The Past is our Present to your Future
Leo Darroch
In the centre of the city of Newcastle upon Tyne, there is, set in brass in the pavement area in front of an impressive monument to a former prime minister Earl Grey, an inscription stating quite simply: “The Past is our Present to your Future.” Whether this has any connection with the Earl I cannot say but I see this inscription regularly and, while it could have two meanings, I have always thought that this could easily be adopted as the motto of those who strive to maintain the traditions of the Catholic Church. The traditionalist case could not be put more simply. We love the traditions of our Church that we have received from our predecessors, we strive to maintain them in the present so that we may hand them on in their entirety in the future as our spiritual gift to our children and grandchildren. It is this love of Tradition, intertwined inextricably with the history of the Church, that impels the members of the Una Voce Federation to act as they do. Despite the overwhelming, and at times seemingly hopeless struggle, we have battled on against all the odds that the great majority of our hierarchies have thrown before us and are now seeing some degree of success for our untiring efforts.Something else that goes hand in glove with tradition is the recognition that the Catholic Church is a universal Church and its central point of organisation and discipline is seated in Rome. This, unfortunately, is now irrelevant to many within its bosom, especially, it may be said, to many of our clergy who appear to accept no other authority than the nebulous “spirit of Vatican II”. Even this is merely a smokescreen for the fact that they accept the authority of no one outside their own self-serving clique but it does give an aura of respectability in that every thing they do or say is claimed to be rooted in the expressed wish of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council.
Another fact that is often conveniently forgotten by too many is that the Church has existed for 2,000 years and was not invented by the Holy Ghost in 1965. The great strength of the traditional argument is that those who extol the merits of tradition can see the benefits that have accrued since the Church was founded; two thousand years of unerring guidance by the Holy Ghost through the writings and examples of the great popes, saints, confessors, doctors, and musicians. It has been a journey of constant trial, of pain and suffering, yet equally, of great courage and perseverance and of the triumph of the human spirit. Another essential ingredient of traditionalism is the acceptance of obedience to higher authority. It is recognised, albeit with great difficulty on occasions, that the Wisdom of the Church through the Magisterium far surpasses that of any individual. Those who believe in tradition are not individualists whereas those of a modernist outlook most certainly are. They prize their own judgement and conscience above that of any higher authority, if indeed, they accept the presence of any higher authority.
These were the thoughts that were passing through my mind as I landed in Rome Airport on 11th October 2001 to attend the XVth General Assembly of the International Federation Una Voce. The General Assembly takes place in Rome every two years and has done so since its inception in 1965. In that year the Second Vatican Council was in its final session and despite the few and moderate changes in the liturgy authorised by the Council Fathers, the small flame they lit quickly became a conflagration out of control as liturgical arsonists gained the upper hand and fanned the flames of revolution. In their anarchic contempt for legitimate authority they have inflicted serious damage on the structure of the Church. Pope John XXIII said he wanted only to open a few windows. Too many others betrayed his trust and not only did they open the windows but they removed them entirely and then set about throwing away the furniture inside and demolishing the walls. A cold wind blew through the Church and many people, who up till then had been protected by the security within, were abandoned to the harsh realities of the modern world and became lost souls. Those who had betrayed the fort, to quote St. John Fisher, quite clearly did not care one jot.
It is one of the major tragedies of the Reform that the great tradition of a universal Church is the one that perhaps has suffered the greatest blow. In 1962 we were part of a Church with one universally accepted head on earth – the Pope; a clear-cut central body, the Curia, that ran everything relatively smoothly; and a smooth functioning hierarchical structure down through the bishops to the parish priests and the lay people. It was by no means perfect but it worked wonderfully well for 99.99% of the Catholic population. There will always be dissenters in any organisation but these are often outspoken and easily recognisable. Sadly, the Catholic Church after the Council was undermined by people who smiled and beguiled in public but plotted and destroyed behind the scenes. Their work was successful and devastating. A devilish plague could not have been more devastating in the carnage of lost souls.
The universality of the Church was dealt a crushing blow when the sacred language of the Roman rite – Latin – was unceremoniously ditched in favour of that sacred cow of the modernists - the vernacular. The ‘experts’ claimed that the people must understand what they are saying and then our liturgy will become more meaningful. Latin was ditched and was replaced with a vernacular tower of Babel. The vernacular, the native language of a country is essentially a two-dimensional language, the language of conversation, solely of the earth, whereas Latin is a three-dimensional language, of heaven and earth. The ‘experts’ made the elementary mistake of thinking that the liturgy was something of the people, by the people, and for the people, and that God looked down upon it and was either pleased or not pleased depending on how ‘active’,‘meaningful’ and ‘relevant’ it was. The sacred liturgy has now degenerated in many parishes into what Cardinal Ratzinger has described as the community, the congregation, celebrating itself and the greater the activity the greater the self-satisfaction. Worship for these has become inward-looking, earthly, and two-dimensional.
It is one of the joys of membership of the international Una Voce movement that its individual members recognise that the Church is three-dimensional. Not only do we rejoice in the fact that its members are spread throughout the world but that its central act, the traditional Mass, is the worship of Almighty God in His heaven through the actions of His Son. We also have retained the bond, the essential outward sign of universality, in the use of the Latin as our primary language of worship. It is an argument that can be discussed in great depth but on a simple level it cannot be contested that the loss of Latin has dealt a huge blow to the universality of the Catholic Church. It was no idle boast that wherever any Catholic went in the world he or she could pop into the nearest Catholic church and feel at home. We all had our dual language missals, the old and the young – be they Latin - English; Latin – German; Latin – Swedish; or even Latin – Japanese perhaps. We all knew precisely where we were within the Mass and what to do. The only part that caused a problem was the sermon but that did not interfere with our understanding of the Mass. Now, through the evidence of Mass attendance figures, most Catholics no longer feel at home even in their own parish church.
The Church is a universal Church that is present in every country in the world with all the varied languages and dialects that God has blessed us with. If we picture the Church as the House of God built with individual bricks we can envisage every country in the world being represented by a brick with its own name inscribed thereon. But the bricks on their own could not form a cohesive building. So God in his wisdom gave his universal Church a universal language, Latin, as the cement to hold all the bricks together (obviously, it is the doctrines of the Church that are essential to its unity under the Pope but the sacred language of Latin was the external sign of universality). But, in an act of subversion, Latin has been thrown out like some demented (or mischievous) builder removing the cement holding together the individual bricks in a house. One does not need to have qualifications in architecture to know that if you remove the cement from between the bricks the house will become a ruin, if it does not actually collapse.
One only has to look at the reality following the Reformation of the 16th century to see what happened. The first thing the reformers did after the break from Rome was to get rid of Latin and impose the vernacular. The immediate result was the formation of national Churches and this has been followed in the four hundred years since by a multiplication of Churches and sects too numerous to count. It was the liturgical equivalent to the ‘Big Bang’ theory put forward by scientists where everything is hurtling away from the core centre. Not only every country, but virtually every city, town and village now has its own church, chapel or meeting room where their prayer groups are conducted in the vernacular language and individual conscience is the yardstick of belief. And the Catholic Church has copied this! And those who seek to preserve the Latin language and maintain the traditions of the universal Church in true and faithful adherence to the wishes of the Council Fathers of Vatican II are the ones that are pilloried and outcast while our clergy urge their congregations from their pulpits to attend these alternative Christian (and even pagan) venues whose values and teaching are often dictated by the personal belief of the leader of each particular local church or chapel.
To meet old friends is often a time of joy and reflection. To meet old friends from all parts of the world who are engaged in the same struggle as you are is uplifting. We commiserate with those who do not seem to have made much progress and we are happy for those who have made a breakthrough. We sympathise with those who constantly suffer rebuff from bishops and priests who patently have no interest in what our Holy Father, their Holy Father, exhorts them to do, and we are envious of those whose bishops show wisdom and charity and invite into their dioceses priests from the traditional orders. Their responses to the requests from the Pope give a good indication as to whether the individual bishops or priests have a two-dimensional or a three-dimensional mentality.
In the U.S.A. and Australia many bishops are now actively seeking priests from the Fraternity of St. Peter but at the moment the Fraternity does not have sufficient priests to meet these requests. Where are the bishops with such wisdom and courage in Great Britain, one is entitled to ask? Our only consolation in this respect is the old saying that what the USA does today, Britain does tomorrow.
It is very frustrating, and often very soul destroying (literally), to see others benefiting from the obedience shown by a few bishops in response to the appeal of Pope John Paul II to allow greater freedom for the traditional Mass, while your own bishop seems to have a face and heart of flint, unmoved by even the most earnest supplications, or, even worse, by abdicating his authority and hiding behind others: “I am not against you personally, but my council of priests thinks that this is not the right time.” But, in a universal Church we rejoice in the progress of others and know that if we pray constantly, our time will come in God’s good time.
A good example of persistence having its own reward is the Traditional Mass Movement of Vancouver, Canada. Two years ago an approach was made to Archbishop Exner asking for a quasi parish with a traditional priest using all the liturgical books of the old rite. At the same time the petitioners made a Novena for the Holy Souls in Purgatory with the promise that if the petition was successful the new parish would offer a Mass once a month for the Holy Souls for as long as the parish existed. This is the type of example we could all follow. In January 2001, Archbishop Exner canonically erected a quasi parish with a priest from the FSSP as its resident priest. The large congregation every Sunday includes a good mix of young people and families with many children and this impresses the Archbishop. 18 to 20 year-olds cannot be accused of being nostalgic for the days of pre-Vatican II and there are many of this age in the congregation. To date, two priests have come out of this group, there are two seminarians presently studying and some others are considering a vocation. Many of the local priests are coming around to seeing that the Fraternity priest and the quasi parish is not a threat to them but just a different situation. Vancouver has always had conservative bishops; the Pope says the old Mass is OK so the archbishop provides it and the future for the traditional Mass there is bright. The news is positive.
Archbishop Exner is not alone in Canada; there are other personal parishes, shared parishes and indult Masses in various cities and are served by FSSP priests. The FSSP has four apostolates in Canada. There could be more successes but it takes a special kind of person to drive something through and organise on a regular basis because it involves a lot of work, time, expense, and often heartache. They have to believe in it heart and soul but there is one simple question – what is more important than this?
It is this kind of success story that gladdens the heart and reinforces the belief in a universal Church. We may find in our own parishes or dioceses a coldness of heart from the clergy and an apathy from the laity that makes it seem impossible to carry on but we must never forget that Our Lord founded a universal Church and that that His Church is governed from Rome, and eventually it will be the will of Rome that will prevail. In any country it takes only one courageous bishop in a country to open the door to the traditional orders and others will follow the lead. It has happened in the USA, Canada and in Australia. We have to believe, and pray, that it will happen in the British Isles.
On Sunday, 14th October, all the delegates attended High Mass in the traditional Roman rite in the church of Gesù e Maria in the centre of Rome. The Mass was celebrated by Don Vittorio Mazzucchelli of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest. In addition to the beautiful interior and the superb singing of the Una Voce Choir of Rome, two things caught my eye. High along the walls of the nave were figures carved in marble. These were half-figures from the waist upwards and what was interesting was the fact that instead of the normal straightforward carving, they were depicted leaning forward with the head and shoulders inclined towards the sanctuary as though fascinated by the events at the altar. The second thing of interest was the fact that the great majority of the congregation was male as opposed to the norm in Catholic churches today where the predominance is female.
The General Assembly ended on the Sunday and I was fortunate to be able to take up a long-standing invitation to visit the seminary of the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest at Gricigliano, near Florence. On a personal level, my three-day stay at the seminary was extremely enriching and encouraging. The degree of hospitality was heart-warming. Mgr Wach welcomed us personally with his assistant Father Mora. We were assigned a young guest master who attended to us with a friendly courtesy that was repeated by every seminarian and priest we encountered. Gricigliano is a combination of a spiritual haven and a working estate with the seminarians and young priests moving comfortably between the two disciplines and organising their days accordingly. Whether working in the laundry, in the fields or in the classroom, or praying in the chapel their demeanour is dignified and courteous and reflects fully their vocation in life. One abiding memory was dinner in the refectory. I cannot remember any time in my life when I have eaten a meal in silence but whereas it was a vocal silence it was not in any way eerie. On the contrary, the hustle and bustle of those appointed on the day to attend to their fellows, the clatter of plates and cutlery, the lone voice of the cantor chanting the readings for that day and the smiles and nods across tables made for an atmosphere that was a rare experience.
As one would expect, my lasting memories are of the spiritual life of the seminary. All except the new students wear the cassock (and the biretta in chapel) and the atmosphere of dignity and reverence is palpable. Nothing is rushed, nothing is omitted and nothing is left to chance; everyone gives the impression of knowing what is expected of them and does it without fuss or unseemly display. The singing of the Divine Office and the Rosary and Benediction inspired me to rise early and be in the chapel at 7.00 a.m. for Lauds. Nowadays it is fashionable to go to a health farm for invigoration and refreshment but as far as I am concerned the most attractive of health farms would pale into insignificance compared with the lift to the spirits experienced at this extraordinary seminary. It is vital to the continuation of what we all earnestly desire – the traditional Mass and liturgy – that we give our unstinting support, both financial and spiritual, to the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, and other orders, abbeys and convents that espouse the liturgy we all love. My sojourn was all too brief but I left with feelings of hope, expectation and thankfulness. After 35 years of seemingly hopeless struggle the picture is changing. Many more senior prelates are once again celebrating the traditional Mass and liturgy and both the Fraternity of St. Peter and the Institute of Christ the King are being invited by more and more bishops into their dioceses. Just because things may be tough in our own parishes or dioceses should not blind us to the real developments being made elsewhere in the universal Church.
Let us all carry in our hearts the motto etched in the pavement – The Past is our Present to your Future. This could have easily been the motto of the Reformation martyrs. They gave their lives in this cause; all we are being asked to do is give our time. It seems such a simple request.
[Taken from the Latin Mass Society's February 2002 Newsletter.]