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Editor’s note: today we begin a weekly serialisation of Dr. Edward Schaefer’s new book A Simple Man’s Case for Tradition. This book is an excellent introduction to Traditionalism and provides an easy way for Trads to introduce the movement to fellow Catholics who are seeking deeper answers to today’s questions. Proceeds from the book sale also help promote the Collegium Sanctorum Angelorum, one of only two traditional Catholic colleges in the United States.
Introduction
In the spring of 1973, I was an undergraduate organ student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. One afternoon, as I was roaming the halls of the music school looking for an open practice room, I heard another student playing a Bach organ work entitled “Komm, Gott Schöpfer, Heiliger Geist” (Come, God Creator, Holy Ghost). The work is a setting of a German chorale tune based on the chant “Veni Creator.” At that moment, the tune captured my attention in a way that it had never done so before then. I found an open practice room, entered, and sat at the piano playing the tune over and over, pondering it. I wondered how much other “Catholic” music there was that I did not know. I was determined to find out.
My search opened a world of musical treasures to me. (Mind you, I had just spent three years in the music school at a Catholic university, and we never studied or played any of the great musical patrimony of the Church. Our studies were filled with new post-conciliar music or Protestant hymns that were now common in Masses.) I was, at the same time, elated to discover this musical patrimony that was part of my heritage, and somewhat resentful that it had been hidden from me.
Thirty-five years later, in 2008, I was directing The Florida Schola Cantorum, a group dedicated to singing chant and the polyphonic repertoire of the Church’s musical patrimony. The students in this group were all Catholics, and like me at their age, they had no idea that this music existed. Shortly after the group had formed, we sang for a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM), also something they had never experienced. We sang the Gregorian chants proper to that Sunday and a Palestrina setting of the Ordinary of the Mass. The students were visibly moved by the experience. One of them asked me afterward, “Why did we ever stop doing this?” It was a good question, and one that has no good, charitable answer.
Today, we are a bifurcated Church. On the one side, there is a “traditional” movement, filled with people who are drawn to the TLM. Of this group, there are some people, like me, who were fortunate enough to experience the Catholic Church in the 1950s, prior to the revolution that began in the 1960s with Vatican Council II – of which various aspects are discussed in almost every chapter of this book – and that continues to this day. However, most of today’s traditionalists are people who were born after the Council. They have no memory of the pre-conciliar Church, yet they are drawn to the TLM for a variety of reasons.
On the other side of our bifurcated Church rest the “non-traditionalists.” This group is also divided among liberals, conservatives, and a host of people in between the extremes. Some, the liberals, embrace the Church’s new practices, and they welcome a new Catholic theology that these practices have engendered. Others, the conservatives, try to hold on to traditional Catholic theology while enjoying the new practices.[1] Still others are clueless that anything ever changed. They have only one experience of the Church, that of the post-conciliar Church, with its revised practices and theology.
Of all these groups, the traditionalists have had a rough time since Vatican Council II. Immediately after the Council, people who wanted to continue to attend the TLM had to go underground, because people were given the false impression that the old Mass had been abrogated. Priests were forbidden to say the TLM. Those priests who wanted to say the TLM had to do so under cover.
In 1970, Archbishop Lefebvre was fortunate enough to receive permission to start a traditional order of priests, the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), but the society was scorned by the progressive movement that had overtaken the Church. Archbishop Lefebvre was eventually excommunicated, and today the Society remains “juridically irregular.”[2]
The indult of 1984 gave limited permission to have the TLM,[3] but the TLM was treated by most bishops as a “controlled substance.” Access was limited, if permitted at all. Finally in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI clarified that the TLM had never been abrogated, and he encouraged much freer access to this Mass. The traditionalist movement began to grow dramatically. Clearly, there was something about the conciliar revolution and its aftermath that left Catholics wanting. For the first time since the Council, it appeared as if traditionalists were going to be treated as full, normal members of the Church.
Then we hit the pontificate of Francis. All of Pope Benedict XVI’s attempts to make the TLM more available were undone swiftly. Pope Francis is clear that the theology of the “new” Church is incompatible with that of the “old” Church, and the TLM, as the last bastion of the “old” theology, must be eliminated.[4] In my own parish, where the TLM has been celebrated for over a decade and at which Mass attendance has been growing, particularly by families with many children, the Mass is being cancelled by order of Rome. Traditionalists are, once again, being forced underground.
As I examine this oppression of traditional Catholics, I see a part of the Church that is suffering – at the hand of clerics themselves. For the most part, the response of traditionalists has taken two paths. On the one hand, some have been submissive, simply reverting to attending the novus ordo Missae or, perhaps, respectfully requesting special permission, which is consistently denied, to have the TLM. On the other hand, many traditionalists have responded in a quiet, almost silent manner, having “underground” Masses, traveling great distances to attend a TLM that is still being offered, moving to live near parishes when the TLM is not yet suppressed, homeschooling children to protect them from the progressive theology of the “new” Church, etc.
In addition, one of the curious aspects of this renewed suppression of the TLM and the oppression of traditional Catholics is that, for the most part, non-traditionalists are either oblivious to what is happening, or they don’t seem to care. A significant part of the Church family is being abused, and the rest of the family is silent, at least partially because traditionalists have simply suffered in silence. They would “upset the family conversations” by making a fuss.
The silence needs to end. Traditional Catholics need, in all charity, to be more vocal about why the TLM and the traditional teachings of the Church are important. This book is intended to do just that: end the silence in a charitable way. It is not a theological discussion about the profundity of the TLM and the tragedy of its attempted suppression. There are any number of texts today that extol the theological profundity of the TLM[5] and the theological weaknesses in the novus ordo Missae,[6] along with the revised Sacraments.[7] These works make solid arguments for the retention of the TLM and the traditional forms of the Sacraments. Rather, this book is the voice of a “simple man,” that is, a person in the pew who is simply trying to live the faith in such a way that he and his family might be admitted to heaven, and why tradition is a good choice in this endeavor.
This book is for traditionalists who are not fully aware of the tradition and would like to learn more. It is for non-traditionalists – particularly those who want to hold on to traditional Catholic theology – who would like to find a better way to be supported in their endeavor to stay true to traditional Catholic theology. It is for anyone who wants to understand a little better the revolution of the past sixty years in the Church and how we might move past it, through the restoration of tradition. Finally, it is for anyone who wants simply to know why tradition is the right choice for me, and why it just might be the right choice for you.
Read chapter 1: Equally Valid and Holy
Editor’s note: buy the full book in print by clicking the cover below.
Photo by Ramses Sudiang on Unsplash
[1] See Chapter Four for a fuller discussion of this phenomenon.
[2] The Society of Pius X is mentioned briefly in Chapter Five, but the issues around the Society are not the focus of this book. For a full and excellent discussion of this topic see Kennedy Hall, SSPX: the Defense (Chatham, NJ: Bowker Publishing, 2023).
[3] See Chapter Nine.
[4] See Matt Gaspars, “Desidero Desideravi, Ecclesiology, and the Traditional Latin Mass,” Catholic Family News (September 2022), accessed on 29 March 2024; see also Pope Francis, Apostolic Letter Desidero Desideravi (Rome: 29 June 2022), Par. 31, accessed on 20 March 2024. It is curious that, while Pope Francis clearly wants to eliminate the TLM, he has not simply abrogated it. Rather, he has chosen to limit access to it. Perhaps he knows that he does not have the moral authority to abrogate the ancient Roman Rite passed down from the Apostles. It is reminiscent of the story of Job, in which God allowed the devil to destroy everything that Job owned, but not to lay a hand on Job Himself. (Job 1:12)
[5] For example, see Peter Kwasniewski, The Once and Future Roman Rite (Gastonia NC: Tan Books, 2022); also Msgr. George J. Moorman, The Latin Mass Explained (Gastonia NC: Tan Books: 2007); also Peter Kwasniewski, Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis: Sacred Liturgy, the Traditional Latin Mass, and Renewal in the Church (Kettering OH: Angelico Press, 2014); also Abbé Claude Barthe, A Forest of Symbols: The Traditional Mass and its Meaning (Kettering OH: Angelico Press, 2023).
[6] For example, see Rev. Anthony Cekada, Work of Human Hands: A Theological Critique of the Mass of Paul VI (West Chester OH: Philothea Press, 2010); also Brunero Gherardini, The Ecumenical Vatican Council II: A Much Needed Discussion, trans. by the Franciscans of the Immaculate (Frigento, Italy: Casa Mariana Editrice, 2009).
[7] For example, see Daniel Graham, Lex Orandi: Comparing the Traditional and Novus Ordo Rites of the Seven Sacraments (Preview Press, 2015).