I grew up assuming that everything about the Catholic Church before 1965, and much of Church teaching after 1965, was outdated, corrupt, narrow minded, and rigid. Contraception was off limits, Sunday Mass was missed, even for lengthy stretches, and holy days of obligation were frowned upon. I could not stand most classical music, particularly choral music. Incense was an irritation. I rebelled at going to CCD. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings were infinitely preferable to the Bible. It did not help that those I knew who were more “conservative” and traditional rubbed me the wrong way personality wise.
The first chink in the modern heart of stone came during a Confirmation class, likely in late 2003. Our classes were hosted by parish families in their own homes, not in the church school. I vividly remember listening to a recorded talk of a priest assuring us that if Mother Teresa arrived at the Last Judgment tried to enter Heaven on her own merits she’d be condemned, as well as an assertion that missing Sunday Mass just once was the equivalent of falling off a cliff.
The second was a flash of insight during a Palm Sunday Mass. This is my culture. In a modern America that has so little ritual, so little history, so little family tradition, and so little in common, this sprinkling of holy water, singing of hymns, and the Eucharist was a valuable heritage.
My convert mother also enjoyed bringing me to Easter Vigil, which I loved right away. The rich, participatory symbolism of the darkness, the Easter Fire, the story that spoke through the marathon of Old Testament readings, the sacraments of initiation for converts, they all called me home.
I arrived at college, got involved with the Newman Center, which was also an Oratory of St. Philip Neri, run by the Congregation of the Oratory. And thank God. I was in shock that college students actually attended daily Mass, prayed holy hours (some in the middle of the night), and even chanted rosaries.
It happened that the Oratory, always more liturgically traditional within the Novus, began layering tradition into the 11 AM Sunday Mass. I got used to the Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei quickly. Ditto for the requirement for vested male altar servers. I positively rebelled at the Pater Noster, bowing during the censing, and the idea that we would even consider a Latin Credo. But I got used to it.
Strangely enough, at this time I began watching a scandalous HBO show called The Tudors. Ignoring the fact that it was clearly for women, I skipped the lurid sex scenes and was enthralled at the scenes involving Saint Thomas More and his martyrdom (not to mention the pilgrimage of grace and terrifying iconoclasm). He quickly became my favorite saint, and I was startled during one of the scenes before his execution to hear him praying the Hail Mary prayers in Latin and hearing priests during Mass scenes administer Communion with the phrase “Corpus Christi.”
Of course, you dummy, all those old saints you love would have prayed in Latin, not English.
I dutifully learned the rosary in Latin, largely in the Oratory chapel.
The Oratory chanted the Regina Caeli in Latin after Masses during Easter season.
Then when I moved to Virginia a priest, who soon after died of cancer, chanted the Parce Domine after Masses during Lent. I was deeply moved.
My then fiancé wanted a Tridentine Mass for our wedding, but this was too much for me who had no experience with full on Tridentine Masses, and anyway how could we use our wedding to, in a small way, catechize our families and friends if no one could understand anything? We went with an Oratory style traditional Novus Nuptial Mass.
My wife and I attended a fairly traditional Novus parish for a year and a half after marriage. We began attending the traditional Latin Mass, a low Mass, offered on the third Friday of the month. It was a stereotypical 50s style Mass with almost nothing audible and the prayers positively raced through. It was impossible to follow. But I still went.
We had friends who were deeply traditional, celebrated the Ember Days, and had their children baptized in the traditional rite. We were scandalized at their children coughing on the salt and didn’t consider it for our eldest three. We met them leaving All Saints Day Mass in 2012 when I was insolently quizzing my fiancé on the names of the 12 Apostles.
We moved to another parish after our daughter was 7 months old and we needed more space. The church was 70s drab interior with guitar at every single Sunday Mass. I had lived with this for most of high school but now it was rather irritating. Surely there could be just one Mass more traditional in style? But we thought it was our duty to stick with our geographical parish so we soldiered on. At least the pastor (now at Christendom College) was solid.
We moved again, this time out of state. Our new parish had priests who were good homilists and fairly with it, but they would take liberties with the liturgy, especially the Scripture translation and the responsorial psalms. We bounced around parishes. What we could not find, though, was anything like the Oratory Mass we missed. I later found out there was an Oratory in Philadelphia about an hour away.
Our irritation with our local parish grew, and we eventually decided it was untenable as our daughter approached CCD age.
I had always been interested in history, and finished a massive dive into Father James Macaffrey’s History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French Revolution (and his sequel for the 19th Century). I tried to find some book, any book, that took a thorough and honest look at the Church after the Second Vatican Council.
By some stroke of inspiration I found Iota Unum and began reading the portions free online at the SSPX Asia’s website (I can’t stand the SSPX but the prudent man will not look a gift horse in the mouth).
That did it.
To my utter shock and dismay, I discovered Veterum Sapientiae, an Apostolic Constitution written by Pope John XXIII in 1962, less than 9 months before Vatican II. My entire narrative of the modern Church was that Saintly John XXIII was inspired by the Holy Spirit to call a Council which, under the inspiration of the same Divine Spirit, reformed the liturgy.
This was, to say the least, entirely mistaken. I could not worship or think of the Church in the same way again after 10 minutes of reading the Pope who called Vatican II demand that the Church return to universal study and use of Latin in liturgy, theology, and administration; and deemphasize the study of modern science if necessary.
I discovered a Latin High Mass happening at a local parish for Easter of 2018 and took my wife and two kids. This time I came with a truly open mind, accepting that I wouldn’t “master” the liturgy on day one. I immediately understood the motif of the Song of Songs: this was a liturgy I would have to pursue. It would not unfold itself automatically before my distracted brain. It demanded focus and contemplation. I got over the poor choir. It helped that the pastor was a scholar and a master homilist who pulled no punches.
It also helped that the night before I attended an Easter vigil at my local parish in which the baptistry was one of those side-opening bathtubs and in which the liturgy took 4 hours because the Scripture readings were interrupted with cringey ad libitum songs that I’d never heard in my life.
I came back the next week, alone with the kids after the loss of a close relative. Already the community seemed more inviting and supportive than any I’d seen in a previous parish outside of the Oratory. It was a trying time, as our house had also been destroyed by a burst pipe and reconstruction dragged on for over a year.
We bounced back and forth between our local parish (mostly because we had good friends who went to Mass there) and the Latin Mass for quite some time, interrupted by a brief move back to Virginia. Foolishly we did not seek out the local Latin Mass in Virginia (now, though another try, ‘twould be too late).
Just over a year in, I wanted to learn more. Providentially, I met a guy at our local Catholic mens group’s axe-throwing event who was just what the doctor ordered. He sent me The Bugnini Liturgy and the Reform of the Reform by Laszlo Dobszay, available free online.
My history, and now liturgy-minded, brain went into overdrive. As my daughter did ballet at the YMCA I learned to my shock that the new Mass was not just the old Mass translated and facing the people. Nor was the calendar I’d followed the traditional calendar. Nor was the Divine Office I’d tried and failed to pray regularly for 9 years the traditional Divine Office. Nor was the extra fasting I had taken on in my plucky teenager years and then recently with Exodus 90 anything even close to traditional Lent.
I broke down and called my trad Ember Day friend, unsure how to live with the fact that every element of the Church’s liturgy and discipline was torn down in five years, against the express wishes of the Pope who called the Council. He calmed me down and recommended I purchase the Monastic Diurnal from St. Michael’s Abbey.
The package arrived during work and I eagerly tore it open and pored through it. I’ve had a regular rhythm of daily prayer for the two years since, something I was never able to do before. It also explained the struggles I had with the modern liturgy of the hours: too many options for opening psalms, hymns, and a confusing calendar and 4 week psalm rotation. The Monastic has a one week cycle, with one option for hymns.
We switched over to the Latin Mass parish full time soon after, just in time for covid to drive our geographical parish into crazytown.
I read Memoriale Domini, Pope Paul VI’s plea to maintain the traditional manner of receiving Communion on the tongue. I read Sacrosanctum Concilium to learn what the Second Vatican Council actually said about the liturgy. Very much a mixed bag. I dove headfirst into the Rad Trad’s blog, particularly his excellent series on Reasons for the Reform of the Roman Rite. I zipped through Malachi Martin’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church, as well as Mary Ball Martinez’s Undermining of the Catholic Church, reviewed in a separate article.
The problem with traditionalists, as Chesterton said of rationalists, is that they are not traditional enough.
Paradoxically, I became more politically liberal the more traditional I became. If throwing out traditional liturgy was wrong, so was throwing out the Church’s teaching on usury (see Benedict XIV’s Vix Pervenit), Leo XIII’s Catholic social teaching, and Leo XIII (and previous popes’) warnings about American style political liberalism. And watering down the Franciscan ideal of poverty, and buying into the ever increasing ultramontanism that was already causing traditional triple doctor Adrian Fortescue to label Pope St. Pius X an “Italian lunatic.”
In an effort to do my part, I sing our High Mass in the choir with my two older kids in tow. My trad Ember Day friend and I sing the Monastic Office in common when we visit one another.
I do not see a way out of the Church’s current crisis without a full, and unconditional, embrace of tradition. To reject out of hand the Church’s tradition does violence to the faith, whether that tradition is the Bible, a translation like the Vulgate, the writings of the saints and doctors, definitive statements by the popes on economic and political systems, or the liturgy expressed in the Mass, Divine Office, and offshoots like processions (especially Eucharistic processions), music, architecture, and art.
After all, it was the liturgy that gave us the Bible in the first place, quite literally as in the case of Saint John the Evangelist receiving the Apocalypse/Revelation as he was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day on Patmos.
Do we trust the Holy Spirit’s promise that He would teach the apostles all truth, or not?
I am inherently skeptical of anyone, especially conservatives, who promise a restoration and renewal but maintain a firm rejection of large swaths of tradition.
I do not see why this is so controversial. True renewal in the Church has always begun locally with those who wish to restore the Church’s ancient discipline and worship, whether Saint Benedict, Gregory the Great, Gregory VII, Bernard of Clairvaux, Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Siena, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Philip Neri, Pius V, Dom Gueranger, and Leo XIII.
I view the traditional movement as firmly within that mold. You will always have excesses and those within the wider movement who take things too far. Yet the opposition we receive today recalls the opposition many of those figures faced in their own day.
They were able to have the joy of the despised and persevere, in faith and in healthy obedience, to give us the faith we have today. I pray we may do the same and that restoration comes, if not for us, then at least for our children.
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