A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

“A Manifesto of the Catholic Laity” from 1943 May 14, 2013

We are frequently told, by various figures in the Church ranging from local parish priests to numerous bishops, and even various authority figures in Rome, that the old Mass, the Traditional Latin Mass, was a very bad thing. Nobody understood anything.  The people sat there blithely thumbing their stupid beads, while the priest rushed through Latin he didn’t understand, with the total effect being that nobody was edified at all by the experience, ever. I exaggerate, but not much.  There is no question there are very strong impressions given that the Mass prior to the massive changes of the late 60s was gravely deficient, did not form souls well in the Faith, and generally was disliked by the laity, who rarely understood at all what was going on.  Now, even if this widely presented view were true, one could see in this perhaps less a problem with the Mass itself, but a significant failure of catachesis, but be that as it may.  That is the view that is presented, when arguing that the changes made to the Mass that resulted in the Novus Ordo were very necessary, in order to get at least some modicum of involvement from the people in the Mass.

The problem with this view is that, it doesn’t square well with the historical record.  The simple fact of the matter is, there was virtually no clamor from the laity for a change to the Mass, at any period during the 20th century. As I have already addressed on this blog, even 10 years after the introduction of the Novus Ordo, a national survey reported in a secular newspaper showed the vast majority of Catholics preferred to return to the Traditional Mass!  In fact, the entire “liturgical movement” was driven by academics and liturgical “elitists,” if you will, people who made study of the Liturgy their life’s work, and who became convinced, for various reasons (but, principally, a widespread acceptance of modernism among this elite), that the Mass was sorely deficient and simply must change.  In having read a number of books on the subject now, following the arc of the liturgical movement of the 20th century, it is apparent to me that the imperative to change was a self-fulfilling prophecy, with excessive focus on change leading to loss of pastoral sensitivity (or misplaced sensivitiviy), and the entire movement devolving to a sort of zero-sum game where all the problems in the Church would be corrected if only the Mass could be changed, and radically!  And thus, we got what we got.

But, again, history shows that far from being disinterested in the Mass, or desiring it to change, many of the laity, and very likely the same large majority reported in the late 70’s poll linked to above, were very attached to the Traditional Mass and did not want it to change at all. They were in fact put off by the liturgical movement and the effort to foist changes on “their Mass.”  Specifically, there was an article in the July 17, 1943 edition of the The Tablet in England, regarding a “Manifesto” produced by lay English Catholics regarding the radical changes being discussed, even then, regarding the Mass.  Far from favoring changes, or supposedy hungering for Mass in the vernacular, which was the sine qua non of the post-conciliar liturgical reform, these Catholics were very offended at the changes being discussed, and wanted it to be known that they loved the Mass, they loved it in Latin, and just wanted it to be taught better (from Dom Alcuin Reid’s The Organic Development of the Liturgy, note 109 pp. 92-93, I add emphasis and comments):

We, the undersigned Catholic layfolk, desire…….to make known our true feelings with regard to the present controversy concerning the language used by the Church in her public worship. We utterly repudiate the subversive efforts that are being made to discredit the use of the Latin Liturgy [So, even decades before Vatican II, the laity were aware of the “subversive” efforts of elites to change the Mass and attack Latin, and impose undesired top-down changes to the Mass, in contrast to natural, organic development, from the bottom up] , a precious heritage brought to the English people by St. Augustine of Canterbury from our glorious Apostle, St. Gregory the Great, and which we are proud to have preserved intact these fourteen hundred yeas, even throughout the hardships and dangers of the penal times. We therefore protest that we are oppposed to all attempts to tamper with this venerable Liturgy, or to substitute for it a copy of any non-Catholic rite, however beautiful and impressive. [It also seemed these well-informed laity had picked up on the protestant overtones to many of the proferred changes] We strongly resent the implication that we and our children are not sufficiently intelligent to understand the simple Latin of the Mass, and we declare our readiness to do all we can to equip ourselves with the necessary knowledge so as to be able to take a more active and intelligent part in our parochial Mass. [Thus, a reaction to the elitist attitude which assumed that the laity were too dumb to understand Mass in a language other than their own] We also respectfully petition our bishops to use their authority to make the teaching of simple liturgical Latin obligatory in all our Catholic schools, since we are convinced that such instruction would be of immense spiritual and intellectual value to our children and would help them to realise more vividly the supra-national character of our Faith. [I’m very impressed with this statement – these folks understood that Latin makes the Mass universal, instead of hundreds of different translations and millions of “inculturating” acts, which makes even Masses in the same town often differ radically from one another, let alone the differences between nations] Finally ,we very humbly beg our Clergy to help our efforts by a distinct and deliberate enunciation of all the words of the Liturgy, so as to make it possible for every one of us to beocme more at home with the spiritual language of our Holy Mother Church, and thus to assist at her public worship with greater understanding and devotion. [An exhortation to priests to pronounce the Latin better]

I am singularly impressed by this statement. Dom Reid does not go into detail on how many signatures it had, but it seems at least some in England understood quite clearly, even in 1943!, the nature of the changes the liturgical movement had come to favor and the dangers those changes posed. They also understood the unstated assumption that the laity were simply too stupid to follow along in a “foreign” language.

But I think the most important element, is the call to better education.  And I think that is really the core of what went wrong with the Church in the mid-20th century.  Instead of focusing on the very hard, often dreary, often frustrating work of catachesis and evangelization, many in the Church leadership came to favor big programs – rather like how our governments have acted since that time – that will magically solve all problems, and accomplish the tasks of evangelization and catachesis for them.  That is to say, instead of slogging in the trenches, it was much more sexy to many elites to exercise their power and demonstrate their brilliance by imposing top-down changes of various sorts.  And certainly, since Vatican II, the Church has been enamored of big programs. The Mass, the perennial “new evangelization,” calls for sweeping governmental reforms and the establishment of super-national forms of governance, top-down forms of charity, proliferations of offices and dicasteries and congregations and committees – all have been presented as solutions for “problems,” which are really best dealt with on the local level, by encouraging hard work by priests and bishops to form their people in the Faith!  But, for whatever reason, that simple call, which was what sustained the Church through thick and thin for centuries, is the one thing it seems our leaders are most reluctant to do. 

None of which is to say there aren’t individual priests and bishops who do an exemplary job at catechesis and evangelization, it’s just that such are exceedingly rare. And it seems the people of England, 70 years ago and 20 years before the Second Vatican Council, knew this very well.  It is a pity their call was not heeded.

I pray this era of big programs may end. I pray we can get back to focus on grass-roots evangelization and especially catachesis.  But I hear so many horror stories about parish catechetical programs. Very often, what is taught is a barely disguised protestantism, at best. Sometimes, it’s much worse than that.

I hope to do another post on this subject either later today or tomorrow.  Even early members of the liturgical movement itself recognized that big programs of severe, top-down changes, were no panacea for the collapse in the practice of the Faith already well underway in the first half of the 20th century.