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Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.

CONFESSIONS
February 2004

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OLD MASS VS. NEW MASS

Father Frank was a showman. Every year, he directed a cast of youth in a Passion Play that toured upstate New York. (Two of those years, I was Jesus -- my 14/15 year-old self beaten, crowned with thorns and crucified to great effect.) As he drove us to rehearsal, he played the soundtrack to Evita; now and then, I still find myself singing little bits of the lyrics.

That showman quality showed up in the way he said Mass. Normally the elevation of the host and chalice follows after the consecration of each -- a moment for the faithful to behold their God made present -- body, blood soul and divinity. But Father Frank performed the elevation and consecration simultaneously. He didn't want your head bowed down during the miracle of transubstantiation, he wanted eyes front and center. I will never forget the slow pan he used to perform with the chalice, bearing it slowly from right to left as he held it aloft and said the words: "...and whenever you do this...you do it always...in remembrance...of me."

But of course, that's not quite it. The order of Mass reads, "Do this in memory of me." The Gospel of Luke has it as, "Do this in remembrance of me." In either case, it's a command. In Father Frank's version, it's a pronouncement, a reminder: "Whenever you do this...."

I do not wish to speculate as to whether Father's tinkering rendered his consecrations invalid, nor do I wish to speculate as to its effect on his soul. (I once heard a priest give a homily in which he cited the teaching that it is a mortal sin to change any of the words of the consecration as an example of the bad old legalistic days in the Church. In one sense, I see his point. Saying that anything is a mortal sin is, I think, simplistic since the will must be informed and engaged for a sin to be mortal. But saying that such a change is grave matter -- the exterior condition for serious sin -- seems entirely appropriate. My inner punk always wanted to smack Father Frank and say, "Dude -- it's the words of Jesus. At the Last Supper. Don't mess around.") I merely cite it to help explain why I sympathize when folks complain about the Novus Ordo -- more specifically, about the Mass in the vernacular -- and its susceptibility to personal flourishes on the part of the priest. Priests naturally vary, and there have always been those who have been regarded as good preachers, good confessors, good pastors, et cetera. But surely it is only recently that we say, with an air of admiring gratitude, "He says a good Mass."

The avoidance of such flourishes is one reason some people prefer the Mass in Latin, which these days tends to mean the Tridentine rite. (One such person, a good friend, refers to himself as a Triddywacker, which I find charming.) Another reason, they say, is a clearer sense of what's happening during the Mass -- the re-presentation of the sacrifice at Calvary to God on behalf of the faithful. Still another is the claim that the text is more poetic, more beautiful, and theologically richer.

While I sympathized with the Triddywackers' frustration with the priest-tinkerers, I was never much attracted to the rite. For one thing, it was not my Mass; I was not born until after the change. For another, I indulged a certain populist pride -- the Novus Ordo was the Mass said the world over, the Mass of the struggling, heaving Church militant. I did not want to be in the company of the remnant of a remnant, one of the few who supposedly knew better than the rest. This mindset included another sort of solidarity: if it's good enough for the Pope, it's good enough for me.

Then, on December 21 of last year, I attended the Tridentine Mass marking the 50th anniversary of the ordination of Father Harry Neely. The Mass was celebrated in the Immaculata at the University of San Diego, with a full choir and about 40 priests in attendance. The building was packed; my family and I ended up sitting behind the altar. The next two hours made a tremendous assault upon my supposed indifference to the rite. Everything worked on me -- the music, the vestments, the light through the stained-glass windows, the massive silence of the throng, the evident holiness of Father Neely. But most of all, it was the words of the Mass, the text of which I struggled to read as I held my sleeping daughter. I realized that it was foolish to avoid a thing simply because of who you might encounter there. I found the Mass glorious, vivid, and vivifying. I am going to investigate further.

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