More Reflections on the Tridentine Latin Mass
These reflections have been collected as of July 1996. They continue in the same spirit and purpose of
the other comments on this site. Again, you are invited to post your thoughts on this topic.
Tridentine Mass in Ottawa
I took my family to Ottawa for the weekend to visit relatives there. I
had the opportunity to attend a diocese Tridentine Mass for the first
time in my life (that I can remember). It was quite beautiful, well
attended, and solemn. The choir was excellent and many among the pews
were young like myself.
I now know why many bishops are supressing the Tridentine Mass. It was
incredible how many people attend the Tridentine Mass in Ottawa. Once
such a movement gets going, the bishop will have a hard time reversing
it. Ottawa isn't much larger than London, so the only explanation why so
many more people attend the Tridentine Mass is that it has the
"permission" of local ecclesial authorities. However, Quo Primum seems
to call into question the need for permission in the first place.
Regardless, it is a wonderful thing that is happening in Ottawa. It
certainly gives me hope that the Tridentine Mass will always endure.
David T. A. Wesley -- E-Mail
... I am a fairly recent attendee at the Tridentine Mass and, because I work in my home parish most Sundays, I don't always make this Mass. I have other
reasons, too, for remaining attached to my home parish. It would never have occurred to me to attend the Tridentine Mass. My husband
drew me to it, not by pressure, but by his love for it. And I greatly missed being with him at Mass. For a long while I didn't imagine that it would
draw me also, but it has. I find in it a careful magnificence and have come to consider it the masterwork of Catholicism. As such, it requires concentration and
a willingness to be drawn into its substance where it can do its work. It calls us to maturity on many levels.
As the saying goes, a masterpiece is never outdated. How we dip into it changes from age to age, but it stands.
I have come to realize that the Tridentine Mass is an extremely important and central part of my heritage. I am deeply grateful to those who
protect it. I wish it were commonly offered in all parishes.
It seems so odd that something so venerable as the Tridentine Mass has so little room, muct be the refugee, must be controversial. It can't be that it's old. Bach was old music,
alive and well, in Mozart's day and Mozart is old today, alive and well. Though we build the World Trade Center, we don't demolish the Parthenon.
Millions of people in our own time must have felt badly when Michelangelo's Pieta was vandalized. There is something in the soul
of a great thing that can never be duplicated and a voice present in that sould that speaks for all ages. And what would be without those things is so important.
We have many reasons to act in honor and respect to all the Church has been.
Margaret Kearney -- from a letter to Bishop Mansell of Buffalo, NY. (Una Voce-Buffalo Newsletter)
I've been attending the Tridentine Mass every Sunday now and have been
studying its structure and history. It is a thing of beauty and I wonder
how could they have ever thrown it out!
I remember it was said that the venacular was necessary to get the people
"more involved" in the Mass. As I look around within our traditional
church, I see tremendous involvement with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Just because we don't give perfunctory hugs during the Mass doesn't mean
the congregation isn't present.
There is also a freedom I feel that I don't get from N.O. masses. For
example, during the Canon I can silently contemplate the Holy Mystery
taking place at the Altar or follow along in my missal with the priest.
In a traditional Mass there is a spaciousness that allows for personal
contemplation.
Yet I also feel more united with the congregation AND the priest in a
traditional Mass because we are all facing the same way; our collective
attention seems to focus all the more ardently upon the Altar this way.
Bob -- Traditio
I am an occasional visitor to your netsite and recently read the
"reflections on the Tridentine Mass". Although I am not
(yet) totally sold on the Tridentine Mass (being only reasonably familiar
with the Novo Ordo, which I used to sing at a local parish), I do find the
Latin Mass very worshipful. Having grown up originally in the Anglican
Church, fortunately one with a very strong choral background, I am quite
familiar with Latin church music- we routinely sang Latin -text masses and
motets. In fact, we probably exposed our congregation to more Latin monthly
than most Catholics have heard in several years. I still sing Compline at
the Anglican Cathedral on Sunday evenings in order to get my choral "fix";
we do most of the service (psalms, antiphons) to English plainchant, with
the Salve Regina to Latin chant at the end. The whole thing takes about 30
mins in a darkened church and is quite worshipful, although the
congregation does not "participate". I have Catholic friends who come down
and find it very refreshing.
I currently direct the choir at a local Catholic church, but I seriously
doubt that we will ever have a Latin mass- too far out in left field. The
parish has been "suffering" (IMHO) the well-intentioned "improvements" of
a liturgical reformer who is trying to modernise things even beyond our
middle-of -the road ways, and it drives me crazy! We are quite lucky to
have a choir at all, even one that attempts to do any sort of even
relatively traditional music. One has to be grateful for small mercies, I
suppose.
One comment from the "Reflections" column that struck me was the one from
the young person who defended the ability of the young to appreciate the
Latin mass. I quite agree that it is often "assumed" that only the aged
could possibly assimilate something as arcane as a Latin liturgy,
something they might only dimly remember from their childhood. Many clergy
would be surprised at how many people would accept a Latin mass if it were
offered. I think there are only two churches offering a Latin mass here-
one Novo Ordo (well out in the suburbs) and one Tridentine, officiated by
the Archbishop, also several miles away. One should not have to travel that
far.
As a trained classical musician, the music is perhaps my point of entry to
all this, but the music and liturgy go hand in hand. One can either have,
it seems, a beautiful, "quiet" liturgy, supported by appropriate music,
which is conducive to interior reflection, or an "active" one where
everyone must be seen to be "participating." The latter is often inimical
to any sort of interior worship. I find it quite depressing that just about
everyone EXCEPT the Catholic Church seems so interested in Gregorian chant
these days. The Anglicans, Methodists, even the New Agers, seem to find
something beneficial in it; all but the folks for whom it was written in
the first place.
In closing, I am often reminded of the words of an English musicologist,
David Wulstan, (director of the Clerkes of Oxenford, predecessor to groups
like the Tallis Scholars), when he said, in his book on Tudor Church Music,
that "the more we try to bring God down to earth, the more He disappears
into the crowd." He was referring to liturgical reform in the Anglican
Church, (replacing the venerable Book of Common Prayer with more "up to
date" liturgies,) but he could just as well have been referring to reform
in the Catholic Church.
Amen, brother David, well put!
Stuart Tarbuck
702-1225 Barclay. St.
Vancouver, B.C.
Canada V6E 1H5
T( 604) 683-1752
F (604) 683-1768
Return to Una Voce Netsite