Brick by Brick

Benedict Ambrose counted 77 people at the Edinburgh Missa Cantata on Sunday, including the Girl Guide company. We discovered that the large contingent of students was from Glasgow and that they hope to make it to our Mass at least once a month. We are terribly pleased. Glasgow is only 47 miles away, but trains are not cheap, so this represents a real effort on the part of the Glasgow young.

Some time ago a middle-aged visitor from Ireland remarked cuttingly that ours was not a young congregation, which he meant as a kind of insult. But as a matter of fact, half the congregation (including the altar servers) was under forty. The demographic we're short on is babies. There are parents, teenagers and children, but only two or so babies currently. This may be because the largest contingent of people of child-bearing age are unmarried university students who, after they graduate, will likely move elsewhere.

It is always said when the university students move away. They never call, they rarely write, nidgy nie zadzwonią, a rzadko piszą listy... 

Patrick Archibald wrote quite a good article on getting the hang of the Traditional Latin Mass. Too bad it's in the Remnant, where he is preaching to the choir. Those readers who don't go to the TLM every week may be turned off by the anti-Novus Ordo remarks in the combox.

I think he overstates the difficulties, but it can't be said too many times that the Traditional Latin Mass is bewildering and even boring to many people the first and second time they attend. And without a missal--or a handy-dandy White Sheet picked up at the back of the church--they are going to have a very quiet hour.

However, the most important thing in traddery is that hour. Nothing else really matters in comparison. The after-Mass social is lovely, and making friends with fellow congregants is marvellous, and signing this petition and going to that rally dutiful, and looking for veils online is fun, but what matters most is the Mass.

Going to Trad Mass without "Going Trad"

The Rome-based New Liturgical Movement blog asked for reports on attendance at readers' Traditional Latin Masses around the world. One commenter--I think he was American--decried  that one couldn't just go to the Extraordinary Form, one had to "go Trad." Unfortunately, the chap didn't say what he meant by that, or who is enforcing it, or what town he is talking about. We are talking about a world-wide restoration here.

Obviously the Extraordinary Form of the Mass is a incomparable treasure of the Church available to all Catholics, even if they are in a state of mortal sin, and any non-Catholic guests we bring with us. (Naturally reception of Holy Communion is reserved to Catholics in a state of grace who have fasted and wish to receive.) The one thing those who regularly attend the EF expect of those who don't is a reverent silence (or brief communications to each other in voices no louder than a whisper) in church before, during and after Mass.

You go in at the church door, taking off your hat (if male), you kneel or sit, you pray or sit being quiet, you toss money in the collection basket or you don't, you receive Holy Communion (if appropriate) or you don't, you sing with the congregation or you don't, you pray silently afterwards or you leave at once. If you leave early, no-one will take offense: in the Edinburgh TLM, a doctor often hurries off to answer a vibrated summons and two or three of the senior ladies toddle off  soon after Holy Communion  to set up the tea and coffee table. At the Extraordinary Form of the Mass, the unspoken understanding is that no-one interferes with anyone else's concentration. Occasionally a chance visitor unthinkingly violates this rule silently, as did the poor woman who wore a sports bra under a T-shirt so deeply scooped, everyone behind her could read her underwear's message, spelled out in rhinestones, that the wearer was S E X Y.

That was about seven years ago; see how it sticks in the mind.

It may be that half--or all--the women who regularly attend the Edinburgh Missa Cantata have similarly memorable lingerie, but no-one will ever know because one of the principles of female traddism is to do our best to keep the under in underclothing.

At any rate, it is true that deportment within the church, in the half hour before, during, and up to fifteen minutes after an Extraordinary Form of the Mass (and Benediction, if offered), is expected to be Trad. Loud chatter, hailing friends, audible laughter, lighting cigarettes, stripping down to one's underwear, men wearing hats, rainbow sashes....all these things are most definitely frowned upon.

However, once you are out of church, you are free to be as noisy, free and easy, dressed or undressed as the the law allows. It is true a married woman of the parish pokes gentle fun at those male university students who do not wear tweed jackets, but she is only kidding. Tweed-haters can prevent being the object of such jests by not going to the After-Mass Tea.  And I think this is the crux of the problem.

As long as you are at the Traditional Mass (Extraordinary Form of the Mass), your personality should not trouble anyone, and nobody's personality should bother you. The priest's personality has been well muffled up with vestments and rubrics; his personality shouldn't bother you either. None of us should stand out much; none of us should trouble the others. We are shoulder to shoulder praying together, a community united in prayer, all facing forward towards the altar, the priest's movements, the Blessed Sacrament in his hands.

Afterwards we pop into the car park and become distinct. The smokers light up. The shy and the busy flee. Knots of friends form. The blind demand to know where so-and-so is. The uni students first greet uni students, the families other families, the old bachelors other old bachelors. There is a slow drift into the parish hall for tea, coffee and biscuits, and people plunk down at tables. In general, the uni students sit with uni students, the families with other families, and the old bachelors with other old bachelors, the childless with other childless. (The elderly women busy themselves in the kitchen.) So far so good. After-Mass small talk in the reserved UK tends to be along the lines of "What atrocious weather. What did you think of Cameron's speech on the telly? A lot of nonsense. I never listen to that rubbish. What do you think of this new adaption of "War and Peace?" Is it worth seeing? Where's so-and-so? Oh, in Ireland?" 

There is a perception that  Old Guard Traditionalist Catholics are obsessed with Freemasons and Jews. However, the one and only Freemason anyone in trad circles in the UK ever wants to talk about is Annibal Bugnini, and very rarely does anyone want to talk about him at After-Mass Tea.  Although Annibal sometimes does gets a kicking at Tea, the wickedness of Continental Freemasonry cannot be discussed without alcohol--at least in the UK--and this is yet another step removed from attending the actual Traditional Latin Mass. As for Jews, the one Jew mentioned by name to this Trad by any British/American or Canadian Trad Catholic was the then-Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, who was praised from the pulpit about his wise and courageous speech about something or other. Meanwhile conversations about the Jews or Israel are categorically banned from the Historical House, so the tiny number of trads invited (maybe three?) who have complaints about the rival tribe have had to stew in their grievances in silence.*So whereas it cannot be said Trads never, ever mention Masonic conspiracies and that the odd Trad here or there believes Jews have a disproportionate influence in society, these subject really do not come up that often in British Trad circles---certainly nowhere near the frequency of the word "Israel" amongst the secular chatterati.

My advice, should one be shocked to find themselves in a weird conversation about Jews, is to say "Which Jews?" This could work for the Israelis, too, should you be at a party of Guardianistas (news-reading left-wingers): "Which Israelis? Not the Arabs, [Women in Black, children, teenagers, babies], surely."

What else are Traddies said to be obsessed with? Oh, women's trousers, which Americans and Canadians call "pants" to the childish delight of the Brits, to whom the word always means "underpants."  The hopefully apocryphal story of the American priest who affixed a sign to his church reading "Women must not wear pants in church" always makes British men laugh like drains.  Nota bene: EF regulars in Britain and Continental Europe don't care if women wear trousers in church. Nor do we care if women go to church bareheaded, hatted, scarved or veiled. (German women went to church bareheaded as early as the 1930s.) Obviously we think people should dress suitably and respectfully for Mass, but we aren't that bothered about women's clothes. We are much more worried about women not taking their children out when they wail or arresting them from running around (Patter-patter-patter-patter-clunk-WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!) because the number one non-American Traddy obsession is Quiet in Church.

Other Traddy subjects that spring to mind are interesting new books on the liturgy or theology (not discussed at Mass), who is going to what seminary (rarely mentioned at Mass), conservative politics (not discussed at Mass), what happened to the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal (not discussed at Mass), what Pope Francis said this week (not discussed at Mass and decreasingly discussed anywhere else except online), why Pope Benedict might really have resigned (not discussed at Mass.)

To sum up, if you stick to Mass and avoid talking to anyone afterwards, you can have the Trad Mass without meeting anyone who has "gone Trad" or feel any pressure to "go Trad"--even if that is just to wear a nice secondhand tweed coat instead of that blue thing.

If however, you go out of your own philosophical comfort zone to talk to other people who go to the Traditional Latin Mass/Extraordinary Form, you may indeed hear new ideas, bizarre ideas, and new-to-you clichés, for After-Mass Tea, like most of the world, is not a "safe zone", and Trads have a high tolerance for eccentrics.

*In Europe, some people feel as free to complain about Jews as English-Canadians feel free to complain about "Quebeckers" and French-Canadians feel free to complain about the "Anglos."  Why this is is as yet a mystery to this Canadian, but I think it has a lot to do with political and ethnic rivalries, particularly in Central/Eastern Europe. Naturally it is shocking. Try saying "Bloody Poles" , "Bloody Russians" and then say "Bloody Jews." Which sounds worst, eh? And why?

Update: In case American and Canadian readers are swooning in horror, I should indicate that I have heard less-than-philosemitic remarks from no more than three trads in my seven years of traddery in six different countries. This is a contrast to my pre-Trad life when I heard such comments over the years from a variety of people from a variety of faiths (and, in the case of strangers, probably none).

A Trad Mass Ceiling?

Monsignor Pope fears so in the National Catholic Register. This is well worth reading if you love the Traditional Latin Mass (Extraordinary Form), even if you do not live in the United States.

If anyone really did, it was naive to assume that the churches would fill up again once the "Old Mass" returned. Have a conversation with an elderly lady who has been going to the same parish for sixty years, and you may discover her telling you what was wrong with the Old Mass, how the schoolchildren she taught struggled with the Latin, etc. (One wonders if she would have come up with such insights had the Novus Ordo not replaced the Mass of Ages.) And then have a conversation with a Catholic who never bothers to go to Sunday Mass. Up to 70% of American Catholics do not go to any Sunday Mass. Some of the elderly shirkers may be cranky, jilted Latin-lovers, but the vast majority are probably disciples of the television, where people almost never go to church, and devotees of the pillow--so soft and comfortable on a Sunday morning--and brunch.

Of course it is sweet the that the Trads had such a high opinion of the spiritual longings of the vast majority of English-speaking Catholics who never darken a church door. I went to school with Catholic kids who rarely went to church, so I never did. Still, I hope First Friday Mass and all the hymns we learned in music class stand them in good stead in moments of grave unhappiness.

Interestingly, there are ordinary Catholic churches in Scotland, where the only Sunday Mass is in the Ordinary Form, which attract fewer Catholics than the weekly Sunday Missa Cantata in Edinburgh. The Edinburgh E.F. community is swelled by university students--some years the students of St Andrews dominate, and others the students of the University of Edinburgh. This year we have a contingent from Edinburgh Uni--mostly male, although the girls come along sometimes--thanks to a youthful enthusiast or two who brought along his (or their) friends.

Upon seeing the "New Mass" for the first time in 1967, Archbishop John Heenan famously said that the Novus Ordo would appeal to women and children, but not to men.

The prophetic quote:

At home it is not only women and children but also fathers of families and young men who come regularly to Mass. If we were to offer them the kind of ceremony we saw yesterday in the Sistine Chapel   we would soon he left with a congregation mostly of women and children. Our people love the Mass but it is Low Mass without psalm-singing and other musical embellishments to which they are chiefly attached. I humbly suggest that the Consilium look at its members and advisers to make sure that the number of those who live in seminaries and religious communities does not exceed the numbers of those with pastoral experience among the people in ordinary parishes.[ H/T Counter Cultural Father.]

And indeed it is true that more men than women attend the Edinburgh Missa Cantata, although it is not the Low Mass. I wish the uni girls would come more often, but naturally there is much to attract them, obligations, etc. at the uni Mass.

The ideal mission field for the TLM is high schools and universities, for it is there that young Catholics are beginning to put away "childish things" and look for new ideas. (Protestant recruiters actually lay in wait at the airport for foreign students from Poland and other countries.) Teenagers, especially the ones working for a university career, love intellectual challenges, intellectual consistency and quests for spiritual realities. And naturally the best missionaries to the young are the young themselves, who can go where we oldies cannot--especially if the university chaplain dislikes competition.

Meanwhile, young Catholic couples who go to church tend to marry and have babies, who add noisily to the ranks of traddery.

As for those older, it's tricky. In many ways the young, despite their hot blood and struggle not to be obsessed with sex, are purer than the old. One could suggest to a middle-aged, twice divorced Catholic mother of two, who is deeply unhappy with her lot, that she might find solace at the TLM. However, if she were to turn up, she might find herself deeply uncomfortable with the frank admission that sin is sin and that she is a sinner and to stop sinning she will have to stop pretending her sins are not sins. (All normal young Catholic men know that their sins are indeed sins and that they are sinners, so they don't feel insulted when Tradition tells them they are.) She will find the people her age--old married people, bachelors or spinsters of decidedly counter-cultural opinions--distinctly odd. On the other hand, she might be struck by the many prayers and psalms that acknowledge that life is not a bowl of cherries and that there is a literal hell of suffering on this earth, from which we beg God to preserve us.

Perhaps some good mission work could be done among women with spiritual interests who are tempted by New Age and eastern meditation. But getting middle-aged cradle Catholics who are wedded to their routines to take an interest in travelling for an hour (at least) to the Extraordinary Form seems an insurmountable challenge. Of course, it is worthwhile praising it to them in case one day some liturgical or homiletical silliness shocks them so much, they wipe their feet and flee to tradition.

Update: Here's a trad who is scratching his head at Monsignor Pope's warnings.

A Moving Tribute

Gregory Di Pippo is the new editor of the excellent New Liturgical Movement blog. An expert himself in traditional liturgies, western and eastern, he writes movingly here of a late priest who dedicated his life to the promotion of liturgical piety.

Father Z of What Does the Prayer Really Say often remarks that "Liturgy will save the world." Certainly, the preservation of ancient Christian knowledge, particularly concerning prayer, is crucial for the survival of Christendom.

There are two kinds of liturgists, both slightly unhinged. There is the innovator, who desperately experiments with the Novus Ordo as if he does not at all trust it to do what it is supposed to do. He shores it up with oddities as if to protect it from a flood of indifference. And then then there is the traditionalist, who finds spiritual meaning in the merest twitch of a cope in an ancient rite.  The discovery that there really is edification in something so small gives the traditionist the edge over the innovator. The traditionalist is interested in the accumulated work and prayer of the Christian churches (i.e. tradition); the innovator is mostly concerned with  his own inventions.

It is to be hoped that Mr Di Pippo will one day produce books on the liturgy, for not only does he have an encyclopedic mind, he is an excellent writer and conversationalist.