The Extraordinary Form is Better (At Being Modern)

I am a firm and strident believer in the Traditional Mass. I believe not only that it is more theologically rich, organizationally genius, and culturally significant than the Ordinary Form, but I also believe in it as a matter of practicality. It likely will return, at some point in the near future, as the generally preferred form of Mass. The reasons I have for this include: a secondary collapse in Church attendance caused by the older generation of cradle Catholics passing away, the generally traditional orientation of most seminarians, and the growth experience by many tradition-leaning orders and Congregations who also celebrate the Ordinary Form. The Extraordinary is becoming more commonplace.

On the other hand, the situation of the world as it pertains to traditionalist laity--by which I rather restrictively refer to those laity who participate exclusively, or almost exclusively, in a community centered on the Extraordinary Form--is changing rapidly. We are now, in some cases, on the third generation of traditionalists. The inherent difficulties posed by a widespread homeschooling educational culture and by the presence of large families living agrarian lifestyles, often with only one parent providing financial support, have pushed young traditionalists further and further away from higher education and into practical vocations much sooner than their parents. This will eventually limit earning potential for traditionalist youth.

At the same time, despite the very patriarchal ideology of most traditionalist communities, women continue to be as well educated, if not more educated, as their male counterparts. And all the while more and more priests, formed and informed by the mainstream American Catholic culture, are beginning to celebrate the traditional mass and take on pastoral responsibilities towards those communities. The skirts are getting shorter, the veils are becoming optional, and the new priest (gasp) isn't blinking. Before you know it there will be classes on NFP and Dorothy Day at the traddie parish. Meanwhile the bishops are pontificating (in the liturgical sense) right before they give speeches on ecological justice and option for the poor. In other words, the old guard of the traditionalist movement is beginning to lose its corner on the market for the Traditional Mass.

And then, you have young people like me. I know that I am rather an odd bird, but I also know that, on specific positions, I am not so alone among modern young Catholics. We read Vatican II, think ecumenism might not be so bad, learn Gregorian chant, go to the Traditional Mass, study Rahner, and like the pope. I know that I am not alone because, usually, when I am in a group of seminarians, a fair number of them think rather like me.

I believe, with the advent of the Summorum Pontificum era, that it is the role of young, modern devotees of the Traditional Liturgy to start explaining old devotions and customs in new ways. I believe that this is our task, not merely because the newer explanations are more palatable to other people, and therefore attractive, but because the newer explanations reveal aspects of the truth that have often lay hidden or under-emphasized.

Today I want to look at the Traditional Mass from a modern perspective. I want to highlight the ways in which the traditional liturgy corresponds to other movements in the Church today and show that it accomplishes their goals just as well, whether that be egalitarianism, space for personal meditation, or political activism. The Church was their first in her liturgy, even if She hadn't quite realized it yet.

Probably the first thing any neophyte will notice about the traditional liturgy, especially if he comes from a middle-of-the-road Catholic or mainline Protestant background, is that that throughout the Traditional Mass the priest faces the same direction as the people. (Now, however, the first myth I want to debunk is that this orientation is prescribed by the rubrics of the Traditional Mass. I have read the rubrics, and I can tell you that not only is there no requirement for the priest to face ad orientem, there are, in fact, special provisions if the priest should decide to celebrate versus populum. Ad orientem is a custom.) The traditional Mass has this in common with another liturgical movement that has been sweeping the Catholic Church and a number of other faith communities for the past twenty years--the Taize movement. This movement, originating from an ecumenical monastery in France, has, as its cornerstone, a form of liturgy radically centered on Christ through simple songs and worship in which the only apparent focus in Christ himself, usually signified by an icon or cross placed at the front of the Church. Everyone in the Church--choir, monks, and leaders alike--face the same direction, towards the Lord, to show that it is from him that unity will come and to Him that our worship is directed. The histories of animosity between different groups of Christians fade away as our own personalities take second place to the worship of the Lord.

Contrast this attitude with that of most parishes. With the priest facing across the altar, as though responsible for attracting us all to the importance of his own pronunciation and facial expressions, we are drawn to observe the ways that he is like and unlike us. His ethnicity, his accent, his level of education, and his personality all intrude on the centrality of Christ. And we wonder why ecumenism has seemed these days to slow to a halt? We are all to busy staring at one another in closed, sectarian circles and not turned towards the One by whom we shall be made one.

The Traditional Mass, with its capacity to make the priest invisible under the ceremonies and actions of the rite has this unique capacity to make us forget the failings of others and focus us on the One Who really matters. There is a profound capacity here for genuine growth together with worshipers from all backgrounds, because the Traditional Liturgy does not make personality the end-all, be-all of correct liturgical practice.

There is something else that the Traditional Liturgy shares with the Taize community: it's use of the Latin language. Today we live in a world where, because of American dominance, English is becoming the lingua franca of most of the free world. Through this language, America promotes her culture, her industries, and her dominance throughout the globe. Yet, despite this, a new globalism is starting to emerge which makes the old nationalisms obsolete through social media, music, and cultural eclecticism. The world is reaching towards an international tongue, but all it has to grasp on to is English, a symbol of militarism, interventionism, and cultural imperialism.

But the traditional liturgy, like the Taize community's liturgy; it is not an English liturgy; it is not an American liturgy. It is so international that anyone from anywhere in the world can understand and participate in it, and it accomplishes this by using a language that has been no-one's native tongue for over a thousand years. I can think of nothing more global, nothing more pacifist than that. Small wonder that Catholics were often suspected of being "unpatriotic" back when the Extraordinary Form was more Ordinary.

We live in a world which, I believe, has become more appreciative of silence and meditation. A quick glance at the bookshelves in any large bookstore and you will see that people are reaching out for a certain degree of peace and quiet in their lives. The world is noisy. Constant sources of input from other people through sites such as Facebook and Twitter barge in on our subconscious and, combined with our less-active lifestyles add to whatever level of stress that we already have. We need space.

One of the aspects of the Traditional Mass that is most striking to visitors, other than its language and orientation, is its level of comfort with silence. While the priest quietly prays for the needs of all mankind, the Congregation kneels or stands and prays in a profound moment of stillness, broken only occasionally by a muttered word or a ringing bell. The traditional liturgy gives us that space we need to just be, to place ourselves in the present moment.

At the same time, because most of the priest's prayers are prayed quietly, the traditional liturgy can have a 'layered' effect which one can simply not experience in the modern Mass. What this means is that very often in the rite, the priest continues his prayers quietly, while the choir continues singing, and the congregation is left free to sing along or to pray in the manner that they wish. Freedom is, in fact, a distinguishing feature of the Extraordinary Form. This surprises most people, because they have been told that while the Old Mass prescribed a certain song or prayer for each and every situation or time, the New Mass now gives us options for almost every part of the Mass. We can now pick between chants, between collects, between Eucharistic Prayers, between blessings, and between vestments.

Except, well, that isn't freedom. Freedom is centered around individual choices, and the giving of options to the celebrant of the liturgy or to the musicians adds nothing to the freedom enjoyed by the people. They cannot choose what has already been chosen. In fact, in so far as the congregation is compelled to submit to their subjective and often arbitrary decisions, they begin to lose their freedom to meditate on the rite as they wish. The more unchanging the rite, the more one can change his/her perception of it from day to day as his/her circumstances require.

This is my main reason for believing that the Extraordinary Form out-moderns the modern liturgy. The modern liturgy is constantly imposing, in a very ho-hum form of clericalism, the will of the clergy on the worshipers and then imposing itself through long-winded, and usually poorly written, explanations. The Traditional Liturgy, however, imposes nothing except silence and reverence. It does not take into account whether you are black, white, or Latino, gay or straight, conservative or liberal, or even Catholic. It simply directs each person towards the God who can, if He wishes, bring about that unity which tolerance can only simulate. It moves us away from that which divides us to the One who can unite an already uniting world.

I recall an experience that happened once when I was leading a group of college boys in a weekly prayer and discussion group. All of them came from traditionalist families, except for one visitor, who was neither traditionalist nor Catholic. Our custom was to say a decade of the Rosary at the end of each meeting, so I decided to explain the prayer to the non-Catholic friend. I remember the odd looks I got from the boys as I explained that the Rosary was a way of worshiping God with our minds, voices, and bodies.  With our minds, we meditate on some part of Christ's life; with our voices, we say the Hail Mary's and Our Father's, which become like a mantra to keep away distractions; with our bodies we move our fingers along the beads of the Rosary and make the sign of the cross.

The traddie boys had never heard the Rosary explained that way before, and I think their hearing it from me exposed a certain gap between us. We both loved the same things, but for different reasons and with different aspects of ourselves. If the traditional liturgy is going to be what it needs to be, for the modern Church, we need to let the rite speak for itself, to move away from the kind of ideological proselytism which has characterized the traditionalist movement up to this point, and to allow modernity (note that I did not say modernism) take the rite for its own.  I believe that the best aspects of modernity will see in the traditional liturgy a welcome space for the worship of God in Spirit and truth.