The Trojan Horse in the Tridentine Mass

Franciscans of the Immaculate

meeting with Pope Francis at

Casa Santa Marta June 10

I have written before on the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate, a group originating in the Friars Minor Conventual (OFM Conv.) but becoming an independent Institute of Religious Life of Pontifical Right in 1998 with Father Stefano Manelli as their Superior General. Last year Pope Francis removed Father Manelli as Superior and put the community under the governorship of Capuchin Father Fidenzio Volpi OFM Cap.  It is not an extraordinary gesture for the Holy See to remove a Superior General and appoint a Vicar of the Holy See’s own choosing, but it is exceptional to bring in a superior from outside the congregation itself.  It seems that the fuss is because the Franciscans of the Immaculate—or their leadership—made the decision that henceforth they would celebrate only the pre-conciliar rite known as the TLM or “Traditional Latin Mass” or the “Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.”  But it turns out it is far more complicated and involves the issue of whether or not the friars accept the magisterial authority of the Church as expressed in the Decrees of the Second Vatican Council.
Of course, for a religious community entrusted with parish churches and public shrines to decide that it will no longer celebrate the “ordinary” Rite of the Mass, that is the Novus Ordo, is problematic for any bishop who knows the pastoral needs of his people require the ordinary form as the ordinary every-day rite.  The bishop must provide for those of the faithful who want the “extra-ordinary form” but even more he must provide for the far greater numbers who want Mass in their own language and according to the 1970 Missal.  But it turns out that the problem runs deeper than the rite.
The Holy Father met with a delegation of Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate on June 10.  The meeting was a bit tense on both sides though all remained cordial.  What is interesting though is that after the meeting with the Pope, a considerable number of young friars who were present—novices and those in temporary profession—applied to leave the Order.  One spilled the beans, saying that he left “because he (the young friar) does not accept the Second Vatican Council.”
This is the problem—not with the Franciscans of the Immaculate Conception, the majority of whom I am sure accept the Second Vatican Council, but with many who “hide out” from the Church in the TLM.  The problem is not the rite; it is the Council just as the Council is the sticking point with the quasi-schismatic Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X.  (I say “quasi-schismatic” because though the excommunication against them was lifted, they have still not been restored to the unity of the Church, and this is because they refuse to accept the teachings of the Council.)  We can no more accept in the Church those who reject the authority of the Council than we can accept those who reject the authority of the Pope.  One might disobey a Council (we do every time we kneel in a Sunday Liturgy or during the Easter Season) or one might disobey a Papal teaching (contraceptive Catholics, for example) but disobeying is not the same a rejecting the authority.  As regards the Second Vatican Council, for example, one might personally choose not to have anything to do with non-Catholics, but neither now can one deny the authority of the Church to enter into fraternal dialogue with Protestants or with non-Christians, or criticize a bishop or priest who permits non-Catholic Christians to use a church for their worship, or who participates in non-sacramental worship with them.  That, of course, is only one example but for the majority of those who reject the Second Vatican Councils, the rejection is on matters of Ecumenism or Inter-Religious Dialogue.  
The problem is not only with the Franciscan Friars of the Immaculate.  I know a parish in the Arlington Diocese which hosts a weekly TLM Mass and which permits parents to “home-school” their children according to the Baltimore Catechism rather than participate in the Religious Education program of the parish.  (The same parish does not have a Catholic School because the pastor does not want to provide an education subject to the diocesan guidelines which would require too many “concessions to modernism.”)  The Baltimore Catechism, a book which provided the basic religious education for many of us, has not been revised to bring it into accord with the teaching of the Church these fifty years since Vatican II and consequently differs from the magisterium on any number of points. 
If the TLM continues to provide an alternative Catholicism, a Catholicism without the Council, it will end up being suppressed.  There is room for a variety of Rites in the Church—we have always had a variety of Rites—but there is no room for rejecting the teachings of an Ecumenical Council.  Ultimately,  unless a conformity of catechesis is maintained across the Roman Rite, Pope Francis or one of his successors will end up suppressing the Rite and the secret schism within the Church will be forced into the open. 

Troubled Seas Ahead For The Barque of Peter, Resumed

I saw and recognized the shade of him
Who by his cowardice made the great refusal.

Boniface VIII

With these words Dante consigned Pope Celestine V to hell.  And for what reason?  Celestine’s 1294 resignation of the papacy cleared the way for the election of Boniface VIII—a pope whose insufferable pride would throw the Church into the double tragedy of the Avignon Papacy and the Great (Western) Schism.   Dante’s grievance with the Pope was more personal, however.  Boniface had turned against the White Guelfs—the political faction, the “peace faction,” in Florentine politics of which Dante was a leader; in addition, Boniface had Dante exiled from his beloved Florence—an exile which would cause him to spend the remainder of his life away from the place on earth he loved most dearly.  More and more of the Krazy Katholics are turning against Pope Francis in just the same way and for a variety of reasons but looking at the blog rolls it does seem in great part boil down to the fact that his vision for the Church threatens the political, social, and economic status quo to which so many neo-traditionalists are aligned. 

Now I am a historian and I must admit that I am skeptical of the idea that most people root their political and economic policies in their religious faith but rather I believe that they embrace a religious perspective that validates their political/economic/sociological prejudices.  In Dante’s Florence, the White Guelfs represented the interests of the Middle Classes who had no interested in going to war while the Black Guelfs represented the major guilds who saw the expansion of Florentine territory as being to their economic advantage.  You know, like Dick Cheney saw war in Iraq as a chance for Halliburton.   (You remember Haliburton, the company that gave him a 36 million dollar severance package when he retired in 2000 from his position as Chairman and CEO in order to run for vice president. ) In the English Reformation the merchant classes and the newly ennobled families who had financially benefitted from the confiscation of monastic properties saw Protestantism as more to their economic benefit than Catholicism while the old nobility and the rural people preferred the old religion because it represented the status quo with which they were familiar and which validated social hierarchy. By the 18^th century that would shift and the Church of England would be called “The Tory Party at Prayer” because the working classes had pretty much gone over to Methodism or the other non-Conformist “sects.”  In Constantinople the “Blues” who supported the Chalcedonian formula came from the upper classes; the “Greens” who tended to be monophysites were those on the margins of power.  Today what really pisses off people about Francis is that he includes women in roles that had been exclusively male (though certainly not the priesthood), he does not make an issue of sexual-orientation, and he says that we shouldn’t be “obsessed” with issues such as abortion and birth control but focus on issues of Social Justice.   If you belong to certain segments of society—or wish that you did—you may not like his ideas about systemic redistribution of wealth.  His philosophy all fits together in ways that would seem to undermine the entrenched social hierarchy. 
We have seen how the Catholic Right is growing more and more alienated from Pope Francis and while I don’t expect there to be formal schism on any significant level—that is any more than already exists with the various independent Tridentine chapels and with the semi-schism of the Society of Saint Pius X—I do think that the ten percent on the right will write off Francis just as the 10 percent on the extreme left stayed Catholic but pretty much picked and chose as they liked from among the policies and teachings of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  The key difference is that while those on the left often turned a deaf ear to the liturgical and disciplinary norms of the previous popes, they often used their social teaching to advance the liberal agenda in the Church.  The wing-nuts on the right, on the other hand, seem to find nothing at all in Francis’ pontificate that they are willing to accept and his social teaching—the idea of being a poor Church on behalf of the Poor—seems to raise their ire even more than his washing the feet of women on Holy Thursday or discouraging policies towards restoring the pre-conciliar rites. 
Speaking of the pre-conciliar rites, I think that Popes John Paul and Benedict unwittingly laid the ground work for this two-Church situation by the motibus propriis (plural of motu proprio), Ecclesia Dei (1988) and Summorum Pontificium (2007).  While, as I said in a previous posting, I believe that the 1570 Rite (including its 1962 revision) is flawed, its theological short-comings are not my primary concern.  I think the 1970 Rite is also flawed and needs some revision.)  I am a historian, not a theologian, and my concern is not for theological defects, but rather the consequences of giving the earlier rite the oxygen to keep it alive beyond its time and—even worse—to mutate into an alternative Catholicism.  I think that the two previous popes seriously misunderstood the agenda of those who were fighting to bring back, even in limited form, the pre-conciliar rites.  The issue was not, and is not, the liturgy: it is the Council and the Council’s vision of Church. 
In the first place, despite the protests to the contrary by a host of voices—including some very highly placed prelates such as Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos—the 1570 Rite was suppressed in the promulgation of the Novus Ordo in 1970.  A priest needed an indult to celebrate the pre-conciliar rites.  That means that it could not be celebrated without an explicit indult from the Congregation for Divine Worship.  These indults were given but only on the most limited basis and during the reign of Paul VI probably only a few dozen were granted.  The ex-Jesuit, Malachy Martin, always claimed that he had one, though Martin’s clerical status after leaving the Jesuits is a matter of dispute.  A group of prominent English celebrities petitioned Paul VI for some continuance of the old Rite in England.  Supposedly when Pope Paul saw Agatha Christie’s name on the petition—he was an avid fan of her mysteries—he granted the English and Welch bishops the privilege of permitting the old Rite on a very limited basis as long as it was the 1962 Missal with the 1965 and 1967 revisions issued by the Congregation of Divine Worship.  This came to be known as the “Agatha Christie Indult.”  Ironically, though she did sign the petition, Ms Christie was Church of England and not Roman Catholic.  On the other hand, priests such as the late Father Gommar dePauw of the Ave Maria Chapel in Westbury NY, were severely punished for continuing to celebrate the pre-conciliar Mass without an indult. 
The English petition—signed by such figures as Sir Kenneth Clark, Graham Greene, Yehudi Menuhin, Nancy Mitford, Malcolm Muggeridge, Joan Sutherland and Philip Toynbee—was based on two separate points.  One is the devotion of the English Catholics to the Liturgy known by the English Martyrs of the 16^th and 17^th centuries.  The other is the aesthetic appeal of the traditional liturgy.   Here in the United States the desire for the “old Mass” was based more on a discomfort with—and in some cases even a rejection of—the Second Vatican Council.  Moreover, while the appeal of the Tridentine Liturgy in Britain was, at least at the time of the Agatha Christie Indult, to people with a demonstrated social conscience, in the United States the pre-conciliar liturgy drew and continues to draw from the most conservative factions of politics and society.  Indeed Tridentine Rite congregations tend to be conventicles of the most rabid social reactionaries because while the trap may be baited with the smells and bells of the old rite, it’s raison d’etre is the preservation of a world that has vanished these last fifty years.  This is why I think that John Paul’s motu proprio Ecclesia Dei and Benedict’s motu proprio Summorum Pontificium are nothing less than two more of the Church’s varied attempts at suicide.  I believe that the two Popes failed to understand the agenda behind those pushing for the revival of the old rites.  In much of Europe, and most notably in Rome itself, there is and has been little interest in the pre-conciliar rites. Of course, in Rome there is little interest in the Mass in any rite at all and this is nothing new.   For John Paul the permission given in Ecclesia Dei was primarily out of concern “for those attached to the Latin liturgical tradition.”  John Paul never gave any indication that he himself had this attachment and indeed his liturgical style could often be at the other end of the spectrum from the Tridentine Rite.  I remember the Indian dancers at the Beatification Mass for Mother Theresa in Saint Peter’s Square.   Benedict, on the other hand, did have a personal attachment to the old rites though once Pope he never publicly celebrated them as he knew it would send a wrong signal and that they were divisive of the unity of the Church.  Pope Benedict is a man of great precision and a deep love for intellectual structure.  He saw that the Latin language and the rigid rubrics of the 1570 rite gave this precision and structure.  The people whom he knew and with whom he attended various conferences at Fontgombault were, like himself, brainiacs whose intellectual and aesthetic sense prepared them to enjoy the rites, especially when carried out with full splendor.  I don’t think he ever understood the lack of sophistication—intellectual or aesthetic—behind most of those in North America who follow the old rites.  The social encyclicals of Popes John Paul and Benedict clearly show that while they, or at least Benedict, may have had some sympathy with the older forms of liturgy, they were men of the Church in today’s world.  But you can bet that Ut unum sint, Solicitudo Rei Socialis, Laborem Exercens, or Caritas in Veritate aren’t part of the adult ed program in most places that celebrate the Latin Mass.  And it is even more sure that the catechesis given to the children in these congregations does not differ from the catechesis I received in 1957 despite the fact that much in the Church has changed in the intervening years. 
There are in the United States approximately 460 sites that celebrate the Tridentine Mass according to the norms set down in Ecclesia Dei and Summorum Pontificium.  (This does not count the various independent—schismatic—chapels or the SSPX sites.)  Of these about 330 have a weekly Sunday Mass.  There are some 40 that might be said to be traditional rite parishes—having at least two Sunday Masses and at least 4 Masses through the week that are celebrated according to the 1962 Missal.  The catechesis is generally the Baltimore Catechism which predates (and thus avoids teaching) the doctrines of the Second Vatican Council.  While some of these sites have the traditional charitable organizations such as the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, there are few—if any—with active programs on the Church’s social magisterium.  Many of the families who attend the pre-conciliar liturgies home-school their children to avoid public (and Catholic) school education.  Urban TLM sites such as Saint Mary Mother of God in Washington DC, Holy Innocents in Manhattan, Saint Agnes in Minneapolis, Saint John Cantius in Chicago, Saint Francis de Sales in Saint Louis, draw significantly from the gay community,  but the number of African Americans, Hispanics, or Asian-Americans is significantly low in most congregations.  This is because ultimately the Tridentine Mass option is not about the Liturgy but the attempts to revive the Church “of a better day” and find refuge there from the vicissitudes of life in the real world.  Pope Francis is making it harder and harder to escape into that parallel universe of the 1950’s as he confronts us with the realities of witnessing to the Gospel in an increasingly secular and secularist society.  With Pope Benedict it was possible to shut our eyes and ears to the world outside and just watch the glorious panoply of a monarchial Church unfold in this imaginary world into which the Church was increasingly being fashioned.  Not so easy with Francis.   Perhaps some neo-trad latter-day Dante will put Benedict into hell for resigning the papacy and giving us Francis.  As for me, I am profoundly grateful the Pope Benedict saw things turning toxic and resigned so that a somewhat younger man with more strength could steer the barque on a sounder course. 

Turning Religion On Its Head

Don't ever go to Rome without

seeing Caravaggio's "Inspiration

of Saint Matthew in the Church

of San Luigi Francese.

I had a fascinating conversation on the airplane last evening with a man who teeters between agnosticism and atheism.  He identified himself as an atheist but when he actually outlined his beliefs he is more at the rationalist perimeter of agnosticism than pure atheism in as that he admits, indeed somewhat warmly embraces, the notion of a spiritual dimension to reality by which he posits the existence and immortality, after a fashion, of what a Christian would call the “soul,” though he himself refrains from that word.  He actually more closely resembles the rationalist Deism of the American Founding Fathers such as Jefferson or Franklin in as that he denies the existence of a personal—or as he said personalist—deity but does subscribe to some sort of what one might call an “Eternal Order” of being.  I have met atheists before and found them, without exception to be fools.  I don’t think atheism itself is foolish; I believe that one must be very intelligent or very stupid to deny the existence of a god.  (God being the deity of the three monotheistic religions; god referring to some sort, any sort, of a deity including the Jewish-Christian-Islamic deity.)  As I said, one must be very intelligent or very stupid to deny the existence of a god and to date I have only met the stupid ones.  By stupid I don’t mean uneducated—education has long ceased being a bulwark against ignorance, much less stupidity, once it abandoned requiring philosophy as a foundation and allowed the houses of the sciences, mathematics, and technology to be built on the sand  of data rather than the rock of metaphysics.  To what purpose is knowledge if it does not impart understanding?  Agnostics, on the other hand, I often find to have the best minds because they are not afraid of the great and important questions but go fearlessly into the dark night of the unexplored queries that relentlessly lead the soul to deeper and deeper searching.  I have much more confidence in the faith of the true agnostic (as opposed to the intellectual sluggard whose laziness leave him or her indifferent  to the search for truth) than the rattler of dogmatic formulae—whether that be the Mormon missionary with his prepared answers or the catechism toting Catholic who thinks all theology lies digested in his (or her) brain once they had memorized the old Baltimore claptrap and calendar of saints.   

     This fellow on the plane is no fool.  Though he works in the technology field he has a Master’s degree in French literature from a prestigious east coast university.  In our wide ranging discussion—most of the way across the Atlantic—I found myself fascinated by his insights on politics, economic, sociology, anthropology and even religion.  It was our discussion of religion—where he confessed he was an “atheist, or perhaps an agnostic”  where I found myself articulating some basic beliefs, the methodology of belief rather than dogma per se, that gave me an interesting insight into my own way of thinking about religious faith as well as why there is tension both between believers and non-believers and among believers who see things from (at least) two very different perspectives. 

     When Patrick—his name—mentioned that he rejected religion and didn’t want his children exposed to it except as a sociological phenomenon, he said that religion claims to be authoritative over the human intellect and thus stifles the human mind in its pursuit of truth.  I know what he meant.  There are plenty of people who think “God said it; I believe it; that settles it, end of discussion.”  This might reflect an “evangelical” (I prefer to say pseudo-evangelical as I don’t think most evangelicals today are true evangelicals, i.e. those who shape their life according to the Gospel.  I think too many take the “Good News” (evangelion in Greek) and make it bad news, something with which to hit  people who disagree with them over the head.  Or it could reflect a lot of super-Catholics who agree unflinchingly with Church authority, or at least as long as Church authority agrees with them.  You know: the Pope is dead right on abortion and same-sex marriage, but when he talks about capital punishment, economic  justice, health care, war, and distributive justice—well that’s just his personal opinion.  What these “evangelicals” and “faithful” Catholics share in common is a highly vertical understanding  of how God communicates himself (I am not into inclusive language when we talk about God, though I don’t have a problem with those who are as long as they don’t get silly.) 

     Now before I go further, let me reaffirm that this blog is not a theological blog and I am not going to approach this question as a theologian, but as a social scientist—that is from a historical/anthropological point of view. 

     The books of Scripture all had historical authors.  Whether or not the Holy Ghost came down and sat on their shoulders, whispering words into their ears as their pens glided across the papyrus and parchment sheets, is not relevant to the historian.  They had human authors and they were written in historical contexts.  The Book of Daniel, for example, was written, or at least much of it was written, in the context of a Hebrew society that was being religiously challenged by Graeco-Syrian political overlords who were trying to move the Jews of their time from traditional belief to a more universal synchronistic religion that would unite the diverse peoples and cultures of their rule.  The Gospel of Matthew was written for a community of Jewish Christians who were trying to harmonize their ancestral faith with some startling new insights developing among the disciples of the lately crucified religious leader, one Yeshua from Nazareth and Capernaum in the Galilee.  And nobody has ever been able to figure out what the author of Revelations had in mind, though there are plenty of theories.  This historical context issue is not limited to Judeo-Christian revelation.  Mohammed wrote in the context of sixth century Arabia with is warring tribes, religious strife, and a society in which alcohol abuse was a significant problem.  He also wrote with a personal exposure to Judaism (less than favorable) and Nestorian Christianity (which was overall a positive experience for him).  The Buddha came out of a Hindu society and culture where he was veddy veddy upper crust and he seems to have had a traumatic introduction to the question of human suffering that shaped his life and doctrine.  Ignatius Loyola wrote his Spiritual Exercises in an attempt to share his own spiritual awakening with his followers.  Martin Luther’s doctrine of justification by faith is rooted in Saints Paul and Augustine but also was profoundly influenced in the way it was formulated by his own scruples and crises, not to mention his alleged digestive tract issues.  We could go on but there is no need.  The point is clear.  While some of these writings may claim to be of “Divine Revelation” that question is of no concern to the historian but only to the religious believer.  There is no objective way to determine with any objective certainty what is and what is not of divine revelation—if there were then faith would not be a required component of the equation. 

      Now, again, I am not writing from a theological perspective but solely from the historical/anthropological point of view, but religion, viewed from the social sciences, is not a matter of “Truth” being imparted from the top down—from God to the Pope, or some Chief Rabbi or Grand Mullah, or even the Dalai Lama (whom I admire tremendously.)  From a historical/anthropological perspective, Truth rises from human experience and crystallizes in the shared experience of a community of believers who shape it into doctrines and practices that reinforce it.  That is not to say that God is not involved but the historian or social scientist (in their role as a historian or social scientist) cannot speak of God but only of what he or she observes.  Of course, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, and others can be men or women of faith as well as professionals in their fields.  As men and women of faith they can supply the God-piece to the puzzle but not in their work, at least not directly.  So while as a historian I believe that Christian Revelation –as all other religious systems—rises from human experience, as a man of faith I believe that the truths of Christian Revelation reveal themselves through human experience by the Grace of God.  What is the faith of the faithful is the crux question for me.  In the Catholic Tradition this called the consensus fidelium   and while it has generally been ignored for the last five centuries (some would say the last fifteen) it once was the crucial element in defining Christian orthodoxy. 

      Does this mean that all religion is on a level playing field?  Is the “truth” of Buddhist experience equal to the “truth” of Muslim experience and equal to the “truth” of Christian experience?   As a historian I affirm that each must be taken with the same respect and openness as the others.  I can also see, however, as a historian, that not all religious doctrines have the same success rate in articulating well the core human experiences.  Why has Buddhism lasted when Celtic religion died?  (I think the current revival of paganism is little more than a very ahistorical playing at nature cults.)   Where is Osiris now?  Where is Athena now?  While a host of deities have disappeared,. Jesus has lasted so far.  So have Allah, Shiva, and the Great Spirit.  Time shows that not all religions capture the Truth with equal resonance.  As a Christian, I believe that the religious experience around the teachings and person of Jesus of Nazareth have a unique depth of human truth, that is to say that they reflect the Divine inbreaking into human experience with a unique and superior authenticity.  In other words, I believe they are Divinely Revealed, or better, capture the Divine Revelation, with a unique truthfulness.  As a historian, however, I can only observe they are one of the major religious traditions and comment on how they function in comparison to other belief systems. 

      This view of revelation as rising from human experience is problematic for Churchy people because it moves the cheese.  It takes power from the select few and distributes it through the whole body of the faithful.  It overturns power structures—casts the mighty from their thrones and raises up the lowly, so to speak.  This is why I think, as a Catholic, that we must restore the balance of power between the magisterium, the theologians, and the consensus fidelium.  Do you remember in The Prisoner of Azkaban, the image of Professor Snape dressed up in Neville’s Grandmother’s clothes?  I am afraid, as a historian, that that is what the magisterium looks like when left unsupported by serious theological research and rooted in the everyday faith experience of the everyday believer.  And that is why so many people walk away from religion—it has just too often become ridiculous looking to too many good thinkin’ folk.