Loving Latin for all the Wrong Reasons
This post is dedicated to my son Francisco, who is going to summer school to take Latin. His goal is to choose and translate a motto into Latin, so that it will sound impressive. Unfortunately, the leading candidate for his motto is “Go to Hell, and take your cheap suit with you.”
Sandro Magister is providing a forum for a raging debate in Italy over the interpretation of Vatican II. Recently, a “liberal” from the Bologna school, Enrico Morini, has weighed in with an article entitled “Tradition Is Also Made of “Ruptures.” The article provides an interesting argument in support of the notion that Vatican II marks a rupture in Church teaching. More specifically, he claims that Vatican II turned its back on many developments from the second millenium in order to return to first millenium belief and practice:
This recovery, on the part of the Catholic Church, of the tradition of the first millennium implicitly involved a de facto rupture – I apologize for the excessive schematization – with the Catholic tradition of the second millennium. It is not true, in my view, that there are no ruptures in the tradition of the Church. There was one interruption, precisely at the passage from the first to the second millennium, with the transition imparted by the “Lorraine-Alsace” reformers (like Pope Leo IX, as also two of the three legates in Constantinople in the aforementioned 1054, Cardinal Umberto and Stefano di Lorena, a future pope) and by the “Gregorian” reform, and then by an eminently philosophical approach to theological truths and by the overwhelming interest in canon law (already lamented by Dante Alighieri), at the expense of Scripture and the Fathers, at the height of the Middle Ages.
His argument has interesting parallels with the ideas of Martin Rhonheimer, who has argued that apparent “discontinuities” in Church teaching are to be explained by the fact that the Church is hewing to a deeper tradition. In previous posts I have made my feelings clear. Here I want to focus on an interesting argument that Morini makes, one which (he claims) will anger “progressives”. He argues that the return of the Tridentine mass is a good thing, and is part and parcel of the “rupture” of Vatican II:
[T]he motu proprio “Summorum Pontificum” – which, as is known, authorizes the practice of the Tridentine missal as an “extraordinary” rite – a document considered by many as involutive with respect to the Council, instead has for me the unquestioned value of reestablishing in the Latin Church the liturgical pluralism proper, once again, to the first millennium. Even if this is a ritual plurality distinguished by the variable of time, and not by that of geographical space, it has the value of introducing into the Catholic Church as well – in a peaceful and painless way – that “old-ritualistic” presence which is a patrimony, although acquired in a violent and traumatic way, of the Orthodox tradition.
I find this an interesting argument, precisely because one of the downsides (in my mind) of the Tridentine reforms was the suppression of liturgical variation: most local rites in the Western Church were abolished, and the few that remained—such as the Ambrosian and Mozarabic rites—were marginalized to the point of irrelevance. Though I have no intellectual or emotional connection to the Latin mass, and I suspect the motives of some of the proponents of it, I think I would be willing to support its reintroduction if it marked the beginning of a new period of liturgical diversity. Not necessarily a return to the endless liturgical experimentation of the period after the Council, but rather, a gleaning from that period and a consolidation of the best innovations into local liturgies.
How local? National liturgies, perhaps even diocesan ones. Considering that the Latin mass will be celebrated in one or at most a few parishes in any diocese, perhaps the argument can be made that liturgies proper to specific parishes or shrines could be acceptable. For example, what about a Marian liturgy proper to Lourdes or Fatima, or a Franciscan liturgy proper to Assisi or any parish staffed by Franciscan friars? Given the interpenetration of Roman rite and Byzantine rite dioceses, we already have particular parishes with distinctive liturgies around us in many parts of the country.
As I understand it, the Council of Trent suppressed local liturgies because of valid concerns about abuses which had crept into the liturgy. But it is worth asking: did the Council throw out the baby with the bath water? Is there any reason that we have to demonstrate our Catholic unity by praying in lock step?
Unfortunately, the leading candidate for his motto is “Go to Hell, and take your cheap suit with you.”
That’s wonderful.
I think that would be “I ad inferos et aufer vilem vestitum tecum.” ;)
Benedict the XVI is the Pope of liturgical pluralism. Summorum Pontificum is not his only work in the area. There is also Anglicanorum Coetibus.
By presuming one liturgy for the Western-rite, Vatican II was perfectly in line with Trent. (As you note, the exceptions to this are almost irrelevant in practice.) It is Benedict who has definitively put an end to Tridentine conformity.
The difference between the pre-Tridentine Church and Benedict’s Church is that in the pre-Tridentine Church, the different rites were geographical. Now they are tribal.
He is lambasted as an arch-conservative, but I think our current Pontiff is the craftiest liberal of them all. ;)
Pope Benedict not only has to navigate between two “tribes” of the Roman Rite, but also through the diverse sub-communities within these tribes. Perhaps it might be better to say that those who favor the Pauline missal and those who favor the Tridentine missal belong to two distinguishable ideological “nations” linked by a common genotypical beginning. The two nations share a historical and theological basis. The distinctive qualities of each nation and their constituent sub-groups, or tribes, obscure this basis.
Adherence to or rejection of key tenets of the Liturgical Movement is not an accurate gauge of liturgical allegiance. Some Tridentine adherents insist that Solemn Mass is the ideal form of worship. Some in this tribe also contend that an active participation of the laity (missal reading, dialogue Masses) is necessary. Others, like myself, appreciate low Mass as a pietistic event inclusive of diverse lay devotions. The former are often eager to snatch the rosaries from the hands of the latter.
Pope Benedict has sliced the gordian knot of different ecclesiologies and liturgical ideologies with his “two forms, one rite” decision. His motion cannot (and perhaps should not) attempt to solve irreconcilable differences.
His goal is to choose and translate a motto into Latin, so that it will sound impressive. Unfortunately, the leading candidate for his motto is “Go to Hell, and take your cheap suit with you.”
Sounds like once he gets his footing he could use a copy of the Student’s Catullus — no one writes insults like him. And later some Plautus, Petronius and Apuleius.
Under the rubrics of the current Roman Mass, a celebrant may elect to offer Mass in the Latin language at an altar against the apse of the church, wear a fiddleback vestment, use the Roman Canon (EP I), use incense, say the confiteor, and even say the prayers for the conversion of Russia at the end of Mass. So I am puzzled why so many of those with an affection for the former order did not take advantage of all of these options. Is there an explanation for this? Is there really that much hostility to including an Old Testament reading in addition to the Gospel and Epistle reading?
Some priests lament the loss of the old Offertory prayers and the prayers at the foot of the altar, for example. The Extraordinary Form could be “rolled into” the Ordinary Form through the inclusion of some Tridentine prayers and rubrics as options. Wouldn’t take much, really.
It’s especially disturbing that noticeable anti-Semitism remains among a reactionary fringe. The residual anti-Semitism in the old lectionary and breviary merely contributes to the hatred. There’s a moral imperative to remove anti-Semitic readings and prayers from the old liturgical books. The fact that the Vatican has not included these reforms in the re-introduction of the Tridentine Mass deeply concerns me, to say the least.
“Not necessarily a return to the endless liturgical experimentation…”
What, fundamentally, is wrong with liturgical experimentation? It is true that some of the experiments turn out not to work so well, like the infamous “Barney Mass” that’s become the bludgeon of choice for every Novus Ordo detractor on the planet.
If the “abuses” are a problem, can’t the bishops simply prohibit the most obvious and heretical abuses that really are abuses? By way of counter-example, I’ve heard complaints that it is extra-canonical and therefore wrong for the congregation to hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer — oh, the intolerable personal abuse of being touched by another Catholic during a spiritual experience! Why should there be no room for liturgical renewal, for diversity that expresses communal spiritual development rather than tribal preferences?
Frank, I tend to agree. What I was obliquely referring to was the attitude that the liturgy must always be changing to keep it “new” and “exciting”. Visualize the stereotyped liturgist rolling his eyes and saying “it’s been done!”