I know it’s been really quiet here and I can’t say as I’m all that happy about that fact.  Despite plenty of excuses know that I am doing my best to get back to a regular blogging routine.  Honest.

That said, I plan on dragging you all along with me as I work to tackle three projects over the course of a good chunk of this year.  First, I’ve committed to getting my Latin studies going for real.  I’ll be going through John F. Collins’ Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin and using its associated Answer Key targeting roughly one unit per week.  There are 35 units in the book, so that means it’ll take me the better part of the year, but I’m going to let myself get ahead if I can.

Second and third, I’m going to read the entire Bible this year as well as the entirety of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  I’ll be following the schedule set up by the good folks at the Coming Home Network.  I started this once before and hit a roadblock a couple of months in.  Hopefully this time will go more smoothly, although I am already a few days behind in starting.

I intend to share any reflections I may have or quotes that strike my fancy or even just the occasional “wow, Latin is a weird language – did you know …”.  That won’t be all I’ll be blogging about, but at least it will give me some structure going forward.

My son has been telling me for several days now that they’re working on a song in Latin in choir practice, but he couldn’t quite remember exactly what it was.  Today I had the chance to pick him up from choir after school and I figured he’d be able to remember the name right after practice.  In his best third-grade I’ve-never-been-trained-in-Latin he tells me it’s Adoramus Te, Christe.  A beautiful, if short, piece and one I’ll be quite glad to hear at Mass this Saturday.  Ecstatic, even.

Then something … unexpected … happened.  Out of my random selection of MP3s I’ve copied to my Sirius Stiletto comes … wait for it … Adoramus Te, Christe from the Catholic Latin Classics CD from Richard Proulx’s Cathedral Singers.  Somehow, I think we have a certain approval of the selection.  Even though there’s no way the childrens’ choir will sound anywhere near as polished as the Cathedral Singers, it will be music to my ears and bliss in my heart.

Well, actually, my wife got it for me and it chants but the point still stands. I’m listening to the CD from the Cistercian Monks of Stift Heiligenkreuzand I can see why everyone has raved about what they have done. Maybe some day we’ll hear music like this in our churches now that the silly season has been seen for what it is. Until then, buy one and do your ears – and your soul – a favor.

Breviarium Romanum where, if you can translate the Latin, all things regarding the Roman Breviary are discussed. This may be the final straw to make me take the time to learn my Latin. I have heard some wonderful things about the pre-conciliar Breviary and if it really is that much better than my already-beloved “modern” Breviary then I truly am missing something. Go, check it out. (I do wish the poll on the sidebar had a “I don’t pray the Breviarium Romanum, but I wish I did” option…)

H/T The Hermeneutic of Continuity.

First, Rich Leonardi tells us about both a beginner’s and an advanced course in Latin provided by the U.K.’s National Archives. I simply must find a way to improve my sketchy-at-best Latin skills. After all, it is little use telling people of the value of Latin if I haven’t remotely mastered it myself.

Second, Rorate Caeli lets us all know there is a course being offered on St. Thomas Aquinas. Ite ad Thomam has more details – it looks to be an interactive online course. I can manage to pull out both of these at nearly the same time, as well as another super-secret project I’m just getting started. Sure I can!

No, not really, but Fr. Fox certainly does make the prospect intriguing. (Note: I’m not complaining about my pastor one bit but only reflecting on Fr. Fox’s excellent work, so don’t get any ideas.) He celebrated the first Mass in Latin in, from his estimation, somewhere between 30 to 40 years in Piqua. Father’s reflections are here, and his homily is here.

Personally, I think this homily should be formatted and handed around to just about every Catholic out there – it is down-to-earth without being simple-minded and there is that hint of glee at the wonder of being Catholic that will be the key to sparking the renewal in the Church so desired. If ever we wish to see a return to all the sacraments and an increase in devotions it will necessarily come as a fruit of the great positive and genuine joy shining out from within Catholics, a joy that comes from the fullness of life and love Christ has given us through his Church. Latin alone won’t change the world, but it is an invaluable tool to help tie us back to the history of our Church, a line that flows back, unbroken, through ages and people and finds its roots in the Apostles and the One who called them, who calls us, to life.

A reaction to the Summorum Pontificum from Citizen Online out of Dover, NH. Given their affiliation to Foster’s and Foster’s Daily Democrat, one would do well to start out a little concerned. All in all, it’s definitely of the mixed-bag variety.

I’ll do my best Fr. Z impression here. My emphasis and comments.

Closer to God?
Catholic parishioners, priests weigh adding Latin Mass
By ROBERT M. COOK
Staff Writer

Parishioners prayed together, word for word, with the Rev. Michael Kerper in English — a language they all understand [see, it's starting badly already, because we as the most well-educated laity in the history of the Church can't possibly grasp a foreign language] — at the Friday morning Mass at Portsmouth’s Corpus Christi Parish.

It was in part the ability to participate so closely with Kerper [a clear mis-understanding that knowing the words translates to participation, and again a mis-understanding of what participation is] that gave some parishioners mixed reactions about the Catholic Church’s older and controversial Latin Mass [what's in a name?], which may become more common [it literally can't become less common in this Diocese, as you'll see below].

Pope Benedict XVI on July 7 formally declared that priests now can say the Latin rite [Isn't it good to know priests can now say Mass? Seriously, did this person do any research? The difference between rite and form is clearly spelled out in the MP.] when parishioners request it. Mass has been celebrated primarily in native languages rather than Latin since the early 1960s and Vatican II [1970 and after Vatican II, but who's counting?]. For years before the pope’s announcement, only bishops had been authorized to approve the Latin rite’s [never mind...] use in public.

Jewish groups have criticized some text in the Mass as insulting. [Apparently research was optional for this piece. Talk about a tired story based on false information.] Also, others say the older Mass could turn away those who prefer to celebrate it in their native languages. [No one is forcing them to come, and the Ordinary Form will be available everywhere it is now.]

“If you want to keep young people in the Church, stick with the English,” said Rosemary Kent of Portsmouth, who attended the Friday Mass at Corpus Christi. [And who clearly didn't read SP either as it notes the large numbers of young people with interest in the Extraordinary form.]

She said she and her children were brought up with the old Mass, but she doesn’t think bringing it back will help the Catholic Church today.

“I don’t want any Latin at all,” she said. [That doesn't sound like a very measured statement, nor one without significant bias. Again, however, she doesn't have to go.]

Others suggested a middle ground.

“I think a little bit of both would be fine,” said Denise Greeley of Portsmouth [Now there is someone in the spirit of SP - the two forms are meant to exist together not in exclusion.], who said she was a longtime parishioner familiar with the Latin Mass, formally known as the Tridentine Rite [Well, "formerly known" might be okay, but at this point I give up on the point.].

There are no Catholic churches in New Hampshire now celebrating the old Mass, according to Manchester Diocese Spokesman Pat McGee. [Like I said, it can't become less common. There is, however, the SSPX chapel in Salem which everyone seems to be ignoring. Do we, in fact, not wish to seek reconciliation with them?]

Maine has two Catholic churches, one in Portland and the other in Newcastle, that celebrate the old Mass, Maine Diocese Spokeswoman Sue Bernard said.

According to the Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei, based in Glenview, Ill., a group that supports use of the Latin Mass, the U.S. has 119 Catholic churches that celebrate the old rite. It lists Connecticut as having six that do, Massachusetts four and Rhode Island one. [Which leaves New Hampshire and Vermont as the only Dioceses without one, although Bishop Matano of Burlington has said he will say the Extraordinary Form of the Mass at the co-Cathedral. That leaves the Diocese of Manchester as the laggard, although there is no hard proof it will stay so.]

The Vatican has changed the Tridentine Rite over time, at least in part because Jewish groups have objected to language in a Good Friday prayer. The Vatican by the end of the 1960s had amended the Mass into its current form, in which the prayer expresses the hope that Jews reach the “fulfillment of redemption.” [Accurate and indifferent, not bad.]

Criticism of that language continues, but it previously contained language Jewish groups objected to even more strenuously, including a reference to “perfidious Jews.”

Members of the Jewish community criticized the pope’s July 7 decision. Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, issued a statement from Rome.

“We are extremely disappointed and deeply offended that nearly 40 years after the Vatican rightly removed insulting anti-Jewish language from the Good Friday Mass, that it would now permit Catholics to utter such hurtful and insulting words by praying for Jews to be converted,” Foxman said. [Do we have to go into this again? I think Fr. Z has torn that canard to shreds by now. Moving on.]

Monsignor Marc Caron, co-chancellor of the Diocese of Maine, said the two churches performing the Mass in that state, located in Portland and Newcastle, have avoided the controversy si
mply by not celebrating the Good Friday portion. [Which is, effectively, what will likely happen under SP although I understand there to be some conjecture on that issue.]

The churches celebrate contemporary Good Friday prayers instead, which presents the Jewish covenant with God as eternally valid, he said.

Greeley said she hopes the Rev. John McCormack, bishop of the Diocese of Manchester, will find a way to accommodate parishioners who, like herself, would like to occasionally celebrate the older Mass. [There are many who hope so. They're just not very coordinated.]

Some parishioners in the Portsmouth area now travel to Latin Mass services in Massachusetts or Maine, she said. [At least they're not attending the SSPX chapel. This also shows the depth of their desire for the Extraordinary Form.]

Mary Lou Garland of Portsmouth said she’d be more amenable to seeing the old Latin Mass celebrated if it were accompanied by an English interpretation so she could understand it. [This has been available since before 1962 in the form of hand Missals. Not a problem.]

“My feeling is to go with the pope,” she said. [Perfect!]

McGee said McCormack will discuss how best “to carry out the objectives that the Holy Father has put forth” with church officials over the next two months. [I have hopes this will proceed well, but sadly no inside information.]

The diocese has until Sept. 14 to formulate recommendations to its member parishes, McGee said, citing Vatican documents.

Several priests cited logistical difficulties in bringing back the old Mass, including a lack of materials and trained priests. [These are issues that can be solved. Those parishioners who want the Extraordinary Form will pay for it if needs be, although I doubt the situation is as dire as suggested.]

“Around here, almost no priest could do it, and lot of older priests have forgotten how to do it,” said Kerper, 55, who added that he last heard the old Latin Mass when he served as an altar boy.

Priests know how to say Mass in Latin, but very few know how to conduct the Tridentine Rite, which includes Gregorian chants [Correction: may include. They're not all Pontifical High Masses, after all.] and specific gestures and movements [Which, again, can be learned - they're not some Masonic secret handshake, after all.].

Most seminaries today want priests to become more fluent in Spanish than Latin, Kerper said. [Having once been capable of holding a conversation in Spanish, I can tell you that moving from Spanish to Latin is a piece of cake in comparison to the same journey from English. There is no requirement this be an either/or.]

Another obstacle is the old rite’s requirement for a raised altar, which few churches have, he said. [Okay, the author has me here. Fresh out of a Missale Romanum of Bl. John XXIII, I can't speak to this - is it really a requirement, and how specific is that requirement? Almost every church I've been in here, however, has its altar raised at least a little. Except for that weird one that doesn't have kneelers either.]

The Rev. Bob Cole, of the St. Charles and St. Joseph Catholic churches in Dover, said he’d be hard pressed to celebrate the old Mass.

“I flunked Latin as a student in the seminary,” he said. [He can learn. Quite honestly, he's probably smarter now than he was in seminary. And as Fr. Z has pointed out, you don't have to be completely fluent in Latin, merely competent. The rest can come with time and practice.]

He also said he hasn’t heard any parishioners in the Seacoast request the old Mass. [See: SSPX chapel in Salem. Invariably there are more who would like it than those who are willing to pester Father to offer it.]

Caron, the Maine Diocese co-chancellor, also called making the old Mass widely available logistically difficult, noting that many liturgical materials have been destroyed as the Mass fell into disuse. [Aside from how utterly sad it is that they would be destroyed, it is not as if they cannot be replaced.] These include missals, which are books containing texts needed for performing the Mass.

“Where are we going to find these ’62 Missals?” he asked. [Baronius Press is printing 1962 hand missals, as one source. Even Amazon has a Missale Romanum available, as does Books for Catholics. They're not cheap, but those who want to see the Extraordinary Form made available will help find a way.]

—

All in all, a mixed bag which seems to be making more excuses for why we can’t than searching for how we can. Let us hope, and pray, that our Bishop is more willing to do whatever he can for his flock than this author would suggest is reasonable. Christ, shall we not forget, did not exactly do the humanly “reasonable” thing either.

…if you know of a parish using Latin with the Pauline Missal. I hope he publishes some sort of writeup of it – we all just might find out something we didn’t know right around the corner.

Some of us sure do. Kansas City Catholic has us covered. H/T to Amy. Be sure to also check out the link at the end of the page. Something to lighten things up during the stress so many experience leading up to Christmas.

Some of you will recognize the subject as the beginning of the infamous line from Joseph Goebbels which continues, “…and keep on repeating it people will eventually come to believe it.” Now…as if that isn’t a big enough lead-in to any post…

A friend at the catholic-pages forum posted a link to a story from James Carroll of the Boston Globe. If you haven’t already heaved a sigh at that combination you may not know of their combined, err, “issues” with the Catholic Church. The Globe, of course, is where the priest child abuse scandal really broke in Boston and they have angled after the Church ever since.

In this piece, Mr. Carroll goes after the desire of many in the Catholic Church to be allowed to celebrate the Mass in the manner stipulated by the Second Vatican Council. No, that does not mean free-form Masses, the “four-hymn sandwich” (thanks Amy – I love that term!) or the complete removal of Latin or chant. As a quick refresher in case you’ve been asleep for the past forty years, let’s review some of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

36. 1. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.
2. But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. This will apply in the first place to the readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants, according to the regulations on this matter to be laid down separately in subsequent chapters.
…
54. In Masses which are celebrated with the people, a suitable place may be allotted to their mother tongue. This is to apply in the first place to the readings and “the common prayer,” but also, as local conditions may warrant, to those parts which pertain to the people, according to tho norm laid down in Art. 36 of this Constitution.
Nevertheless steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.
And wherever a more extended use of the mother tongue within the Mass appears desirable, the regulation laid down in Art. 40 of this Constitution is to be observed.

Now, if you’ve read this carefully you’ll realize that Latin was, in fact, never to be removed from the Mass in the first place. The closest one comes is in Art. 36 wherein the phrase “some prayers and chants” could be construed to mean “all prayers and chants”. But then, one is left to wonder, if the Council had meant “all”, why did they not in fact use the word “all”? Occam’s Razor would suggest, in fact, they never did mean “all” and its interposition is in fact an error.

This contrasts sharply with what James Carroll posits, having of course introduced himself as one “in the know” by repeating a well-known Latin phrase and citing his credentials as a former altar boy:

The first vote taken by the bishops of the Second Vatican Council in 1962 concerned liturgical reform, centering on use of the vernacular at Mass. If the Council fathers had voted against worshipping in language ordinary believers could understand, the revolutionary impulse driving that Council would have been stopped dead in its tracks, but the tally was overwhelmingly in favor. The Latin Mass was finished. With that single vote, the Council set loose a current of change that is still running.

Once Catholics entered into the mystery of the Mass as literate participants instead of as dumb spectators, an unprecedented renewal took hold.

For anyone who can read between the lines, Mr. Carroll has clearly insulted just about anyone who attended Mass prior to the upheaval following the promulgation of Sacrosanctum Concilium. In his estimation you all were akin to sheep, or perhaps more accurately cows, meandering along an unwitting path totally devoid of knowledge of your surroundings as the hammer raised over your head. Is it true that many people did not know enough Latin to understand the “old Mass” and that there were liturgical abuses such as the “McMass”? Absolutely. But is it not also fair to say that many, if not most, people were raised with a sufficient knowledge of Latin to understand the Mass? Indeed, if you look into almost any Missal even today you see Latin on one page and English on the other. It doesn’t take a PhD. to learn the translation one to the other.

Now, as Pope Benedict has said previously (for instance, in his book Principles of Catholic Theology) given the length of time this error has been in force it is entirely probable that a surgical removal of this error and complete replacement of it with what had originally been intended would likely cause harm to the Church, much as its original implementation harmed the Church. This is why, I believe, the Pope is leaning towards not so much a universal indult but a universal clarification, possibly in the form of an indult (how’s that for cutting hairs?) that the use of Latin in the Latin Rite Churches is to be restored as a universal right not dependant on the whim of the particular Ordinary at the time. The further restoration of the Tridentine Latin Mass (or, as many of those who are strongly drawn to it would say, the “TLM”) is likely and I would expect it to be received as any of the other Rites of the Catholic Church only, I believe, in much greater number.

The one thing that seems missing from the whole discussion on liturgy among Catholics of different persuasions is often, sadly, respect for differing viewpoints. Is the Novus Ordo the cause of all of the current ills in the Church? Hardly. Abuses of the Novus Ordo are clear signposts, however, of those ills and at the same time pointers to what must be done to remedy them. Here’s a strange thought – it is possible the Novus Ordo is a movement of the Holy Spirit designed to highlight the dark corners of abuse which the Tridentine Rite with its strict regimentation and whispered (or mumbled or slurred or perhaps ignored all together) prayers may have left unlit. Is that a fault of the Tridentine Rite? Not at all – those participating in it, both at the altar and in the pews are called to an actuose participet (Art. 113), an “actual participation” (not the “active” participation that has led to some “interesting” liturgical inventions) which also presupposes a spiritual predisposition to performing a respective role properly and with humility.

I suggest that, now that these corners are lit, the time has come to allow the Church to reconnect with Her history and allow both the Tridentine Rite and Latin in the Novus Ordo to co-exist as equals with the vernacular Novus Ordo. After all, is this One Holy Catholic Church big enough for these Rites, properly observed? I think it is.

Update: Gerald has been good enough to give his own riff on this subject and link over to this post as well. Heavens! I have company coming – I’d best tidy up the place! Welcome to anyone coming here from his The Cafeteria is Closed blog!

Update 2: Diogenes has picked up on this story too (thanks for the pointer Lilo!). And, might I say, in his own unique way, nailed it. And he is precisely correct – how is it that the Globe manages to keep publishing personal vendettas like this and still call itself a responsible journalistic source?