The Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite Divine Liturgy, also known as the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) or the Tridentine Mass, has become a controversial topic in the last several decades. Even among "conservative" or "orthodox" Catholics, there are heated arguments that take place about the relative value of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass in comparison to the Ordinary Form (Novus Ordo) of the Mass. I have first hand experience of such debates; I've often discussed--sometimes passionately--the pros and cons, not just of the forms of the Mass themselves, but also the attitudes and opinions of various people who regularly--or even exclusively--attend (or 'assist,' in traditional parlance) the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.
In this post, I want to trace briefly my personal experience with the Extraordinary Form of the Mass and discuss my current disposition towards it vís-a-vís the Novus Ordo Missae (the New Order of the Mass, i.e., the Ordinary Form).
My earliest memories of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass are, of course, from Novus Ordo liturgies. Those experiences were vastly different from one place to the other in many ways. The music was sometimes led by guitar players featuring 1970s folk music as the fundamental genre. As a kid in the 1980s, I didn't really find that to be "contemporary" in any real sense of the word. It certainly wasn't part of my culture, even a mere decade or less later than the music was written. Despite that, I still loved receiving our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, but I never really felt like the music had anything to do with it. There was a disconnect between the music and what I had been taught was actually taking place. The sound track did not match the event.
Occasionally, I'd come across a parish that had some really decent music, even if not "traditional" in the full sense of the term. The parish I attended in Middle School and High School (St. Mary of the Woods in Russell's Point, OH) definitely fit this category. Compared to many other parishes I had attended, the music was much more solemn, and I did enjoy it to a much greater degree than what I had experienced before. I even became a member of the Bell Choir there, and that was a good experience for me. The music was at least fitting.
It was also the parish at which I became an altar boy. The altar server training there was top notch. It was run by a woman who, herself, insisted that the altar servers only be boys. She was not a fan of altar girls, despite being the one training us. She was a strong woman, who loved the Church and loved her faith. And it was for that reason that she held the position she did. I respected that, and I still respect her very much. We were taught down to a 'T' what was expected of us when. Every movement was prescribed, and I loved it. I still remember, to this very day, the detailed instructions she gave us. In a certain sense, it ruined my experience of watching servers at other parishes, simply because they seemed too lackadaisical, undisciplined, and haphazard in their execution. I found that distracting and a shame. Sometimes the servers appeared upset that they were there at all, and acted not only disinterested but disdainful of the duties they were called upon to perform. That wasn't my experience, and for that, I am very grateful (a shout-out to Karen, my trainer, and Fr. Tony Geraci for whom I am most grateful).
Even during these rather disparate experiences of liturgical celebration, my faith was nurtured and my love for the Eucharist remained steadfast. I loved the Sacraments, I loved the faith, I loved dogma, prayer, and I was always orthodox in my beliefs. The Novus Ordo, for all its--potential and actual--faults, was the primary and nearly exclusive means by which I received the greatest gift possible this side of the Gates of Heaven: the reception of the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. And for that also, I am most grateful.
During those same Middle School and High School years, my family lived in the house of my maternal grandparents. My grandfather especially was a staunch proponent of the Tridentine Mass. He had been an altar boy growing up and, despite being relatively academically disinclined, found it easy to learn the numerous Latin prayers required of the server during the Mass. He thus found the "language issue" to be bogus. If he could do it, then anybody could. The vast majority of the prayers are the same every week, after all, how hard is it to learn them, even if in a foreign language?
Despite his position on the language of the liturgy, he conceded that he would have been okay with them simply switching from the Latin prayers to their English/vernacular translation. His biggest issue with the change was the loss of prayers that he, himself, found so edifying as a young man. By comparison, he found the Novus Ordo lacking in solemnity and in linguistic and pietistic beauty. For this reason, he had a "Prayer for the Return of the Tridentine Mass" magnetically posted on the refrigerator. So I saw it every single day.
Yet, on Sundays, he almost always went to the Novus Ordo. He never let his personal preference for the Tridentine Mass prevent him from worshipping Our Lord and receiving Holy Communion at what is objectively speaking one and the same re-presentation of Christ's once-and-for-all Sacrifice on the Cross in both forms of the Mass.
Every now and then, he and my grandmother would drive to a church in Dayton, OH, which was somewhere between an hour and an hour-and-a-half away from our home, to attend the Tridentine Mass. I distinctly remember going with them at least once. I loved it, but I really didn't know what was going on, so I didn't "bond" with it, per se. But I did imbibe the absolute love my grandparents had for the Mass that would lead them to drive so far away. So, without an individual dedication to the Tridentine Mass, I was still very much personally a fan of it, because I was inspired by my grandfather's devotion to it.
Over the years, I attended a handful of Latin Masses here and there, including at Old St. Mary's in Washington, DC where I saw Pat Buchanan as one of my fellow congregants. I liked it. I can't say I found it enrapturing. It was a bit disorienting, simply because of some of the differences.
Unfortunately, and bluntly, it was at Old St. Mary's that I got a bit of a bitter taste for what is now called the "Extraordinary Form." Firstly, I was disturbed by the fact that the scriptural readings were read reverently and solemnly in Latin, but then speedily and almost with annoyance in English just before the Homily, as if they needed to be gotten out of the way. I did not like that. It bothered me.
What bothered me more was the comment of one of the parishioners after the Mass. I had attended/assisted at that Mass with a friend of mine who was a seminarian. As we were standing on the sidewalk outside, with Pat Buchanan visible in the background, this late middle-aged gentleman walked up to us and spoke to my friend saying something like: "It's good to see you. It has been so long that I thought we lost you!" That bothered me. "Lost him from what?," I thought. I was interiorly offended that this man deigned to compare attending the Novus Ordo as a diocesan seminarian as akin to "being lost."
To me, this smacked of being holier-than-thou, more Catholic than the pope self-righteousness, and downright disrespectful to Holy Mother Church herself, whose own liturgical norms specified the Novus Ordo as the ordinary form of the mass. Thus, it was experiences like these that led me to perceive in the community of Latin Mass devotees a certain Pharisaical attitude that I wanted no part of. Between irreverence during the proclamation of the Word of God in my own mother tongue to snide comments deriding the official celebration of the Holy Mass of my beloved Catholic Church, I became a bit embittered towards--not the Mass itself--but towards some of its most prominent proponents. Whether accurately or not, I sensed pride rather than piety as the root of their fervor.
This perception was contrasted with very, very devout and holy people I knew who attended the Novus Ordo almost exclusively. There were even friends I had who played the guitar at some Masses that I looked up to when it came to piety and to dedication to sound morals, doctrine, and prayer, including Eucharistic Adoration. They exhibited great charity and--most impactfully--tremendous humility, the heart of all other virtues, without which they easily become vice: pride.
Added to this, I've seen ordinary form Masses celebrated with exceeding piety by the priest celebrants. I've had a few pastors who were thoroughly orthodox, ensured that very solemn music in the form of chant was part of the liturgies, and who gave great homilies on controversial topics like abortion. Fr. Dwight Longenecker was one of my pastors, and I must say that I have not experience many Novus Ordo Masses that could match the solemnity of the one his parish provides. I fell in love with his parish the very first time I attended it. He and his parochial vicar are great, powerful, orthodox, and challenging homilists. The music/chant, the incense, the proclamation of the Gospel, the reverence, the use of the Roman Canon: they are all fantastic and worthy of tremendous praise. If every parish celebrated the way his parish does, the vast majority of the ills of our Catholic Church would be lessened exponentially.
For years, this contrast in attitude led to a degree of disinterest on my part from going to the TLM regularly. Nevertheless, I still attended the Latin Mass occasionally.
But, truth be told, I actually found--at that time--more solemnity, humble devotion, and authentic piety among Novus Ordo Latin Masses (yes, that's a thing!) than I did at Tridentine Masses. My favorite Masses were Novus Ordo Latin Masses, with the readings (all THREE plus the psalm versus two with the Gradual and Tract at the EF) in English, but with communion received kneeling and on the tongue, with solemn chant as the liturgical music. I found this to be the most profound expression of the Divine Liturgy I had encountered, including some experience with different Eastern Rite Catholic Divine Liturgies, which I also admired to a good degree. (My paternal grandfather's funeral was a Ruthenian/Byzantine Catholic Divine Liturgy.) In short, the Ordinary Form informed by the Extraordinary Form was my absolute favorite expression of the Mass. The so-called "Reform of the Reform" seemed to me to be the best, most authentically Catholic option.
But let's get real. I've only experienced the Latin Novus Ordo in two places and both were at cloistered monasteries of nuns, and specifically, the Poor Claires of Perpetual Adoration.
I am 40 years old. In those four decades, I have attended thousands upon thousands of Divine Liturgies in all varieties: Extraordinary Form, Ruthenian/Byzantine, Maronite Catholic, Ukrainian Catholic, Ordinary Form in the Vernacular, Ordinary Form in Latin, and everything in-between.
One thing stands out to me that I can--after all these years--no longer ignore. As humble and reverent as I might try to be, as humble and reverent as other congregants might choose to be, the reality of the matter is that the Novus Ordo, as it is current practiced, widely allows, even legally protects some of the most disrespectful postures and practices that one can imagine within the liturgy itself: most specifically, the reception of Holy Communion.
De facto and de jure, the Ordinary Form of the Mass--at least almost worldwide--allows for communicants to receive Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself on the hand. And while this is not necessarily an impious gesture (although, a case could be made that it is), it most often is. It is a rare thing to see someone receive on the hand properly and reverently. It does happen. I have done it. I've seen devout, solidly Catholic family and friends do it. But . . . the vast majority of people that I have seen receiving our Lord in the hand--if not interiorly impious--are at the very least externally distracted, rushed, and thus acting impiously. Most hand-communicants receive "on the run" or "on the go." They say "Amen," receive the host, and walk several steps while raising the Host to their mouths. How irreverent is that?! Their main concern after hearing "the body of Christ" is: "I need to get out of everyone else's way." Thus, our Dear Lord, during the most intimate part of the entire Mass, is overshadowed by thoughts aimed elsewhere, while people are literally already moving on to the next thing. That is hardly a fitting experience of the Most August moment possible on earth.
Contrast that with the rubrics of the Extraordinary Form where it is required that people (apart from serious, obviously exclusionary reasons) receive on their knees in humble adoration, directly on their tongue out of respect for the Divine Person fully present in the Host, and accompanied by an individual Benediction with the Blessed Sacrament.
After years of not going to the Traditional Latin Mass, my wife and I decided to give it a shot with our children, who have special needs (autism and other issues) that make going anywhere in public at least somewhat stressful and anxious to say the least.
It was a Missa Cantata (a.k.a. High Mass) at Prince of Peace in Taylors, SC. And it was glorious! The chant, the homily, the reverence, it all made me feel like I was in the foretaste of heaven that the mass objectively is more than I had experienced in a very long time. We have now enrolled there, and we are very excited, indeed!
What is more, the priest and the people we encountered so far are not--by and large--prideful zealots who are defined by their hatred of the Novus Ordo. Rather, they are--relatively young, but--mature Catholics, who love Our Lord, love the Mass, love the Church, love the Gospel, and have welcomed us to their ecclesial home that is now our home as well.
I could go on about how fitting the Latin language is to solemn, heavenly chant. I could very well--and quite rightly!--speak of the tremendous sense of diachronic and synchronic (both throughout the course of time as well as contemporaneous) unity that the Extraordinary Form provides. I could harp on how great it is to know that--by and large--we are worshiping the same way, with the same exact words in the same language as the saints throughout most of the Latin Church's history. All of those would be and are valid reasons to love the Extraordinary Form.
The linch pin, for me personally, is that I no longer have to see--almost invariably--a plethora of liturgical abuses, witness impious communions, and listen to music discordant with the sacred mysteries truly present and taking place.
So, while what the TLM has to offer is reason enough to attend it over the Novus Ordo, the real and most compelling reason I want to stay is simply the lack of offenses against our Lord manifestly present on a regular basis that I have continually witnessed during the Ordinary Form. Sometimes the priests themselves don't want to see some things that happen at the Novus Ordo, but they are liturgically impotent to prevent it (externally impious reception of Holy Communion, chief among them).
Thus, while I am still allergic to people bashing the Novus Ordo, per se, and while I will happily attend the Novus Ordo on occasion again, and while--and this will irritate many of my traditionally-minded readers--I would attend a Novus Ordo before I'd go to the SSPX, the bottom line is this: I am sick and tired of making excuses for the Novus Ordo based on what it could exhibit in practice but rarely ever reflects: the Liturgy of the Saints in Heaven and on Earth joined together in solemn adoration of the One, True, and Triune God: Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus.
Amen.
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