Could the Latin Mass Save Western Civilization?
Back during the Roaring ‘20s, a then-contemporary witticism had it that four institutions would prevent the takeover of Europe by Communism: the German General Staff, the British House of Lords, the Academie Française, and the Holy See. Eighty years have brought many changes, to be sure. On the one hand, Communism is as unlikely to remerge in Europe as Fascism or Nazism. But on the other, the four mentioned institutions have also undergone alteration. The German General Staff was corrupted by Hitler, and destroyed by the allies; the House of Lords has suffered the same fate (albeit in reverse order) at the hands of the late Tony Blair. The cultural supremacy of English has diminished the relevance and importance of the Academie severely: as one French friend told me, “it would not be so terrible for the language of Moliere to be eclipsed by that of Shakespeare; but by that of Rod McKuen?” A horrible fate for us all, to be sure.
Moreover, if Communism has departed for the happy hunting ground of evil philosophies, the civilization of the West has acquired other enemies, unthinkable in the Flapper age. Islam is the obvious external threat—not merely in terms of terrorism and the like, but by a seemingly inexorable birth-rate within the Mother Continent herself. This latter development is matched by a corresponding fall in the fertility of the native population, itself bound up with a sickness-of-self on the part of that same population. To a great degree, this is the result of a second, internal enemy: a secularism that hates all that Europe, North America, and Australasia once were, and that would replace it with—well, that’s just it. It is a state of mind that cannot build; it can only destroy. Worse, it is the dominant mindset among those of the Western elites who belong to that age-group called the “Baby Boomers” in America , and the “Generation of ‘68” in Europe. Despite the rapid onset of old age, they cling to the rebelliousness of their youth as though it were a mystic talisman, protecting them from Father Time. All that made the West strong, in culture, governance, politics, and most assuredly in religion, is intolerable to them. But if the identities of the nations they manage are destroyed from above and within, how can those countries possibly survive in the long run?
The one remaining member of the quartet earlier mentioned is the Holy See. But it too is not what it was when Pius XI occupied St. Peter’s Throne. The horrors of World War II damaged the self-confidence in the Catholic ethos of the generation of clerics who lived through them. This would play a big part in the events of Vatican II and its aftermath. However one wishes to view those occurrences, the fact remains that by 1970, the Church appeared to be in an acute state of what Paul VI called “auto-demolition.” Although the Holy See under John Paul II contributed heavily to the fall of the Soviet Union , and its role in the diplomatic world expanded, the Church’s ability to counter the self-destructive tendencies in Western Culture became severely limited. Supposedly Catholic legislators throughout the West (even including such clerics as Congressman Robert Drinan, S.J.) joined gleefully in wrecking the moral and political heritage of centuries. Bishops themselves often quietly acquiesced in this, refusing to discipline such members of their flock as, say, Teddy Kennedy, for their anti-Catholic voting patterns. This was, however, emblematic of said prelates’ attempts to purge the Church of every vestige of the Catholic past.
Nowhere were these attempts more obvious than with the liturgy, the center of the Catholic religion. Most particularly, the classical form of the Catholic Mass and various other Sacraments was virtually banished from almost every nook of Christendom. With it went much of the distinctive Catholic identity—so much a part of the very foundation of Western culture. As the Harvard historian Christopher Dawson famously remarked, culture flows from “cult,” or worship; when forces internal or external root out the forms or content of religious practice in a civilization, they have essentially cut out its heart--the brain will follow.
After some 36 years of liturgical controversy, Pope Benedict XVI, on Saturday, July 7, 2007, in his motu proprio Summorum Pontificum, has liberated the ancient Roman liturgy, which, after September 14 of this year, may be celebrated by any priest anywhere in the Catholic world. This action was angrily attacked by a number of bishops and other liberal Catholics in the weeks leading up to its promulgation.
Now it may be objected at this point that this occurrence, while doubtless of interest to Catholics, would have little interest to those outside of their religion. But in fact, it has attracted angry denunciations by such as the ADL’s Abraham Foxman (admittedly, Mr. Foxman has been described by his co-religionist, comedian and ordained rabbi Jackie Mason as “more afraid of a real job than of anti-Semitism”). Catholics might be tempted to angrily respond that Foxman’s statements upon an internal Church affair are as impudent as Gentiles attacking elements of the Jewish liturgy that they might find offensive (such as Yom Kippur’s Kol Nidre prayer) would most certainly be. But such Catholics would be wrong.
The truth is that the Catholic Church is a bellwether for the health of Western Civilization in general—a sort of canary chanting in the coal mine of culture. On the one hand, events within the Church cast their shadow on the rest of the Christian ecclesial bodies. This author has ventured, for example, into formerly beautiful Anglican and Lutheran churches, only to find them sacked by their clergy in similar manner to the depredations suffered by Catholic parishes in the past four decades. Upon enquiring about the reason for such artistic purging, he has often been told—“oh, because of Vatican II!” While he understands that this a misreading of the Council common in Catholic circles, he has never been able to understand how it could have any relevance to other denominations.
But there are wider implications as well. When, in 1971, news came out that the traditional Latin Mass was to be scrapped, a primarily non-Catholic group of English artists and writers protested to Paul VI:
If some senseless decree were to order the total or partial destruction of basilicas or cathedrals, then obviously it would be the educated—whatever their personal beliefs—who would rise up in horror to oppose such a possibility.
Now the fact is that basilicas and cathedrals were built so as to celebrate a rite which, until a few months ago, constituted a living tradition. We are referring to the Roman Catholic Mass. Yet, according to the latest information in Rome , there is a plan to obliterate that Mass by the end of the current year.
One of the axioms of contemporary publicity, religious as well as secular, is that modern man in general, and intellectuals in particular, have become intolerant of all forms of tradition and are anxious to suppress them and put something else in their place.
But, like many other affirmations of our publicity machines, this axiom is false. Today, as in times gone by, educated people are in the vanguard where recognition of the value of tradition is concerned, and are the first to raise the alarm when it is threatened.
We are not at this moment considering the religious or spiritual experience of millions of individuals. The rite in question, in its magnificent Latin text, has also inspired a host of priceless achievements in the arts—not only mystical works, but works by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians.
In the materialistic and technocratic civilisation that is increasingly threatening the life of mind and spirit in its original
creative expression—the word—it seems particularly inhuman to deprive man of word-forms in one of their most grandiose manifestations.
The signatories of this appeal, which is entirely ecumenical and nonpolitical, have been drawn from every branch of modern culture in Europe and elsewhere. They wish to call to the attention of the Holy See, the appalling responsibility it would incur in the history of the human spirit were it to refuse to allow the Traditional Mass to survive, even though this survival took place side by side with other liturgical forms.
Fifty-six of the most prominent and celebrated English writers, artists, and musicians of the time signed it --- among them Vladimir Ashkenazy and Yehudi Menuhin (pace Mr. Foxman), Graham Greene, Robert Graves and Cecil Day-Lewis (onetime poet laureate and father of Daniel), Iris Murdoch, and, in the end most importantly, Agatha Christie. The importance of the last signatory lay in the fact that the then-Pontiff was a devotee of her mysteries, and so granted her request. The resulting permission for the Old Mass to be continued in England to some degree has therefore been dubbed the “Agatha Christie Indult.”
What these illustrious folk understood, better than many theologians, was that the health of the Catholic Church was and is integral to the health of the West. If our civilization is to withstand its current slate of internal and external foes—throughout Europe and the Diaspora—it must regain its hold on the things that first enkindled its spirit. Restoration of liturgical sanity and unity within the Catholic Church will inevitably have a beneficial “trickle-down” effect far beyond the Church’s borders. Those who prize the health of the West must welcome Benedict XVI’s action, regardless of their own creed.
Of course, this is only one part of the new Pope’s apparent program—all of which, however, tend to the same ends. His ongoing efforts at the formation of an Anglican Rite within the Catholic Church bode well for members of that Communion who are disgusted with their hierarchies’ headlong retreat from Christian orthodoxy and morality. The Pope’s initiatives to shore up the beleaguered Patriarchate of Constantinople show an authentic desire to move past the hatreds and bitternesses of the past that have so long sundered East and West. Recent moves to discipline erring theologians and free the Catholics of China are very hopeful signs that the long slumber of the post-Vatican II era is over. With Benedict’s encouragement, the Cardinal-Archbishop of Mexico City has excommunicated the Mayor and City Council of his town, who have introduced abortion to their bailiwick (although they seem less capable of policing the streets). This is an example that—given the caliber of his episcopal appointments— may well be echoed one day in New York , Boston , or even Washington.
Should the Pope be successful in his attempts to straighten the course of the Barque of Peter, it will of course be of immense benefit to his own flock. But more importantly, to the non-Catholic, it will restore the Church’s ability to function as effective a watchdog over the health of the body politic of the West as ever she did under Pius XI.
But do not be fooled. The viciousness of the attacks of the liberal media, such as Mr. Foxman, and various Catholic clerics and other such pundits on the new liturgical decree are being echoed in other spheres. From Belgium , news has come that homosexual activists have brought charges against Mgr André-Mutien Léonard, the Catholic bishop of Namur , for homophobia. In that country, this is a criminal offence under the country’s 2003 Anti-Discrimination Act.
In an interview last April in the Walloon weekly Télé Moustique, the bishop is said to have described gays as “abnormal”. According to Michel Graindorge, the activists’ lawyer, the bishop intended to “stigmatize” homosexuals, whose “identity and dignity is debased from the moment that the bishop considers them to be abnormal.” In Australia, A New South Wales parliamentary committee will investigate whether Sydney ’s George Cardinal Pell was in contempt of parliament in warning that there would be “consequences” for Catholic members of the NSW parliament who voted for a bill that would scrap a ban on stem cell research. The alleged free nations of the West, apparently intent on suicide, will—should these trends continue—punish Catholic prelates for doing their duty as they believe Christ has called them to do. Nor, in the end, will it only be Catholics so threatened, but anyone who holds to what the West has been, and what it needs to be if it is to survive.
For such as these, then, any and all of Benedict XVI’s efforts at rebuilding the Catholic ethos should be welcomed, and their success prayed for. But all of these things can bring little surprise to students of history. Very often, down through the two millennia of the Church’s history, internal reform has been followed by external persecution—itself usually the prelude to a period of triumph. In this light, July 7, 2007, may well be seen in future centuries to be as momentous a date as September 11, 2001--although, of course, one that points not toward death but rebirth. Whatever the case, keep your eyes on Rome.
Charles A. Coulombe is author of Vicars of Christ: A History of the Popes.
Comments
As a complement to the superb scope of Mr. Coulombe’s analysis it may be worth observing that by casting aside the Tridentine rite, Catholicism left it untouched by the pollution, Catholic and beyond, of recent decades. Thus leaving aside such mystical strength as Catholics will ascribe to it, even from a secular perspective there is in the West today no more vivid a foundational alternative to said pollution, than the historical Latin Mass.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Just outstanding. It’s superfluous to add:
1. Communism is very much still with us, in its new manifestation: Cultural Marxism (the Frankfurt School). All the rest of us need to form a coalition against it and fight with the same determination as we fought against the previous manifestation: Leninism. As John Paul II against the latter, so Benedict against the former—with the same success.
2. There is no prayer in the 1962 Missal against the “perfidious Jews”. This is a straw man, and one propagated by the Cultural Marxist domination of the press. The real Good Friday bidding prayers of 1962 mention the Jews specifically so as to separate them from pagans – and thus respect them. (I confess that I prefer still the New Order bidding prayer. After the events ranging from Dreyfus to Calypso Louie, I can understand why Jews are a bit paranoid.)
4. Islam feeds off a decadent society. To end the decadence is to end the Islamic penetration. (It also needs to be said that the only support that The Holy See gets at UN conferences on the family comes from Latin American and Islamic countries. )
5. Liberal Christianity – as old as the 1688 Whig Latitudinarians, and now the “useful idiots” of Cultural Marxism – is in the nursing home, and by all signs its condition is terminal. I even know backsliding Unitarians. There are now really only two branches of Christianity: The Catholic Church (including the Eastern Churches) and the Evangelicals. This latter branch, having become the “useful idiots” of the Statist Whigs in supporting the Iraq quagmire, is about to undergo the worst assault upon it since the Scopes Trial.
6. Much of the problem in the Anglophone world is simply bad bishops, and in this matter John Paul II failed us. Pray that Benedict will not.
7. The enemy is never so vituperative and violent as when he is dying, be it in Belgium or in Miami.
8. There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that an Italian Christian Democrat politician asked a cardinal how the state could help the Church. “How about some persecution” was the reply.
9. No one noticed, but the Liberal Era in the Catholic Church (“Vatican II”) ended with JPII in 1978, bad bishops or no. After a time between the times, a sort of Thermidor after the Liberal Revolution, the Blanc (Counter-) Revolution began 7/7/7.
Ceterum censeo Cultural Marxism must be destroyed.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Thank you for this worthwhile analysis and the forward thinking.
SH
http://www.tcrnews2.com/
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Cultural Marxism has established its public educational system, or rather formation system, for benefit of novus ordo seclorum. Yet,it has not been entirely successful.It has awakened many Catholics to the need for Catholic education,where tradition and absolutes, especially moral, are taught. Among the “traditions” are Latin. The foundations for the return of the traditional mass are being laid. The “new world order” has unknowlingly planted seeds for their demise.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I fear that our own Pax Americana may be drawing to a close given the slow yet steady slide into the mire and muck of our own making. God shall not be mocked forever.
With regard to the “perfidius” Jews why are we so afraid to admit that they are, in fact, perfidious? Did not our Lord say that those who turn away His Gospel and its heralds would receive a fate worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah? Let us not be ashamed or intimidated to speak the Truth!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mr King asked,
“With regard to the “perfidius” Jews why are we so afraid to admit that they are, in fact, perfidious?”
Why should we refrain from calling “the Jews” “perfidious?” Because, as it says in Romans 5:12 (Latin Vuglate),
“omnes peccaverunt”,
that’s why.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mr. Ball:
Thank you for the scripture lesson but what does the fact that we have all sinned (and are, in fact, sinners) have to do with the objective truth that Jews have rejected Jesus through whom is our only hope of salvation? That is not meant to be an insult against the Jewish people but rather an admonishment. Do we not, as Christians, have the responsibility of, dare I say, “admonishing sinners”?
I believe the Church has already made enough concilliatory changes to the liturgy as it is for the Jewish people. And I find it curious that there is no movement by the Jewish leaders to strike from their Talmud references to our Lord boiling in excrement or to those of our Blessed Mother having been a whore.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mr King,
Mortal men do not have the authority, let alone the supernatural power, to look into the hearts of other men and decide which of them has or has not “rejected Jesus.” Isn’t acceptance or rejection of Christ more a matter of acting in accord with the Holy Spirit, than of ostensbily professing or not professing any creed?
Furthermore, imputations of collective guilt are abhorrent to Christianity as well as to pre-Christian Western civilisation. You wanna judge people collectively? Then tell it to Lenin and Mao, but don’t tell it to Christ - or for that matter to any civilised Western Man.
Oh, and with a bit of intelligence (from Latin, inter-legere, “to read between the lines), one could figure out that my reference to Romans 5:12 was an oblique reminder that the only “collective guilt” which any Son of Adam bears, is Original Sin.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mr. Ball
It is not a matter of judgement to pray for those ignorant or hostile to the way of Christ but I would say rather an understanding that without it one is lost in this world of Cultural Marxism. To pray for the conversion of those whose belief is anathema to The Way is truly Catholic and to abstain from mentioning the Jews for fear of being labeled anti semitic or “judging” is surrendering to the destructive influence of the Entity that pervades any culture without the armor of faith.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mr Tamburello,
I mostly agree with you, except: Insofar as Christ was crucified by the sins of all men, ALL men are “the Jews.”
Click to flag this comment as abusive
To jump into this 10 day old discussion:
The word “perfidious” is not used in the pre-Johannine Mass, as the prayers were not in the English language.
The prayers were in the Latin language, and the word used was “perfidis”, which has the meaning of “faithless” in the original context. The Latin “perfidis” CAN be used to mean “treacherous”, but it is a logical deduction from the prayer that the view of the Church is that the Jews are considered “faithless”, and any “treachery” is a result of that faithlessness.
Anyway, it’s a moot point, because who really cares what people think about the Mass? It is what it is.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Absolutely, decidedly marvelous! An example of the
splendor of Truth!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I’m afraid that I don’t have a copy of the Novus Ordo ready to hand (it’s in my mess somewhere)as I am much more inclined to the Usus Antiquior. AS i remember, however, the Novus Ordo prayers for teh Jews are more positive and not patronising as were the older prayers but they DO end by praying thathe Jews will one day be led to Christ. It is one of the few places where the Novus Ordo prayer is better than what it replaced and it could easily be inserted into the 1962 Missal in what would truly be an organic development.
We should always remember that it was the vocation of the Jews to give birth to the Messiah and they fullfilled this vocation. All of the history of the Israel from the time of Abraham was a preparation for the moment when Mary, the Daughter of Zion, would reeive God’s call from the Angel Gabriel. She answered “Yes” and thus was born the Saviour of the world.
What more do you want?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
What does the Rabbi say to his young student when asked, “Who was Jesus?”.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
RE: What does the Rabbi say to his young student when asked, “Who was Jesus?”.
Posted by Sean on Aug 03, 2007.
Sean, if your question is a serious one then I suggest you really do a research to find out what Talmudic teachings are on topics concerning Christianity, Our Lord Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and how the Jewish community as a whole should relate to Christians (When the Talmud refer to Christians, it refers to Roman Catholics and Orthodox Catholics). There are plenty of resources from which you can obtain unbiased information on this topic, specifically what the Holy Roman Catholic Church taught up to 1962 when the Second Vatican Council was convened, and traditions of the past 1961 years were suppressed.
If you seek truth and knowledge for the sake of the Glory of God, you will find both. Be sure to pray as you proceed so that you can discern what you read from here on out.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Before I go, I want to make sure that readers understand that prior to the Second Vatican Council, Catholic Civilization produced a faith so powerful and so courageous until death itself without apologies, and yet full of charity (love) for Christ and the executioners. How many Catholics post Vatican II had gone to their death being given a choice between denying Christ and live, or refusing to deny Him and accept death? Here is an excerpt that all of you should read and really think about:
By Robert Royal
Special to the HERALD
Following is the second in a series of articles by Robert Royal, author of the soon-to-be released book Catholic Martyrs of the 20th Century.
On Nov. 22, 1927, a man dressed in street clothes was led through a crowd of photographers and politicians on his way to a firing squad in Mexico City. The photographers were present for this illegal execution — there had been no trial or even formal charges — because the Mexican president, Plutarco Elias Calles, the most rabidly anti-Catholic leader in the world at the time, wanted them to record the humiliation of a man desperately pleading for his own life. Calles badly miscalculated. The man walked calmly to the place of his death, asked to be allowed to pray, and then, in a voice neither defiant nor desperate, intoned the words Viva Cristo Rey! — “Long Live Christ the King!”
Through photographs distributed worldwide, the Jesuit priest Miguel Augustin Pro thus became the most famous martyr in Mexico’s anti-Catholic revolution early in the twentieth century.
But Pro was hardly alone. Thousands of Catholics died in the same anti-Catholic wave, though few people anywhere, especially in the United States, remember their martyrdom today. President Calles was not only wrong about how Pro would die, he was wrong about Mexico as a whole. Though anti-clerical propaganda long tried to portray the Mexican clergy as corrupt, few of them, few enough to count on one hand, renounced the Faith or caved in to government pressures, even facing death. They all showed a heroic faith so deep that many, like Christ, calmly forgave their executioners before they died…
Click to flag this comment as abusive
All civilizations, including the “Christian West” will come to an end. “The kingdom of THIS WORLD [which is all “Christian Civilization” ultimately is] is now become the Kingdom of Our Lord and of His Christ.”
And Christ, btw, did not come to save nations or civilizations. He came to save souls.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
St. Joan of Arc Pray for us. It’s all about Sacred Tradition. The Roman Catholic Church has it all, and plenty more. It just hasn’t been taught to the masses in the last forty years. Our Lady of Fatima Pray for us! The battle has just begun in this modern era of lies and deception! The Tridentine mass lives forever!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Like it or not literally millions of Roman Catholics worldwide are clamouring for a return to the Latin (Tridentine mass) and it’s growing expedentially. The end result of vatican 2 was corrupted bishops, priest and a temporary victory for degressive secular humanist aka liberal aka useful neomarxist idiots. Milions have left the church in the last forty year primarily because of the stench and rot that set into the Catholic Church under the reigns of John 23 and especially the despise Paul 6th (Montini). Millions saw a protestant service inaugerated into the Catholic church and in sickened disgust stopped going. By the way that protestant service is called the modern venacular mass akaPaul 6th mess. Can forget 40 years of corrupt bishops priest nuns and monks and a gleefull homosexually oriented seminary system. The days of the mahoneys browns lustigers dannels and thank G-D the reign of JP 2 i love u are OVER.tHE PROTESTANTS IN ROMAN COLLARS WILL SOON BE SENT PACKING"bACK TO HELL WHENCE THEY CAME.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The above articule in this viewers opinion is one of the best secular opines i have read on line since Pope Benedict the 16th issued the motu proprio Summorum Ponificum freeing the 1700 year old latin liturgy codified at the council of Trent in the 15th century from illigal suppression of it. Since this divine liturgy was NEVER abrogated after the council called vatican 2, it was and remains an abuse by Catholic clerics of a 60’s cumbyya mentality to heap scorn on the millions that have been demanding it for years (literally millions of Catholics) in a faith of 1.7 billion people Not coming as a surprise the classic latin mass is filling churches worldwide with predominately youth between 15 & 50, so much for “nostalgia”. It is a simple fact that there is no priestly vocation crisis in the orthodox (Latin) roman catholic communities of Traditional/Seminaries Abbeysmonasteries & convents ARE having a sort of crisis and that is they just don’t have room for the influx of young Catholics requesting interest in the priesthood and Religious life. It is the novus ordo missae congregations (venacular mass parishes)that are experiencing “priestlyvocational problems”. Even the generally ambivilent Patriarch of the 300 million strong Russian Orthodox church has expressed sincere joy at the Catholic church returning to the Catholic church in his reference to the Liberation of the Ancient Catholic Divine Litury, to quote the good Patriarch “now true ecumenicism can commence.----SHALOM
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.