Letter #16, 2025, Thursday, January 30: Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? Part 5

    I want to again introduce this serial presentation of a lecture I gave almost 18 years ago, in the summer of 2007.

    On August 17, 2007, I gave a talk at a church in California, St. Cecilia Church in Tustin, near Los Angeles, on the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to issue on July 7, 2007, his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, granting wider use of the old liturgy throughout the world.

    The motu proprio had been published just 5 weeks before.

    So, at that time, in August 2007, it was entirely in keeping with the wishes of Rome, and of the Pope, to receive and to accept and to praise and to embrace that document.

    Pope Benedict had encouraged me to try to explain his intent in the pages of my magazine, Inside the Vatican, and in any talks I gave.

    So I felt “authorized” to try to give my interpretation of what he had done, and why, when I gave my first and only talk on the subject, in August 2007.

    I spoke without notes, and went on for about an hour. (It was recorded by Terry Barber of St. Joseph Radio — thank you, Terry!)

    Even as I gave the talk, I felt it was reasonably effective, but later people told me it was the best talk that I had ever given.

    I did speak from my heart, and from my memories as a child, and from my studies as a historian, and from my many conversations with Pope Benedict, in the 1980s and 1990s, when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger.

    I tried to be clear, and fair, and reasonable, and faithful, to what I had lived and learned during those decades about the Catholic Mass.

    Later, people came up to me and told me that my talk had moved them and instructed them, and they thanked me.

    I put the talk onto a CD which was entitled Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? (To order a copy, please quick here)

    Now, almost 18 years have passed by, and the attitude of Rome, and perhaps also of the Catholic faithful in general, has changed over these nearly two decades. Indeed, in Rome, the current pontiff seems intent on restricting the celebration of the old Mass, for reasons he has set forth in two documents and in several interviews. (see this link from seven months ago).

    During December, one month ago, an old friend and reader of the magazine told me that my talk had influenced him deeply, and that he had taken to listening to the talk on his car CD player (I realize that many cars no longer have CD players!) while driving on long trips. “It is a great talk,” he told me. “I may have listened to it 12 times or more by now. I always find something new in it. Why don’t you share it again, make it available again?”

    So I decided to publish that talk here, and to make the CD available again. I will also soon be posting a downloadable audio file.

    I note again that, when this talk was given, in 2007, it was given in an attempt to explain and defend the reasoning of Pope Benedict, who had acted just 5 weeks before.

    The talk was therefore intended to offer my full support to the reigning pontiff, and to explain why he had taken the decision that he took.

     —RM

    P.S. Order the Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now? CD here

    P.P.S. Subscribe to Inside the Vatican magazine here. (Each subscription is quite helpful to us!) 

    Motu Proprio: Why the Latin Mass? Why Now?

    Part 5

    (Continued from previous letter)

    It was in the midst of this that the Catholic Church said, we too are facing a new reality.

    Four hundred years have gone by since Trent, and a hundred years have gone by since Vatican I.

    The world has had two great wars.

    We’ve had enormous changes in communications, in travel, in technology. We need to have an updating Council.

    So they called the Second Vatican Council.

    The First Vatican Council never ended, by the way. It was ended abruptly and militarily by an invasion of Rome.

    So, in a sense, the Second Vatican Council is “Part Two” of the First Vatican Council.

    The Second Vatican Council occurred when I was a little boy.

    1962 to 1965.

    One thing to remember about it is, they did not buy the chairs for the bishops, because they thought it would only last two months, one session.

    When that ended, and they realized that it was going to go on the following year, and then a third year, and then a fourth year, instead of renting the chairs, they did buy them, but it shows you the mentality.

    People went into the Second Vatican Council in this context of a world that’s globalizing and of a Church which was linked to a tradition through the Latin language.

    Latin was still the official language of the Church and was the official language of the Council. When bishops got up, they spoke in Latin.

    The Mass that I participated in celebrating as an altar boy when I was a child was that same Latin Mass.

    Everyone celebrated it.

    In Germany, and in Spain, and in Africa, it was the same Mass.

    That was the old Mass, the Tridentine Mass.

    But the Council Fathers said, we have to update the Church.

    They made two critical points.

    They said (and I paraphrase):

    “We’re having a Council that’s not doctrinal. It’s pastoral.

    “Nothing that we do will change anything in Church doctrine. That’s all settled. We have no problems doctrinally.

    “What we have is a pastoral problem of how to communicate that doctrine to the world, which has become communist, which for a while became Nazi, which has become fascist, which has become secular.

    “How do we present the word of Christ to this new modern world?

    “How do we update?”

    This last was the famous phrase of John XXIII. His word was aggiornamento, which means bringing things up to date.

    Two of the things they thought they should do, they thought, ecumenism should be central.

    They said: “We have to get back together as Christians.

    “We can’t confront the modern world as a bunch of separated Christians, each of us in our own corner.

    “We’ll be divided, and a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

    So a theme of the Council was ecumenism, which meant Protestants, Orthodox, Evangelicals, Jesus believers, somehow talk, dialogue.

    Talk about what divides them.

    Get back together somehow.

    What are the issues that separate them?

    So, already in 1964, the excommunication of the Orthodox and the Orthodox excommunication of the Catholics was rescinded, and we’ve been working now for the 42 years since to officially end the schism that originated in 1054 with the Orthodox.

    We’ve had all, and your pastor here is the leader of the ecumenical dialogue for this entire area and a great expert in it, really.

    And the second thing that they thought they should do was: break with the aspects of tradition that made it impossible to speak to the modern world, while keeping the essential elements of the tradition.

    And they entrusted the change above all of the liturgy, the central act of worship, this Mass, they entrusted a rewriting of the Mass to a small committee headed by Annibale Bugnini, a monsignor in the Roman curia who was a career liturgist, and he created, with his committee, the texts and the order of prayers and the order of readings, which he submitted to Pope Paul VI in 1968.

    And they revised it into 1969, and it was called “the new order,” the Novus Ordo Missae, the new order of the Mass.

    And Paul VI, when he first attended a practice Mass, actually said, “What have you done? The mystery is gone.”

    But he then went forward and approved it, in 1969, because he was “between a rock and a hard place,” as we say.

    [Part 6 to follow]

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