The use of the Vernacular at the Traditional Mass

Having readings in Latin at Mass is something which many people find rather baffling about the Traditional Mass. Today I am posting a Position Paper on the subject over on Rorate Caeli, defending the traditional practice: go there to read it.

Here I want to reflect on an associated issue: the wider question of the use of the vernacular at the Traditional Mass. One of the things which struck me when reading up on the topic is a polarisation of views, among those who want to mix Latin and the vernacular, as to which should be used for what. I think this is quite revealing.

One view says that they should be used for the changing parts of the Mass - the parts which are unfamiliar. If we had the readings and the proper prayers in English (or whatever vernacular we are considering), then we wouldn't have to refer to our Mass books. We are after all familiar enough with the unchanging parts - or, if we're not, we will be in time. This is essentially what happens in most Latin Novus Ordo Masses: we revert to Latin in the bits everyone knows, like the Agnus Dei, the little dialogues ('Dominus vobiscum!' and everyone booms back, at different speeds, 'Et cum spiritu tuo!'), the Canon, and the Pater Noster.

The other view is the opposite. The most obscure propers, like the Collect, should be kept in Latin, and English should be used for really familiar things like the Pater Noster. This is the view of the influential and highly regarded liturgical schola László Dobsay. He's quoted in a footnote to the Position Paper as follows:

The citations from, and references to, the liturgical texts are present in the works of the Church Fathers and many spiritual writers, as well as in the prayers and meditations of the saints. Priests and a lay people who have a high level of theological formation but do not know the Latin liturgy extremely well (which means now they are not familiar with the Latin texts), surely cut themselves off from the historical records of the Church’s life. Not to know the vocabulary used, or the sentences referred to, means not being able to recognize their context and origin in the theological and spiritual literature of the tradition itself.
This is an interesting and powerful argument. But it applies equally, or more, to the Scriptures. Sacred Scripture is the basis of theology, and the terms of Sacred Scripture have an even more fundamental importance than the terms of the Collects. The Vulgate version of the Scriptures, which is used in the readings, has been pondered and commented upon by the great theologians of every generation since it was composed; often enough the earlier versions, used by St Augustine and others, are close enough to this text too. It diverges in certain ways from modern English translations, and it is exactly for this reason that it is important for us to keep up some familiarity with it: otherwise we risk losing touch with what the Fathers and Doctors are talking about.

This subject, of course, takes us back to an earlier Position Paper: on the use of the Vulgate and Ancient Latin Psalters.

Dobsay's suggestion that some of the most familiar texts of Mass should be in the vernacular, including the Pater Noster, remains baffling. What is supposed to be the point of this? Everyone - for practical purposes - knows the Our Father in their native language, so you aren't telling them anything they didn't already know when you recite it in English. It doesn't take long for people to become thoroughly familiar with the Pater Noster in Latin, and it is not uncommon for people to pray or sing it in Latin, as we do on traddy pilgrimages. Why break out of the sacred language for the sake of a text we know by heart?

To some extent the argument of familiarity applies to the readings. Because we are familiar with the Gospel stories, especially those used at Mass which we read in our hand-missals, it doesn't take long before you often recognise what the story is as it is being read, from the odd name or phrase: St John the Baptist and Herod, the Rich Man and Lazarus, and so on. If you listen to it and follow it in a missal, you start to recognise more and more of it, and you start to notice quotations from it in some of the other propers of the day. Even if you have little or no Latin to start with, you gain a certain familiarity with both the words and the meaning.

I can't help thinking that the only reason for Dobsay to suggest having the Pater Noster in the vernacular is that he wanted to say something should be in the vernacular, and couldn't think of anything else. But, as the paper argues, a problem is raised by even the most limited use of vernacular, because we end up switching between two languages. This, if you think about it, is a very strange thing to do, and it makes it impossible for Latin to mark out a sacred, liturgical space.

Pictures: preparations for the proclamation of the Gospel, Solemn Mass in St George's Cathedral, Southwark, for the Latin Mass Society's Annual General Meeting. The gospel procession pauses in the middle of the sanctuary to allow the singers to complete the Gradual and Alleluia.

Canticum Clericorum Romanum

Those busy Americans have been at it again - I've received another book which must have taken a vast amount of work to create.

I should add that I pay for these things, they aren't freebies, perhaps that's why I feel free to criticise them!

This is essentially a hard copy of the excellent, enormously useful collection of epistles and gospels, which you can see here on a page of the Fraternity of St Peter's American seminary, Our Lady of Guadalupe; it was done with the help of the Windsor Latin Mass Society. On that page you can look up any Sunday of the year and download a page which sets the epistle and gospel to Chant notation. You can also listen to them being sung by FSSP clerics: a fantastic resource.

This is useful because the Missal used for Mass does not include the music for the readings (though it does have the music for the Prefaces). It assumes clerics know how to apply the (pretty simple) rules which tell you when it goes up or down a tone or two: at the end of sentences, for example, with a variation for questions, and something a little more elaborate for the end. Seminarians were once trained how to do this, and when ordained priests in parishes would have done it a lot, it would have been second nature. Things are different today, with priests and deacons being encouraged to start using the Traditional Mass for the first time and putting on, for example, a monthly Sung Mass. You can't expect them to know everything right away.

It is worth noting that the rules for singing the lections are not absolutely rigid; there is some room for differences of opinion on how they apply. Another way in which using this volume is second-best to knowing the rules and being able to apply them is the rigidity which it introduces: it obviously gives only one interpretation of the rules. Even the business of setting it to chant notation may suggest a less fluid approach to singing it. Whenever you see a line of text with a punctum over every syllable, there is a temptation to give each syllable an equal length, which is not how chant works. One just has to note these difficulties and overcome them as much as possible.

The point of this book, published by Biretta Press, is that it goes beyond a crib, which, in the form or a printed sheet, you could perhaps insert sneakily into the Missal during Mass. It is in itself a book worthy of liturgical use, with a price-tag to match: $275, plus postage. Ouch. But it really is nice, well bound, lots of reading ribbons, gilt edges. It will look good and it will last. Though thinking about the cost, bear in mind that it only includes 'Sundays, Solemnities, and Holy Week'. There will in time be another three volumes, to cover everything else.

(What are 'Solemnities'? Presumably they mean First Class feasts.)

One oddity about the book is the complete absence of an introduction or preface. Not that I'm volunteering to pay more for anything not strictly necessary, but I wonder about how exactly they envisage it being used. It seems to me that it makes most sense for Solemn Mass, when the Deacon and Subdeacon sing from a different book from that on the altar. But I see this has the Collects and Postcommunions in it as well. Since it doesn't have everything else (the Ordinary and other propers) which you find in the Missal, it couldn't replace the Missal, so for the priest to use it to sing the Collect and Postcommunion, or indeed to use it to sing the lections at Missa Cantata (when they are sung from the Missal on the Altar), would require swapping books around or putting it on top of the Missal, and then taking it away again. Not impossible, but not exactly ideal either.

But then there is no ideal solution here. An altar Missal which included the chant for the lections would obviously have to be in several volumes. This book includes different tones for collects - each collect is set to the festal tone, and then the whole thing again is set to the solemn tone. It includes the little introductory formula to each reading - in full, before every single reading. It avoids awkard page turns where possible too. It really is impressive, and will make a huge different to priests and deacons who may be put off sung Masses because of the difficulties of the singing. So I say a big 'well done' to those who created this book, a real labour of love, and I recommend it. Let's hope it facilitates more Solemn Masses, and enables them to be celebrated as worthily as possible.


Above: at Solemn Mass, the subdeacon sings from a copy of the Canticum Clericorum; the Missal remains on the Altar: at SS Gregory & Augustine's, Oxford.

Below: at Missa Cantata (Ash Wednesday) in the same church, the Canticorum Clericorum is quietly replaced with the Missal (at the Offertory, I think).

Vernacular readings at the TLM

It is often asked, with puzzlement, why the readings are read in Latin in the usus antiquior. That they must be read in Latin has been reiterated by the PCED in a recent ruling, although they can be repeated in the vernacular. But surely, people say, the readings are intended to be understood by the people! What is the point of reading them in Latin?

The greatest obstacle of all to the acceptance of the TLM by ordinary Catholics brought up on the Novus Ordo is this simple point, which is implicit even in the New Mass but is inescapable in the TLM: the ceremonies and prayers may be edifying to the people, if they understand them, but they are directed towards not the congregation but to God. That is why the 1970 Missal continues to make use of ceremonies and language people cannot readily understand. Placing a fragment of the consecrated host into the consecrated chalice: how many people understand what that means? (Indeed, is there a single uncontroversial answer?) The priest continues to pray silently at the Lavabo. And of course the use of Latin, especially Latin chants, is still recommended. The 1970 Missal does plenty of things the people can't see, or hear, or understand, because it is directed towards God.

In the usus antiquior the pretence that the people 'should be able to see and understand everything' is totally impossible. You are forced to see that what the congregation is doing is looking at a sacred action carried out on their behalf by the priest who ascends the altar steps to face God Himself. The kind of participation possible to the congregation is principally that of uniting themselves to the sacrifice offered by the priest to God. This is what makes them more than mere spectators, but this is a prayerful interior participation, not the participation of fellow actors on the stage.

A colleague of mine put the point very eloquently:

The translations of the readings read in vernacular, in fact, do not belong to the Liturgy. Even the homily is not part of the Mass, because of that the priest before preaching often takes off the maniple (and sometimes even the chasuble).... The Liturgical readings in Latin do not have mainly a didactic purpose: they are also and primarily acts or worship. They do not have to be understood in terms of a rational knowledge (the eagerness to understand clearly and distinctly every single part of the Mass and especially the readings is pure Cartesianism). We should look upon the readings of the Mass with the Eastern mentality (as we are reminded by Msgr. Klaus Gamber): as true Epiphanies of God who, as Saint Paul says, "multifariam, multisque modis olim Deus loquens patribus in prophetis : novissime, diebus istis locutus est nobis in Filio". The Epistle is the manifestation of Our Lord through the Prophets and the Apostles, whilst the Gospel is His Epiphany in the Son. It is for this reason that the Gospel is honoured, accompanied by the candle-bearers, incensed by the deacon and kissed by the priest in High Mass. The Gospel in the Mass is the Logos made flesh (Verbum caro factum) and manifested to us. The readings of the Mass, then, are sacred and worthy of our deep veneration and must not be considered as a mere "instruction" (the instruction comes with the homily or in the teaching of the catechism).

There is a lot we have to re-learn about the liturgy, including many things which were being forgotten in the first half of the 20th Century. The desire that everything should be immediately comprehensible has, thankfully, been rejected in the context of the new translation of the 1970 Missal, which is going to use words not readily comprehensible by all members of the congregation, but about which they will need to be catechised. The wider point, however, is that, as Martin Mosebach puts it in his book 'The Heresy of Formlessness', when Mass begins we enter into a sacred time characterised by the sacred space, clothing, and language of the liturgy. He asks us to acknowledge breaking into that sacred time, and interupt what is being done in the sacred space of the sanctuary in the sacred language, as being problematic: he is speaking of the sermon. Perhaps it would be better to have the sermon at the end of Mass, as was formerly done. But even if we think that a vernacular sermon after the gospel, preceeded by a reading of translations of the epistle and gospel, is justified, the point is that we are holding our breaths: the sacred action is suspended. It will recommense when the priest puts his maniple back on, and returns to the altar.

A number of priests all over the world have, in good faith, adopted vernacular readings to the exclusion of the Latin in the EF for 'pastoral reasons', thinking this has been permitted by the Motu Proprio. I have always found this a little puzzling: why not simply repeat them in the vernacular? However, the legal goalposts have now been moved.