Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Fr Z on Tablet editorial
Fr Z draws our attention to an editorial in this week's Tablet. It seems to be a reply to the editorial in the Catholic Herald which expressed a sensible support for the Holy Father's forthcoming Motu Proprio on the Classical Rite of Mass. His trenchant critique is well worth reading.
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2 comments:
Fr. Tim,
The Tablet is certainly reflecting the party line of the high-ups in the English Church, as Fr. Z. says, but the disagreement between those who favour the liberalization of the Old Rite and those who don’t is a broader generational difference of view encompassing the laity as well as the clergy. The differences of opinion in my family are a good example.
My mother (in her 60s), an otherwise docile and loyal Catholic, is very much anti the revival of Latin. In her mind, the Old Rite is inextricably bound up with the less user-friendly stereotypes of the pre-Conciliar Church – strict priests and nuns, stiff discipline and a strong emphasis on sin and guilt – which she claims, rightly or wrongly, to have experienced in her formative years. There’s almost a fear that if you bring back Latin, Father will start delivering hell-fire sermons and shouting at you in the confessional all over again!
Certainly, there was plenty of room for improvement in the pre-Conciliar Church, and that’s probably why the Holy Spirit prompted Blessed John XXIII to convoke Vatican II in the first place. But I and other Catholics whose formative years were in the 70s and 80s do not have our parents’ sense of having put the “bad old days” behind us – all that we are aware of is a dismal present marked by mass lapsation, shoddy liturgies, scant vocations, and a semi-detached, poorly catechized laity. So much for the “renewal of the life and mission of the Church…”
This bleak picture has made many in the post-Vatican II generation, myself included, take a more balanced view and appreciate the many positive aspects of the pre-Conciliar days – beautiful and disciplined worship, abundant vocations (both male and female), a tremendous esprit de corps in the Catholic rank and file, and unshakeable loyalty to Rome – now all pretty much lost.
No-one in their right mind wants to revert to the unpastoral excesses of the pre-Conciliar Church. But the post-Conciliar changes have surely thrown the baby out with the bathwater in many respects, and it is high time to synthesize the best of the new with the best of the old.
This is why I am very much in favour of the Holy Father’s move to revive the Old Rite alongside the vernacular Mass, pace the different perspective of my parents’ generation, both clergy and laity. The Old Rite won’t be a panacea, but it will be a step in the right direction, and not before time.
(francis - I reposted your comment with the correction you mentioned!)
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