Una Voce Dicentes
“Crying out with one voice…” ( from the Preface of the Mass)
News from Una Voce of Northeast Florida
Our Lady of Guadalupe Chapter
Volume No. 3 Issue No. 9 Winter 2006
Current News
Freedom for the Latin Mass?
October 11, 2006: Andrea Tornielli; Rome
The text is ready, lacking only the signature of the
Pope. Benedict XVI could publish a "Motu proprio" even before the end of 2006,
with which the use of the pre-Conciliar Missal is liberalized, thus allowing
groups of faithful to ask for the celebration of the old Mass without receiving
negative answers, often unmotivated, from the singular bishops. The document
shall "rehabilitate" the Mass said of Saint Pius V, celebrated in the Latin
Catholic Church up to 1969 and never declared abrogated, defining it as an
"extraordinary" universal rite, alongside the ordinary Roman Rite, which is the
post-Conciliar one.
After having consulted the cardinals of the Roman Curia and having posed
the question even to the consistory of past February, affirming that the
theology of the Tridentine Mass cannot be defined as "reductive", Benedict XVI
has charged Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, Prefect of Clergy and president of
the Ecclesia Dei Commission of proceding [with the text]. A first draft of the
text was thus written, which the Pope then sent to the Congregation for Divine
Worship. Here the road of the decree, due to some internal resistance at the
Dicastery, was made more difficult: a minimal number of solicitating faithful
was considered, initially set at 100, then lowered to 30, and the references to
liturgical abuses were removed from the draft. The text was thus returned to the
Pontiff and to Ecclesia Dei. Other than Castrillón, Cardinal Julián Herranz,
president of the Pontifical Council for the Interpretation of Legislative texts,
was also involved in the crafting of the text.
The "Motu proprio" for the liberalization of the new [sic] Missal, a
measure which finds notable resistance inside and outside the Roman Curia,
should also ease the gathering into full communion with the Lefebvrists of the
Fraternity of Saint Pius X, who have always fought for it. Obviously, if the
Pope signs it, as he seems bent on doing, it will not mean that the simple
faithful will find the Mass celebrated in the old way the very next day. It will
be necessary to harmonise the desires of the Traditionalist faithful with those
of the other parishioners.
Ricard in Lourdes: Motu Proprio "has not been signed"
November 04, 2006 (Conférence des évêques de France Assemblée Plénière – Novembre 2006)
From the opening speech of Cardinal Ricard to the assembled bishops of the French Episcopal Conference (which he presides), delivered today in Lourdes:
...I wish to make three remarks:
1. The decision to liberalize, for the priests, the possibility of celebrating the mass according to the missal of 1962 has not yet been made. The announced Motu proprio has not been signed. Its project will be the object of various consultations. We will be able to convey, from this moment, our fears and desires [regarding it].
2. This project is not
part of a wish to criticize the Missal said of 'Paul VI', nor to proceed to a
reform of the liturgical reform. The liturgical books written and promulgated
following the Council are the ordinary, and thus habitual, form of the Roman
Rite. This project originates, above all, from the desire of Benedict XVI to do
all which is within his power to put an end to the Lefebvrist schism. He knows
that, the longer the years pass by, the more the relations weaken and [the more]
the positions harden.
Watching the history of the great schisms, it is always possible to ask if
there could not have been lost occasions of rapprochement. The Pope desires to
do his utmost so that the hand be stretched and that the welcome be made clear,
at least to those who are of good will and who display a deep desire for
communion. It is within this spirit that this project of Motu proprio must be
understood.
3. The welcoming of a few to ecclesial communion would not put in question
the pastoral work of the whole. No, the Church does not change course. Contrary
to the intentions which some ascribe to him, pope Benedict XVI does not wish to
turn back from the course which the Second Vatican Council gave to the Church.
He has solemnly pledged to it.
From [the day of] his election, he affirmed: "Pope John Paul II rightly
pointed out the Council as a 'compass' by which to take our bearings in the vast
ocean of the third millennium (cf. Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte, nn.
57-58). Also, in his spiritual Testament he noted, 'I am convinced that it will
long be granted to the new generations to draw from the treasures that this
20th-century Council has lavished upon us' (17 March 2000). Thus, as I prepare
myself for the service that is proper to the Successor of Peter, I also wish to
confirm my determination to continue to put the Second Vatican Council into
practice, following in the footsteps of my Predecessors and in faithful
continuity with the 2,000-year tradition of the Church." (Message at the end of
the Mass in the Sistine Chapel, April 20, 2006)
In his speech to the Roman Curia where he criticizes a false "spirit of the
Council", the Pope declares: "Forty years after the Council, we can show that
the positive is far greater and livelier than it appeared to be in the turbulent
years around 1968. Today, we see that although the good seed developed slowly,
it is nonetheless growing; and our deep gratitude for the work done by the
Council is likewise growing." These words must be heard.
I believe it is not necessary to be governed today by apprehension and by fear. Let us also live in confidence. Why should not recent events be an occasion, for us in France, to make a calm reappraisal of our reception of the Council, to read again its great foundational documents, to grasp anew its great intuitions, and to seek its aspects which are still worthy of consideration? We are not called to an ideological reading of Vatican II, but rather to a spiritual reading, in thanksgiving for what the Lord has given us to live on and in a renewed responsibility for the mission.
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Many important words by Cardinal Ricard, who seems to speak as a direct representative of Pope Benedict before the assembly. The Motu proprio is still an unsigned "project"; it may well be influenced by decisions taken by the French Episcopal Conference itself. The main motivation behind the document also seems quite clear.
Speculation on a document from Rome granting greater freedom for the traditional Roman Rite
(06 Nov 2006) There is, currently, much speculation and comment in the media about a document from Rome that is said would grant much greater freedom for the celebration of the Holy Mass according to the traditional Roman Rite (Liturgical Books of 1962); a Liturgy that has never been abrogated. Although the content of the said document is not yet known, some people are making critical public comments and are indicating their displeasure in newspapers, magazines, and via the internet.
It is quite distressing to many of the laity to note that most of this adverse comment is coming from clerics and religious whose prime concern should be one of obedience, leadership, and the care of souls. It is equally distressing that these adverse opinions are being expressed seemingly without any consultation with, or regard for the welfare of, their flocks.
Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI has been elected to the Chair of Peter to govern the Church and we should support him continually with our prayers and humble loyalty especially in these difficult times. The International Federation Una Voce, a federation of lay associations worldwide, on behalf of its members wishes to express its faithful and loyal support to our Holy Father and assure the Successor of St. Peter of our prayers.
Mr. J.P. Oostveen - President, FIUV
New President for Una Voce International
J. P. ("Jack") Oostveen has been named President of the International Una Voce Federation in the wake of the resignation of Fra' Fredrik Crichton-Stuart on September 10, according to an announcement by the Federation.
Fra' Fredrik resigned as Executive President for personal reasons, according to a statement released on September 11 by Leo Darroch, acting Secretary of the Federation.
Mr. Oostveen is President of Ecclesia Dei Delft, the national Una Voce association in the Netherlands. Oostveen was named First Vice President at the Federation's 2005 General Assembly -- the same one that named Fra' Fredrick to the Presidency.
In accordance with the statutes of the Federation, the First Vice-President assumes the functions of the President in the event of the office of the President falling vacant. Mr. Oostveen will hold the office until the next General Assembly, anticipated in 2007.
"Mr. Oostveen has expressed the hope that he can fulfil his Presidency in a fruitful cooperation between the members of the Federation, the Roman Curia, the local hierarchies, the Priestly Fraternities and Institutes, and all Catholic faithful who feel attached to the Classical Latin Rite," stated Darroch.
Oostveen thanked Fra' Fredrik for his service to the Federation, adding that he sent his prayers and wished him well for the future
Cardinal Hoyos Resigns
October 31, 2006
(CWNews.com) - Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos (bio - news), who has
resigned as prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, will remain president of the
pontifical Ecclesia Dei commission, the Vatican has confirmed.
Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, who at the age of 77 is two years beyond the
ordinary canonical retirement age, will be replaced at the Congregation for
Clergy by Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, the Vatican announced on October
31. But the Colombian cardinal will remain at the helm of the Ecclesia Dei
commission, which is responsible for Vatican outreach to traditionalist
Catholics.
Father Ciro Benedettini, the deputy director of the Vatican press office,
assured reporters that Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos will continue to head the
Ecclesia Dei commission for the immediate future. The presidency of that
commission is not linked to the leadership of the Congregation for Clergy, and
in light of the intense discussions currently taking place about efforts to
revive the traditional Latin Mass, Pope Benedict has ample reason to want
continuity in the post.
Pope John Paul II (bio - news) named Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos to head the
Ecclesia Dei commission in April 2000, and gave him the sensitive assignment of
negotiating with the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), seeking to end
the split that began in 1988 when the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre was
excommunicated for ordaining bishops to
the SSPX leadership without Vatican approval.
Formed in the wake of the Lefebvrite schism and excommunications, the
primary duty of the Eccelsia Dei commission is to heal the wounds inflicted by
that schism, by working to bring separated traditionalist Catholics back into
the Church. It is also charged with collaboration local bishops to satisfy the
desires for the traditional Latin Mass in
keeping with the 1962 rite. Finally, it oversees and regulates those clerical
groups and associations associated with the Tridentine rite, such as the
Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, the Canons Regular of the New Jerusalem, and
other traditionalist groups.
While talks with the SSPX itself have not yet borne fruit, in January 2002
the Vatican reached an agreement that allowed for the reconciliation of another
breakaway traditionalist group in Campos, Brazil. And in September of this year
a new agreement led to the establishment in France of the Institute of the Good
Shepherd, composed
of traditionalist priests and seminarians who have left the SSPX. The latter
move has roused loud protests within the French hierarchy, which fears the
Vatican is going too far to accommodate the traditionalist clerics.
Widespread reports that Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) will soon release a
motu proprio allowing wider use of the traditional Latin Mass have heightened
the controversy in France, and placed the focus of attention squarely on the
Ecclesia Dei commission. Because of his involvement in
talks with traditionalists over the past 5 years, Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos
looms as an important player in any effort to achieve reconciliation with the
SSPX and any new gesture toward traditionalists.
The Colombian prelate-- who has said that SSPX members should be welcomed
back "with open arms" when they seek reconciliation-- made an important
individual move in May 2003, when he celebrated Mass in the basilica of St. Mary
Major using the Tridentine rite, thus becoming the first Vatican prelate to
celebrate the traditional Mass in a Roman basilica in decades.
New Traditional Religious Institute
September 08, 2006 (CWNews.com) - The Vatican has established a new religious institute to accommodate priests and seminarians leaving the schismatic Society of St. Pius X, the I Media news agency report.
The new group, the Good Shepherd community, will be located in Bordeaux. Members will be allowed to celebrate Mass using the traditional liturgy exclusively.
Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, the prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, signed the decree establishing the Good Shepherd community on September 8. The institute will be a "society of apostolic life," under the supervision of the Congregation for Clergy and the Congregation for Religious.
The Vatican has approved the canonical statutes for the new institute, as well as the first superior: Father Philippe Laguérie, a priest who was dismissed from the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX).
Informed sources at the Vatican report that Pope Benedict XVI personally approved the settlement that will allow members of the Good Shepherd society to use the traditional liturgy, following the Missal of St. Pius V. Members of the new institute point out that by authorizing this move, the Pope has fulfilled one of the major demands made by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre before his break with the Vatican in 1988.
The new fraternity will include five priests and a number of seminarians, including several who are in line for ordination to the priesthood shortly. Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos will celebrate the group's first ordinations. All of the members have already left the SSPX.
By establishing this new community, the Vatican has chosen to pursue talks with priests who have left the breakaway traditionalist group, rather than with the SSPX itself. In that respect the move might signal a decision by Vatican leaders that reconciliation with the SSPX is unlikely, after years of unfruitful negotiations. The creation of the Good Shepherd institute could provide an incentive for other priests to leave the SSPX. Talks between the Holy See and the SSPX intensified in 2000, when Pope John Paul II asked Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos to make a special effort to achieve reconciliation with the traditionalists who split from Rome in 1988. Those talks gained even more momentum with the election of Pope Benedict XVI, who was widely seen as sympathetic to the traditionalists' concerns.
In August 2005 the Pope met with Bishop Bernard Fellay, the SSPX superior, for private talks at Castel Gandolfo. However, the talks between traditionalist leaders and Vatican officials eventually cooled, and Bishop Fellay-- who was recently re-elected as the head of SSPX-- has told journalists that he sees little likelihood of a reconciliation in the near future. Father Laguérie, the leader of the new institute, expressed the concerns of traditionalists in March of this year when he wrote that the Vatican should remedy "the scandals of the years 1960- 2000," and insisted that traditionalists should have "total freedom for the liturgy" and the liberty to question the teachings of Vatican II. He argued that Pope Benedict, in a December speech to the Roman Curia, had acknowledged the damage done by popular interpretations of Vatican II.
In April 2006, speaking at Lourdes, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard told the bishops of France that "the question of relations with the SSPX" deserved special treatment. He added that Pope Benedict was particularly anxious to find a resolution after years of division. The French hierarchy, he said, should be prepared to welcome traditionalists back into full communion.
The priests who will compose the Good Shepherd institute have all found themselves in conflict with the traditionalist group to which they once belonged. Father Paul Aulangnier was the superior of the SSPX in France until 2003, when he was dismissed from the group after defending an agreement between the Vatican and another traditionalist group, the Brazilian Society of St. John Vianney. Father Laguérie, the group's superior, was expelled in 2004 after he openly criticized the formation at SSPX seminaries.
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Basic Resources for the Traditional Latin Mass
From Una Voce America
With news regarding a document from Rome granting a wider permission for the traditional Latin Mass circulating, the following may be helpful for priests and laity interested in some basic resources for the Mass:
Roman Missal of 1962 can be purchased through Roman Catholics Books www.BooksforCatholics.com
Priests who may want to learn more about the Mass from other priests, or to pick up pointers on celebrating the traditional Latin Mass can contact the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter or the Institute of Christ the King.
The Coalition Ecclesia Dei offers inexpensive Latin-English Booklet Missals for individuals, or for bulk purchases for parish use, as well as a wide variety of informational resources.
Weekly propers for the Mass are downloadable from Una Voce Orange County.
As an excellent musical resource, Neumann Press has re-published the St. Gregory Hymnal and Catholic Choir Book
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Can the existence of two rites fracture unity?
Cardinal Ratzinger explains why not
We have already explained in a more "practical" level why the arguments of liberal critics of a possible papal document restoring the Traditional Latin Mass to its place of honor do not make much sense.
We now turn to the words of the then-Cardinal Ratzinger, the gloriously reigning Supreme Pontiff, responding to these specific criticisms.
It is good to remember ... what Cardinal Newman affirmed when he said that the Church in all her history has never abolished or prohibited orthodox liturgical forms (forms which express the true faith) which would be totally foreign, to the spirit of the Church.
The authority of the Church can define and limit the use of rites in different historical situations. She never prohibits them purely and simply! The Council, therefore, ordered a reform of the liturgical books, but it never forbade the previous books. The criterion which the Council enunciated is both vaster and more demanding. It invites everyone to self-criticism! ...
One must examine the other argument which pretends that the existence of two rites can fracture unity. One must distinguish, here, the [1] theological from the [2] practical side of the question.
[1] Theologically and fundamentally one has to realize that several forms of the Latin Rite have always existed and that they retreated but slowly only as Europe was unified. Up to the Council, there existed along side the Roman Rite, the Ambrosian Rite, the Mozarabic Rite of Toledo, the Rite of Braga, the Rite of the Carthusians and the Carmelites and the best know the Dominican Rite; and perhaps other ones which I do not know. Nobody was ever scandalized that the Dominicans, often when present in parishes, did not celebrate like parish priests but rather had their own rite. We had no doubt that their rite was both Catholic and Roman. We were proud of the richness of having several rites.
[2] The free space which the new order of Mass gives to creativity, it must be admitted, is often excessively enlarged. The difference between the liturgy with the new liturgical books, as it is actually practiced and celebrated in various places is often much greater than the difference between the old and new liturgies when celebrated according to the rubrics of the liturgical books.
An average Christian without special liturgical formation would be hard-pressed to distinguish a Sung Mass in Latin according to the Old Missal from a Sung Mass in Latin celebrated according to the New Missal. The difference, by contrast, can be enormous between a liturgy faithfully celebrated according to the Missal of Paul VI and the concrete forms and celebrations in the vernacular with all the possible freedom and creativity! With these considerations we have already crossed the threshold between theory and practice where matters are naturally more complex since the question of human relationships arises.
If the unity of the faith and the unicity of the mystery appear clearly in the two forms of celebration, this can only be a reason for all to rejoice and thank God. In so far as we believe, live and act on these motives, we can also persuade the bishops that the presence of the ancient liturgy does not disorder or injure the unity of their diocese, but rather it is a gift destined to build up the Body of Christ of which we are all servants.
So, my dear friends, I would like to encourage you not to lose patience - to remain confident- and to exercise in the liturgy the necessary courage to bear witness for the Lord in our times.
Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger
Conference on the Tenth Anniversary of the Motu Proprio Ecclesia Dei
Rome, October 24, 1998
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Latin's second coming
Barbara Kay
National Post, October 18, 2006
It would appear that Pope
Benedict XVI intends to reinvigorate the beleaguered (Tridentine) Latin mass,
which in the late '60s was almost universally replaced by individual vernacular
languages to encourage "active participation" for ordinary parishioners.
Although not a stakeholder in the issue, I am all in favour of Latin's second
coming.
Last month, my friend Monique, an Opus Dei numerary, honoured me with an
invitation to attend a traditional private Mass presided over by Bishop Javier
Echevarria, the visiting Opus Dei prelate. I'm one of those academic fossils who
actually majored in Latin in university, so the sonorous majesty of the
recitations provided me with a fillip of cultural nostalgia I could not have
experienced anywhere else these days.
Monique closed the liturgical loop last Saturday by accompanying me for her
first-ever visit to a synagogue. Although she didn't understand a word of the
almost all-Hebrew service, she declared herself aesthetically pleased, and the
prayers meaningful for their historical associations with Christianity.
After a lifetime of sometimes more, sometimes less frequent attendance at
synagogue, I negotiate the Hebrew service with casual familiarity, for the same
motifs recur again and again. But since I don't speak vernacular Hebrew, my
vocabulary remains frozen at the "See Spot run" level. So, ironically, even
though I am a fluent reader and chanter of my own liturgy, I actually grasped
more of the literal meaning in the Opus Dei Mass than I do in my own Hebrew
prayers. Nevertheless, the Catholic Mass, Latin or otherwise, will never be
anything but an aesthetic experience for me, while my imperfectly understood
Hebrew meets all my spiritual needs.
For the power of liturgy to lift us out of our narrow practical and
material pursuits is not dependent on our understanding of every actual word we
are saying, any more than our emotional submission to classical music's soaring
magic is dependent on our ability to read the score that produced it. The power
of liturgy to stir and inspire us isn't even dependent on our commitment to the
beliefs and doctrines from which the liturgy sprang.
I see the worship service as more about belonging than belief. An
ancestral, globally employed language like Hebrew or Latin provides a context
for predictable and organic communion amongst those present at the service.
Through regular engagement, even though rote, with a universally recognized
language, worshippers are subliminally imbued with a common motivational
narrative from the past, common moral goals in the present and intimations of a
common destiny in the future.
But the ancient language and music of the liturgy, which unite the
individual with his fellows in the sanctuary's space, also unite the individual
with the eternal idea of peoplehood -- those who came before and who will come
after -- in time. Under the mesmeric sway of ancestral language, the finite
moment is transcended through expressions of aspirational yearning (future),
emotional attentiveness (present) and nostalgia (past) to fuse in what the
philosopher Henri Bergson called "intentional time," when the worshipper
achieves the spiritual peace that is conferred by timelessness.
Last Saturday was my father's yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death. I
spoke aloud the ancient Hebrew words of the mourners' kaddish, as my
English/Yiddish-speaking father did for his father, and his
Polish/Yiddish-speaking father and forefathers before him for theirs. Declaiming
it in English would have no heritage meaning for me. It is a comfort to know
that I could have walked into any synagogue in the world on any Sabbath, recited
the same prayer, and experienced the same sense of peoplehood as I do here.
In the 1960s, the received wisdom amongst ascendant secular humanists
taught that all traditional, hierarchical institutions were intrinsically
corrupt, and only an induced cultural amnesia would suffice to level the playing
field. Even the Vatican was not immune to the force of the zeitgeist. But making
the Mass egalitarian, and literally more accessible through the use of
vernacular, did not bring more people to the Church, in North America at any
rate.
Reform Judaism once tried to phase out Hebrew in the interest of "active
participation." The services were "accessible" but sterile and deracinating, and
now Hebrew is back in the Reform liturgy. Quod erat demonstrandum. Bring back
the Latin mass
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We'll Take the 'Quiet Mass'
By Jeffrey Tucker
Early one Sunday morning, my son, age 3, asked whether we were going to the "quiet Mass" or the "fun Mass." The choice was between the 100-mile drive our family makes once a month to Atlanta to attend a church that offers the Tridentine Rite--the old Latin liturgy that prevailed in the Catholic Church until 1969, when Second Vatican Council reforms were implemented--and the quick hop down the road we make on other Sundays to our local parish church in Auburn, Alabama. There, we can see friends and neighbors, sing along to bouncy liturgical music, feast on donuts afterward (the Latin Mass in Atlanta offers only hard cookies), and be home in no time. My son was relieved--but also disappointed--to learn that this wasn't the Sunday of the "quiet Mass," when we make our monthly trek to be part of what every Catholic in the world experienced 30 years ago.
Yes, the new Mass ("Novus Ordo Missae" is its Latin name) is "fun." It's accessible and community-minded. Our local parish isn't one of those where abuses thrive, such as making up our own liturgy or letting lay people preach their own theologies in sermons. Our priests love the faith and adhere strictly to the rubrics that the Church has set forth for the Mass's celebration. Their homilies are not overly politicized. And they do their best to invest the English liturgical text (a victim of a tone-deaf translation committee) with profundity.
Nonetheless, the overall effect of our parish Mass is not so much scandalous as spiritually and aesthetically prosaic. Despite the new liturgy's attempt to reach us where we are, its effect is oddly abstract and distant compared with that of the old. It's great to be with the community and hear a nice homily, but the whole point of the Mass is something very different: that is the sacrifice on the altar, the bread and wine are transformed into the Body and Blood of Our Lord. In the multitude of readings, greetings, and songs in our parish church, that point tends to fade into the distance.
Even my toddler son and my older daughter, age 6 (my youngest is a baby), understand that something is missing at the "fun Mass." I make a point of never disparaging the new rite in my children's presence. That's because I recall a conversation I once had with a fallen-away Catholic. She said, "Oh yes, my father loved the Latin Mass. After Vatican II, he refused to go to church at all." I wondered at the time if her father's stubbornness position inadvertently played a role in his daughter's loss of faith. I didn't want that to happen to my children, so I swore that I would always keep my complaining to myself. I want my children to grow up as faithful Catholics, regardless of which rite they attend.
But can the new rite ensure this as well as the old? The old rite provides theological depth, transcendental complexity, the right mix of exterior and interior textures, and a historical link to the whole of Catholic liturgical tradition. Can a rite designed in 1969 do the same? I'm not taking any chances by denying them exposure to the old rite as well as the new.
I've tried to put myself in their place and deduce why they are attracted to this old-fashioned ritual, which is not inherently child-friendly. Maybe it's the smell of incense and the strange sights and sounds: the clanking chain of the thurible, in which the incense burns; the complicated altar choreography; the high-pitched Sanctus bells. Maybe it's the Gregorian chant, a form of music so intrinsic to the Faith, it seems to evangelize all by itself. Or the silence in the church before and after Mass. Even the very unfamiliarity of the Latin language that challenges their ears.
Most likely, my children treat the old Latin Mass with respect and deference for the same reason my wife and I do: the entire liturgy takes us far away from everyday life, envelops us in a sense of mystery and spiritual solemnity, transports us out of time and place, and feeds our souls. It is not one thing in particular but the whole package, so integrated and thick with meaning, so radically unfamiliar and yet deeply penetrating, that causes us to hope that the Church will no longer treat this Mass as a bone thrown to quirky people willing to drive long distances to attend it, but as a mainstream part of everyday Catholic life, as it once was.
Catholic writers such as Michael Davies have gone to great lengths to demonstrate the theological superiority of the old Mass and its continuity with the practices of the early Church. Philosophers such as Catherine Pickstock of Cambridge University have contended that the old Roman Rite is so significant as a distinct language form that it solves the very riddle of linguistic meaning that the French deconstructionists have raised. She argues that the old liturgy, developed over 10 centuries, emerged as neither pure "text" nor pure revelation from God, but a "middle voice" between time and eternity, one that takes us to truth. But in the end, such arguments are not as important as the simple fact that the Latin Mass calls me personally and intimately to communion with God, and that everything that happens during that hour is directed toward that goal.
The Tridentine parish in Atlanta that we attend, St. Francis de Sales, opened only last year and is one of the few in the country where all the sacraments are offered in pre-Vatican II form. The pastor, the Rev. Mark Fischer of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, a Vatican-approved order dedicated to the Tridentine rite, raised money to purchase a former Baptist church on the outskirts of town--and with its plain red brick exterior, hanging interior ball lights, acoustic ceiling (think public school, circa 1955), and pile carpet, let's just say this is no Chartres. And yet the people come. There are two Masses on Sunday, and both are three-quarters full and growing.
Children of all ages can be seen at these Masses. In fact, most of the people there seem to be under 40 and over 65, with the generation that came of age during Vatican II conspicuously underrepresented. Many, like us, travel long distances to attend. The congregation includes a broad cross-section of races, ethnic groups, and social classes. What unites us all is a love of the old liturgy and our faith.
Why, if the case for the old Latin Mass is so apparent to so many of all ages, do we have to drive so far to find it? Part of the answer may lie in Church politics (many liturgists have invested heavily in the notion of "reform" that the new rite seems to entail) and part in sheer inertia. The new Mass is now the "tradition" in most parishes, like my own in Auburn. Still, I'm inclined to think that eventually the majority of Catholics will come to recognize--and reinstate--the beauty and profundity of the "quiet Mass" of the Tridentine rite, which my 3-year-old son can see so clearly.
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New to the Latin Mass?
All newcomers are encouraged to come downstairs after Mass and join the parishioners for coffee and donuts. To get downstairs, exit through the main front doors, and walk to the left and enter the courtyard gates. The stairs are immediately on your left. There is also an elevator located just beyond the stairs. You may also get downstairs through the bookstore, located down the stairs on the Ocean Street side of the church.. Newcomers should feel welcome and free to ask any questions. We look forward to seeing new faces, so please join us!
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In Closing
The next meetings of Una Voce Northeast Florida will be on the following Sundays after the 8 a.m. Mass: December 17, January 20, 2007 and February 17. The monthly meeting is held the 3rd Sunday of every month.
If you would like to submit an article for the newsletter, please contact Ed or Mollie Garcia at the number/email below.
If you are not currently a member of Una Voce of Northeast Florida, and would like to join, please come to our next meeting. Dues are only $10.00 per year!
Tax deductible donations are appreciated and go toward providing this newsletter, maintaining our website, advertising in the Florida Times Union, and all other activities that promote the Latin Mass in the Diocese of St. Augustine.
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Contact Information
For more information about Una Voce of Northeast Florida, please contact
Ø Michael Federico (president) at 730-8761
Ø Jerry Lawson (vice president/treasurer) at 284-5414 or gla1946@msn.com
Ø Ed and Mollie Garcia (newsletter) at 287-6470 or sursumcorda63@bellsouth.net
Ø UVNFL’s website at latinmassjax.org
Ø Una Voce America: unavoce.org
The Latin Mass is said at 8:00AM every Sunday at
Immaculate Conception Catholic Church
121 E. Duval Street
Jacksonville, Fl 32202
359-0331
icjax2@bellsouth.net
Confessions before all Masses
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