Chairman's Blog

Now that you've remembered that you forgot to get one of these, you still can! Yours for £7 from the LMS website here.

It opens up to a list of dates arranged vertically, giving you much more space than in the usual formats to write things in, with our lovely photos arranged down the left.

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Ever mindful of feedback, we will be using this slightly revised, less cluttered cover when the booklet is reprinted. The contents will also have some tiny, and I mean tiny, corrections.

One of the reasons we at the Latin Mass Society created a booklet of the Ordinary of the Mass was because the widely-used red 'Booklet Missal' produced by the Coalition in Support of Ecclesia Dei is American and contains some American feasures, such as the American version of the Prayer to St Michael. We also thought we could do better in certain ways.

You can buy it here.

While we were still thinking about this, the Catholic Truth Society brought one out. That is a good thing; it is good that the the CTS is using its considerable market penetration to spread knowledge about the Traditional Mass, in a handy pocket format with a smart leatherette cover. The only problem is that this booklet contains a series of mistakes.

A second edition was published, and I thought they might address some of these, but in fact the only difference, as far as I can see, is the title: it is now called 'The Extraordinary Form of the Mass' instead of 'The Traditional Latin Mass'.

So what are these mistakes?

First, there are a series of misdirections as to who is saying what.
At the Pater Noster (the Our Father, before Communion) it directs 'S', the server, to say the it up to and including 'et ne nos inducas in tentationem', when it says 'S/C' (Server or Choir) to say 'Sed libera nos a malo', adding 'This is sung at High Mass'.

This makes no sense at all. The Pater Noster is never said by the Server, but the Server (or the choir) responds 'Sed libera nos a malo'.

Some bright spark at the CTS objected to their title 'The Traditional Latin Mass'. Fine, but what about the mistakes?

It is true that there is an obscure option for the congregation to say or sing the Pater Noster, among the many complicated options for dialogue Masses given in 1958. But the point of this, of course, is that it is said by the congregation, not the Server. Directing the Server to say it is simply wrong. And anyway, the CTS booklet hasn't gone into all the other complicated options, which are never used in England. I suspect the confusion here has come from practice at the Novus Ordo.

A different kind of confusion is at work in the Agnus Dei, where the book tells us that it is 

Then the booklet tells us that 'Omnes', 'All', say 'Domine non sum dignus' before the Communion of the Faithful. Now this does sometimes happen, and I don't object to it happening, but it is not a response: it is said by the Priest. If they people say it, that is a pious custom, but they don't replace the Priest at this point. 

In addition, there are a series of errors about when things are said at all.

The Asperges / Vidi Aquam are marked by a red line, the meaning of which, we are informed, is that they are 'found only in solemn (High) Masses'. Presumably 'solemn (High) Mass' is Missa Solemnis, Mass with deacon and subdeacon, normally called in the UK 'High Mass'. But the Asperges is also said at Missa Cantata, Sung Mass without deacon and sub. (There is also a note saying, correctly, that they are said at the 'principal Mass on Sunday'.)

One of the illustrations in the LMS book.

On the Psalm Iudica, the booklet tells us '(Omit during Passiontide)'. This is approximately true (it is not omitted during Passiontide at the celebration of festal or votive Masses), but it would be a lot more useful to know that it is omitted at Masses for the Dead, including, for example, Remembrance Sunday.

Despite various references to what happens at High or Sung Masses, the booklet makes no mention of the Pax at High Mass, which ought to be there with a red line next to it like the prayer said over the Deacon before the sings the Gospel at High Mass, which we find on p20. There is also no reference to the Pontifical blessing at Masses (High or Low) said by Bishops.

One of the strangest things in the booklet is that it tells us that 'Prayer for the Dead is sometimes added' to the Prayers after Low Mass, giving the text of the De Profundis. I have never encountered this, and it is not in the Ritus Servandus. If it is done, it would be a private initiative of the priest. It is extremely strange to print it in a tiny book to help people follow Mass. 

If we are going to include things unofficially added at the end of Mass, then the obvious thing to include is the Marian Anthem, nearly always sung at the end of Sung and High Masses in this country: but the CTS booklet does not do so.

It also says about the Prayers after Low Mass that they are 'now optional'. This is simply not true. If anyone is inclined to disagree, I would like to see the decree which made them so. In the rules in force in 1962, there are a number of specific cases in which they are optional, but the rule remains that they be said at public Low Masses other things being equal. The red booklet unhelpfully points out that they are not in the 1962 Missal, neglecting to mention that they are not in any other Missal either. There were suppressed in 1964 by Inter Oecumenici, which implies of course they they still existed officially up to then.

The rest of this editorial paragraph is also wrong. It says they were first instituted by Leo XIII: no, they were changed and universalised by him, but they were instituted by Pius IX. It says that Pius XI 'directed that they be said for the conversion of Russia': well, this is widely believed but it is not accurate; what he said was this:

Therefore we must press upon Christ the Redeemer of the human race that he allow tranquillity and the freedom to profess the faith to be restored to the afflicted children of Russia. 

Anyone interested in this topic can read the Position Paper on the Prayers after Low Mass; start with the post in this blog here.

Another illustration.

Similarly, the booklet tells us, of the 'Prayer for the Queen', that it is 'Customarily said after the principal Mass on Sunday'. This seems to be a sneaky way of suggesting that it is optional. Again, it is not. It had been mandated by the Bishops of England and Wales, as we see in the Ritus Servandus; that mandate was in force in 1962; that mandate should be followed, in England and Wales, at the Extraordinary Form, today. If it doesn't always happen, that isn't such a big deal, but it's not the place of a little booklet like this to change liturgical law.

The attitude of the CTS in producing this booklet seems to have been that they didn't need to consult anyone who actually understands the Traditional Mass, and that they could stick in whatever their personal tastes, views, or eccentric devotions dictated. This is a disservice to the Church.

Another deficiency of the booklet worth mentioning is the complete absence of music. But then there are a lot of things missing from the booklet which could easily and usefully be included, such as Benediction and the Angelus, as well as as a lot of music, which we included in the LMS booklet. And our specially commissioned illustrations, helpful marginal notes about what is going on, and what seems to be the only accurate traditional Prayer for Wales in Welsh currently in print.

The Latin Mass Society's booklet has a huge amount of additional material, including beautifully printed chant notation and prayers for Holy Communion, and it can be purchased from the LMS website (or your friendly local church) for the extremely reasonable £3.75, with a stiff colour cover. There are discounts for bulk orders.

The leatherette CTS booklet will set you back £5.95; they also do a version in the format of one of their information booklets, for £2.50, but if you want something small and cheap, you can get one of the little blue booklets from the LMS for £1.50.

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In the pause between Christmas and the New Year, on the feast of the Holy Innocents, I invite a little reflection on children and the liturgy.

I have written a few posts about this already on this blog, and the current issue of the Catholic Herald has a short piece by me on this topic. But today I am publishing a Position Paper about it on Rorate Caeli go there to read it.

People who have never attended the Traditional Mass can still be found who assume that the only people there are old folks who can remember it from the 1950s. The image of young people--perhaps 'rigid' young people--associated with it has, however, begun to impinge on the consciousness of the wider world, and the mental readjustment this has necessitated has been painful to watch. The Holy Father has repeatedly said that he finds it difficult to understand, and he is certainly not alone. Another step again is required to absord the fact that in many places the Traditional Mass is filled with children, who seem perfectly contented with it, in fact rather less bored than children at the Ordinary Form can often be, despite the attempts being made to entertain them.

If you find this difficult to understand, you may need to let go of some prejudices before it begins to make sense, and it is for the sake of my more baffled readers, or the baffled people my readers meet, that I have been banging on about this subject. What I want to convey to them can be summarised in a few common-sense ideas.

1. Modern entertainment, education, and liturgy directed at children tries to keep their attention by frequent change, by keeping things familiar and easy to digest, and by a mockery of the old order: gender models, hierachy, traditional narrative structures, doctrines and so on. The last element is part of a 'dumbing down' process but often comes across as baffling to children, who don't have an articulated grasp of what is being rejected, so can't see how clever or funny their entertainers, teachers, and children's-liturgy-coordinators think they are being. The overall effect is one of banality, which is exremely boring, especially for children who are (mentally) six months older than the intended audience, for whom it comes across as acutely patronising.

2. Traditional entertainment, education, and liturgy for children (as for anyone) invites you into something which you do not already understand. If that thing is of real value, then this invitation is intriguing, and the things you see and hear seem to be, what they are: filled with profound, though not immediately clear, meaning. This is fascinating for children: you can see them absorbed by it. They don't understand everything straight away, but children's whole lives are like that, and they have a way of engaging with things at their own level. Repeated experiences of the same thing, or type of thing, enable them to penetrate to greater and greater depths.

The Traditional Mass is an example of the second type of thing. And you know what? It works. It doesn't make children morally and spiritually perfect right away--of course not--but as they grow older and more familiar they can become absorbed by it for stretches of time as they are with stories and plays and traditional games. Being absorbed by the liturgy is what we all want, isn't it? Because the liturgy is the source and summit of the Christian life: so says Vatican II.

But oh no! the liberals say: even if children are absorbed by the vestments and the incense and the music they don't really understand it, as they would a Novus Ordo celebration done specially for children in words of one syllable, and surely it is understanding which is the important thing. After all, liturgy is not about entertainment, is it?

This objection rests on a couple of mistakes. The first is the idea that children, particularly small children, understand the baby-talk of the Eucharistic Prayers for children. I'm afraid children simply aren't going to take in such big blocks of texts; no educationalist would imagine that this is a way to get children to understand anything. Catechesis may enable them to grasp what is going on, but that is going to be true regardless of the liturgy. Our question is what the liturgy can itself contribute.

The other mistake is in imagining that a child's engagement with the ancient liturgy should not be described as 'understanding'. What children can understand in the Traditional Mass is that there is something of tremendous holiness and grandeur taking place; this is something children at a liberal ideal liturgy would be forgiven for missing completely. And if you don't understand that, then you really have missed the whole point.

The liturgical reform was focused on verbal communication, and it is natural for its supporters to look at verbal comprehension to measure its success. But a child who can parrot back to his teachers that at Mass 'we remember that Jesus had a meal with his friends' has not, simply by that fact, understood the Mass. A child who has a developed an instinct to kneel and be quiet, because what is happening up there in the sanctuary is beautiful and set apart from ordinary life, has, on the other hand, grasped something fundamental, and is in an infinitely more receptive frame of mind to benefit spiritually from the experience, and to absorb appropriate catechesis, than a child who can do no more than trot out a simplistic verbal formula.

It is interesting to see that a traditional conception of children's Catholic education is not, after all, limited to learning the Penny Catechism by rote. Such learning makes sense, in fact, in the context of the training of the emotions, the mind, the spirit, by the liturgy. The Penny Catechism can attach pithy verbal labels to experiences which are, in fact, incommunicable. The labels are helpful, indeed indispensible, but they certainly aren't the whole story.

'Suffer the little children to come to Me', says Our Lord. And when they come to Him, what does He do? Does He tell them simple stories about kindness to animals and tolerance to people of other faiths? No. Does He give them a lecture, in words of one syllable, about theology? No. He embraces them and blesses them (Mark 10:16). In other words, He shows them natural affection, and He subjects them to an objectively efficacious ritual. Parents and Pastors have something to learn from this.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.

Support the work of the LMS by becoming an 'Anniversary Supporter'.