Fr Longenecker, the Latin Mass, and the magic bullet

Reposted from October 2015.

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An act of revence during Mass before the Blessed Sacrament Exposed, for Corpus Christi:
it tells us something, does it not? (What does the little chap on the left think?)

Further to my post the other day someone noted a recent post on this topic by Fr Dwight Longenecker: 'Is the Latin Mass a Magic Bullet?'. In it he attempts to put the thoughts of those 'conservative' Catholics who don't much like the Traditional Mass, about the relationship between the crisis in the Church and the liturgy, into order. The result is fascinating. Some key quotes, with a few comments of mine in black.

The problems in the Catholic church are not due to lack of reverence at Mass. The lack of reverence at Mass is due to the problems in the church. But it can't help, can it?

Simply obeying the rubrics or performing the Mass in this direction or that direction or standing here or there or wearing this particular vestment or that particular vestment or holding your fingers together there and bowing properly there do not necessarily make a Mass reverent. It makes the Mass more formal. .... So what's the point of them?

Here is my main point: I think those who blame all the problems of the church on the Novus Ordo are simply missing the point. If there are things wrong with the Novus Ordo they are symptoms, not causes. The core problem in the church is not the Novus Ordo or the liturgical abuses or the bad hymns and liturgical dance and all that awful stuff. So why exactly are these things 'awful'?

The reason the Latin Mass seems to be ‘more reverent’ is not because the language is in Latin or because the priest obeys all the rubrics or because he faces East. (remember I am not against all those things!) The reason the Latin Mass seems more reverent is because the people who attend the Latin Mass are far more likely to be well catechized Catholics ... So why do they go to this Mass and not another?

Fr Longenecker on duplicitous bishops: not big or clever

Update: A commenter below has alerted me to a post on Fr Longenecker's blog very similar to one I am commenting on, from the end of 2010: here.

In this post, he makes it a bit clearer who he is referring to. This hope for a priest shortage to be followed by lay pastoral leadership and the ordination of women was, he says,

shared with me with some enthusiasm in not one, but three of the Southern dioceses in England. Anyone who knows the English Church will be able to identify the three Southern Dioceses to which I am referring and I doubt if anyone will refute this proposed ‘new model’ of priesthood in England.

Well, Fr Longenecker, I know you've been out of the country for a while and may be a little out of the loop, but the following dioceses have changed hands since 2010: from the south, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Arundel and Brighton, Brentwood, Birmingham, Northampton, East Anglia... You really can't talk about any others as 'Southern Dioceses in England' apart from Westminster and Southwark, and those both had new bishops about a year before the 2010 blog post, long after these reported conversations.

I would suggest that justice and charity both require you, Fr Longenecker, to explain to your readers that not a single one of the bishops whose views you claim to know about is still in office. 

Bishop John Arnold, now of Salford, at the LMS Confirmation service

Fr Dwight Longenecker has picked up the story (earlier reported here) about a religious sister being put in charge, in some sense, of two parishes in Milton Keynes. He expresses some of the concerns I and others have expressed over it, but adds something from his personal experience: an anecdote about a conversation he had many years ago with a senior priest in a particular diocese in England, who had suggested that having fewer vocations would have the advantage of forcing Rome's hand on ordaining women, through the intermediate step of female lay parish administrators.

No doubt that conversation took place as described. We've all heard stories like that. What came as a bit of a surprise is the way Fr Longenecker concluded his post.

I do not criticize my fellow Catholic clergy by name, but I will say here and now that the ten years I spent as a Catholic layman in England–working close up with the Catholic hierarchy makes me not surprised or shocked at all by this behavior.

Clergy can be devious and manipulative and secretive at times, and often they have a good reason to play their cards close to their chest, but a few members of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales (those Damien Thompson calls “the magic circle”) are the most secretive, devious, duplicitous and schemingly oily inside operators I have ever come across.

This article is typical of their behavior.


Now, there is a lot to be said about this. I feel confident, in saying it, that since he feels able to describe Successors of the Apostles as secretive, devious, duplicitous and schemingly oily inside operators, Fr Longecker won't mind a little fraternal correction from me.

Bishop Conry, Fr Longenecker, and forgiveness

Opening the trad-bashing neo-conservative Fr Longenecker's blog post on Bishop Conry I thought I'd be reading something with which I could agree, for a change, but it was not to be. Here comes Fr Angry.

Forgiveness may be offered, but for it to activate it has to be asked for. It takes two to forgive. You may wish to forgive someone, but unless they acknowledge what they’ve done and sincerely request forgiveness it remains a one way street.

...

Conry went on to put up his hand and say, “Yup. I did wrong. I’m sorry about that. I’m sorry I let you down.” Combined with his other statement this sounds more like, “Hey guys. It looks like the tabloids have got the story. You caught me. My bad. I’m out. See ya.” In other words, no real repentance and not so much “I’m sorry” but “I’m sorry I got caught.” What we did not hear was Bishop Conry’s full affirmation of the Catholic Church’s teaching on marriage and sexual morality.

There is something seriously wrong with both quoted passages.

Longenecker vs. Voris

Looking in from the outside, at Walsingham

An interesting spectacle has arisen on the internet: Michael Voris has criticised Catholic Answers for the high salaries their big-name people have, and Fr Dwight Longenecker has defended his friends and criticised Voris. I have in the past criticised both Voris and Fr Longenecker, for different reasons, and now I feel both of them has a point.

Voris is railing against 'professional Catholics' being paid six-figure salaries (in dollars, of course). Fr Longenecker says he'd like to see a few more professionals in Catholic apologetics. Touche - I also think Voris is a bit of an amateur. (Full disclosure: I am not a professional theologian, and nor am I paid by the Latin Mass Society. I get expenses, mostly for travel, when I get round to claiming them.) But I think Fr L has missed Voris' point, which Voris doesn't articulate but I think takes for granted. These salaries are connected in Voris' mind with the big salaries of liberal diocesan administrators, as part of a military-industrial complex - well, ideological-liturgical complex - of the Catholic Establishment, which has done nothing over the last two generations but preside over a disastrous decline. Leaving it to amateurs like Voris to say the things which need saying.

No doubt the guys at Catholic Answers see themselves as a beleaguered remnant battling against the odds for the truth. (Funnily enough, Catholic liberals have the same self-image.) But from Voris' perspective, they are part of the Establishment of mutual back-scratching, and the salaries demonstrate this. The fact is that there is, in the USA at least, a Conservative Catholic establishment, with endowed institutions, a career-structure, access to the hierarchy and so on. And, Voris says, while acknowledging the good they do, they are also part of the problem. Because they refuse to see the real causes of the problems in the Church.

The problem Voris identifies with certain 'conservatives' is that, in order to have a seat at the big table as part of the Catholic Establishment, they profess themselves content with, or even enthusiastic about, the wrenching discontinuities of liturgy and theology which are present in the Church today. This then manifests itself with a contempt towards Traditionalists.

There is an established definition of a Catholic Traditionalist: they are people who wish to live in continuity with their predecessors in the Faith. This means that, while not rejecting organic development or new initiatives, they prefer the Traditional Mass, they gravitate towards traditional spirituality, they regard innovations of institutional form or theology as having to make their case: they must carry the burden of proof. This is, of course, what all Catholics should be like, this is the attitude called for by Popes down the ages, it is even explicitly demanded, in liturgical matters, by the Second Vatican Council.

Sacrosanctum Concilium 22:
Finally, there must be no innovations unless the good of the Church genuinely and certainly requires them; and care must be taken that any new forms adopted should in some way grow organically from forms already existing.

Not fruitcakes on the march, just Catholics on pilgrimage, doing what we've always done.

I don't object to the intelligent labelling of schools of thought, but really, Traditional Catholics are just Catholics. People who think the Church began in 1962 may be baptised and confirmed members of the Church, but their attitude is not a Catholic one.

But this Catholic attitude is a rebuke to some 'conservatives' - maybe they have a guilty conscience. So we have incessant attacks on 'radtrads', as Fr Longenecker delightfully calls them. He doesn't bother telling us who exactly he has in mind, he neither names names nor specifies theological positions, but when challenged he says that he likes good Traditionalists and is only attacking the bad ones. This is a lazy old trick: who is which? What kinds of 'traditionalist' attitude counts, according to Longenecker, as sede vacantist or anti-semitic?

You can't spend long in the Catholic world attached to the Traditional Mass without being called a sede vacantist or an anti-semite. I have been called both, at least by implication, over the years. I have no way of telling whether my own views don't put me into Fr Longenecker's sights: whether, that is, he is only criticising people who are genuinly sede vacantist and genuinely  anti-semitic, or whether he is using these terms as hiss-words to apply to a much larger group. Of course, there is a lunatic fringe, there are people attached to the Old Mass who have genuinely unpleasant views, and I've been attacked by them as well. I am a bit hazy about exactly what Christian Order stands for these days, but they think I am insufficiently hard-core for them and I am pretty content with that situation. But even if Fr Longenecker does have only the nut-jobs in mind, it is hardly helpful to fixate on them.

I don't spend all my time attacking the people who've been excommunicated for carrying out bogus ordinations of women: the radical liberals. Why not? Because they aren't a serious part of the conversation. Not even the Tablet takes them seriously. Sure, if they got too much influence they could drag the whole progressive Catholic groove into disrepute - to parallel Fr Longenecker's argument about trads - but that isn't going to happen, they know perfectly well what lines they can't cross. Fr Longecker should apply his critical faculties to the positions which are part of the conversation: the views of ordinary Traditionalists, their respected publications, organisations, conferences and so on. There's plenty there to get your teeth into.

Fr Dwight Longenecker on the 'rad trad'

I have posted before (and here) on people attacking Traditional Catholics; here is what appears to be another example. I say 'appears' because Fr Longenecker's target is not clearly identified.

Here's the money quote:
But what happens when the people are forgotten and all the emphasis is on rubrics and rules and liturgical finesse and ecclesiastical fine-ness? There is a danger that it all turns into a precious religious ceremony for the liturgical elite. I've heard of parishes where the music is so fine and the ceremonial so refined and the servers so meticulous and the liturgy so correct that ordinary people are repelled by it all. They are not connoisseurs of brocades and birettas, Lassus and lace; Mozart and maniples, and when the liturgy gets so high and mighty it only makes them feel low and lowly.

Really? People are repelled by Mozart? Well, there are a couple of things to be said here.

First, Fr Longenecker is not talking about Catholics - priests or laity - attached to the Traditional Latin Mass. He doesn't in fact even mention it, though he refers to 'radtrads', whatever that means. It clearly isn't the form of the Mass which is at issue, but the embellishment and presentation of the liturgy.

The fact is, the long period in which the Traditional Mass was available only in hotel reception rooms and the like purged the Traditional movement of people who were only in it for the lace. I myself started going to the usus antiquior in a meeting room in the West Oxford Community Centre. We later graduated to the sports hall in the same building, as shown in these photographs (there are more here). (And this was with the full permission of Archbishop Vincent Nichols.) The more solemn presentation of the liturgy is something we may desire, but it is still pretty rare.

How many places in England and Wales have Mozart or Lassus at the Traditional Mass? Once a month at St Bede's Clapham Park, and on an occasional basis at the London and Birmingham Oratories. Once a year in a handful of places where there are Latin Mass Society pilgrimages.

I actually don't think the USA is all that different: the kind of liturgy Fr Longenecker is referring to is rare, certainly in the context of the Traditional Mass. Reading the blogs - like the New Liturgical Movement - might give a different impression, but the point is that those blogs lap up these splendid occasions because it is NEWS. It is because - as they sometimes remark in the comments - the vast majority of readers can't get anywhere near that kind of thing themselves, that they want to read about it.

When these events do happen, pretty well everyone is very pleased; numbers on these occasions indicate that there is pent-up demand for Mozart and his ilk. If Fr Longenecker has met people who are put off by it, why do they go, for heaven's sake? They still have the other 99.99% of Masses to choose from.

However, he has identified something real: there really are people who don't like it. I spoke to one parish priest who said that when he first wore a Roman chasuble - at an English Novus Ordo Mass - one of his parishioners told him afterwards that it made her feel physically sick. One can only speculate that it was associated in her mind with a lot of things she didn't like - doctrinal orthodoxy, for example. (She would certainly be getting that from this particular priest!) But what are we to say to people who have that kind of reaction?

It reminds me of a story of Fulton Sheen. He was giving a woman instruction in the faith, and when he came to the subject of Confession she reacted in a very negative way. The more he talked the more she went nuts. He said finally: 'When did you have an abortion?'

The fact is that the reaction of a whole set of Catholics to certain liturgical practices is pathological. It is connected with deep psychological complexes, linked to their experiences of the liturgical changes, the permission liberal theology may give their lifestyles, their roles in parish life, and a host of other things. We have to have compassion, and we have to deal with local situations as gently and pastorally as we can. But we can't let these reactions stop us restoring to the liturgy the dignity it deserves, and for which most Catholics long, any more than the deep dread of facing up to old sins, on the part of some people, should stop the Church offering us Confession.

We need Confession: the lady in the story even more than the rest of us. We need to restore dignity to the liturgy, and although the people who object will probably go elsewhere when it is done in a particular parish, in reality they need it more than anyone. The people who think they can relate to God only in the context of rainbow vestments and pottery chalices have clearly lost the sense of the His transcendence, and this is going to have a bad effect on their spirituality, their theology, and their lives as Catholics.

If the liturgical restoration spreads to the point at which this kind of Catholic is forced to confront his inner demons, that will be a good thing. But they can relax: it won't be soon.

Fr Longenecker's 'Questions'

about the Traditional Mass: in the context of the expected Motu Proprio, what is the point of it, and particularly what is the point of the Latin and the silence? Fr Longenecker is a recently ordained, extremely zealous convert, and his questions must reflect those of many 'conservatives' in the Church.

I've posted the following in his comments box.

One key idea which needs to be emphasised is that the Mass is an act of worship offered to God. The people's participation in it is extremely important, but this is a participation in an act of worship directed to God. So they follow with their eyes and prayers when the priest disappears behind the Temple veil, the iconostasis, or the rood screen, or simply turns towards the crucifix. They know that what is important is the offering the priest is making to God, and they know what that is - from catechesis or from their missals. They don't need to hear the words or see the actions; on the contrary, the fact that the priest is in a sense alone with the offering and God is the most eloquent expression of what is going on. The use of a liturgical language, special clothing, special vessels made of precious metals, etc. all serve to emphasise the same point.

BXVI makes some very strong points on the eastward orientation in 'The Spirit of the Liturgy': it shows the Mass is a worship of God, whereas versus populum suggests a 'closed circle' with the people. The orientation, the language, the silence, the vestments and so on are all part and parcel of this idea.

I'd defend Masses - Low or Sung - in which the people make little or no verbal contribution on the simple basis that interior participation is more important than exterior participation (isn't that much obvious?) and that it is a fact of pastoral experience that exterior participation can be a barrier to interior participation. I'm never so distracted from the sacred action as when I am looking up a hymn number, or even enjoying singing a hymn.

As for readings in Latin: obviously, people can follow them in their missals, but note two things. First, the more restricted lectionary is a great boon in enabling the people to gain a familiarity with the texts. That great passage from Proverbs is always read on the feast of Holy Women; you know what's coming next when the choir sings 'Cogitationes corde mea' (viz., a votive Mass for the Sacred Heart), the liturgical year kicks off with St Paul telling us to put on the armour of Christ. The readings and prayers become old friends, and you hear them preached repeatedly. My own experience of daily Mass in the Novus Ordo and maybe twice weekly Mass in the TLM for a much shorter time is that my engagement with the scripture is far deeper with the latter.

Second, the proclamation of the scriptures in the liturgical language is an integral part of the act of worship offered to God. The pedagogical value is subordinated to this. Everything in the Mass is subordinated to its essential character as an act of worship (isn't that as it should be?) That the readings retain their pedagogical value in this context is part of the genius of the traditional liturgy.

Finally, I assume you've read BXVI 'The Spirit of the Liturgy'; I urge you to read 'The Heresy of Formlessness' by Marin Mosebach, which addresses many of these points.