Recently the French magazine La Nef published a collection of essays Enquête sur la messe traditionelle. It assessed the achievements of the traditional Mass movement ten years after the promulgation of the Ecclesia Dei decree. Among more than sixty contributors from around the world was Father Ephraem Chifley OP. In his contribution, which we republish in Oriens, Fr Ephraem recounts his own "conversion" to the traditional Mass and offers some pungent observations about the movement and its role in the Church.

RECENTLY MY passport needed to be renewed and as I looked at the much younger face on the passport, I realised just how much has happened since 2 July 1988 both in the Church and the World.

At the time of Msgr Lefebvre's uncanonical consecration of bishops I was the university chaplain at Monash University in Melbourne. I had been ordained two years previously. My theological position at this time, while more or less Catholic, was not especially traditional, or for that matter even conservative. I did, however, take an interest in matters liturgical, especially what might be called the 'high-church' style common among the English speaking nations.

On Sundays when my own pastoral duties allowed I offered the Mass a few suburbs away at the church of St James, Gardenvale. This Mass was Novus Ordo although in Latin, and at the old high altar. Birettas and much incense were de rigeur.

The congregation were mostly younger people interested to worship God in a worthy manner. The music for the ordinary was plainchant or classical polyphony, while the hymns were often vernacular, but in a traditional style. Many of the people from that congregation now attend the traditional Mass.

During my time at Monash University I began to understand some of the deficiencies in my own religious and priestly formation and I began to read more widely in traditional theology. I was assisted in this process of re-education by my then Dominican superior Fr Peter Knowles OP, an oriental rite priest and liturgical scholar. I was also privileged to become friends with a number of younger lay Catholics who rounded off some of my rough theological edges and pointed me in the direction of theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger, who despite some evident weaknesses presented a much more coherently Catholic theology than that to which I had become accustomed by my own education.

More importantly these theologians underlined for me the necessity of having a good understanding of patristic and scholastic theology. Likewise in a different way my colleagues in the chaplaincy (Jewish, Islamic and Anglican amongst others) helped me to realise the philosophical inadequacies of much modern theology. Hard theological and philosophical arguments with non-Christians and with non-Catholics focus the questions very clearly. The basis for my acceptance of what has become known as aggiornomento was becoming increasingly unstable.

In January 1989 I was appointed as chaplain to the Australian National University in Canberra and deputy Master of John XXIII College, a university residence administered by the Dominicans. The University Chapel was also the place for the celebration of the 'Indult Mass'. It was here that I first became seriously interested in the traditional rite of Mass. When the usual priest was not available I would fill in. On a number of occasions we organised a Solemn Mass. The Novus Ordo liturgical life was also of a high standard musically and ceremonially. A large group of current and former students of the university had formed a choir that sang at Mass on Sundays and feast days.

The inadequacies of the new rite are most apparent, however, precisely when the rite is celebrated at its best. The comparisons became more and more unavoidable for me. In Australia the Ecclesia Dei Society was formed soon after the motu proprio was issued. I became involved in the work of that Society and was introduced to many of the people in the Australian traditional movement who are still active and influential proponents of the traditional Mass.

My conversion to the traditional Mass was a slow one and happened in stages. I can still remember at the 1990 conference of the EDS proclaiming myself to be "agnostic" about the benefits of the traditional Mass. The turning point came, I suppose, with a theological understanding of tradition. Fr John Parsons had presented a paper on the eighteenth century Pseudo-Synod of Pistoia-Prato to the Campion Fellowship (an Australian group of orthodox Catholic intellectuals) which he gave me to read. We discussed the issues contained both in his paper and in the original documents at great length. The Apostolic Constitution Auctorem Fidei is a very precise elucidation of the nature of Tradition, a theological concept that has been much maligned in the last few decades.

Hand in glove with intellectual conversion is, of course, conversion of heart. In my own case I can state that this is true. The traditional rite of Mass does not take any prisoners. It is very confronting. It changes us, rather than the other way around. Not that the traditional rite makes saints of us all overnight, but it does not allow us to avoid the searching gaze of Christ. There are no soft edges to feel cosy about. I have seen many conversions as a result of an encounter with the traditional Mass. Its form is essentially kerygmatic. It proclaims the Gospel unambiguously, not just to "them" out there, but to each of us in his heart. Eventually I decided that in my circumstances I could not continue to celebrate the Novus Ordo.

 Like the Gospel itself, the traditional rite seems to attract opposition. Perhaps the greatest spiritual hurdle for those who promote the traditional rite of Mass is to leave aside fruitless polemic and bitter feelings, especially in cases where real injustices have been committed by Church authorities and religious superiors in the name of aggiornomento. Likewise the temptation to a pharisaical or sectarian spirit is real and sometimes, as far as one can see, not always avoided, by traditional Catholics. We are not the Church, we belong to the Church and the Church belongs to Christ its bridegroom. To realise this fact it is important wherever possible for the traditional Mass to be incorporated into the life of the local Church and to contribute to the life of the entire Church. It is also important for the process of decay in the Novus Ordo to be arrested and if possible reversed. We cannot wash our hands of it or give it up as a lost cause, even if we choose only to attend the traditional Mass. The Church has need of the liturgical insights of traditional Catholics, which we must express in a form which can be at least understood and, we might hope, accepted by others.

The motu proprio "Ecclesia Dei" represents a new beginning for the Church after the largely futile excesses of the post-conciliar period. Like many new beginnings in the history of the Church not many people understood its significance at the time. It was merely a pastoral concession to people in difficult circumstances to help heal dissent on the "right" of the Church, or so it was thought. From the begining, however, its application was always wider than this. By design or by accident it allowed many who had never been formal dissenters or schismatics to inhabit a different ecclesiastical landscape where the impossible suddenly became possible again. In its own way the wide spread revival of traditional liturgical forms among young Catholics over the past ten years is as significant as the destruction of the Iron Curtain in 1989. It was also as difficult to predict and is now as difficult to reverse.

The future for the traditional Mass does not hold sudden triumphs or overwhelming victories, and may well indeed hold significant reversals and disasters. We, however, are not dedicated merely to liturgical forms but to the reality they convey. We love the Mass because we love Christ. Christ's victory was obtained through the Cross, and that is what lies ahead for each of us in the way chosen for us by God's provident Love.

Return to Oriens, Autumn, 1999

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