Pope Benedict XVI Blog

Catholics' Latin traditions are making a comeback

The Record Searchlight
David Yount
Saturday, August 18, 2007

By the time you read this, my wife and I will be in England on one of our twice-yearly visits. We look forward to Sundays in London, because it's when we worship at the Brompton Oratory, a vast baroque basilica built by John Henry Newman, the Victorian Anglican priest convert who became a Catholic cardinal.

Considering that the Younts are Quakers rather than Catholics, what is it that attracts us? It is the Oratory's Sunday 11 a.m. Solemn High Mass, featuring three priests, a choir singing Mozart, a brilliant sermon, plus the "smells and bells" associated with traditional worship. Mass is conducted in Latin.

We are not alone in being attracted. The church is always packed to overflowing with domestic Roman Catholics, not just curious tourists like ourselves. In passing, it's worth noting that England still has an established church of which the monarch is head. The monarch is neither permitted to be a Catholic nor to marry one. The recently retired prime minister, Tony Blair, respected this prohibition while in office, although (as a crypto-Catholic) he attended Mass with his Catholic wife and sent his children to Catholic schools.

I bring all of this up because Pope Benedict XVI recently relaxed rules that will allow Latin Masses for Catholics around the world. It was after the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s that the church opted for Mass in the vernacular and favored free-standing altars with the priest leading worship while facing the congregation. Churches built since then dispensed with altar rails, because they gave the impression of separating the people from their priest.

All of this reform, while well-intentioned, grated with many Catholics, because it was done in slipshod fashion. The old Latin Mass was hardly a model of lay participation, but it was ancient and predictable. Rushing into the vernacular, national churches in English-speaking nations tended to translate the old Latin into pedestrian English that lacked the dignity, authority and sonority long since achieved by the Book of Common Prayer.
more...

posted by Dr. Denice Hanley, DPM, M.Div. @ 3:45 PM