Liturgical Extremism, The Latin Mass Society, and Todd

Sometimes we get foretastes of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. One happened to me on the Saturday after the Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ (I believe Westerners call it Christmas). On that day, my wife, who is a manager for a local crafts chain store in Torrance, California, had to open the store at 6 a.m. I drove her there, and as I had no work that day, I was tempted to go home. Something prompted me, however, to go instead to my office a mile away to check my e-mail. I’m very glad I did.

I had gotten a message from a dear friend of mine, an assistant choir director for St. Innocent’s, an Orthodox church in Tarzana, who that Friday night had written to say that she was getting together a group on Saturday morning to sing the Nativity liturgy in Slavonic for the benefit of Russian émigrés, who came once a month for the service, and in honor of her 80 year old father, who for many years had been the lead cantor at the (Eastern Catholic) Ruthenian Cathedral in Van Nuys.

Five minutes after getting this news, and after having googled the address of the church, and gotten directions via Yahoo Maps, I was on my way to Tarzana. I made it there by 8 a.m., just as everyone in the choir was gathering for practice. All eight of us were either choir directors or cantors, and as there was only one other tenor and two basses, I was Tenor For A Day. We practiced from 8 to 10, reading through the music (perhaps two thirds of which I already knew), and then sang the Liturgy from 10 to 12. All through the experience, both of competent singers working together, and of the Divine Liturgy itself, I was reminded of the words of the envoys to St. Vladimir regarding the Orthodox liturgy: “We did not know whether we were in Heaven or on Earth, but this we know: That God dwells here.”

I had another such foretaste about a month later, when I, my wife (who is a competent alto) and a dear friend of ours (a concert pianist with a lovely soprano voice), were invited to the same church to record the music that had been sung for Nativity. This time, while we did not have the transcendant beauty of holiness of the Divine Liturgy, yet in the fellowship of the twelve of us, we were able to put aside the enmity which, unfortunately, has so often separated Eastern Catholics from Orthodox.

On that occasion, I was again singing tenor with the Orthodox choir director of a church in Oxnard, an excellent musician, composer, linguist, and liturgical scholar, who effortlessly negotiated the Slavonic, Carpatho-Rusyn, Russian, and Ukrainian texts we sang. During a break in the recording (which went on for five hours), I mentioned to him that of all the liturgies I had studied or had served, I found that the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom was the most spiritually mature of all. He nodded, and then said, “But you know, the Tridentine rite of the Roman Church is a close second.” We both smiled, nodded, and returned to our work. I had found a friend and colleague.

* * *

Much of this experience has been at the back of my mind in reading what the dread Todd has written in his recent blast of the Latin Mass Society. I must say that I am more of a mind with my friend than I am with Todd. Nonetheless, I thought it best to give Todd the benefit of the doubt, and go look at the website myself.

But rather than finding an intolerant, ignorant, and triumphalist website (rather in the manner of www.catholic-clayeaters.com, as Todd had intimated), I found instead the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, a well-designed, literate, intelligent and moderate page. But Todd had not bothered to put a hyperlink on the particular text to which he was objecting so vociferously, and I could not immediately find it.

So I looked at their Documents page, and found their focus statement: A Guide to the Latin Mass Society In the initial section, UNITY WITHIN THE CHURCH, the statement began by stating the Society’s legality under Canon law, its legitimate apostolate to preserve the tradition of the Church, its obedience to the Vicar of Christ and the hierarchical church in communion with him, and its obedience to the sacramental, teaching and governing authority of that Church. This does not appear to be the impulse toward schism which Todd tries to present, and its statement of obedience is more than I have so far found in reading anything written by Todd.

In point of fact, the Guide makes a statement so appropriate as regards the attitude that Todd has taken that it might be appropriate to quote that section in its entirety:

“Although the Society is not separated from or in opposition to the rest of the Church, the value of its apostolate is not generally recognised by the liturgical establishment which tends to view its activities as bearing adversely on the status quo. Thus a partisan spirit has developed which automatically opposes, as a matter of policy, the regular and frequent celebration of the former rites.

“It was to correct this obstructive pattern of thought that Pope John Paul II wrote:

“It is necessary that all the Pastors and the other faithful have a new awareness not only of the lawfulness but also of the richness for the Church of a diversity of charisms, traditions of spirituality and apostolate, which also constitutes the beauty of unity in variety. (Ecclesia Dei 5a)”

So much then for Todd and his attempts to assert that the Novus Ordo, whether in Latin or in the vernacular, is the only legitimate liturgy for non-schismatic Roman Catholics. If we were to follow his oh, so tolerant attitude, we would probably also have to abandon what remains of the Gallican, Mozarabic, Ambrosian, and Dominican rites, and in particular, my beloved Byzantine rite, as some backward Irish bishops had attempted to do in the United States in the early 20th Century. The result of that misguided effort was a schism which drove hundreds of thousands of Eastern Catholics into the Orthodox Church. Let us hope that the intolerance that Todd appears to exhibit will not occasion another such.

The remainder of the Guide deals with a number of topics, including the Society’s apostolate for Sacred Music, for the Traditions of the Church, a listing and description of the indults regarding the use of the old Latin Mass, and the many movements, faithful to the Roman Catholic Church, which are maintaining its use. It is a thoughtful, reasoned, and historically and theologically well-informed apologia. It is a pity that Todd’s critique fails to address it, or to measure up to it.

Getting back though, to the text that Todd had so objected to, I continued looking in the documents section of the Latin Mass Society webpage, but what I found instead was a history of that Society, where the members petitioned for an indult to permit the Old Mass to continue to be served in England. The member list of the signators to that petition are an honor roll of the poets, authors, essayists, musicians and singers, actors and actresses of England of the time, including Vladimir Ashkenazy, Agatha Christie, Kenneth Clark, Cyril Connolly, Robert Graves, Graham Greene, Cecil Day Lewis, Yehudi Menuhin, Malcolm Muggeridge, Iris Murdoch, Joan Sutherland, and Philip Toynbee. This does not appear to me to be the effort of obscurantist and reactionary schismatics, as Todd would suggest.

I looked further for the document to which Todd was objecting, and looked under resources. While, again, I didn’t find the text, I found the following:

-A guide or instruction to how to read Ecclesiastical latin;

-A plain man’s guide to the celebration of mass;

-A guide for priests in the celebration of low mass, with an explanation of the Requiem mass;

-An explanation for servers (or altar boys);

-Questions and answers regarding the traditional mass;

-The ordinary of the Mass in latin and in English;

-and the propers in Latin and English;

-A comparison of the texts of the old and new masses in English;

-But most important of all, from my point of view, is a large set of translations of the Fathers;

As well as a webpage which has a set of the Fathers and other Catholic writers over the last 2000 years, in chronological order, and including such 20th Century luminaries as Dorothy Day, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, Thomas Merton, etc.

In short, I found a wealth of material for anyone who might be looking for a rubrical, linguistic, traditional, and theological understanding of the Old Latin Mass. This is not, to say the least, what I was expecting as a result of Todd’s blast.

Finally, after looking everywhere, and finding an embarrassment of riches of information, I found the section to which Todd was referring:

And finally, upon reading it, I understood what Todd apparently does not get: this is not a know-nothing, reactionary, and intolerant rant, but a call to arms, written in the same spirit, and with the same nobleness of heart and mind, as the call to Orthodoxy and Catholicity that we have seen in the best modern English Catholic writers, including John Henry Cardinal Newman, G.K. Chesterton, Hilaire Belloc, and Evelyn Waugh. It is a pity that Todd apparently has neither the knowledge nor the wit to see this.

But like the beginning of this essay, when I wrote of the finding of a new friend, Todd has at least introduced me to a new and dear friend, The Latin Mass Society, and I owe him a debt of gratitude for this at least. Because of this, I will forgo writing the really nasty, and perfectly accurate, things I was going to say regarding Todd.