The Battle for the Traditional Mass in the Catholic Church
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In 2006, the English translation of a book by renowned German writer Martin Mosebach was published in which he advocates for a return to the traditional, pre-Vatican II mass.[1] He thereby adds his voice to those in the Catholic Church who have been dissatisfied by the Vatican II liturgies and their implementation, which they see as indicative of the increasing worldliness in the church's hierarchy and teaching.[2] What follows is an attempt to correlate Mosebach's advocacy with the recent action of Pope Benedict XVI, permitting a more wide-spread use of the Latin mass.
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[edit] Who is Martin Mosebach
The American reader might not know Martin Mosebach. He was born in 1951 in Germany, studied law, and then, in 1980, began working as a freelance writer in Frankfurt on the Main. He has made a name for himself as a novelist and author in Germany (winning the highly prestigious Büchner-Prize in 2007). And he has already made a name for himself in Germany as an apologist for the pre-Vatican II, Tridentine mass. The book at hand, the translation of the third edition of a collection of this layman’s essays and reflections, might help him to achieve similar fame in English-speaking lands. It already gained him the invitation of Catholic liturgical traditionalists in the US: In early September 2007, he read from his book in Connecticut and New York, but only in New York his reading was reportedly preceded by a Tridentine mass, permitted by Cardinal Eagan.[3]
[edit] Pope Benedict XVI on the Latin liturgy
Had Mosebach visited the US on or after September 14, the Day of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the Roman calendar, this special permit by the cardinal would not have been needed anymore for the celebration of the 1962 version of the Tridentine mass, the old missal of Pius V that was reissued by John XXIII. In his Apostolic Letter Summorum Pontificum, published on July 7, 2007,[4] Benedict XVI made it easier to use the old mass for those who wish to do so. Now a request from the people, and not (as still stipulated in two pertinent apostolic letters issued by John Paul II in the 1980s) the authorization from the hierarchy, is sufficient for celebrating the traditional mass in Latin. The regulations therein took effect on September 14, 2007.
Perhaps surprising for some, Benedict reaffirms the primacy of the vernacular novus ordo of Vatican II that has caused so much stomachache for liturgical traditionalists in the Catholic Church. He, in fact, praises the liturgical work of Paul VI in the aftermath of Vatican II (the novus ordo) by a quote of the anti-modernist and champion for the traditional rite, Pius X, now the patron saint of a brotherhood of priests following French rebel archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) which is sharply critical of Vatican II and its liturgical reforms.
The accompanying letter to the bishops makes explicit mention of Lefebvre. Yet while the general permission of using the old rite – it has never been officially abrogated – is clearly meant as a reconciling gesture in this direction, it is equally clear that Lefebvre’s disciples are called to compromise: “in order to experience full communion, the priests of the communities adhering to the former usage cannot, as a matter of principle, exclude celebrating according to the new books. The total exclusion of the new rite would not in fact be consistent with the recognition of its value and holiness.” The traditionalists thus get to celebrate the Latin mass wherever that is requested – this, as the pope assured the bishops, will only appeal to a small liturgical elite – but, “in order to experience full communion,” they must also accept and use the novus ordo.[5]
Elsewhere in the accompanying letter to the bishops, Benedict speaks of “coming to an interior reconciliation in the heart of the Church.” In his analysis, the rift to be healed was caused, not by the novus ordo per se, but by the irreverence and “creativity” in which it frequently was implemented. This caused offense among those who, while they appreciate the “sacrality” of the old rite, desire to be faithful to the church. As he stated in this same document, his purpose was “to make every effort to enable for all those who truly desire unity to remain in that unity or to attain it anew.” This conciliatory, but firm spirit, by the way, also marks Benedict’s dealings with the two Catholic churches in China, the underground church in fellowship with the Vatican and the “official” church in fellowship with the Communist government.[6]
Beyond this immediate church-political goal, what does the pope intend to accomplish by permitting the free use of the pre-Vatican II rite? This question is answered in the original Apostolic Letter where he reaches back not so much to Trent as to Gregory I the Great. As Benedict sees it, this 6th-century monk and pope played a crucial role in bundling the churchly-cultural heritage (cultus et cultura) of the crumbling Roman Empire in order to pass it on to the heathen to the north of Europe (England was being evangelized at the time by Augustine). In this Gregorian bundling of the faith and the culture of the Mediterranean church, the liturgy of “the City” (Rome) played a crucial role, as it, also through the worshipful work of the Benedictine monks and nuns, was spread abroad. As Benedict XVI writes, the developing Roman liturgy proved fruitful not only for the faith and piety but also for the culture of many nations.
Judging by the statements he made, e.g., in 2006 in Germany and more recently in 2007 in Austria, the current pope sees his primary mission in the light of that of the two monks, Gregory and Benedict of Nursia: shoring up the theological and cultural bases of the Roman church – according to Benedict, it is a careful synthesis of Biblical, Greek, and Roman ingredients – to reach out vigorously to an (increasingly) heathen West that includes not only Western Europe but also the US and that, because it has lost the true cultus, also is in the process of losing its cultura. The man formerly known as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger definitely chose his papal name carefully and deliberately.
[edit] Mosebach's program and its rationale
This is what the pope wants to accomplish immediately and mediately by allowing the use of the traditional Roman mass wherever requested. What does Mosebach want to accomplish? Simply put, he wants the Vatican II-rite to disappear in favor of the pre-Vatican II Latin liturgy; the new rite’s self-destructive creativity comes in handy for men like him (19f., 38). This clearly goes beyond the pope who, it appears, favors a careful “reform of the reform,” not the simple abrogation thereof, as seen in his Apostolic Letter and as Fr. Fessio is quick to point out in his foreword to Mosebach’s book (10f.).
Yet for Mosebach, the irreparable problem with the novus ordo is not that it introduced change; he knows that there has always been change in the liturgy. The problem is also not that it is practiced irreverently (he acknowledges that Paul VI’s rite and its “creative” implementation are two things (172)); the old rite could be done badly too, as he remembers from growing up as an ill-prepared altar boy and from attending well-meant, but ill-executed “traditional” services after his rediscovery of the traditional forms later on.
The real problem with the novus ordo, which renders it irreformable in his judgment, is that it is not the result of gradual, unconscious growth but that of conscious action, of a theological agenda (24, 71f.). This prevents the faithful from seeing this rite as something divine and eternal, which Mosebach considers indispensable for a correct celebration of the mass (35). Conscious reform also prevents the liturgy from being seen as a work of art. For genuine art, in his view, is about unconscious, not forced, creativity and innovation (109), which gives it lasting vitality, even when it is no longer contemporary (111).
For him, the pre-Enlightenment “Mass of St. Gregory the Great,” as he prefers to call the Tridentine mass (71, 91), is theologically perceptive where the novus ordo betrays iconoclastic Enlightenment thinking blind to the reality of religion. Prior to the 18th century, he writes, “practically all people were homines religiosi:” people of all cultures believed that they “can make a connection between the macrocosm and microcosm by means of sacral acts” (54); “that material actions have effects in purely spiritual regions.” Chief among those actions is, of course, the sacrifice, specifically the unbloody sacrifice of the mass (22). In other words, the traditional mass – understood as “positive action” (41) – is what the religious man “instinctively” understands (28) because is the product of a series of in-style, organic reforms carried out by the homo religious himself (112). Therefore, it alone corresponds to reality as Mosebach, being a self-described “Stone Age man,” believes it to be (18f.).
Reflecting on the anti-ritualism of his Protestant father and Catholic mother (63), Mosebach affirms that it is the sacrificial ritual of the mass that keeps Christianity alive. The bible and doctrines and teachings derived from it seem by necessity to evaporate into the moralism of Enlightenment philosophy because they could do without the incarnation of Christ. He then claims that, in the NT gospels, it is the wordless “presence” of the God-man that brought about conversion, healing, union with Christ (67). Liturgically, this means that “the Holy Spirit is only present in the liturgy and the sacraments when he effects the bodily presence of Jesus … Holy Mass is the Holy Spirit promised to the disciples” (69). Here – in the objective liturgical texts, prayers, readings, creeds, and in the sacraments (90) – is the objective, certain, and efficacious presence of the Spirit and Christ. This presence, in Mosebach’s view, so often seems absent from the councils and synods, from the bishops and priests, from their teachings, decisions, and sermons (68). And after claiming that Paul VI acted as a tyrant (24), Mosebach might as well add popes to this sorry list of the Spirit-less. Hence it is the Tridentine missal that is the expression par excellence of Catholicism (195).
[edit] Evaluation from a Lutheran perspective
Clearly, Mosebach seems to have imbibed his share of the liturgical theology of German Benedictine monk Odo Casel (1886-1948) who viewed the liturgy in analogy to pagan mystery plays. What are Lutherans to make of him? There are various levels of response: First of all, his accounts of “creative worship” filled with bad theology and taste will find sympathetic readers. Second, also in formless (“informal”) Lutheran services, centering on a dynamic speaker or band, one can detect an absence of content or substance: Christ present and active in his word in law and gospel; Christ’s true body present and active in the bread, his true blood present and active in the wine of the Lord’s Supper. Third, what is historically correct in matters liturgical is not always religiously-theologically correct (123ff.). Fourth, Lutherans also lament the emancipation of modern art into abstraction (77, 105). Fifth, Lutherans can agree that the historic lectionary is an “ecumenical treasure” that should not have been given up so quickly and thoroughly in the aftermath of Vatican II where it “was wrecked by … so eminently ecumenical reformers” (63). Sixth, Lutherans appreciate the affirmation of corporeal causes (the life and death of the incarnate Son of God) for spiritual realities (God’s grace and mercy), yet they do so in due biblical specificity, not in the generality of a natural-religious worldview.
Seventh, Lutherans, before jumping on the bandwagon of Casel, Mosebach, and other “liturgical traditionalists,” do well to consider how these men evaluate Luther: if Paul VI’s reforms were bad, since they were “conscious,” how will Luther’s reforms fare since they consciously attacked the canon missae, the core of the Roman mass (SA II, 2, 7)? If vernacular Catholic hymns are seen as having no place in the liturgy, is it then surprising that Luther’s work is characterized as a “singing movement” that replaced the liturgy by hymns filled with “combative spirit” and “demagogic power”(40)? If already the introduction of sermons by Vatican II’s liturgical constitution is considered a “rent” in the fabric of the traditional liturgy (49-52), how will Luther’s demand that without preaching no one should gather for worship fare? (There is a consolation prize, however: Luther’s anti-ritualistic reforms are said to have emerged from religious fervor that has some precedent in Christianity, not, as in the 1960s, from “religious anemia” (62f.).) – If the liturgy is defined essentially as unbloody divine-human sacrificial action, where are the genuinely sacramental gospel word and receiving faith in all this? How does the asserted self-evidence of the ritual for the homo religiosus square with the cross that is foolishness especially for the homo religiosus?
Finally, underneath Mosebach’s argument for the traditional liturgy, there seems to be an entirely modern distrust of institutions and its representatives, including the Catholic Church and its bureaucratized hierarchy. Knowing that the bible cannot be trusted and after popes, councils, bishops, and priests have been proved to be without the Spirit time and again, what is left for Catholic traditionalists like him is a liturgy that seems to come from a time when people still got the stone-age worldview right; when they still could believe in “the one holy Catholic Church,” its saintly representatives, and its liturgies generated either by anonymous processes or by saints, either of which renders them divine and eternal and therefore effective. This is remarkably reminiscent of modern American sects – “the most frightful form religion has ever adopted in the world,” according to Mosebach (73) – that will not accept man’s word (sermon, creeds) as God’s own word; men, after all, can and do err. The American sects “believe the bible.” Mosebach and his camp “believe the liturgy.” The pope, however, still believes in that church whose visible head he is – Roma locuta, causa finita.
[edit] Footnotes
- ↑ The Heresy of Formlessness: The Roman Liturgy and Its Enemy, tr. G. Harrison, foreword by J. D. Fessio, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2006).
- ↑ Cf. this January 2007 German article on the struggles of a group of traditionalist priests in Germany against what they perceive to be the destructive work of "68ers" ("old liberals") on all levels in the church (hierarchy, seminaries, congregations, ...).
- ↑ Cf. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 12, 2007 (No. 212), p. 35.
- ↑ The official Latin text is easily accessible online. So far, and quite fittingly for a letter promoting the Latin mass, no official translation has been made available on this site. Cf. also the accompanying letter to bishops, in English.
- ↑ Even the older Latin texts continue to be changed, as recently done by the pope in the 2008 Ash-Wednesday prayer for the conversion of the Jews, which caused outrage among traditionalists, as seen in this English piece from March 2008.
- ↑ Cf. his Pentecost 2007 letter to the Catholic Church in China.
