Born in 1948. I wasn’t
conscious of the Mass that I went to with my parents until I was in grade
school. It was all in Latin. Pius XII was Pope then. I didn’t think twice about this. For me, it was just as a fish in the sea. I
loved the feast where the priest walked around the inside of the church,
carrying the Blessed Sacrament in that large golden Monstrance, with altar boys
swinging incensors and little girls in white dresses scattering flower petals
on the floor. Was the feast Corpus
Christi? Or was it after a Forty Hours
devotion? I do not know. The aura of it was what pulled me. What did I
think? Feel? It was not participation; it was audience, and I liked being part of that audience. But
I didn’t think anything of it. I couldn’t imagine church being any other way.
Then, in the beginning of seventh grade – probably October
of 1960, the Sisters started putting up
posters and talking about Vatican II. It
seemed to be very important to them, but it didn’t matter to me in the least,
even though I was a fervent Mass goer, even daily Mass. We began to have “dialogue Masses” , but in
Latin, where we learned the responses and said them out loud, in Latin.
I am not sure when – but I think it was when I was a
freshman in high school, at my well-loved high school, where we had Mass in the
Auditorium, not weekly but fairly occasionally regularly (?) that the Mass
changed . The priest was now facing the congregation, and the Mass was in
English. Again, all this momentous
change took place with me just going with the flow. I didn’t much like the Folk Mass music, and
much preferred the Latin songs in three part harmony. Somewhere in those
Religion classes, we were being taught the significance of the changes. But
again, I was a self-absorbed teenager.
Skip through the years 1966-70, and on into the early 70’s,
with all of the ups and downs of my life, during which going to church played a
very peripheral role. Until my heart
changed , and I picked up on that call I had heard in 1960, on the feast of the
Immaculate Conception. It resulted in 1978, when I joined the Daughters of
Charity, and church, and Jesus, became central.
I was still thinking of myself as a “Vatican II Catholic”
and resisting any of the “old time religion” pious practices and language we
got in our novitiate. And I was sent on mission to a wonderful “post Vatican II”
parish in the very progressive Diocese of Richmond, and I loved it.
I am trying to fast forward, through the 80’s and 90’s,
until 2000, when I was in Campus Ministry at the Mount, and living in our large
Seton Shrine building. And, of course,
reading things on the Internet.
The Internet made me aware of the revisionist/restorationist
movement in the Catholic Church, led by a few vocal priests and many more very
vocal lay Catholics.
Now it is 2021, and
all these Catholics who weren’t even born in 1965, want the Lain Mass. And they want the priest with his back to
the congregation. On Facebook posts,
they abbreviate and call it the TLM -
Traditional Latin Mass. And the
present Pope is trying to rein that movement in. But many of the young priests and seminarians
want it too.
I’m not even talking at all about the Gospel message of
peace and justice and being servants. I
know those Restorationists still hold those values. They just don’t talk about them very
much. I also know that these young
Catholics who weren’t even born in 1965 don’t know about some of the negative
baggage that had accumulated around the clergy and the TLM.
It’s the lack of charity and the divisiveness - the split between the two groups, each one chastising
the other, that upsets me. In this last year of becoming hooked on the
TV series “The Chosen”, and reading the Facebook group posts from “Catholics
Who Love the Chosen” as well as the really wonderful posts and prayers of
Jonathan Roumie, the actor who plays Jesus, and who is a fervent Catholic, I
have moved from the left to the center and maybe even to the right-center in my
attitude to prayer and liturgy. I still
prefer the “Vatican II Mass” but I am not so bothered by the proponents of the
TLM.
I still find the mantillas and incense pretentious, and
still complain about some outrageous displays of clericalism, but I
have returned to saying the Miraculous Medal novena each morning , and the Divine Mercy Chaplet each
afternoon, and Centering Prayer in
between.
Amen.
Just recently, Jonathan Roumie and Dallas Jenkins ( the evangelical writer and director of "The Chosen") met with Pope Francis. Notice especially the expression on Jonathan's face in this photo:
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