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[Akinlolu Watters]

Towardsthe beginning of this past summer, I fulfilled a longtime goal of attending the Traditional Latin Mass. More specifically, I spent a week with the Fraternity of St. Joseph the Guardian, attending a Solemn High Mass every day and learning about various topics related to liturgical studies. It was a beautiful experience (and not just because it was located in the picturesque Provence region of France); even more so than that, it was enlightening. What follows is a reflection on what I learned from my first experience with the Latin Mass.

As I entered the church for my first Solemn High Mass, I expected some differences from the Novus Ordo which I find so familiar. I knew that the priest would be facing with the people; I knew there would be more incense than usual; I obviously knew that the Mass would be in Latin. I found, however, that I had wholly underestimated the differences.

I am terrible at Latin. I took a semester of it freshman year and was absolutely miserable. Naturally, I was slightly terrified that my lack of understanding the language would impede my understanding of the celebration.

For much of my life, I was raised to treat participation in the liturgy as a vocal or physical activity. As a child, I was an altar server. As a teenager, I was a lector. As a college student, an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. Each ministry participates in the Mass in a very direct way, and so I had come to associate direct participation qua participation. The Traditional Latin Mass taught me differently.

In the Traditional Latin Mass, the congregation does not say most of the responses as we do in the Novus Ordo. That task is reserved for the deacon, subdeacon, and servers. The role of the congregation is to pray, some in chant but much in silent prayer, contemplating the Mass and offering our intentions and those of the whole world. It is an indirect participation, but it is a powerful form of participation nonetheless.

I promised you that I would get back to silence. At times, it was palpable. Throughout the Mass there were a myriad of movements and periods where no celebrant said a word and no member of the choir sang a note. The congregation sat in total and complete silence.

It was dreadful. Anyone who knows me knows that I talk a lot; the converse of that truth is that I am particularly uncomfortable in silence. Listening to the Solemn High Mass forced me to confront this fact, and the ample time to contemplate what it meant that I could not keep silence. It is a flaw of mine, and I am not proud enough to believe myself the only creature with this flaw. We live in a world of constant noise and few periods of silence. Experiencing directed and intentional silence via the Traditional Latin Mass is, in my opinion, a spiritual benefit well worth experiencing. For those interested, the Alumni Hall chapel hosts a Traditional Latin Mass every Sunday at 9am.

The other course was on the Eucharist and taught by Benedictine Fr. Aidan Kavanagh. One of his repeated refrains was that the Eucharist as the body of Christ always builds up and serves the body of Christ, the church.

I offer here a few thoughts that contextualize and explore Pope Francis' July 16 apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes, which reimposes restrictions on celebrations of the Mass according to the pre-Vatican II Latin rite.

Amid all the discussions about the papacy in recent years, I find it helpful to regard St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis as a papal triptych. Each brought his particular strengths to the papacy and specifically to the issue of church unity.

No pope wants to have a schism as part of his legacy. John Paul II saw that as a serious threat from the followers of Marcel Lefebvre, who taught that the Missal of Paul VI, issued in 1970 following the end of the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), was heretical. They also found the council's overtures to other Christian churches, communities and interreligious dialogue were deeply flawed and suspect, in effect heretical.

Therefore, John Paul II extended a very significant olive branch to the Lefebvrites in 1988 to celebrate the pre-Vatican II missal under certain restrictions. Overnight, the issue of the missal revised after Vatican II was off the table.

Interestingly, the title of the document giving this permission is "The Church of God" (Ecclesia Dei) and not for example, "The Liturgy of God." This is the same name John Paul II gave to the commission whose competence was to work toward reconciliation with the Lefebvrites. The permission about the Mass was about the church and the restoration of church unity.

In the fall of 1996, I was residing at St. Mary Mother of God in downtown Washington, D.C. One Sunday morning, I was going to take a run on the National Mall. My exit from the building coincided with the arrival of the community that would gather for the 9 a.m. Tridentine Mass in Latin.

One gentleman asked whether I would ever celebrate "their" Mass. I replied that I could not because I did not have the archbishop's permission. It turns out that almost all of those who attended were from the Diocese of Arlington, Virginia, because the bishop of Arlington at the time, John Keating, did not allow the Tridentine Mass at all.

The phrase lex orandi, lex credendi (what we pray is/should be what we believe) had had a certain resurgence during the debates about the English translation of the Roman Missal. In his apostolic letter Traditionis Custodes, Francis reasserts that the liturgical books approved by Pope Paul VI and St. John Paul II "constitute the unique expression of the lex orandi of the Roman Rite."

When Pope Benedict XVI in 2007 issued his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, expanding the occasions when what the pope termed the "Extraordinary Form of the Mass" could be celebrated, he also issued a letter to accompany the document.

Who would decide what elements and on what basis? Did not Benedict severely criticize the "picking and choosing" that was going on in the 1960s and quite correctly so? I can recall seeing clandestine prayers circulating to replace the texts of the missal for the day. (That was in a Xerox copy culture. I can only imagine what can and does happen in an Internet culture.)

Honestly, by this time of Summorum, the wind had gone out of the sails about the Tridentine permission for reconciliation with the Lefebvrites. But it was curious that Benedict noted that a number of young people "feel" drawn to this form of the Mass. The phrase is "felt its attraction" (Italian: "anche giovani persone scoprono questa forma liturgica"). Since when does an official church document about the liturgy concern one's feelings to be drawn to Mass A or to Mass B? Liturgy is.

When the Kennedy Center opened in D.C. 50 years ago, the premier performance was the newly commissioned Mass by Leonard Bernstein. Within about five minutes into the piece, the orchestra stops abruptly and a soloist sings something that is the exact opposite of the Mass. He sings, "Make it up as you go along."

That is the complete antithesis of what liturgy is about. In fact, we do not plan any liturgy. We should prepare for every liturgy. Sadly, some of the things we should prepare very carefully are things that surveys of American Catholics repeatedly criticize: the quality of homilies and music.

Among the first instances of the Tridentine Mass being celebrated in D.C. was at the prompting of Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan in 1992. In his book Right From the Beginning, Buchanan said that even during the Tridentine Mass he would read a book during the homily because after Vatican II the Catholic Church had become "the First Church of Christ Socialist."

So much for the Holy Spirit guiding the bishops as teachers at Vatican II. At the same time, Buchanan may have been ahead of his time by hiring a priest to celebrate "their" Mass in a high school chapel. I regret to say it, but I can sadly envision the volume of requests that those who want the (then) extraordinary form to be celebrated will make of schools and seminaries.

The fact that from now on a seminarian seeking to celebrate the Tridentine Mass needs the permission of the Apostolic See means the pope regards this restoration of the Vatican II liturgy to be of the utmost seriousness. In effect, this will dry up the supply of priests trained and willing to celebrate the Tridentine Mass.

Some will say (and have already done so in blogs) that this decision will cause a schism, the kind of thing John Paul II wanted to avoid in the first place. But my opinion is that whatever actions people take will simply unmask the silent schism that has taken place and continues in the American Catholic Church over a number of things, including liturgical preferences.

Take your time browsing through our extensive listing to find the one that best suits your needs. Once you have that in hand, please be sure to read our etiquette for using a cell phone in church so that you can minimize distractions to yourself and the pew sitters around you.

Our compilation (listed below) includes Missals for both the Ordinary Form and the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Catholic Mass. These apps are primarily in English (although some have language options including Spanish and Latin) and primarily follow the lectionary currently in use in the United States. A listing of Spanish lectionaries based on various countries is also listed below.

The Missal is the collection of prayers, chants, and instructions (rubrics) used to celebrate Mass. The missalette typically found in the pews is an abbreviated version of the complete Roman Missal and is suitable for those in the congregation to use. The big book used by priests is called a Sacramentary. Combine that with the Lectionary used for the readings, and you have the complete Roman Missal. Read more

Using an iPad, iBreviary can be used in place of the traditional missal on the altar if you are without your Sacramentary. Imagine being on the road and saying Mass in a variety of non-church settings [see photo]. But world-wide, the debate on the appropriateness of this use continues. Some priests object to this unless in a pinch. Others have had a great experience with using an iPad in place of a printed missal. New Zeland bishops have forbidden its use by priests in that country.

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