The Barbarian Latins
By Julian O’Dea
For a body with two millennia of experience of human
nature, the Catholic Church has done some dumb things lately. Perhaps she has
been listening
to the wrong experts.
Somebody said to me recently that the only group of experts
not consulted sufficiently by the Church in her recent troubled decades were the
social scientists. Someone else wrote that the Church has done everything wrong,
in a human sense, in recent years and is lucky
to have any members left at all. A little timely advice from sociologists on how
to manage rapid change in an organisation, and the importance of familiar and
stable ritual, could have saved the Church a lot of pain.
Explorer gone native
I
must admit that when I first attended the Latin Mass, it was partly in a spirit
of sociological inquiry: to observe quaint customs, primitive rites and bizarre
rituals. But I quickly did what observers are supposed never to do. I "went
native". I joined the Traditional tribe. But it is still sociological fun
to compare traditional practices to other cultural phenomena: as the historian
Montague Summers compared the actions of the priest at the Traditional Mass to a
dance in a classical temple; or Hemingway compared a top bullfighter's style to
the deliberate motions of a priest at Benediction. Veiled women convey one to a
storybook Palestine. The rising incense at a sung liturgy could be accompanying
the prayers of Taoist priests in Taiwan. The vestments and regalia of the priest
could be those of an adept of the occult Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The
Latin text on the pages of the missal seems to hint at the primaeval creative
depths of the Jewish Kabbala. In short, the Traditional Mass evokes many worlds
of meaning and multiple spheres of reality. Moreover, it is clear to someone who
can just remember the Latin Mass in its previous incarnation that the revived
version has been changed and enriched through a subtle inculturation from the
vernacular Mass. It should have something for everyone. But
an uneasy sociological question comes to mind: Is the Latin Mass just a
primitive rite? Is it simply a freakish survival - a creature of outmoded
rigorism? Is it fundamentally unhealthy: something best left to die? But it
would be a strange kind of organism that grew well for centuries, provided
spiritual food for generation upon generation, and then abruptly died. And
indeed it is not dead, but seems to be popping up everywhere again, even in
difficult conditions, like a lusty weed.
Are we decadent?
Question of vitality
It
is dangerous to speculate about the direction of social change. But it may be
that we are witnessing a rapid decadence in the vernacular idea, a premature
senescence; and a corresponding return to barbaric vigour among the traditional
community. As the sociological Bergers imply, in the end it all comes down to a
question of vitality. Which approach proves to be - figuratively and literally -
the more fertile? Which rite will engender stronger families and more vocations?
Which rite more strongly resists the decadent aspects of the broader culture?
Which rite, Latin or English, will prove to be the more satisfying and enduring?
Only time will tell; but the Traditional Latin Mass has time on its side.
