Listen to the Dies Irae on Saint Rita's Prayer Book

Simon-Peter Vickers-Buckley is an Englishman exiled in North Carolina, a liturgical wasteland that may be in for a renewal. You can leave prayer requests there. You also hear the Dies Irae. This was the sequence for the mass of the dead for the better part of a millennium and perhaps longer. It survived Pius V's reductionist reform of the medieval mass after the Council of Trent only to fall under Bugnini's ban, the bane of the ancient rite.

He has another blog: Simon-Peter's blog.

Living in the New Liturgical Era

Fr. Martin Fox writes a blog called Bonfire of the Vanities. You can read in his latest posting how one parish priest is responding to Benedict's newest motu proprio freeing the traditional Latin mass. I find in his attitude the true spirit of Vatican II.

In the comments a few practical issues arose:

Do we have to learn Latin?

You will not need to learn much Latin. It was common practice to follow the old mass by using a missal with Latin on one side and English on the other. The Liturgical Movement and Vatican II wanted to emphasize the high or sung mass and reduce the importance of low or said mass. Thus the congregation would again sing its parts of the mass (in Latin.) The Council gave pride of place to Gregorian chant, the music of the people, to accomplish this. You do not need to be a Latin scholar nor do you need to be a great singer to chant the people's parts of the old mass. This is what the Council meant by "full and active participation" in the mass.
We presume that most communication is verbal. Yet the experts tell us that 60-90% of communication is nonverbal. You will find that the non verbal communication of the older form of the Latin rite conveys both an atmosphere and specific messages that will change your understanding of the mass.

What is Benedict trying to accomplish?

The very heart of Benedict's program is allowing the older form of the Roman rite and the newer form cross pollinate. The older use stopped developing in 1962. The motu proprio will allow normal organic change to resume in the traditional Latin mass. As individual priests learn the older mass and Catholics experience the it, the ordinary use of the Latin rite will relearn the reverence, the solemnity, and the trancendance of the traditional Latin mass. This will lead to the ordinary use moving more in line with what the Council fathers approved.

Thus the TLM will lead by example but it will no longer be stuck in 1962.

Do you want to read the motu proprio?

Benedict's motu proprio freeing the traditional mass of the Latin rite will be released 8:00 A.M. Wichita time. You will be able to read it here in Latin and the Benedict's letter here in English.

Oswald Sobrino on his blog Catholic Analysis provides a link to subscribe to the Vatican News Service's email notifications.

Benedict's Liturgical Liberalism

Pope Benedict is pro choice, at least when it comes to the liturgy.

Next Saturday, he will release his motu proprio which will allow priests to say the ancient Latin Rite mass without having to get their bishop's OK.

I do not believe that the freeing of the mass of the Missal of John XXIII is meant solely for an opening to schismatic traditionalists. The motu proprio is being released on the Feast of Cyril and Methodius under the old calendar. I read this as a signal to Eastern Orthodoxy. I do not read what the signal is however.

The Organic Development of the Liturgy

The Liturgical Movement, whose work was endorsed by the Second Vatican Council, was rediscovering the liturgical tradition of the Latin Rite, replacing less democratic music with chant, restoring to the people their legitimate parts of the mass (singing the Kyrie, the Gloria, etc.), and spreading an understanding of the mass. The Consilium commissioned to revise the missal in 1969 in its haste and, for lack of a better word, its bull-headedness, made some serious mistakes. Subsequent research has shown that many of its scholarly and pastoral assumptions were wrong. Heavy handed implementation compounded these problems.

The liturgy is supposed to develop organically. Given the break in that development, can we start afresh? Benedict seems to think so.

Benedict is asking us to replant the older liturgy next to Mass of Paul VI so that they can grow side by side cross pollinating and creating the proper fruits of the Liturgical Movement for our children and our children's children.

It took forty years for First Vatican Council to bear fruit. We will just now start to see the Second Vatican Council bear its first liturgical fruits.

You are not convinced? Read this moving account of one new priest's experience. He attended a one week training session ("boot camp") for the traditional Latin mass (i.e., according to the Missal of John XXIII.) This priest will be saying the new mass better, more reverently, and with greater effect because of his experience of the old.

Laus Tibi Dei!

Do we have the leadership and strategy to fight the "long war?"

Last Friday's Wall Street Journal had a front page story by Greg Jaffe, "Narrative Discord: Critiques of Iraq War Reveal Rifts Among Army Officers."

Jaffe writes about Lt. Col. Paul Yingling, a veteran of the war in Iraq. He tells us that Col. Yingling "poured his thoughts into a blistering critique of the Army brass, 'A Failure in Generalship,' published last month in Armed Forces Journal, a nongovernment publication. 'America's generals have been checked by a form of war that they did not prepare for and do not understand,' his piece argued." Col. Yingling argues with passion in the piece which you can read yourself.

The piece elicited significant debate within the armed forces. Jaffe, tells us, "The essay rocketed around the Army via email. The director of the Army's elite school for war planners scrapped his lesson plan for a day to discuss it. The commanding general at Fort Hood assembled about 200 captains in the chapel of that Texas base and delivered a speech intended to rebut it."

Read the whole article. It caused me to reflect and ask some troubling questions about our future as a democracy and a world power.

The Real Questions

Do we have the leadership and strategy to fight the "long war?" On a political note: would any of the presidential candidates give America the kind of war president the times demand? Would any of them dare to tell us that we at war and will continue to be at war whether we try to opt out or not? Would America elect the kind of president it needs even if he or she were on the menu?