motu proprio - if you don't like it, don't complain to me, complain to Pope Benedict!

The aspects of this analysis less spelt out in the letter are made abundantly clear in Redemptoris Sacramentum, an Instruction from the Congregation for Divine Worship 'in collaboration with' the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at that time under Cardinal Ratzinger. One of the useful things about this document, published in 2004, is its honesty in admitting the enormity of the problem: in 'some places' (and we all know a few) abuses have become 'almost habitual' (section 4). That is extraordinarily strong language for such documents, and gives the lie to the claims that the problem went away in the 1980s.

It pays to be familiar with these documents. A correspondent in last week's Catholic Herald came a serious cropper by quoting a version of the motu proprio ('MP') Summorum Pontificum which was redacted by the Holy See before getting into the Acta Apostolicae Sedis ('Acts of the Apostolic See'), which is the official record of Papal documents. What is in the Acta is definitive; until the Acta is published we are dealing with an unofficial text. This particular change caused much comment - see Fr Zuhlsdorf for example (and here). But this clearly passed a certain Tom McIntyre by, and he is merrily quoting the un-revised version nearly three years after the confusion has been cleared up.

But not by coincidence, for the original Latin refers to a group (coetus) asking for the Traditional Mass which had existed 'continenter'. It was clear enough to the fair-minded reader that this was meant to contrast with the temporary groups which exist when a wedding, funeral or pilgrimage takes place: people who don't normally worship together gather and then disperse. A temporary group like that has the right to ask for the Traditional Mass under the MP section 3; an on-going group, existing continuously, also has the right to ask for the Mass under the MP section 5. And of course priests could say it off their own bat.

Nevertheless, some commentators claimed, on the basis of the original version, that the Traditional Mass could only be said if requested by a group existing 'continenter', and these commentators then set to work to make this phrase as restrictive as possible. It must be an enormous group. All its members must come from a single parish. And it must not only have existed 'continuously' but have been attached to the Traditional Mass 'continuously', ever since before the Missal of Paul VI was published, in fact.

This is taking wishful thinking to hallucinatory lengths. The text simply does not support any of these restrictions, and naturally the MP would be pointless if it were so restrictive. This debate all took place in the weeks after the MP was first published, but sometimes misunderstandings get lodged in people's minds. In reply to Tom McIntyre's letter I wrote as follows:

Sir,

Tom McIntyre (Letters, 3rd Sept) paraphrases the Holy Father's motu proprio Summorum Pontificum as giving 'those uninterruptedly (continenter) attached to it their right to participate in it.' He must be puzzled, then, that the Holy Father also observes that 'young persons' have found the Traditional Mass 'particularly suited to them', since according to Mr McIntyre such persons, born after the Council, are unlikely to have been 'uninterruptedly' attached to the Mass in that form.

The notion that only those who knew the Mass before 1970 have a 'right' to ask for it today is an old canard; it hardly coheres with the authorisation of new religious orders whose mission is to offer the Traditional Mass and Sacraments to new generations of Catholics.

Clearly wishing to head off such misunderstandings, the Holy See revised the text of the motu proprio when the definitive text was finally published, and, if he goes to the Vatican website, Mr McIntyre will find that the word 'continenter' no longer appears in the document. Instead it refers to those who 'stably adhere' to the Mass in the older form: 'coetus fidelium traditioni liturgicæ antecedenti adhærentium stabiliter exsistit'. Such a group has a right to ask for it, and the pastor should receive such a request willingly ('libenter') (Article 5 Section 1). Age is irrelevant.

But this is just one provision of the motu proprio. In Section 3 we learn that, in addition, it should be allowed for 'special celebrations', such as weddings, funerals, and pilgrimages: these are cases where there is no 'stable group'. Furthermore, in Article 2, any priest is permitted to say the Traditional Mass, without any lay request for it; in Article 3 any order or religious community may adopt it. Article 4 makes the point that these non-requested Masses can be attended by any member of the faithful who wishes to go. Capping all of these provisions, Article 1 says the Traditional Mass has never been abrogated: special permissions with conditions attached are no longer at issue.

The era of specially permitted Traditional Masses in the chapels of old peoples' homes have long gone. The old liturgical books are increasingly used for weddings and baptisms. For many years now the Archdiocese of Westminster has provided a bishop to confer the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Traditional form, in a service organised by the Latin Mass Society. The Holy Father refers to this liturgy as 'sacred and great', not only in the past but 'for us too'. It is a patrimony which should not be denied to future generations.

Yours faithfully,

Joseph Shaw

Alongside my letter were several others on related subjected. As well as letters lamenting the problems caused by liturgical abuses, Daphne MacLeod suggested that it was catechesis, not the liturgy, which caused lapsation in the 1970s and later. I certainly wouldn't dispute the importance of sound catechesis; this simply wasn't the subject of the correspondence. However Mrs MacLeod uses arguments which I don't find entirely convincing in trying to separate the different causes at work by reference to the experience of Africa and the Soviet Bloc. She has used these before, and I have addressed them on this blog before.

Another letter was from Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB, which interestingly claimed that the youthful doubts of many of his contemporaries in the 1950s were successfully addressed by the exciting new perspectives given by Vatican II. I'm happy to take his word for it; I assume he'll take my word for it that what later generations were offered, in the 1980s and 1990s and beyond, did not successfully address many of our youthful doubts. In fact there's no need to take anyone's word for it - just look at the statistics.

He also returns to a well-worn theme (of his) about my use of the term 'Traditional Mass'. He says we should use the terminology used by the Holy Father; the difficulty of this argument is sufficiently demonstrated by his failure to follow his own advice (he keeps reverting to his own invention, 'the Old Form'), as I pointed out on this blog the last time he treated readers of the Catholic Herald to these views of his.

All I would add is that insisting on using technical vocabulary from legal documents instead of the vernacular - the terms people actually use - makes one look stupid. The Quixotic attempt to get Catholics to call Confession 'the Sacrament of Reconciliation' has produced nothing but momentary confusion over the years; it is never likely to change popular usage. The attempt by Lady Thatcher's government to insist on 'the Community Charge' when everyone was talking about 'the Poll Tax' just made them look out of touch.

I'm all for a linguistic free market. It's the reality behind the words which is important.

What's in a name?

In a wide-ranging article in this week's Catholic Herald, Fr Leo Chamberlain OSB reflects on the two 'forms' of the Roman Rite. I knew Fr Chamberlain of course from his time as Master of St Benet's Hall, where I was (and still am) a Fellow.

It is interesting to hear the experiences of the generation of priests who were, as he explains, the first not to learn anything other than the Novus Ordo. He remembers the problem of priests racing through the Mass in the 1950s; he is equally aware of the 'arbitrary deformations' of the new missal which have shaped the liturgical experience of most people since 1970.

However, the article ends with a rather strange paragraph.

...we should all use the terms used by the Pope. I have tried to do so in this article. It is offensive to speak of "traditional Mass" as do the advertisements of the Latin Mass Society. We are all of the tradition, we all celebrate within the tradition, and our unity depends on our recognising it.

It is odd in part because, however hard he tried, Fr Chamberlain has not, in general, succeeded in using the 'terms used by the Pope'.

In the article Fr Chamberlain uses the term 'old form' nine times, 'new form' four times, and 'ordinary form' twice. The last of these clearly derives from the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum, where Pope Benedict describes the 1962 Missal as the (or an) 'extraordinary form' of the Roman Rite, whereas the 1970 Missal is the 'ordinary form'. But the contrasting terms 'old' and 'new' do not appear. Other terms for the 1962 Mass in the Motu Proprio (without contrasting terms) are 'usus antiquior', 'the older use', and 'the Missal of Blessed John XXIII.'

Not that I object to the development of the vocabularly. Fr Tim Finnigan, for example, has adopted the 'usus antiquior' / 'usus recentior' distinction (using the Latin terms). If Fr Chamberlain wants to talk about 'old' and 'new' forms he is free to do so; it seems to flow from the terms 'new Mass' and 'old Mass' which have had a long currency. But they are not the terms used by the Pope.

It is worth asking why the Holy Father adopted the vocabulary he did. It is important to remember that the Motu Proprio is a legal document, and makes a very important legal point: that the 1962 Missal was never abrogated, and should be regarded as a legitimate version of the Roman Rite. The 1970 Missal is the 'ordinary' form of the Rite; the 1962 Missal is accordingly an 'extraordinary' form. This is not simply a statement of fact: it is a legal enactment. The Holy Father is not, as a scholar, contradicting the great Klaus Gamber, who said that the 1970 Missal could not be regarded as a form of the Roman Rite. He is making it true, not as a historical, liturgical judgement, but as a matter of the law of the Church, that the two Missals are two forms of a single Rite.

To enact that they are two forms of a single Rite (neither of which tied to a particular locality or religious order) is to enact that every priest of the Latin Church, trained in the 1970 Missal, has the right to use the 1962 Missal. If they were, legally speaking, two Rites, then a priest of the 'New Rite' would have to get a special permission to celebrate a Mass of the 'Old Rite', just as a Latin Rite priest cannot, without special permission (granted for special reasons) celebrate a Mass according to the Greek Rite.

The Holy Father, a liturgical scholar of great importance himself, is not trying to close down the long-running debate about the nature and implications of the liturgical reform, to which he has made his own contributions. Still less is he attempting to enforce terminological uniformity. Why it should be imagined he is doing the latter is frankly beyond me - what would be the point? - but if proof were needed it was provided by Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, in the famous interview he gave during his visit to England last year, when, in defending and explaining the Motu Proprio, he repeatedly referred to the 'Gregorian' Mass: indeed, on three occasions he calls it the 'Gregorian Rite'.

Cardinal Hoyos is not making a legal point by using that term. He is not suggesting, for example, that the different Masses should be said only be the priests of mutually exclusive 'Rites'. He is using 'Rite' in the extremely well-established looser, non-legal sense: compare 'Sarum Rite', 'Dominican Rite', 'Gallican Rites': legally speaking these are all probably 'uses'. And he is referring to the Mass as 'Gregorian' to make a historical point: contrary to the suggestion that this Mass is, in any important way, a product of the Council of Trent, it is actually the Mass of Pope Gregory the Great.

Equally, however, a useful point can be made by talking of the 'Missal of Blessed John XXIII', as the Holy Father describes it in the Motu Proprio, or even as 'the Mass of the Council' (ie Vatican II): it reminds us that as well as being of great antiquity, it was the ordinary used form of the Roman Rite even for Pope John XXIII and during the Second Vatican Council itself.

The notion of terminological uniformity arising out of all this is pretty far fetched. But what of the term 'the Traditional Mass', or, as the legal name of the Latin Mass Society has it, 'the Traditional Roman Rite'?

Well, clearly the term 'traditional' is descriptive and widely understood. The Mass we are referring to is the traditional as opposed to the reformed version. It also draws attention to the fact that the 1962 Missal is 'traditional' in the sense that it had not been altered much from previous editions, going back over enormous stretches of time. Not only does the 1970 Missal represent a significant change, but - as its designers intended - it ushered in an era in which there would be more changes as time wore on. Since 1970 there have, for example, been a large number of new Eucharistic prayers authorised for use. There have been successive changes to the rubrics, as various new practices have been permitted. As I write we are preparing for a substantially new English translation. This all represents a different attitude to the Missal from what might be called a 'traditional' attitude, which emphasises the idea that what has been handed to us should be handed on to the next generation as faithfully as possible.

This suggests that the term 'Traditional Mass' makes perfect sense. It is reinforced by some interesting terminology adopted by a number of Vatican officials, referring to the 1962 Missal and its surrounding books and customs as 'the former liturgical tradition'. Cardinal Meyer used this term in his well-known letter othe American Bishops of 1991; it has been used many times since, in the context of the people 'adhering' to this tradition. The term 'usus antiquior' seems related to this: it refers to a liturgical tradition or usage with which the 1970 Missal is not in complete continuity. One can make a distinction between the tradition up to 1969, as Klaus Gamber did, and what happened in 1970 and subsequently.

One cannot read very far into the Holy Father's great book 'The Spirit of the Liturgy' without realising that he acknowledges this discontinuity of tradition himself. It forms the great problem of the liturgy today, to which, as Pope, Benedict XVI is clearly concerned to address himself. To claim, as Fr Chamberlain does, that acknowledging this discontinuity is 'insulting' is, it seems to me, an attempt to deny the obvious. To his great credit, this is not something which Holy Father, and indeed the Vatican in general, have any wish to do.

Let's hear it again, the oft-quoted remark of Cardinal Ratzinger, before his election as Pope: ‘I am convinced that the ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in great part upon the collapse of the liturgy.’