Author: Jeffrey Tucker

Some data recently posted on the traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli caused something of a furor. “Since 2005, the number of every-Sunday New Masses in Latin in the U.S.A. has fallen from 58 to 39,” the post said. “The number of dioceses in the U.S.A. offering this Mass every Sunday has fallen from 36 to 28.” Further, the ratio of old Masses to new Masses in Latin is 9:1. So the blog claimed.

This data would imply that the Latin ordinary form is dying out and that the demand for Latin in the liturgy is increasingly becoming the exclusive province of the extraordinary form. The great worry here, from my point of view, is the rising impression that the new Mass is for the vernacular and the old Mass is for Latin – total obscurity the reality that the normative form of both is Latin, and certainly the normative form of the music for both is Gregorian chant in Latin.

I had fretted about this data for a full day before it was finally brought to my attention that something is fishy about the report. Unless the author is withholding his source, there seems to be no scientific basis for these statistics at all. Indeed, there is no reason to believe a word of it.

In fact, my strong impression is that Latin in general received a strong boost from Summorum Pontificum’s liberalization of the older form of the Roman Rite. Certainly the sales of Latin chant books for the ordinary form reflect that. Most all musicians working in the Catholic Church sense the change, the opening up of possibilities for singing music from our heritage in Latin.

My evidence is anecdotal but my own inbox has served me well as a barometer on these matters, and I hear of ever more cases of parishes moving to all-Latin ordinary settings and more choirs singing the propers, and even cases of all-Latin dialogues and Eucharistic prayers. To be sure, most progress takes place within a context of a mixed-language liturgy, neither all English nor all Latin.

Now, one might say: it’s fine to sing a Sanctus but what about the rest of the Mass? My answer is this. If you are looking for a direction of change, and hoping to characterize the future of the ordinary form, looking only for all-Latin-language Masses misses the point in several respects. For example, it is actually very common for low Masses in the extraordinary form to include vernacular hymnody.  Are traditionalists unwilling to call these “Latin Masses?” Of course not, even though one might even say that a sung ordinary form Mass with Latin propers is a closer approximation of the Roman Rite ideal than the the case of a four-hymn low Mass in the old form. .

Latin is surely part of progress toward the ideal, but not all progress can be defined in terms of the language alone. A mainstream parish that moves from four pop songs every Mass to using chanted propers in English and a chant-based ordinary setting in English is making great progress. This can happen without ever venturing into Latin. So far as I can tell, this is the kind of progress that Rome is currently urging with the new translation in English and the mandate that all missalette publishers include English chant from the Missal in their worship aids. It is not an end state but it is a step in the right direction.

As I think about these data in retrospect, a red flag should have gone up at the mere reporting of specific and seemingly scientific information about Masses and their forms in the United States. The parish experience is famously difficult to quantify. Many parishes have all Latin ordinary forms as one Mass on Sunday, and they may or may not advertise this fact, not because they are hiding it but merely because the parish convention can settle in without specific identifiers that subdivide parishes along demographic lines.

Why did I believe the data when I first read it and why was I alarmed by it? Because it played into a fear that I had developed soon after the Motu Proprio was promulgated. My worry was that the energy for reform the Mass that most people experience today would be poured exclusively into the push for the old form of the rite. The “traditionalists” would bail out of mainstream parish life completely once they get what they want, leaving the main Catholic experience worse off than ever. The “novus ordo” would be firmly entrenched as the English Mass with goofy music, while the “traditional Latin Mass” would be the place for seriousness, dignity, and Gregorian chant. This situation would persist for decades hence, creating a dynamic that might, on balance, leave the average Catholic worse off than before. The pressure to acculturate the ordinary form to Catholic tradition would evaporate.

Now, let me say in passing that there is a certain sector of traditionalists that would welcome this result – however perverse that might sound. To their minds, the new Mass is a hopeless abomination that must be destroyed, while the people who attend it (meaning some 95% of practicing Catholics) are deluded or corrupt or otherwise beyond hope, so they might as well be pushed overboard  too. It’s true that some people really think this way, and if you doubt it, I encourage you to look at the editorial on the blog that originally reported this (made up?) data.

Fortunately, I don’t see this great fissure between the ordinary and extraordinary form happening. Of course we can only speak of broad tendencies and hard facts are truly hard to come by here, but my strong impression is that Pope Benedict’s hope for “mutual enrichment” is indeed taking place. This is absolutely essential for the ordinary form and its future. I think of places like St. John Cantius in Chicago, St. Agnes in Minnesota, and many other cathedrals and parishes in this country where the EF and OF coexist to the point that parishioners are no longer sure which they are attending.

The great calamity for Catholic liturgy that took place in 1970 is that the new Mass, implemented without sufficient attention to its associated music and rubrics, was imposed on the world in the cultural context that seemed to rule out looking to history as a means of guiding the way forward. Even the translation was completely novel and, in places, not a translation at all but rather a vague paraphrase. There were serious mistakes even in some structural aspects of the calendar, among other factors.

The regrettable cultural environment in which the new Mass was imposed is gone. What is the way forward? It is through looking back at tradition. But unless that tradition is a living reality that we can see and experience, we end up conjuring up a heritage from dusty books and groping in darkness and speculation. This is the reason that every Catholic should favor the full  proliferation of extraordinary form Masses. It is not only for purposes of righting a wrong and ministering to those attached to the older form; a living presence of the older form provides a guiding light for the reform of the new.

It strikes me as a strange alliance that both die-hard “progressives” of the old school and hard-core traditionalists are united in wanting to keep a permanent wall between the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Roman Rite. To hope and pray in the spirit of Summorum is to desire continuity between the tradition of the past and the ritual that Catholics will experience today and long after this generation passes from this earth.

Mary Rose Garych has been posting hundreds of images on her Facebook page, and I’ve copied a few here. All are from the Sacred Music Colloquium 2010, Duquesne University. None capture the entire group of 250 because there was no (tedious) “group photo” time – although one regrets that in retrospect. Obviously the are all cell-phone quality, which is fine.

I wondered if the Palmer-Burgess Gradual had a version of Petite in it and how it might turn out in English. Sure enough, it appears, and it preserves the structure of the Latin! How it might turn out in modern American English is another question.

In the course of seeking the perfect comment system, I made a mess of the code. Now we’ve reverted to plain old comments in this lacrimarum valle. At least they work and are reliable.

This weekend’s communion antiphon “Petite, et accipietis” does not appear on Sunday in the old ordering of Mass music, so this is a musical treat that can only be experienced in the ordinary form for this Sunday.

It is drawn directly from the Gospel reading. “Ask, and it shall be given you: seek, and you shall find: knock, and it shall be opened to you: for every one that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth; and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened, alleluia.”

Here is the antiphon (and here is a sound file that you can listen to as you watch the music):

Now, for those who might say that there is no real relationship between the music and the text in Gregorian chant, consider this wonderful musical structure and how it beautifully reflects the symmetry of the prose here.

We begin with three actions: ask, seek, knock. These actions are embodied in the musical phrase that form the pillars of the first half of the chant, which we see in petite, quaerite, and pulsante. Each is structured to be a unique musical phrase, each with its different character.

The first half of the chant ends at the full bar. Then we pick up with the answer: he who asks, receives; he who seeks, finds; he who knocks, it is opened. The words in Latin are now grammatically different (petit, quaerit, pulsanti) but the unique musical structure of each of those words is preserved from one phrase to the next, and then extended upon to signify the universality of the relationship between the reach for God and the granting of grace, consistent with the text (for everyone).

The parallels between the words in the first phrase and the repeat in the second phrase are beautiful, creative, and unmistakable. The chant then closes with great drama, an alleluia more elaborate than anything series of notes before, all coming together to form a perfectly crafted composition and unity of music and text.

I’ve just seen that Jubal’s Review offers a model of live blogging for the St. Colman’s Society conference, July 10-12,, 2010 (“Benedict XVI and Sacred Music”) with papers by William Mahrt, Archbishop Burke, Fr. Uwe Michael Lang, Kerry McCarthy, James McMillan, Ite O’Donovan, and many other stars of the sacred music world. Here is the complete conference program. The live blog offers a daily summary.

It’s thrilling to read this erudite review of Christopher Page’s Christian West and Its Singers, by Dom Alban Nunn of Ealing Abbey in London. The review helps alleviate my own worries that this book would not get the attention it deserves.

Page dares to go where few have trod before. Certainly there is some cross over with James McKinnon’s final offering The Advent Project. That earlier work, a decade ago, cast considerable light over the darkness of the late 7th century in musical terms. Page goes much further creating a coherent history across the first millennium. I say creating because the size and breadth of this work means that many of his conclusions will be the basis on which future work will be done.