The legacy of 1988

This is the article of mine published last weekend by the Catholic Herald, under a headline with a howling typo. Well, you can't win them all! I am grateful to Luke Coppen for asking someone committed to the traditionalist cause for writing a reflection on what was one of the most divisive events in the Church's recent history: Archbishop Lefebvre's episcopal consecration of four of his priests without Papal mandate. (The other Catholic weeklies ignored the anniversary.)

On June 30 1988, 25 years ago this week, Archbishop Lefebvre carried out episcopal consecrations (to use the traditional term for the ordination of bishops), of four priests of the Society of St Pius X, which he had founded. He did so without the permission of the Holy See, facing the prospect of his own death (which occurred less than three years later), to ensure the continuity of the SSPX, dedicated to opposing what he saw as modern theological errors, and preserving the Traditional Latin Mass. The cluster of events of which this was the centre – the negotiations between the archbishop and Cardinal Ratzinger, later to become Benedict XVI, and their failure; the subsequent excommunication of the archbishop and his four new bishops; the apostolic letter of Pope John Paul II, Ecclesia Dei adflicta; the reconciliation to Rome of individuals and groups formerly aligned with the SSPX – may together be described as a turning point for the post-conciliar Church, whose consequences continue to play out today.

The Novus Ordo Missae, the post-Vatican II Mass, celebrated almost always in the vernacular, was promulgated, after a transitional period, in late 1969, and it was widely assumed that, apart from older priests saying Mass in private, the use of the older liturgical books was thenceforth forbidden. At the request of the Latin Mass Society and Cardinal Heenan, Pope Paul VI signed an indult (permission) for the “Old Mass” for England and Wales in 1971. In 1984 Pope John Paul II issued an indult for the whole world. Nevertheless, the dominant attitude among those in authority in the Church was well summarised by Cardinal Ratzinger, when he wrote: “Anyone who nowadays advocates the continuing existence of this liturgy or takes part in it is treated like a leper; all tolerance ends here.”

Window of Padley Chapel, Derbyshire, showing Mass said by a martyr-priest of the 16th century

Cardinal Ratzinger warned Catholics against this intolerance, for both human and theological reasons. Humanly speaking, the effective banning of what had been the basis of the spiritual life of the entire Catholic Faithful in the Latin Church, particularly in the context of liturgical abuses in the reformed Mass, “caused deep pain to individuals totally rooted in the faith of the Church”. Theologically, it was part of a “hermeneutic of rupture” which was incompatible with a Catholic view of the Church: a long view. “A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent,” Cardinal Ratzinger said. In a 2001 talk at the traditionalist French monastery of Fontgombault, he linked opposition to the Traditional Mass to a rejection of the theology of sacrifice: bad theology leads to bad liturgy in general, and a rejection of the ancient liturgy in particular.

It has become a common theme among a new generation of theologians, led by Benedict XVI, that on a series of points the Traditional Mass is an important corrective to problematic modern theological tendencies. Celebration ad orientem (with the priest facing the same way as the people), Latin and Chant, the silent Canon, the ancient prayers of the Missal, the reception of Communion on the tongue: all demonstrate theological principles sorely needed by the Church today.

Window of the chapel of the former seminary at Ushaw, showing tonsured Medieval priest in Gothic vestments celebrating Mass

The crisis of 1988 had the immensely important result of the rapid establishment, by John Paul II, of the Fraternity of St Peter, a priestly fraternity committed to the Traditional liturgy. To a large extent the FSSP, founded by priests of the SSPX who repudiated Archbishop Lefebvre’s defiance of the Holy See, was able to adopt the deal which Lefebvre had negotiated and then rejected. They have over time been joined by other groups for whom the ancient Mass is the central plank of their charism and spirituality, most notably the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest and the Apostolic Administration of St John Vianney in Campos, Brazil, which has its own bishop, Fernando Arêas Rifan.

After 1988 it has been impossible to interpret the official attitude of the Vatican towards the ancient Mass as a temporary toleration for the sake of the older generation. The Holy See does not authorise religious orders and communities with the hope or expectation that they will fade away and die. As things have turned out, these groups have grown quickly since 1988, and from a standing start now comprise more than 600 priests worldwide. This growth has meant that a new appreciation of the riches of the ancient Mass has been brought to one diocese after another as traditionalist apostolates have established themselves around the globe.

Low Mass at the LMS Training Conference in Ratcliffe College, Leicestershire. We're just doing what our forfathers did.

Those attached to the Traditional Mass after 1988, both lay and clerical, were still, however, in an anomalous position: while in principle their right to exist was acknowledged, in practice many bishops remained suspicious of them and restricted the opportunities for public celebrations of the Traditional Mass. This changed in 2007 when Pope Benedict declared, in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, that there was no need for permission from bishops for what he called the “Extraordinary Form” of Mass: all priests in the Western Church could say it, if they knew how. In England and Wales Sunday Masses in the Extraordinary Form have more than doubled in number since 2007 and there are now more than 200 priests regularly saying this form of the Mass.

This gesture of Pope Benedict was part of a renewed effort towards the Society of St Pius X, which also included the lifting of the excommunications on the four bishops consecrated in 1988, and doctrinal discussions between the SSPX and the Vatican. These have again, for the time being, failed to bring about the reconciliation Pope Benedict desired. The motu proprio does, nevertheless, represent another step in the healing of a cultural and theological schism with the past, which may be a necessary precondition for a healing of differences in the present.

Dr Joseph Shaw is chairman of the Latin Mass Society

------ Ends

I encourage readers to follow the link to the Fontgombault talk of Cardinal Ratzinger: it is the most theologically forthright discussion of the importance of the EF that he wrote, that I know of. 

Two new priests for the Sons

"Father Magdala Maria and Father Yousef Marie were ordained alongside Fr. Massimo Botta of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter by Archbishop Guido Pozzo, head of the Office of Papal Charities, in Rome." See the Sons' blog.

Congratulations to them and to their community! This is the culmination of a long process, and is the fruit of great patience and fidelity by the Sons, the only UK-based traditional order or community.

Having an extra two priests means that it will be much easier for the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, based on Papa Stronsay Island in the Orkneys, to take up the kind of parish missions and other work which is characteristic of their vocation.

The early years of Traditionalism: 'The Living Flame'

Evelyn Waugh

'The Living Flame: the first twenty-five years of the Society of Pius X in Britain' by Ronald Warwick was was published in 1997, and is available on Scribd:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/7993057/The-Living-Flame

In the context of the 25th anniversary of the 1988 consecrations, this may be of interest to readers. It also sheds some light on the early days of the Latin Mass Society (which otherwise gets hardly a mention in the book): I reproduce the main passage here, which covers the foundation of the LMS and the key decision, reached in fact by all the members to the newly formed Una Voce International Federation, to seek the preservation of the Traditional Mass after 1969, and not just the new Mass in Latin. (Those who disagreed with this decision would found the Association for Latin Liturgy.)

Evelyn Waugh, the foremost Catholic writer of his day, Sir Arnold Lunn, controversialist and skiing pioneer, and Hugh Ross Williamson, media personality and historian: quite a trio of founding fathers! All them, interestingly, were converts.

Sir Arnold Lunn

Until his death in 1966, Waugh acted as an unofficial spokesman for the conservatives, expressing their growing disenchantment to Cardinal Heenan and in the press. He was also instrumental, with Sir Arnold Lunn and Hugh Ross Williamson, in founding the Latin Mass Society in Easter 1965. Almost from its inception, the Society attracted significant support and was soon organising itself at a diocesan level. Most importantly it brought like-minded laymen and sympathetic clergy into contact. Before the introduction of the Novus Ordo in 1969, its objectives were clear and completely in accord with the wording of the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Liturgy and the Encyclical Letter of 1962, ‘Veterum Sapientiae’ both of which urged the retention of the Latin language in the rites of the Church. Despite this, the Society was largely ignored by the English hierarchy and sometimes treated with downright hostility, a fact which gave rise, in some minds, to a suspicion that even more radical developments were in store.

The Latin Mass Society developed into a ‘broad church’ organisation containingwithin its ranks a range of differing opinions including those who considered the very identityof the Church to be imperilled and those who preferred the Latin liturgy for cultural reasons. I suspect that most members oscillated between the two opinions. Its Annual General Meetings were rather colourful and sometimes noisy occasions at which the clash of contending views was distinctly audible.

With the promulgation of the Missa Normativa came the biggest clash of all. There were those within the Society who felt bound in conscience to accept the new rite, while others favoured carrying on the fight for the old. At the AGM of 1969 there were impassioned speeches on both sides. Hugh Ross Williamson put the case for the ancient rite, citing the privilege contained in St Pius V’s Bull ‘Quo Primum Tempore’, the famous Ottaviani Intervention and the doctrinal dubiety of the Novus Ordo. Dr R. H. Richens argued for accepting the new rite pointing out the danger of schism implicit in the alternative course of action. By an overwhelming majority, the members voted in favour of the Ross Williamson motion - a decision which was described as ‘Latin Madness’, the banner headline in the following week’s Universe. The LMS was affiliated to the international federation, Una Voce, which also decided to carry on the struggle for the traditional rite.
...

Making this possible for future generations: First Holy Communion with the Traditional Mass

The patient advocacy of the Latin Mass Society yielded its first fruit in the form of an Indult granted by the Sacred Congregation of Divine Worship to Cardinal Heenan on 5 November 1971. The Indult was highly restricted in a number of respects. It permitted local ordinaries in England and Wales to grant permission to groups of people to participate at Mass celebrated ‘according to the rites and texts of the former Roman Missal (27 January 1965) with the modification indicated in the ‘Instructio Altera’ (4 May 1967).’ In other words, the very mutilated rite as it existed on the eve of the Novus Ordo could, on rare occasions, be said with the express permission of the diocesan bishop. In practice, this grudging concession made little difference, though some cherished its symbolic value as the first breach in the wall of hierarchical intransigence. 

Loftus: Pius XII wanted liturgical abuses. Really?

Strangely Mgr Basil Loftus' grinning face in The Catholic Times is still captioned 'Mgr Basil Loftus'. Hasn't the editor heard that Basil regards titles such as Monsignor as detestable flummeries? When can we look forward to seeing 'Mgr Basil Loftus'?

The Tabernacle is firmly fixed to the Altar at Our Lady of Willesden, just as Pius XII wanted.

Today (30th June edition) he makes the argument that the even the most extreme and illicit liturgical excesses of today are in continuity with the liturgical movement, as represented by Fr Pius Parsch and as endorsed by Pope Pius XII.

Pope Pius XII put the icing on the liturgical cake when he told the all-important Internationla Congress of Pastoral Liturgy meeting in Assisi in 1955, that "the liturgical movement is a sign of the providential disposition of God for the present time as well as of the Holy Spirit in the Church."

Loftus is quoting selectively. In his allocution to the Assisi conference (in 1956), Pope Pius XII gave some stern warnings against the very excesses which Loftus is arguing he approved. To give just one example, the practice of Mass 'facing the people' was making an appearance in the mid 1950s. What does Pope Pius say about this, in this allocution?

Infantilised laity? Fr Schofield distributes Communion at the Willesden Pilgrimage

It is one and the same Lord who is immolated on the altar and honoured in the tabernacle, and who pours out his blessings from the tabernacle.

What does this mean? It means that the Tabernacle should not be separated from the Altar. The following year Pope Pius XII signed off a Decree of the Sacred Congregation of Rites (Sanctissimam Eucharistiam) (1957) 4: ‘In churches, where there is only one altar, this cannot be built in such a way that the priest should celebrate facing the people’

The Tabernacle ajar during Communion at SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford: Loftus hates the practice of taking hosts for Communion from the Tabernacle, a practice which emphasises that it is 'the same Lord' in the tabernacle, as Pius XII said.

If the Altar is fixed to the tabernacle, it is obviously impossible for the priest to celebrate Mass from the far side of it. Did Pius XII approve of celebration versus populum? No he did not: he argued against it, he legislated against it. How could he make it any clearer?


Pius XII ended his allocution with a general note of caution: 'it is also our duty to forestall whatever might be a source of error or danger.'

The tensions within the Liturgical Movement, and the role of Pius XII, and also St Pius X and John XXIII, to reign in what was wrong with it, are steadfastly ignored by Mgr Loftus, who wants to present us with a single 'organic' development.

It is clear, therefore, that the post-conciliar implementation and further specification of the liturgical reform was not only mandated by Vatican II but was an organic continuation of a movement which Pius XII had enthusiastically backed for some 15 years before the Council even began.
     The whole of the post-conciliar liturgical reform of the Mass and sacraments, as well as of the breviary, is the true hermeneutic of continuity in reform.
     Both the Council and the post-conciliar implementations were no more or less than the fuller ripening of a fruit which had been maturing for 15 years before the Council and was then ready to be picked and enjoyed.
     The hermeneutic or interpretation of rupture is typified only by those movements in the Church which ignore that organic and harmonious liturgical growth...

Another Tabernacle fixed to the Altar: at SS Peter & Paul, New Brighton, served by the ICKSP

     One facet of the 65-year-old Liturgical Reform Movement which must be preserved and further developed, perhaps above all others, is the accommodation of the liturgy to the common priesthood of all the bapstised. Attempts to undermine the participation of the whole People of God are sadly all too common when priests turn their backs on the people, or autocratically reimpose Latin. Translations which are coached in 'sacral' or 'hieratic' language are symptomatic of a retreat into some Old Testament kind of 'Holy of holies', where only the ordained or 'professional' priest knows what is going on - if even he does. There is no place for such a 'Holy of Holies' in Western Christianity, let alone in post-conciliar, liturgy. [sic] Likewise, opposition to women into the sanctuary [sic], refusal to admit lay-ministers of Holy Communion, and varied attempts to infantilise and individualise the People of God who approach Holy Communion in a united and adult manner, all conflict both with that common priesthood and with the unity of the whole People of God.'

I think that last bit must be about not making a scene when people want to receive communion on the tongue.

How can there be 'continuity' between John XXIII's insistence on the importance of Latin in 1962 (in Veterum Sapientia), and Vatican II saying 'Latin must be preserved' in 1963, on the one hand, and the villification of Latin promoted by Loftus? How can attempts to bring Latin back be in 'rupture' with the Council, and what went before it, which explicitly demanded that it be preserved?

More infantilised laity.

How can the claim that 'lay ministers' (ie Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion) manifest the Priesthood of the People of God be in 'continuity' with forty years of official documents from Rome which have condemned this idea? Or with the Council, which doesn't mention the possibility of any such thing? The Instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum (2004) makes it very clear:

[151.] Only out of true necessity is there to be recourse to the assistance of extraordinary ministers in the celebration of the Liturgy. Such recourse is not intended for the sake of a fuller participation of the laity but rather, by its very nature, is supplementary and provisional.

A modern chapel with the traditional Tabernacle / Altar arrangement: at the Oratory School.

I've written more about the difference between what the Council mandated and what was actually implemented here. But Loftus is not content with what was actually implemented officially - the legislation and official texts. He is talking here of liturgical abuses - practices which have been repeatedly condemned by the Church - or the wickedness of Papal initiatives such as the new translation of the Ordinary Form.

This is all quite dotty and harmless but for the fact that he is actually attacking his fellow priests: priests who are merely following the Church's liturgical laws, or are allowing the people to exercise their right to receive Communion kneeling and on the tongue. This is not harmless: it is serious. The madness of these articles has got to stop.

Communion of the Faithful: 'in a united and adult manner'.

Oxford Pro-Life Witness this Saturday

Saturday, 29th June, Ss Peter and Paul,

OXFORD PRO LIFE WITNESS

3pm -4pm

We meet at the Church of St Anthony of Padua, Headley Way, Oxford.

Usually there is Exposition of the Most Blessed Sacrament and then we stand opposite the Church which is the entrance to the 

JOHN RADCLIFFE HOSPITAL

We pray the Holy Rosary and pray for all unborn babies, their families and the medical staff involved in the terrible crime of abortion.

Refreshments available afterwards in the Church Hall.

More information, please ring Amanda Lewin on 01869 600638

A sociologist on the Latin Mass

A characteristic gesture of the Dominican Rite, at St Dominic's, Haverstock Hill, London. Archer's research centred around the Dominican parish in Newcastle.

I've been reading Anthony Archer 'The Two Catholic Churches: a study in oppression' (SCM Press, 1986); it's a classic in the sociology of the English Catholic Chuch, and his treatment of the liturgical reform is sometimes cited in traddy books. It deserves to be better known, however, so here is a good long quote.

Archer, at the time a Dominican priest [see comment: he left the priesthood a couple of years after the book was published], was no traditionalist; he has complicated things to say about the Catholic working-class community and the social motivation (or pressures) which maintained it, which were declining for socioeconomic reasons in the 1960s and thereabouts. But his observations about the liturgical changes, larded with quotations from the scores of the older generation of Newcastle Catholics and former Catholics he interviewed, are acute.

Eloquent gesture: the celebrant confesses his sinfulness. The LMS AGM in St George's Southwark.

From pp138-140. I've put his block quotations in double quote marks " ". The photos and their captions, of course, are mine.

If the old mass most noticeably provided a break from the mundane, it was also able to bear a great deal more than the new mass. No doubt this was partly due to the half-understood mutterings and gestures and silences – and its familiar shape for as long as anyone could remember:

“Whether it was the very fact that I couldn’t understand it, but it was much nicer. As I say you couldn’t see much of what was going on while the priest has his back to you, you couldn’t understand, but you somehow still enjoyed it…
“I couldn’t understand three parts of it, but I used to love to hear it. I could sit and listen to it and me mind was far way. I could imagine all these things when I was listening to the mass.”

The holy perceived through a mist of incense: Corpus Christi at SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford.

The mass allowed people to engage the sacred in their own fashion, providing for a while range of religious demands and sensibilities and drawing people into the space where there was evidently something more to life. It provided a fixed centre to which people could relate their changing worlds. The emphasis given to the sacredness of the space itself enclosed within the precincts of the church reinforced this. Nor was there any need to belong to any particular community to take advantage of it.

Distant but meaningful mutterings: Low Mass at Prinknash Abbey

Much of the now vanished impedimenta contributed to the effectiveness of the mass, for it served as a remind of the human condition:
“You’re more saddened with the Latin and I think requiems it should be done in Latin – on sad occasions, Good Friday, things like that.”

The mass did take place ‘in this vale of tears’ and it did incorporate the ambivalent hosts of angels and the looming statues and the dark corners of the church. It did know that black, however discordant with modern liturgical scholarship, was the human colour for funerals and that the Dies Irae, however pagan the words, was a genuine cry of anguish.

A window onto another world: Solemn Mass through the Rood Screen at St Birinus, Dorechester

The new mass had lost much of this. It had damaged the sense of occasion:
“Let me go back to when I was young, when it was all in Latin. To me in the Latin mass there was more devotion, when all your bells rang for communion and all this. I really used to feel straight away that God was there on the altar and I wouldn’t talk or turn or do anything. But now during an English mass it’s really, now I feel I could talk to Tessa or something if I felt I had to say something.”

The mass had lost its characteristic difference:
“If I went back I’d rather it’d been in Latin. Them just gabbing off in English now – there’s no feeling in the mass now. I liked to listen to the priest saying it and follow it in me old mass book rather than everyone together yapping away. It’s just killed the mass off. They’ve killed the feeling of the mass off. You could be anywhere – right in the middle of Land’s End.”
In this way the mass came to press in on the individual. Not only had it become in itself much less of a means of solemn withdrawal from the world. It no longer permitted individual withdrawal.

Communication with splendour: the Faithful are incensed at SS Peter & Paul & Philomena, New Brighton

Moreover the new mass, by the very nature of its pruned matter-of-factness, worked to close off areas to which access had previously been given. From its opening salacious invitation to ‘call to mind our sins’, the English mass carefully avoided the kind of language that might be described as genuinely popular, in the sense of conceivably being used by anyone. (‘Let me call to mind the name of that plant?’) At the same time it eschewed any attempt at ‘fine writing’. It also excluded anything that might seem excessive in the way of language or gesture. At every point one, and only one, clear meaning was to be conveyed: ‘It’s just like a lecture, man. It goes on and on.’ But it was an unkind fate that allowed the new mass to come to completion just when – elsewhere – the importance of non-verbal communication was being rediscovered.

A sublime expression of human grief: a Solemn Requiem in St James', Spanish Place.

The shades of the shaven men

I was in Burford today, and I looked into the Medieval parish church. I was very struck by the hugely impressive tomb from the late 16th century, from a couple, Sir Lawrence Tanfield and his wife, who seem to have done pretty well out of the Reformation. Realising, I suppose, that no one was likely to pray for the repose of their souls, they built this monument to their own piety.


They lived in 'The Priory', by then not a religious institution but a very grand house, and I thought of Chesterton's lines:

'Perhaps the shades of the shaven men,
Whose spoil is in his house,
Came back at last in shining shapes
To spoil his last carouse...'



Here is their only daughter, he hands folded in prayer.

It seems, in fact, that the shaven men, the monks displaced by Tudor squires, had the last laugh after all. This young lady, Elizabeth, Viscountess Falkland, clearly a girl of remarkable spirit, who also secured a place for herself in English literature as the first known woman to write and publish a play, became a Catholic. Her four daughters all became Benedictine nuns at the English convent at Cambrai.

She has a Wikipedia page. So perhaps the smug old Tanfields got more prayers than they bargained for.

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