Why I Do Not Miss the Latin Mass

Many of my generation and the generation before felt betrayed by the loss of the Latin Mass. I have never felt this way.

Today, for the first time in many years, I attended a Latin mass; and realized for the first time why.

It was beautiful; there is no doubt. Although well attended, it seemed mad the place was not packed to the rafters if only for the musical performance. Some claim the attendance at mass dropped off a statistical cliff right when the liturgy switched to the vernacular.

And it satisfied to discover that after so many years I still remembered some of the Latin.

But I will not be back.

When as a kid attending a Catholic school, I went to mass with my class, I would often start to feel faint and nauseous. I would have to sit bent over in the back. I felt embarrassed and did not know why.

Some of that feeling came back to me this Sunday.

It did as well the last time I attended a Latin mass, years ago now, but as an adult.

The vernacular mass, banal as it may be by contrast, feels much more comfortable.

I grew up attending the Latin mass. I also grew up in what the self-help groups somewhat euphemistically call a "dysfunctional family." Aside from the constant stress and strife, my parents, inevitably, presented themselves as Christian examplars, and their own opinions as theologically authoritative. God was on their side, and against me.

I was aware enough to realize that what they did and said was not compatible with the gospel or the catechism  I learned in school. Yet there was the chilling possibility that the official catechism was really just a cover story to fool outsiders, and they really did represent the heart of the church. Why not? In every other horror movie, Satanists perform black masses that are superficially strikingly like a Latin mass, with smoke and intonations, ritual movements, organ music and oddly discordant chant. Perhaps this was the reality. The Catholic Church was, then, a secret cult along the lines of that portrayed in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.

Because of this, the lack of clarity with Latin was disturbing. What were they really saying? Why could they not say it outright so that all could understand? Surely the Latin suggested an urge to conceal; they had something to hide. The thought never fully formed, until last Sunday, but I believe this was the incoherent suspicion behind my nausea.

The vernacular mass, to me, if only symbolically, brought needed clarity.

I really wonder, had the switch to the vernacular not come about around when it did, whether I would have been able to remain a Catholic. Friends of mine from similar Catholic backgrounds have ended up Muslim, or Buddhist; others, raised in other traditions, have escaped their tainted upbringing by becoming Catholic. Others, and probably far more, less happily, have become secularized or atheist, losing all the comfort and support of religion, most desperately needed by those who never had a real family.

It is no doubt of such family backgrounds Jesus spoke when he said, "but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea."