Let us pray in Latin: priests take on Catholics’ magic mystic circle
Pastor Dale Morgan
From The Sunday Times
August 10, 2008
*Let us pray in Latin: priests take on Catholics’ magic mystic circle*
Damian Thompson sniffs the incense of a revolution among Britain’s
parish priests
For a moment it looks as if a fire has broken out in the chapel. A cloud
of smoke is billowing from the back and rolling down the aisle – and it
is fiercely pungent. This is grade A incense, pure enough to guarantee
an instantaneous spiritual high.
A young man walks through the door swinging a thurible on a gold chain.
He passes it to a priest, deacon and subdeacon – all in gold vestments –
who take turns wafting it at each other. Finally, the subdeacon turns
round and, bowing low, shoots plumes of smoke diagonally across the
choir stalls with the accuracy of a mid-fielder taking a difficult corner.
We are witnessing an unusual sight: a Roman Catholic solemn mass,
celebrated according to an ancient Latin rite effectively outlawed 40
years ago. And it’s taking place in the 13th-century chapel of Merton
college, Oxford, which has been Anglican for 400 years.
Just for a week, however, it has gone back to being Catholic – but this
is not Catholicism as most people know it. I’m at the summer school of
the Latin Mass Society which – to the delight of the conservative Pope
Benedict XVI and the dismay of trendy British bishops – is teaching
priests how to say the Tridentine mass.
The last time Merton chapel regularly witnessed this sort of complex
liturgy was in the 1540s, before the Protestant reformers pulled out
much of the stained glass and toppled the statues of saints. The
organi-sers of the summer school are reformers, too, but their aim is
precisely the opposite: to restore Latin services and rich furnishings
to their own Catholic parish churches, many of which were stripped bare
by modernisers after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
What makes this summer school rather controversial is that most of the
bishops of England and Wales disapprove of the return of the Latin mass,
regarding its sonorous Latin prayers and intricate gestures as a relic
of the Middle Ages. Until recently, the Tridentine mass could be
celebrated only with a bishop’s permission, usually granted grudgingly
for special occasions. Then, in July last year, Pope Benedict XVI swept
away the right of bishops to ban the old services. Most of them were
horrified.
So these are tense times. But the 60 priests who have gathered at Merton
college – to brush up their skills or to learn the Tridentine mass from
scratch – are careful to avoid talk of civil war in the church. All are
aware that this autumn, Pope Benedict is expected to announce a
successor to Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of
Westminster, who presides over a liberal “magic circle” of bishops
unsympathetic to the Pope’s reforms. Will Benedict break the circle that
has run the English church for 40 years?
Whoever gets the job, however, nobody expects a sudden return to the
Tridentine mass in parishes all over the country. The seminaries do not
teach priests how to say it and teaching yourself is difficult. A glance
at the manual explains why: “Bring the thumb of each hand over the upper
front edge of the paten [communion plate], tilting it to let the host
slide off onto the crease of the front-centre fold of the corporal
[linen cloth]. Place your left hand on the altar and with your right
hand set the paten halfway under the right edge of the corporal.” And
all the while saying: “. . . pro innumerabilibus peccatis, et
offensionibus, et negligentiis meis, et pro omnibus circumstantibus . . .”
Interestingly, the most traditionalist priests here are also the
youngest – and I spot four in the choir stalls who are popular bloggers
on the internet. Walking down the high street later, I encounter two
clergy wearing the old-fashioned soup-plate hats beloved of Italian
village padres. One of them has long knotted tassels dangling from the
brim, “so I can tie them round my neck when I ride my horse through the
parish”.
A priest who looks barely out of his teens explains what he does when
unsolicited copies of The Tablet – a liberal Catholic magazine that
opposes the Latin revival – arrive at his church: “I painstakingly
remove the staples and feed it into the shredder. It’s time-consuming,
but God’s work.”
Most of the other priests at the summer school are less extreme: they
have come because they are curious about the Latin mass and they can
scent change in the air. “We’re not trying to turn them into
traditionalists,” says Father Andrew Wadsworth, an authority on the old
rite who is conducting classes. “We want to show priests how the
underlying principles of the traditional liturgy can deepen their
understanding of their priesthood.”
Father John Boyle, a parish priest in Ashford, Kent, recently taught
himself to say the Tridentine mass by watching a DVD. “It’s made a
profound difference to the way I celebrate the new mass in English,” he
says. “There’s greater reverence now. I’m more of a celebrant and less
of a compere.”
I sense a huge contrast with the atmosphere at the first Merton summer
school in August 2007. Then, I was allowed to poke my head round the
door of a training session. Now, Wadsworth lets me watch him take a
priest right through the opening sequence of a Latin mass in a student’s
room, using a reversed bookcase as an altar.
The priest, Canon Michael McCreadie, is in his fifties – yet today is
the first time in his life that he has acted out the ancient gestures.
He removes an invisible biretta (it’s a pretend mass). “Now, father,
keep your hands joined,” Wadsworth reminds him. “Go to the centre of the
altar, not touching it . . . left hand flat on the page. No, you should
be over here,” and he gently turns his pupil towards the window.
After half an hour, we are still only five minutes into the order of
service, but McCreadie is elated: “I wasn’t looking forward to saying
the old mass, but after today I most certainly am.”
It’s only now I discover that he is dean of Leeds Cathedral. A year ago
there were no senior main-stream clerics at the summer school. Later in
the day, even more significantly, the Rev Malcolm McMahon, the Bishop of
Nottingham, celebrates old rite pontifical vespers wearing a jewelled
mitre and an embroidered cope that even Cardinal Wolsey might have
considered over the top.
McMahon, a Dominican, is left-wing in his politics and certainly not
part of a traditionalist faction – but nor does he belong to the
politically correct, back-slapping magic circle. At dinner later, he
effectively breaks ranks with his fellow bishops by unambiguously
endorsing Pope Benedict’s vision of a church in which the old and new
rites coexist. The traditionalists give him a standing ovation and a
verse of God Bless our Pope.
He also tells Father Tim Finigan, author of the Hermeneutic of
Continuity, the most influential of all the conservative blogs, to keep
writing. Which is interesting, given that the Bishops’ Conference would
dearly like to stop that particular blog.
Afterwards, Finigan writes: “Bishop McMahon has certainly won the hearts
of the priests . . . All of a sudden, there is someone that many priests
loyal to Pope Benedict will be watching closely . . . ecce sacerdos magnus!”
That’s Latin for “behold the great priest”. Those words will be read
carefully in the Vatican, where Pope Benedict has been informed that the
magic circle is desperate to install one of its own as the next
cardinal. He isn’t pleased. Watch this space.
Damian Thompson is editor-in-chief of the Catholic Herald
Related Link:
The Keys To Understanding Apostasy, Romanism and The Bible
http://www3.telus.net/thegoodnews/rome.htm