“What are they going to change this week?” I said to my parents.



Believe it or not, I’d stay awake at night and worry about what was happening to the Mass that I loved. Growing up, the nuns would tell us over and over how wonderful it was to be Catholic because no matter where you went in the world—from China to the South Pole—the Roman Mass would always be the same. They kept repeating that refrain as if it was the selling point of Catholicism, as if it was the one reason why the whole world should become Catholic.

With the passing of the TLM, I disappeared into the secular world for a few years, wearing my agnosticism on my sleeve like all good party members, carrying a book of Sartre in my knapsack. Cynical, know-it-all youth– that was me, us, everybody; even the way “we” flipped our long hair when we talked told the world that we knew everything and had it all figured out. But over time, especially on Sunday mornings, whether in Cambridge, Baltimore, or Colorado, I’d think of the Grand Lady of Liturgical Ceremonies, the Mass of all Ages, and a strange feeling of peace and comfort would come over me. I’d wonder how “she” was doing, now that she’d been brought up to date and given a new lease on life.

So I walked into a Catholic church one day. It was a modern church in the round, one of those theater churches, and around the bare altar in the center of the circle were burlap banners. I looked in vein for statues, pictures, crucifixes, anything from the not-so-old days, but all I saw were more burlap banners.

I went home and wrote a story, The Church of Burlap, and convinced myself that it was just as well that I’d taken another direction because this wasn’t the sort of thing that I could tolerate for long.

“Good-bye Church,” I said. “You were pretty once upon a time, but something happened…”

Years passed, and I ventured back, always trying to find something about the new liturgy to love, my eyes scanning the scene for something to value, hoping to be won over, to be convinced, to be converted. Again and again I’d leave disappointed, wondering how and why it all happened.


But then something did happen. In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI issued a Latin Mass motu proprio, allowing Catholic priests to celebrate the TLM anytime and anywhere they wanted without the permission from bishops. This was good news, because bishops—modernist bishops anyway—were the problem. Previously a priest had to request permission from his bishop to say the TLM, a cumbersome process that often got bogged down in webs of delay, obfuscation and sometimes outright rejection.

“That Mass is not the current form,” these bishops would say, as if the Grand Old Lady herself, the Mass of the Saints and Tradition, had somehow become heretical or suspect or was somehow an occasion of sin. Ah, yes, the modernist bishops were certainly unique, with their miniature miters and potato sack vestments; they seemed to go hand-in-hand with the secularized nuns in pant suits and fem-Nazi hair.

The Catholic Church has survived greater disasters, such as the iconoclastic controversy and the Arian heresy in the 3rd century. When you’re 2,000 years old, you’ve seen it all.

Things did begin to change, and they are changing now.



When I walked into St. Paul’s I noticed the quiet that precedes a TLM. It’s Quaker Meeting House quiet, not the gabfest that precedes many Novus Ordo Masses in some churches. (Speaking of quiet, a friend of mine, a sometime communicant of Saint Agatha and Saint James at 37th and Chestnut Street, tells me that before and after Sunday Masses there the congregation literally goes wild with talk and ‘shout outs’ to friends. He says he’s considering not going to that parish anymore because of the noise). When Fr. Gerald Carey, in traditional Fiddleback vestments, entered the sanctuary with acolytes carrying candles for the traditional Prayers at the Foot of the Altar, the time machine in my head did double flips. Then the Latin hymns started up and out came the incense. I felt the peace that I’d felt so long ago—yes, the transcendent lift started to take hold.

The TLM has been a 12 Noon staple at St. Paul’s now for several months, and Fr. Carey tells me that on good days he gets as many as 120 people. I counted about 110 people of different ages. There were also about eight to ten young acolytes serving at the altar.

“The Traditional Latin Mass has had a slow comeback,” he says. “But it’s always been part of the heart of the Church, but I think that the Holy Father would like it to be even more so, maybe because of the ways in which the Ordinary Form of the Mass has been handled.”

Fr. Carey is much more respectful of the Novus Ordo Mass than I tend to be (the NO Mass is also offered at St. Paul’s), but it’s easy to see that he feels passionately about the TLM. As they say in show business, he’s a natural at it. The morning I attended most of the people sat towards the back of the church as if to “read” the stand/kneel/sit cues of the people in front. A sturdy pamphlet, Saint Paul’s Mass Book for the Traditional Latin Mass, is distributed to all congregants. The pamphlets allow congregants to read the English translation while being “lifted” by the music and chants.

Everything in the TLM seems focused on God, on the mystery of sacrifice that the Mass purports to be, since both priest and people face the same direction. I found myself relieved on several occasions that this was a far less “talky” Mass than exists throughout all of Center City. This was less a Mass about “instruction,” handshaking and creating a theater-style reception atmosphere than it was about a “surgical” focus on what happened in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago.

Although Father Carey may not like me saying this, there’s no comparison between the two Masses. The Extraordinary Form is Mozart, while the Ordinary Form is definitely bottom shelf Insane Clown Posse.

“All the Italians in this area of South Philly are now in New Jersey in Washington Township,” Father Carey said. “We really don’t have a big Catholic community like we used to have, years ago.”



Years ago, when there was a large Catholic community here, St Paul’s would offer 8 Masses on a Sunday. The parish was about to eliminate the 12 Noon Mass when Fr. Carey brought in the TLM at that time.

Because St. Paul’s is the only Catholic church near Center City with a TLM, people travel from Drexel Hill, Bensalem and Port Richmond to attend each Sunday. News (and popularity) of the Mass has also attracted former parishioners of St Clement’s Anglo Catholic in Center City, and congregants from Saint Jude’s SSPX chapel in Eddystone, Pa. 



Fr. Carey cares for two South Philadelphia churches, the Church of Saint Mary Magdalen of Pazzi as well as St. Paul’s. On Palm Sunday, March 28, there will be a blessing and distribution of palms at 12 Noon at St. Mary Magdalen’s, and then a procession through the streets to St. Paul’s for the 12:30 Solemn High Traditional Latin Mass.



It promises to be a stunner. 


With the Italian market around the corner, and cafes down the street, this event seems like the ideal way to prepare for Holy Week and Easter. 



Although Father Carey thinks that the Latin Mass motu proprio should have happened in the 1970s, he’s very grateful that the “Mass of the Ages” is finally making a serious comeback. “There are still Catholics who walk in here during the 12 Noon Mass and think that a UFO landed on them,” he says. “There are young Catholics in their 20s who have no idea that we used to receive communion kneeling at altar rails. Some don’t even know what a Latin Mass is. They’ll say, ‘What’s that?’ Some will walk in off the street, see this Mass, and be in a state of shock. One person asked, ‘Is this a private affair?’”

Father Carey says that when he distributes communion —there are no lay Eucharistic ministers in the Extraordinary Form—he sometimes sees people crying as they kneel at the altar rail. (Pope Paul VI was against communion in the hand).

When the Mass ended about an hour and fifteen minutes after it had begun, I was
feeling pretty good. In fact, I was feeling so good that I walked into Center City before heading into Starbucks for coffee (and some reflection), and then Macy’s to window shop. In Macy’s, I encountered a Roman priest in a wheelchair.

“Are you a Catholic priest?” I gently inquired.



The priest nodded his head and waited to hear what I had to say.



“Father, I’ve just been to the most beautiful Traditional Latin Mass at St. Paul’s in South Philadelphia. It was a work of art. It was beautiful–I am thoroughly won over. Why did they ever change that Mass?”

“Don’t ask me,” he said, “I’m a traditionalist….I already know it’s a beautiful thing. Yes it is!”

Oops. Dumb thing to say.

But why stop there?

One can read about just what the inventors of the New Mass wanted to do and you will see a foundation of sand; removal of prayers that explicitly mentioned sacrifice that Paul VI intervened to keep, disobeying direct orders from the Pope by Bugnini (chief architect of the New Mass), the outcry of the 1969 GIRM draft as “heretical,” Bugnini infamous statement about removing prayers that would be obstacle to protestant (like in my first example).

Imagine a man with the goal of removing prayers from the Mass which were obstacles to ecumenical dialog with protestants. What would that be? Number one on the list is the fact that the Mass is a Sacrifice and number two is Transubstantiation. Now Paul VI did intervene to save some of these prayers but Bugnini’s hand is far reaching, he and his commission successfully watered down and/or removed other prayers as much as they were allowed to do so the Mass would look less Catholic. Read a side by side comparison of each missal and you will see.

So there in lies one problem; prayers.

The next one is options, which is more easily dealt with by Rome and one which many can agree upon.

The very existence of options actually lends to the mindset that the Mass is more about pleasing people and experimentation – at least implicitly. A multiplicity of options encourages deeper experimentation, combine this with less explicit Catholic prayers and the result is more abuse.

Ritual is also watered down. Many significant ritual aspects that have deep symbolism are removed.

Rayn Grant writes:

All of the rites, symbolism and ritual present in the ancient liturgy have been suppressed. For example the numerous signs of the Crosses, all with theological meaning, were reduced to 3. All the rites governing the use of incense were suppressed. Ritual symbolism such as the altar boy moving the missal from the epistle side to the gospel side which symbolizes the old law passing from the Jews to the gentiles was removed, as well as the actions of the priest, outstretching his hands as Christ on the cross, or how he bows down at the confiteor to symbolize Christ weighed down by the world’s sin. These things were all completely excised from the Novus Ordo.

The only one I question from Mr. Grant is the “priest outstretching his hands” and of course the fact that incense is not removed but made optional.

Other examples can include the priest genuflecting immediately after the consecration but before the elevation and the placement of the priest’s fingers after the consecration.

Also the very concept of Holy obedience by the priest is hurt. Gone are the many rubrics that train him to perform the Real Sacrifice at the altar in submission to God just like Christ prayed “thy will be done.”

“But we can just use all the good options.” But you would still have all the watered down prayers and inferior ritual. One might as well offer a TLM if you want the NO to look more like it. At least then you can use prayers that were organically developed throughout the centuries instead of ones watered down or invented to please protestants.

Another warning sign is the fact that the Novus Ordo is a break from how a Mass is developed, namely organically and slowly throughout the centuries. Instead we have a Mass that was created by a commission which sought protestant input from six protestant observers – the head of this commission, as mentioned above, was Fr. Bugnini, already suspect for his explicit remarks about removing prayers that where obstacles for protestants. (L’Osservatore Romano, March 19, 1965.) and direct disobedience to the Pope among other things. Further the Nous Ordo was implemented from the top down on the whole church with such vicious speed.

- The expanded readings, especially from the Old Testament, are a vast improvement, as they allow us to see the whole of Salvation History and interpret the Scriptures as the Fathers did: allegorically with Christ as their center.

I disagree. A one year cycle focused around the most important Scripture better familiarizes everyone with salvation history than a three year one. For a better defense read this:

http://athanasiuscm.blogspot.com/2008/04/objections-answered-alleged-superiority.html

Excerpt:
The argument is essentially flawed because it relies upon numbers and the mere quantity of something as the sufficiency necessary for correct evaluation. Thus, to put it another way it seeks to implement the liturgical reform the way governments try to reform things, by throwing more of something indiscriminately. In this case it is scripture. Just as truly as government throws money at education, or defense in the desperate hope that things will get better, so the new lectionary throws as much of the bible at the layman as possible, indiscriminately, in the hope that he will leave the Church knowing something about the bible. However, the Traditional Lectionary’s effect is qualitative, focusing not so much on how much of the Bible the man in the pew hears, but rather what the man in the pew hears.
In the Traditional Liturgy the lectionary was tailored to match the breviary and lead the faithful to a certain idea through its collects, antiphons and other propers, the lectionary of the Novus Ordo often makes use of antiphons and propers that do not match any liturgical objective, that are given just for the sake of it.

Moving on:

- I personally think the vernacular should be the standard for the language of the Mass. This is the deeper tradition of the Church and it also allows for a more full participation by the faithful.

- Having the responses moved from the servers to the people is a good thing and also allows for a deeper participation by the faithful.

The Tradition of the Church is organic development. It is fact that all liturgies developed in such a way into their own liturgical language. Whether it be Latin or some archaic version of an area’s common tongue.

We cannot by any means fall into what Pope Pius XII condemned as antiquarianism; to return to older practices and disregard developed ones. There is a reason why liturgical languages develop.

Latin is good for unity and familiarity.

Latin helps prevent ad-libbing.

But most of all a liturgical language is most fitting for the Sacrifice of the Mass.

It is more proper for the Sacrifice of Calvary to be offered in a tongue that when everyday man hears it conveys a sense of mystery and other-worldliness. This brings man out of the everyday and into the Sacred. Hence his perception of what is going on is elevated to the Holy and as a result this can help against abuse and strengthen Catholic doctrine and concepts.

Further, participation can be fully achieved with no vernacular. Participationalism is the concept that man must be physically doing something in the liturgy – that he has to understand verbatim and he must say and do something.

Not so, this is false participation. Real participation is called “ACTUAL participation” not the falsely translated “active participation.”

This means that one can follow with mind and heart alone and achieve full actual participation.

But further still, the Latin is not as bad as everyone thinks. I went to a TLM for one month as was able to follow along. Not because I know Latin but because I familiarized myself with a few words, phrases and postures. I now know, without any translated help, where we are at in the Mass and I can follow with mind and heart – thus I achieve full actual participation even with a full Latin Mass.

And no, praying the Rosary at Mass is not an abuse and fulfills full participation as long as one is mediating correctly.

Eric, common sense tells me that you’re missing the point. The issue is not how often the priest faces the people but why he faces them. All of the instances listed in the link you provided have a definite purpose – engaging the people in the priest’s next action, be it to welcome them into the holy sacrifice of the Mass, to enjoin them to pray that God will accept the sacrifice presented to him, to present to them the body and blood of Christ, or to proclaim the sacrifice ended and bless them so that, having entered into communion with him, they can follow Christ’s command to “go and make disciples of all nations”. I’m not a liturgical scholar so I don’t have any idea whether or not reducing these instances from eight to six was a good idea. However, none of them involve the orientation of the priest when he is offering the sacrifice to God, and since they are all requirements they all imply that he’s not facing the people.

I’ve heard the geometric explanations for both orientations: when the priest faces ad oriens, he is offering the sacrifice to God in linear unity with the rest of the Church, with him in front in persona Christi; when he faces versus populum, the offering can’t be linear (presumably since he’d be offering it to the people themselves and not to God) and so it is offered upwards to God. The whole idea of the priest’s orientation is meant to help the laity more reverently participate in the sacrifice, and I can’t see why the versus populum offering wouldn’t be in danger of being perceived as given forwards to the people or downwards to the earthworms or deflected off to Mecca or any other direction. Everybody knows that Heaven is not ‘up’ – we face the East because we look that way for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, i.e. ‘like the rising sun, for the rising Son.’ The only argument I’ve ever heard in favor of the versus populum orientation is that it allows the people to see what the priest is doing. Apparently “hocus pocus” came about because superstitious types misheard the priest saying those magical words that turn bread and wine into flesh and blood: “Hoc est enim corpus meum.” Catholics already know what’s happening (the bread and wine sit on the altar until the priest consecrates them – until that happens, he moves himself around), and they don’t care about seeing it happen so much as participating in it reverently and in a way that sensibly gives glory to God. Indeed, when the priest performs the most important action of the Mass and raises the host, they can see it from any angle. At one of my local Novus Ordo-rite parishes, the physically capable priest doesn’t bother raising the Eucharist past nose level since everyone can already see it, and it looks more like he’s checking for lice than reaching and begging the Holy Spirit on behalf of the rest of humanity to descend upon the gifts in the climactic action of consecration. I can’t see why suddenly allowing this is an improvement.

Regarding the Catholic convert, G. K. Chesterton wrote in The Catholic Church and Conversion:

“He begins to realise that it is the secular world that spoils the sense of words; and he catches an exciting glimpse of the real case for the iron immortality of the Latin Mass. It is not a question between a dead language and a living language, in the sense of an everlasting language. It is a question between a dead language and a dying language; an inevitably degenerating language.”

Last year I attended Ave Maria University and was blessed to be able to experience the EF as well as the NO. Fr. Fessio also celebrated what he called “a sort of hybrid” Mass once every Wednesday. This may have been an inaccurate way of putting it because it was a NO rite with some if not all of the Latin options, and Fr. was positioned ad oriens. The Liturgy of the Word was done in the vernacular from the ambo (the expanded set of readings you mentioned, I think), and much of his homily was devoted to explaining how this particular Mass was celebrated. Doing the readings in the vernacular made sense for the sake of explaining the Word of God while the source is still fresh in the people’s minds. The Latin was kept for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, preserving its “iron immortality” and being fully accessible to the universal Church. Again, I’m no liturgical scholar, and I regret to say that I’m still unfamiliar with the history of Vatican II (and the Church at all), but this particular implementation seems to be what you are suggesting when you say that the NO needs to be implemented in a better way. It was far more effective than the usual implementation. Still, it took Fr. Fessio to make it happen, and he was fired from Ave Maria (”one more in a series of bad decisions,” he said) so I doubt that this implementation is still practiced there.

Beyond that I agree with Dean and I applaud you for rising to his challenge. I’m also looking forward to that detailed post.

God bless.

Then what is the point of your post here?