Latin Doubleplus Ungood

 

Pope Francis has just issued new restrictions on the use of the Latin liturgy. Most strikingly, he will not allow it in any church.

Who else does it harm if some Catholics want mass in Latin?

Personally, I have no fondness for the Latin mass. I prefer to understand what is going on. I feel deeply uncomfortable at a Latin mass. But why drive others from the faith over such an irrelevant issue?

The church, after all, allows a variety of liturgies—Coptic, Ethiopian, Armenian, Greek, Melkite, Maronite, Malabar. Why shoud the Latin mass, alone, be so restricted? And if there is something wrong with celebrating the Latin Mass, doesn’t that say that the liturgy of the Catholic Church was wrong for almost two millennia? 

This is hard to understand in any terms other than an exercise of raw power. Francis is not thinking of the interests of Catholics, or of the Church. He is thinking of how to punish those he views as his enemies inside the church.

Like so much Francis has done, this only spreads confusion and conflict.

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."

Pescador de Hombres, Gather Us In

Somewhere recently I read a piece by a Catholic English professor lamenting the weakness of the lyrics to the modern Catholic hymn “Gather Us In.” It is a common complaint among Catholics today. Why is our liturgical music so lame?

Lyrics to popular songs are often awful when you set them down in print. These modern Catholic hymns are not egregious by comparison. Still, as the present author argues, why do we cling so hard to them when we have a 2,000-year tradition of the finest composers and poets in Europe to draw on instead, most of whom wrote religious poetry and music?

Some of his objections to the lyrics of “Gather Us In” seem nitpicky when I read them. Yet I myself am deeply aware that the song is unsatisfying, banal. So I take a closer look.

First line:

“Here in this place new light is streaming.”

Coleridge defined poetry as “The best words in the best order.” Keats advised to “fill every vein with ore.” Every word must work in several ways, as though it and no other simply had to be there. Like the gears of a fine watch.

“Here” and “in this place” are redundant. No reason to use both. Just filling in syllables for the scan. “Place” is vague, and so evokes little. A more precise word is more vivid, obviously fits more precisely. And this song was composed to be sung in a church.

Then there is a theological problem, surely, with the word “new.” In what sense is the light of Christianity, of Jesus, or of the sacrament “new”? Truth is eternal, Jesus is eternal, and the church has been doing this for two millennia. It is hardly le mot just. It looks as though “new” has just been tapped here as an attractive, “happy” word, for the same reason it is so often found on packaging and in consumer ads.

“Now is the darkness vanished away”

The entire line is redundant, since it is hard for new light to steam in without removing darkness at the same time. The grammar is also awkward: the correct English word order would be “Now the darkness is vanished away.” Sometimes mangling of grammar is done in poetry to fit the metre, and is accepted, but here it is not even necessary on those grounds. The correct grammar works fine. Even better, as it still scans while more concise: “”Darkness now is vanished away.” The bad grammar seems introduced only to make the lyric sound more “poetic.” Like throwing in a “prithee” or a “fain.”

And, of course, "away" in “vanished away” is yet again, redundantly, redundant. It is hard to vanish, if you are darkness, while still being there.

“See in this space our fears and our dreamings”

Bad parallel. Surely that should be either “fears and dreams” or “fearings and dreamings.” And the latter, with so little mental effort on the part of the lyricist, actually makes the line scan better:

“See in this space, our fearings and dreamings.”

“See in this space” is also perfectly redundant. We have already plainly established, if it were necessary, that the action is taking place here. Which is after all simply to say that it takes place where it takes place.

And on it goes. Little care seems taken, beyond grabbing the first words and phrasings that make superficial sense, are not heretical, and fit the needs of rhythm and rhyme. The thing feels posted in by regular mail. Bulk mail.

Some will no doubt argue that using classical poetry as lyric instead can give us hymns that are hard for many parishioners to understand. Depends on the poem; depends on the poet. But there is also a vast folk tradition we might draw on, with lyrics that are simplicity itself.

Were you there when they crucified my lord?
Were you there when they crucified my lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my lord?

Not hard to understand, and not a lot of spam.

Here’s a Spanish folk hymn, "Pescador de Hombres," that even when imperfectly translated into English, shows what a hymn can be. Our priest back in Athabasca had it taped into the hymnal at the back. A bit of liturgical rebellion, perhaps, on his part, or that of the music director. I love singing it:

Lord, you have come to the seashore,
neither searching for the rich nor the wise,
desiring only that I should follow.

Refrain
O, Lord, with your eyes set upon me,
gently smiling, you have spoken my name;
all I longed for I have found by the water,
at your side, I will seek other shores.

Lord, see my goods, my possessions;
in my boat you find no power, no wealth.
Will you accept, then, my nets and labour?

Lord, take my hands and direct them.
Help me spend myself in seeking the lost,
returning love for the love you gave me.

Lord, as I drift on the waters,
be the resting place of my restless heart,
my life’s companion, my friend and refuge.