MOTU PROPRIO ENCOMIUM

DISCIPLINAM MATRIS TUAE NE PROJICIAS

THE ELECTION of a new Pope is one of the most eagerly awaited events in the world, and hardly any more so than that of April 2005, particularly among faithful Catholics. The twentieth century commenced with the election of Pope Pius X, ushering in a line of distinguished successors of St Peter, ending with the first non-Italian for over 450 years. Would the first conclave of the third millenium produce another remarkable and dramatic result? After the long pontificate of Pope John II, and the hopes that it had raised at times, everything depended upon the successor the Cardinals would choose. He had begun to move the agenda towards a resolution of the most obvious and urgent issue of Catholic identity and experience, anxiety regarding the liturgical experiment departing from the specific recommendations of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council. As we know only too well, that agenda suffered a major setback nearly twenty years ago. The late Holy Father was unwisely prevailed upon to abandon his gracious and generous offer of a lifting of the worldwide restrictions on the celebration of the traditional Mass. It has to be said, that this decision sorely tried the patience and pained many devout Catholics.

Just before the last conclave, I remember saying to some friends that in Pope John Paul II we had a Moses figure, under whose guidance we had come in sight of the Promised Land. He had led us in some ways to anticipate entering it before long. Now, we needed a Joshua, to cause the trumpets of tradition and authority to sound loud and clear and bring tumbling into the dust, the walls of the Jericho of official obstruction to the universal celebration of the Old Mass. Returning to England on that fateful evening of 19 April, 2005, my mobile phone registered a text message to be followed by others of a similar vein- Joshua has arrived! As many of us here can, I still recall the exhilaration of that moment. As I drove back to school, and switching on my car radio, the Radetzsky March of Johann Strauss coincidentally began to play, it seemed to echo my mod of unrestrained triumphalism. I can’t remember enjoying a similar feeling so much since I last saw the late John Cardinal Heenan in full cappa magna in the sanctuary of this cathedral! That sense of expectation of liberation from forty years of metaphorical wandering in a wilderness of liturgical uncertainty, in search of security, has since been amply justified.

The revealed word of God teaches us that the desert is the place in which we are purified for God’s great purpose. In past decades, both the atmosphere and the outlook have often seemed particularly arid and comfortless. Like the Chosen People, we looked for someone to blame and bitterness set in, with the long years of a restricted diet that seemed less appetising than one that had nourished us for centuries. We have paid a great price for past negligence. A good number of us here grew up comfortably with the Mass as it is essentially in the Missal now called that of Blessed Pope John XXIII, and how ironic that designation now seems! We may recall how in our springtime years, the Mass was not always valued or offered with quite the love and attention to its hallowed ritual that is appropriate. Its temporary obscurity has been a salutary lesson for those with the wisdom to learn it. Those wilderness years have taught us how precious and even how fragile centuries of continuous tradition can be, when faced with a determined and powerful campaign to obliterate it. The future conservation and extension of that tradition demands both vigilance as well as perseverance. Every one of us here in this great Cathedral, built at enormous expense for the worthy celebration of the Mass, has learnt not to be complacent about the defence of any aspect of the continuous tradition of the Church’s ancient rites. Anxiously we have witnessed the effects of prejudice, ignorance and indifference and have gained both wisdom and experience from our toil. The capture of Jericho was not an end for the Chosen People but the initiation of a new chapter of consolidation. Aided now by advanced and immediate systems of communication and witness, and a resolution tempered by travail, we are in a much stronger position to fulfil the mandate the Pope Benedict XVI has given us, and to revive interest in and love for the older form of the Mass. That has always been our mission. Our method must be both catechetical and charitable.

We need to aim to re-educate the generations of Catholics alive today that there is more to being at Mass than eye-contact, concentric cosiness and chat-show communication technique. We need to convince and convert with persuasion and presentation of the facts. We have always hoped that truth and justice would prevail in the end. Now at last, the shadows of suspected disloyalty have been banished. In their place shines the light of affirmation from the Supreme Pontiff that our cause is just as well as universally legitimate. Yet there are challenges still to be overcome. Though we have indeed overthrown Jericho we may still have to face the Goliath of obstruction and obfuscation that occasionally challenges a priest’s right to offer Mass in either the new or the old form. Giving thanks to God in this Holy Sacrifice, we ask grace and courage from His infinite Majesty to sustain and direct us in the task ahead.

In conclusion, I would like to acquaint you with some words preached by the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, Reginald Cardinal Pole, to the royal court of Queen Mary, almost exactly 450 years ago. They were preached on St Andrew’s Day, 1557, a day which also witnessed the restoration in England of the Grand Priory of the Knights of St John. They have a timely and apt significance that reminds us that some of the problems we have faced are not new and need similar remedies. The Cardinal was seeking to reconstruct a nation’s faith after years of destruction and hostile propaganda. Here we may find familiar echoes in our own experience though of course it refers to a time when even the most basic rituals of Catholicism had been legislated away and needed to be revived totally.

“Audi legem patris tui, et disciplinam matris tuae ne projicias. Which a great while hath been despised, and especially the discipline of ceremonies which hath been utterly cast out: and the sooner the more they were ancient. And because men cannot live without ceremonies, nor never was religion utterly void of them, they had rather in those days use none, than accept the old, so much did they despise the discipline of their mother; delighting in their new inventions, wherein if they could spend their wits all their lifetime, better can they not find than hath been instituted already of their mother. And, of the observation of ceremonies, beginneth the very education of the children of God; as the old law doth show, that was full of ceremonies, which St Paul called the pedagogiam in Christum... But this I dare say, whereunto Scripture doth also agree, that the observation of ceremonies for obedience sake, will give more light than all the reading of Scripture can do, if the reader have never so good a wit to understand what he readeth, and though he put as much diligence in reading as he can, with the contempt of ceremonies.. They are most apt to receive light, that are most obedient to follow the ceremonies than to read.“

Antony Conlon
Feast of St Bruno
6 October 2007

A full set of photos of the Mass at Westminster Cathedral can be found on the traditionalcatholic.org.uk web site.