One year ago an event at Saint Patricks Cathedral quietly rocked the Catholic world. On that day, a Sunday and Mother's Day, over 4,500 people flocked to the Cathedral to see something that had been banned there for over 30 years. Ushers said they had never seen so many people crowded into that huge Gothic space, even for Papal visits. What did some people drive all day to see? just a Mass.
What worshipers really got that day was more akin to a fairy-tale. Presided over by Alfons Cardinal Stickler, the Prefect Emeritus of the Vatican Library, this Tridentine Mass was attended-to by 150 priests and servers. Stickler himself entered the Cathedral through the great bronze Fifth Avenue doors accompanied by a single priest, an honor guard, and the swell of Mozart from the organ in the loft. Behind him trailed a 30-foot red silk cape called the cappa magna. Stickler and his 150 servers processed all around the Cathedral, squeezing rightly through the standing-room-only crowd. It was more reminiscent of Papal ceremonies in the Vatican itself than the most Catholics are allowed to see. It lasted three hours and nobody left, not even the usually hard-bitten New York press corps that was so numerous they were crowded into not one, but two, press areas.
Almost immediately after this grand event, an event that was covered in the news all over the world, organizers requested a reprise at the Cathedral for the following year. After a three month wait, last fall the request was denied. Organizers immediately set out to find another venue, and they did. But word came down from the Chancery office in mid-April that this particular Solemn High Pontifical Mass was banned not just at St. Patrick's Cathedral, but everywhere in the Archdiocese of New York.
Why would Chancery officials react so vociferously to a Mass supported so strongly by so many of the faithful and by Cardinal O'Connor and his message of welcome? The answer is properly seen in the context of a war between Catholics on the left and Catholics on the right, a war that the liberals thought they had won for good over 30 years ago.
At the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, sweeping changes visited every Catholic parish in the world. Chief among these were radical changes in the Rite of the Mass. Prior to Vatican II, all Roman Catholics went to exactly the same Mass. Called Tridentine because it was regularized at the Council of Trent (1545-1563), this Mass is properly understood as the Classical Roman Mass, and the Mass of the Saints, for hardly any of the canonized saints in the Roman Calendar ever heard anything else.
Vatican II changed that. First the local liberal liturgists threw out the Latin, and in quick succession got rid of the high altar, turned the priest around to face the people (with his back now turned to God), got people off their knees for communion, and encouraged them to use their hands to handle the sacred host. The strong meat of the Tridentine Mass was now replaced by a lighter fare for more delicate palates. What are the reasons for these radical changes? Liberal liturgists claim that the Tridentine Mass is theologically unsound because it is too adoring, too vertical, too directed toward God, and worst of all, too forgetful of man. Even 15 years ago their liturgical victory seemed complete.
But the Catholic people cried out. Millions drifted from the Church. Some went away permanently. Others went to "independent chapels" where they could see illicit but still valid Tridentine Masses. A world movement began specifically to restore the Classical Mass. And Rome listened. In 1984 and again in 1988 John Paul II required generous access to this Mass and directed bishops and pastors to "make a broad and generous application" of these legitimate aspirations of the people.
Most recently this battle was joined by the second most powerful man in the Church. In his memoirs, just published in Germany, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the Prefect of the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith, wrote words that will certainly chill the aspirations of Chancery repressors. He writes, "I am convinced that the ecclesial crisis in which we find ourselves today depends in great part on the collapse of the liturgy."
Sadly the bishops and pastors seem to listen to these Vatican wishes only half-heartedly. The Tridentine Mass is permitted on in a small portion of parishes in the world. Many American bishops still ban it outright, Not so New York, not so.
New York is blessed with a Cardinal who has heeded generously the call of the Holy Father and the Tridentine Catholics. While New York only has 12 Tridentine Masses, this is still the most of any diocese in the United States. That is why last year's Mass was so important and why it was followed so closely from every Catholic listening-post the world over. This year's denial, this year's ban, can only be seen in the light of last year's enormous success. In the days leading up to last year's Mass the phones in the Chancery office were ringing thunderously with calls from Church bureaucrats around the world. All trying to stop this Mass. What they feared came quickly to pass for the Mass was a wild success, beyond even the dreams of the organizers. If only 600 octogenarians bad attended, it would have proved the long asserted position that affection for the 'Tridentine Mass was merely the sentimentality of old folks. instead, the place was filled not just with those in their twenties and thirties, but with hundreds of children. No longer could Church bureaucrats dismiss so easily the Tridentine Mass.
Catholics who care about this issue do not believe this omes from their friend John Cardinal O'Connor. In welcoming the congregation last year he said to them from the pulpit, "I feel privileged that you have requested this Mass be celebrated here in what is your Cathedral." No, the folks denying this year's Mass are the anonymous people around him, the bureaucrats who have found they can no longer convince, but only enforce their liturgical hegemony. One wishes they were more courageous, and came into the sunlight, at least to give their reasons for squelching the wishes not just of the Catholic faithful, but the Holy Father himself.
-Austin Ruse is the Editor of Excelsis
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