Is the Latin Mass Divisive?
...by Oliver McMahon
Some who oppose the re-introduction of the Latin Mass claim that it will be divisive, having some parishioners attending Mass in the vernacular and others attending it in Latin. And yet how will this be any more divisive than what we have now? The church down the street from me has Mass in English at 6 AM and Spanish at 7 AM. I've seen parishes with as many as four different languages for Sunday Mass. One more language won’t make it any worse? In fact it can be argued that getting away from the universal language of Latin has been divisive.
Why must Catholics of different ethnic backgrounds be separated? Prior to Vatican II we all attended the same Mass. Wherever you traveled in the world, you knew what to expect when you went to Mass. I came across a reminder of this in the book, Damien the Leper, by John Farrow. Father Damien ministered to the lepers in Hawaii and eventually died of leprosy. Here's Farrow's description of Damien's arrival in Hawaii in 1864 after several months at sea.
"...they were escorted ashore where there was a great deal of merriment occasioned by what seemed, to feet and balance used to decks, the swaying motion of solid land. Even the gait of the nuns, sedate as they tried to make it, was marked by a slight roll.
“They were taken to the Cathedral through streets that were unlike any they had seen before, narrow and crooked, branching in every direction and shaded with overhanging trees. After the desert of the sea their eyes drank in hungrily the profusion, the richness of the exotic foliage. Green of myriad shades, from pale to dark, is everywhere in Honolulu; green upon green punctuated with the scarlet of the hibiscus, the yellow of the Golden Shower, and the crimson crown of the pociana regia. Not one of these plants was known to Damien. The people whom he saw on the streets were equally strange and picturesque; barefooted, scantily trousered native urchins, the mothers in the Mother Hubbard gowns introduced by European missionaries...
“ Like a kaleidoscope of fresh wonders, the scene shifted continually before their wondering eyes until they arrived at the Cathedral. Here the missionaries in the peace of the dim interior found a sudden transition from unreality to reality. In this alien land where everything was different they gratefully experienced a sense of home-coming upon entering the consecrated territory, for it is a happy fact that a Catholic church, whether it is a vast Cathedral, rich with centuries of history and tradition, or merely a tiny chapel, newly erected and poor, is always the same."
I think there is a good possibility that with the Motu Proprio we’ll begin to see a return to the unity there once was.
Comments (3)
maybe it will be divisive and the only answer is to have all the Masses in Latin. . .
Posted by surgite et coffeam olfacite | August 29, 2007 8:00 PM
Posted on August 29, 2007 20:00
I could not agree more. The attempt at unity during V2 was fundamentally misguided. What should have been addressed was the church's previous failure to educate the laity in the nature, usage and value of the tridentine mass.
Instead, V2 dummed-down the mass in a gross miscalculation of both its audience's capacity to learn AND (most importantly) the capacity of the traditional tridentine mass to connect, on an individual and fiercely personal level with each and every communicant.
One has only to absorb the comments rolling in from new (and old) tridentine "converts" out there to know that the traditional Mass has "mass" appeal.
Posted by Doug | August 29, 2007 10:05 PM
Posted on August 29, 2007 22:05
All Latin, all the time. I like it.
Posted by Mary | August 30, 2007 11:31 PM
Posted on August 30, 2007 23:31