The Worm Is Turning.

What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful.

LETTER OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI TO THE BISHOPS ON THE OCCASION OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE APOSTOLIC LETTER "MOTU PROPRIO DATA" SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM ON THE USE OF THE ROMAN LITURGYPRIOR TO THE REFORM OF 1970

As a Latin Mass regular now for a number of years, it often seems that the traditional restoration is slow-going. Following the Holy Father's liberation of the "extraordinary" form of the Roman Liturgy in 2007, most dioceses still appear to treat those attached to to the ancient liturgy as spiritual lepers and in doing so render the Holy Father's instruction a dead letter. But following the lead of many traditionalists who have been in the liturgical ghetto longer, I simply continue to assist at the traditional liturgy, avail myself and my family to the sacraments and devotions of the ancient Church, and enjoy the society of devoted and mature like-minded traditional Catholic families. Infrequently, I will lament the lack of progress in the broader Church when time permits me to consider it but a busy legal career, raising and homeschooling seven children and a rich liturgical calendar of feasts and fasts do not provide me as much opportunity to do so.  

Occasionally I will see things differently: I will see a Church that is enjoying a genuine regeneration -- an authentic springtime. Usually it is in the growing numbers now being introduced to the old Mass. Other times I meet young diocesan priests that are markedly more orthodox, donning cassocks and interested in -- or even offering -- the old Mass. My spirit is also warmed by seeing the sacrifice and diligence of so many Latin Mass families who endure considerable financial hardship yet seem to continually bring child after child into the world without counting the costs of such children -- trusting in God's good favor that faith and love of children will be rewarded by His care and protection. I look over those many children and my heart is uplifted by the thought that ten families deeply committed to the old Mass and serving our Lord as their forefathers did will turn into fifty families in a generation. Yes, progress is slow but then again "progress" was never a traditionalist concept to begin with: we care about the true, the eternal and the good. In the end, we know that these things win because we trust our Lord's good promises. So whether it happens next week or next year or next century, it will happen because we all know the ending to this story.

One place that I would never expect to find solace pertaining to the fight for the soul of Holy Mother Church are the pages of the heterodox National Catholic Reporter (NCR). The NCR, or course, is generally wrong -- often mortally -- on virtually every important issue confronted the Catholic world. While I do not frequently the NCR (ever), I recently ran across a December 8, 2012 NCR editorial by a California pastor who musings and hackneyed stereotypes of all things traditional were so offensive and ignorant that my dander was immediately raised. After a few huffs and puffs -- mostly in disbelief of the uncharity of it all -- a smile ran slowly across my face and I realized how wrong indeed I was. This editorial -- laughable as it was in terms of content and critique -- was actually the best outside vindication that the war in the Church is turning. The fact that he needed to write an editorial attacking traditionalists means he -- and, by extension, the NCR -- see the old Mass beginning to gain traction. By analogy, any sensible incumbent politician knows that the rule of thumb in a campaign is that you ignore the challenger until you absolutely no longer can and now the "spirit of Vatican II" crowd are rapidly realizing that ignoring the old Mass is no longer an option, and it is in that that we should rejoice because it is now they -- and not us -- that is fighting a rearguard action.

With that proviso in mind, it is worth parsing the NCR's editorial hit job, Attempt to resurrect pre-Vatican II Mass leaves church at crossroads, if for no other reason to understand the huge educative job that is before us. It is debatable whether ignorance or malice accounts for so many of the misrepresentations written by its author, Father Ron Schmit, pastor of St. Anne Church in Byron, California, but as the author is a priest of God, I assume it must be ignorance. Either way, his statements and prejudices should be explored and exploded.

Father Schmit (or Father Ron as he addresses himself to parishioners) begins by observing the following:

It was curiosity and a sense of irony that moved me to open the Oct. 1 issue of our diocesan newspaper. On the cover was the headline "Moving Forward in Faith" next to a picture of our former bishop vested as would be a prelate from more than 50 years ago. This was a photo from a liturgy in the "extraordinary form" (pre-Vatican II 1962 Latin Mass), welcoming a group of very traditional Carmelite nuns to the diocese.  Lately, there seems to be an increasing interest in this "extraordinary form" in our diocesan paper and among some of our clergy. 

Immediately we are struck by the Father Schmit's incredulity of the increasing interest in the old Mass in an article entitled "Moving Forward in Faith." While there was no link to the article in Father Schmitt's editorial, I was able to locate it online in the October 1, 2012 e-edition of the Oakland Diocese's The Catholic Voice. For the sake of fairness, here is how the event was described by The Catholic Voice in an article entitled, Carmelites welcomed at St. Monica:

About 800 people — a congregation reminiscent of Christmas and Easter — filled St. Monica Church in Moraga to celebrate the official opening of the Carmel of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, a new foundation of the Discalced Carmelites in the Diocese of Oakland.  Five nuns in brown habits and black veils and five novices with white veils took their places in the pews as the Most Rev. Salvatore J. Cordileone, archbishop-designate of San Francisco, celebrated the Solemn Pontifical Mass on Sep. 21.  The Mass, which was in Latin with priests dressed in red and more than a dozen altar boys serving, was celebrated on the Feast of St. Matthew.  The Rev. Gregory Eichman, FSSP, who was ordained to the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter in May, proclaimed the Gospel. His order is dedicated to the traditional liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church. Father Eichman, 27, is assistant pastor at St. Anne Church in San Diego. His 19-year-old sister was among the Carmelite novices attending the Mass.

One might think (however, one would be wrong) that Father Schmit would be profoundly grateful that a convent in Oakland was opening as opposed to closing and populated with devout and habited young women as opposed to eco-friendly, yoga-teaching geriatric sisters in pantsuits. No, all that Father Schmit can muster -- almost ominously -- is that they were "very" traditional.  Using that beautiful sign of renewal as a tendentious opening, Father Schmit gets right down to business:

In the past my attitude has been "so what." [1] If people are into antiquarianism, let them. [2] Some people like to spend weekends reenacting the Civil War. They dress in period costume. They stage mock battles of Union and Confederate soldiers. It's a harmless hobby. I just figured that the people attached to this "extraordinary form" were the liturgical version of societies for anachronistic re-enactment. However, I have come to change my opinion. Those attached to the extraordinary form are not like Civil War re-enactment societies. At least those people know they are play-acting about a time that can never return. [3] The people attached to the extraordinary form are seriously trying to enact a particular worldview and understanding of church. And it is an understanding that we left behind at the Second Vatican Council. It is a worldview that is incompatible with the council.  Liturgy is not about taste or aesthetics. It is how the church defines itself. Those who rejected Vatican II and its liturgy were the first to understand the connection between liturgy and our self-understanding as church ....

Three observations from this opening salvo must be made: first, the use of "antiquarianism" is an ironic one, which I will discuss below. Second, the comparison of traditionalists -- both young and old -- attached to the Mass that built Christendom, produced saints and unknown martyrs by the thousands, was the way in which the holiest prayer in Christianity was offered from the beginning, and, most importantly, is a devout and reverent manner by which to honor God to "Civil War Re-enactors" is gratuitously noxious. As an argumentative medium, this is little more than cheap ad hominem to equate Traditionalists with those whom most people consider goofballs (no offense intended to Civil War Re-enactors). 

Third, Father Schmit quite correctly (for the first time in his editorial) states that Traditionalists are trying to restore a pre-Vatican II worldview and ecclesiology, which, in his view, "was left behind at [Vatican II"].  We do understand precisely that liturgy is not about taste or aesthetics and it is by and through liturgy that the Church defines itself -- and it is for that reason why we precisely cling the old Mass from time immemorial because that is what the Church always was.  

Father Schmit laments the Holy Father's actions in Summorum Pontificum because, "[Pope Paul VI] knew that permitting the old form would be not only divisive but would call the whole council into doubt, and that would be a sin against the Holy Spirit. Now we are experiencing the unfortunate fruit of the recent permission to celebrate the extraordinary form." First, I could be misreading Father but he seems to suggest that the Holy Father sinned against the Holy Spirit by permitting the old Mass. Second, remember what the context of Father Schmit's introduction was here -- the opening of a traditional Carmelite convent -- and thus vocations and reverence presumably are the "unfortunate fruits" of the Holy Father's actions.

What follows is a contemporary full throated defense of the "spirit" of Vatican II.  One might surmise that after forty years of a vocations implosion, closing schools and "clustering" parishes, collapse of Mass attendance, exploding divorce and annulments, and a pederasty abuse crisis that the "spirit" of Vatican II schtick would have worn thin by now.  But doing his best imitation of the year 1969, Father Schmit maintains -- I believe seriously -- that:

The definition of who we are as church comes alive in the liturgy. Vatican II described the church as a priestly people called on a mission. This priesthood is rooted in our baptism. ...Baptism is our sharing in Christ's victory over death. We are incorporated into the paschal mystery of the risen Christ and now share in the life of God. What higher calling can there be than this? Marriage, religious or single life and ordained ministry are but specific ways in which one is called to live out his/her baptismal vocation. The council's vision of a priestly people on mission necessitated a liturgy that could prepare disciples ready to take up their responsibilities.

I know as much as anyone that "clericalism" is a four-lettered word among liberal Churchmen, but is this Catholic priest really maintaining that there is no special distinction or calling for God's ordained priesthood?  Does he really value his own vocation so little such that his gift to offer Holy Mass and to forgive sins by the power of Jesus Christ are not qualitatively differently than the laity in the pews?  By the grace of God, I am thankful to be born again in the healing waters of baptism, but speaking as layman who Father Schmit  holds in such great esteem, I appreciate the difference between myself and my vocation and that higher calling of my priests and bishops.   If in fact this were the case -- that Vatican II eviscerated the difference between the ordained priesthood and the laity -- then I suppose it is no wonder why we have a vocations crisis.   And where exactly may I find this Vatican II "vision" that "a priestly people on mission" (nb. what does this even mean?) "necessitated" a new liturgy?

To buttress his case that the new direction allegedly taken by Vatican II was proper, Father states: 

The council looked to the church's distant past to recover ritual elements that were instrumental in preparing the baptized to take active responsibility for Christ's priestly, prophetic and royal mission.  In her article "Summorum Pontificum and the Unmaking of the Lay Church" (Worship, July 2012), scholar Georgia Masters Keightley identifies those elements recovered by the council from the ancient church. These express the active exercise of the priestly people of God: the prayer of the faithful, the offertory procession and the kiss of peace. These were visible signs that expressed the church's priesthood. These signs incarnate for the priesthood of all believers the task to proclaim the Gospel and to make intercession for the world and all people. Over time, these elements were lost or obscured. By the time we get to the Council of Trent (1545-63), new prayers and rites had replaced the ancient rites.

Remember above that Father criticized those who are attached to the old Mass as "people [] into antiquarianism."  The term, at least in this instance, could not have reasonably been used accidentally.  The charge against Traditionalists -- and Father's subsequent appeal to it in defending the new Mass -- is so rich in irony that one in incredulous that Father Schmit could have written it with a straight face.  "Antiquarianism," of course, is the love of old things because they are old.  Defending the then-current Mass (our "old" Mass today), Pope Pius XII condemned in paragraph 61 of his 1947 encyclical Mediator Dei those who, in the name of liturgical "antiquarianism," would "restore" it to its original and ancient form: 

The same reasoning holds in the case of some persons who are bent on the restoration of all the ancient rites and ceremonies indiscriminately. The liturgy of the early ages is most certainly worthy of all veneration. But ancient usage must not be esteemed more suitable and proper, either in its own right or in its significance for later times and new situations, on the simple ground that it carries the savor and aroma of antiquity. The more recent liturgical rites likewise deserve reverence and respect. They, too, owe their inspiration to the Holy Spirit, who assists the Church in every age even to the consummation of the world. They are equally the resources used by the majestic Spouse of Jesus Christ to promote and procure the sanctity of man.

It is unbelievable that Father could serious tar people who want to maintain a liturgy that was suppressed -- unlawfully as we now know -- only forty years ago as trying to reinstate antiquarian elements into the liturgy as if the old Mass were the novelty.  Indeed, the old Mass is not a creature of a committee's conference room but rather shaped organically by the hands of Holy Mother Church in every age.  There is nothing "antiquarian" about wanting to see it restored to its rightful pride of place.  But the very defense that Father Schmit musters for the new Mass is exactly on antiquarian grounds -- thus the irony.  Moreover, as someone who has been to the new Mass hundreds of times in hundreds of places, I can say with some degree of anecdotal certainty that no matter how hard I try I cannot imagine that the restored "kiss of peace" among the faithful in the new Mass -- with its concomitant hooting, wild gesticulating, running up and down the aisles and peace signs -- looks anything like its ancient counterpart.  Call me prudish but I just cannot see any "high-fiving" in the Roman catacombs.  

As much as Father Schmit loves the spirit-filled Vatican II new Mass, he genuinely objects to the old Mass; he writes:

The liturgy that came out of the Middle Ages and Trent placed a different emphasis on the eucharistic liturgy. Focus was not on preparing all the baptized for mission but on the power of the ordained to transform bread and wine. The idea of the "unbloody reenactment of the sacrifice of the cross" pushed "thanksgiving for creation and consecrating the world" to the margins of eucharistic theology. The power of the clergy to make Christ present in Eucharist eclipsed the Eucharist's power to transform the baptized -- equipped to make Christ a real presence in the world through their everyday lives. The 1570 missal (the basis of the 1962 missal) was, and continues to be, a liturgy in which the baptized -- once subjects of the liturgy and co-celebrants of the eucharistic sacrifice -- were and are reduced to mere spectators. They are there to watch the priest say "his" Mass. The emphasis is hierarchical and legalistic (who has the power and how are they lawfully exercising that power). Rather than the risen Christ working through the whole people of God (lay and ordained), we have a powerful clergy ministering to a passive people. Instead of church as sacrament, we have church as a juridical hierarchy.  

It is a misnomer to say that the "Mass" came out of the Middle Ages as if it were born there because the liturgy that "came out" was the same as the one that "came in" to the Middle Ages.  To speak of it in that way betrays an almost breathtaking ignorance of the organic growth of the liturgy through the centuries.   The Mass of the "Middle Ages" was the Mass of the Crusades was the Mass of Charlemagne and the Mass of Gregory the Great -- and it was also the Mass of the Third Century Church as so on.  Did it change organically over time -- yes.  Were new prayers added and rituals enhanced to give greater glory to God -- yes.  Did it "come out" of anything other than the original public worship instituted by Christ himself -- no.  There is no "1570" missal as if it were invented at that time.   Only one liturgy "came out" of any human endeavor and time period-- and that occurred in the 1960s with the new Mass.

Father Schmit's criticism of the old Mass is troubling:  I am not sure what Father Schmit believes he is offering, but if he is not focusing his people on the reality of the unbloody sacrifice of our Lord than he is, in my humble opinion, radically shortchanging them on what Holy Mass is and how that sacrifice -- renewed everyday on every Catholic altar -- can save them here and now.  Morever, his description of those who assist at the old Mass as "mere spectators" is grossly unfair and suggests that Father has not grasped the difference between spiritual and interior participation and mere externalities. I can say, again from experience, that the new Mass was by no means as challenging spiritually as the old Mass -- i.e., to fervently prayer the entire old Mass in real time with the priest is both edifying and exhausting.  I hardly consider myself a mere spectator when the mysteries are concluded.  Moreover, I do not see the many external participations by the laity in the new Mass as particularly instructive or spiritual -- they have struck me as downright mechanical at times:  the enthusiastic greeters who assault your private space in the "gathering space," the stentorian lay lector, and the phalanx of blue haired ladies who rush the altar to distribute communion.  Nor do I see my shouting "and also with you" as specifically prayerful.  With all due respect, I often have felt as a spectator at the new Mass albeit at something that amounts to a very poorly choreographed performance of a protestant prayer meeting.  

Father Schmit ends his rant by equating the old Mass as the end of Vatican II's new Pentecost and invoking the most unlikely of allies:

The attempt to resurrect and popularize the 1962 pre-Vatican II Mass has serious ramifications. Will we be a church that looks narrowly inward -- where God is found only in piety and private devotion, or will we be a church as Vatican II defined it -- a Spirit-filled people on fire with an urgent sense of mission? We are at a crossroads. The extraordinary form is incapable of activating us as the priestly people of God -- the vision of Vatican II. Which path will we follow?  Sts. Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross were great reformers of the Catholic Counter Reformation. As those at Vatican II, they tried to reform their community by returning to the sources and restoring religious practice (discalced) that had become obscured over time. They also had to struggle with those who fought the reforms they were initiating. We need their intercession to persevere in the aggiornamento (updating) that Pope John XXIII inaugurated by calling the council together.  

While I admittedly have not assisted Holy Mass as Father Schmit's church, I can say that his recycling of warmed-over cliches such as "spirit-filled people on fire" and "urgent sense of mission" is none too convincing.  I suspect that many who have been to the new Mass have not met too many "spirit-filled people on fire" but rather people suffering under the discomfort of forced social interactions and kitschy music and the only "urgent mission" that the people seem to undertake is the mad dash for the exits immediately following communion.   Finally, Father Schmit's chosen intercessors to protect us from the very Mass that both Sts. Teresa and John would have known and loved are from the very same order of those courageous women who recently opened a new convent in Oakland, California, which, as we now know, served as the jumping off point for Father Schmit's annoyance.  Far be it from me to divine what two of my favorite saints might think of all of this, but I must believe that they would not share his consternation at the founding of a new Carmelite convent and as an occasion for a rant but rather a cause for a celebration.

One really must ask if the old Mass is so incapable of "activating" (again, nb, what is that word supposed to mean?) us a priestly people of God, why is Father Schmit so worried?  God willing, may many more like him also worry.

Deo gratis.