The Latin Mass: beyond the language
The Latin Mass?“I’m all for it. I love that Mass with all the memories linked to it. Like the High Mass I attended in the Seville cathedral. Besides I know Latin.” “OK din ako sa Latin Mass, for the feeling of unity, reverence and greatness for God, anywhere.”
For us, “Latinized” in worship and Westernized in culture, so easily rekindled is nostalgia for the mysterious murmurings of a remote priest speaking a strange tongue, and for the beauty and solemnity of all the “smells and bells” of Mass on the high altar. But I wonder if our faith stirrings for practices old and beautiful occurred while they were happening in our youth, or as memories go, mainly upon sweet recall. We may have been moved to “feeling holy” then, but even then we would be children hissing “Patis kamatis” for every “Ora pro nobis” in the endless litanies.
As for the “liturgical chaos” after Vatican II, the cultural-religious matrix of the romanticized medieval past of the West, Asia and Africa in the past and present, and modern East and West, are worlds apart. If old Europe and our own elders and ourselves worship with folded hands, calloused (or knee-padded) knees and bowed heads, and Asians do so with silence and Africans with movement and song, and today’s global generations X and Y as they choose, who is to judge what is proper and improper?
Other reactions range from nonchalance to alarmist. It’s “not terribly earth-shaking,” not “a rightward lurch.” It’s just an “option,” a “permission” that “does not oblige.” But “may” can turn to “must” (possible, if the Church from the Vatican down to the parishes are systematically set in motion to disseminate the Latin Mass). It’s a “triumph of conservatism” setting the Church on “a new old course.” It’s a step back for Vatican II and may drag along its other reforms. When you come to think of it, 42 years of Vatican II and how go its 16 great decrees? Cry not for Edsa I, it’s only 21 years old.
There is one more important factor to consider. Rina Jimenez-David mentioned the word “inculturation” in her column. Let me pursue that loaded word. “Today, many Asian and African theologians are attempting to express the Christian faith in terms of the cultures and religions of their peoples.” Scholar and priest are making a case to “root their faith in the cultural moorings of their communities, shedding the European images and symbols that obscure Christianity in the region... Faith is common. But its expression should be in local culture. Most rites in the Catholic Church are rooted in local culture.” (Look at our pasyon-pabasa-cenaculo).
The future of Christianity is shifting from Europe and North America to Africa, Asia and Latin America, and the latter are justifiably sensitive about their cultures. (Witness the flak Pope Benedict XVI received for his remarks on Brazil’s indigenous cultural heritage.)
Here’s more. “Christ’s story is an Asian story” and “the roots of Christianity are sunk deeper in the East than in the West.” The historical threads are challenging and even disconcerting for anyone steeped in classical Western tradition and once made to believe that this was superior.
Comes now this hint of a re-Europeanization of the Church. It’s no secret that Pope Benedict is “European to the core, and for him Western Europe remains the heart of the Church.” If so, who cannot appreciate him for the dream and the goal to bring back Europe to the Church, now painfully “reduced to a geriatric, art-filled echo chamber”?
Who cannot share his dream of doing so? Except that, in view of the need for inculturation and an equally deep if not deeper claim to the roots and character of Christianity, the return of Europe to the Church need not mean Europeanizing the rest of the world, beginning perchance with the return of the Latin Mass.
But why should there be any tension between inculturation and Europeanization? Live and let live. Unity in diversity, not uniformity. Latinizing all of us is unrealistic. Consider:
In the e-mail: “… from my silent pew, the people seemed irrelevant. This Mass belonged to priest and his altar boys…. to hand [the Church’s] highest form of public worship back to Father makes Latin illiterates like me irate.” So, “is the Church the people or the institution?”
“Oratio Imperata Ad Petendam Pluviam.” The official language may sound all that royal and authoritative, but does that mean anything to the masses?
“People’s heads were buried in thick black missals.” What about the no-read no-write no-money Africans and Filipinos who can never have a missal? (“What’s a missal?” asks my son.) Whither the universal Church?
Here is an unlikely but possible scenario. Who knows? Sometime in the future, we may have not just two official Mass liturgies—the Latin and the vernacular—but even more: like Masses with celebrant priests sitting on the ground or in low seats like Jesus at the Last Supper; or exuberant Masses like those of the Charismatic movements; or Masses sung, chanted, whispered, whether in church, mall or park—all permitted according to need and culture, without anybody frowning in disapproval. I am sure Christ in the Eucharist will smile and bless us all.
Preposterous, say the conservatives. Possible, say the dreamers. What happens when differing sides refuse to budge? The natural outcomes acquire a life of their own and become accomplished facts.
