Raised in the 1960s & 1970s, I’m just old enough to remember the Old Rite, in Melbourne, where my father wore a suit & my mother a hat, gloves & stockings, to Sunday Mass at St Finbars, East Brighton.
We fasted before Mass: nothing to eat til after. We were lucky to have an Irish firebrand Parish Priest, Fr Ashe. Ireland is incapable of producing a priest like that anymore.
Mass was an awe-filled experience prior to Vatican II. Should a baby cry during the service, it was understood that the mother took her child outside till it ceased. I attended one Good Friday 3:00pm Service, which took nearly 3 hours, yet the Church was so full, that people stood outside in the rain! And there were no lay assistants with Communion.
After each Mass, we gathered outside for a social chat. Most walked to Mass. It was customary for those with a car to give a lift home for little old ladies. They were delightful, & I miss them.
Yes, I’m reminiscing. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Especially as you’ve provided the more serious theological context of which we ought be aware.
We’re still like fish out of water with the watered down Mass. Fortunately, there are a handful of Parishes which offer the Tridentine Mass.
I grew up in Philadelphia in the 60’s and 70’s at a time when each ethnic neighborhood had a Catholic Church with priests that had 2 masses, one in Latin then after Vatican 2 English and one in (German, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Irish) etc. You LIVED in the part of the city with the parish of your choice/ethnicity. Usually, back in those days your parents or most grandparents came here from the “old country” after the world wars and spoke those language in the home. Our schools were run by each particular parish. Even the bakery baked goods for each particular saint day, or Catholic holiday. The city closed business on Good Friday at noon(you got paid on Thursday that week because banks were closed from noon on). Everyone walked to their neighborhood church. Sunday dinner was an extended family/neighbor event and the priests were invited. Everyone dressed to go to mass. Folks actually stood in line for Confession (now nicely called Reconciliation). Everyone feared the nuns…they had no problem telling your parents in the middle of the grocery store..as they were usually one of their prior students, what you did wrong. And when the local priest came into the taproom, usually on a mission of asking the men for help with money or repairs or to speak sense into the ear of a parishioner…he never paid for his drink.
The church was our life and a lived community. It guided everything. Now, it’s an organization… no longer the heartbeat .. it’s on the rim looking in. It’s afraid of hurting feelings, it’s afraid of truth and light, it’s afraid of offending xyz, it’s afraid of losing funding, it’s closed most schools, stopped CYO, stopped teaching the catechism, the nuns are gone, the priests aren’t part of the community, let alone setting the community standards.
The church is supposed to be “the light of the world” it needs to switch back on.
God in His mercy has allowed and provided the Church with faithful priests who still celebrate the TLM, namely priests formed by the FSSPX. It is very comforting to meet pious Catholic families who still practice the way you remember. I pray you find an FSSPX priory or chapel where you can experience the reverence and the joy of being Roman Catholic.
Ok. I have read your article, and I appreciate the perspective you are coming from. I stand in unison with you on this key point:
"To Christians, we are the new Israel - the spiritual Israel - the Church is a continuation of God’s chosen people. The Old Testament points toward the coming of Christ, and the New Testament speaks of His fulfilment of the old prophecies and promises of God. No one is replaced, but everyone is welcomed in. The Jews who followed their Messiah - the Christ - became members of the Church, and the Gentiles who joined them were grafted in. This is a marvellous gift our Lord has given us."
This is historical Christianity. And those who deny it simply do not understand how they are undermining the work of the Lord and his Apostles.
But I don't think you made your case well with Protestantism. You may have shown why it is deficient from your perspective, but not why it is Jewish. I would argue that dispensationalism is exactly what you said, it is the Judaisation of Christianity.
But I think this Judaising can creep into any denomination or church. It was even creeping in with Peter in Galatians 2, which demonstrates this, profoundly.
I see many aspects of this in my wider denomination, evangelicalism in particular, and Protestantism in general. But I also see it in the high church denominations, like Catholicism.
For instance the importation of the priesthood, which has the mix of Roman practice, and Hebrew high priestly practice, the emphasis on the tradition of the elders (church tradition) over scripture, instead of an aid and commentary as it should be, and more.
I think it is easier, at times, to see how Judaising has impacted other Christians, rather than ourselves, again highlighted by St Peter.
I really appreciate a lot of your work, even though we are of different traditions. I think seeking to challenge the Judaising of the church is important. Paul spent much of his ministry doing that. He would be horrified to see modern Christians teaching that there is two people's of God, one in Christ, one in the flesh. This is a repudiation of his teaching on the issue. He would be horrified, but not shocked, as he saw this sort of teaching heaps in his day.
Dear Fr. Calvin, I am impressed at your insight and understanding of the spiritual depth and meaning of the Traditional Latin Mass. The FSSPX gave me back the Catholic identity by teaching and preaching the truth of our faith.
It is not about criticising others for their beliefs, it is about the TRUTH, about Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Gospel and His revelations in the history of the Church to offer the means of salvation to people.
I believe that much of the discomfort with sacrificial language comes from the fact that the Blessed Sacrament is not offered to the Heavenly Throne e.g. by being burnt as incense, but is rather afforded to the congregation (my Body, broken for you) as a grace to be eaten.
But this is of course still sacrificial, and so watering down the language merely diminishes the proceedings rather than enriching them.
Excellent. Thank you so much Father for clearly and simply spelling out the whole thing. As someonr born into the Catholic faith I've had to wathc it wither and die before my very eyes during to course of my whole life time to the point of it now being an incoherent dog's breakfast.
This is devastatingly true, Fr. Calvin, and I admire you so much for saying this so clearly, and so bravely. We so want to get up to Grand Rapids and meet you, but we want to make sure you're not on some junket with Lawrence!
I am on my summer holiday throughout August. But other than that, I am always around for TLM at 5pm on Saturdays and Sunday Mass at 10am. Look forward to seeing you sometime.
Beautiful, Father. Excellent! Thank you!! 🙏🏻❤️✝️ To us faithful Catholics, NOTHING will separate us from the fullness and truth of our Faith. I and my Faith are indissoluble. God continue to bless you, Father, as your devotion to Christ blesses us.
There is much in this piece, Fr Calvin, with which I wholeheartedly agree.
Where I would differ slightly is on the role of Latin itself. I don't believe the Mass must be in Latin to retain its sacrificial character. The English Missal, for example, or the Liturgy of St Gregory from the American Missal, makes the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist abundantly clear in English. Likewise, I have attended both Book of Common Prayer and even Novus Ordo Masses celebrated ad orientem with genuine reverence and holiness.
Until very recently, I had assumed that the principal deficiency of the Book of Common Prayer and, even more so, the Novus Ordo, lay in the omission of certain sacrificial prayers and a general simplification or lightening of the liturgy.
Over the past week, however, I've been reading material from one of the very men responsible for creating the post-conciliar Mass, and it has fundamentally changed my understanding of what actually happened.
The common claim that the Novus Ordo is simply the traditional Latin Mass translated into the vernacular, with a few simplifications, is not supported by the historical evidence. That isn't merely my opinion; it is contradicted by one of the reformers themselves.
Fr Joseph Gelineau, S.J., was a French Jesuit liturgist, composer, and enthusiastic supporter of the Second Vatican Council and its liturgical reforms. More importantly, he was not a commentator looking on from the outside. He served on Group 10 of the Consilium, the body responsible for revising the Order of Mass, and in 1965 directed the music for a French-language experimental celebration demonstrating what the reformed liturgy would become. In any ordinary sense, he was one of the architects of the new Mass.
That is why his own assessment is so extraordinary.
In Demain la liturgie (The Liturgy Today and Tomorrow), Gelineau urged readers to compare the old Gregorian High Mass with the post-conciliar rite. He noted that the words, melodies, gestures, and liturgical forms had changed.
His conclusion could hardly have been clearer: "The Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed."
Elsewhere, he states plainly: "It is a different liturgy of the Mass."
Gelineau's point was that liturgy is not simply a vehicle for conveying theological information. Its prayers, gestures, silences, chants, ceremonial actions, and structure constitute the rite itself. Change those forms comprehensively, and you have changed the rite. That is exactly what he believed had occurred.
The Novus Ordo, therefore, was not created merely by translating the traditional Roman Mass into modern languages and pruning a few ceremonies. Its prayers, rubrics, offertory, lectionary, calendar, ceremonial structure, and many other elements were substantially reconstructed through the work of the Consilium before being promulgated by Paul VI.
Whether one believes that reconstruction was wise or unwise, beneficial or harmful, legitimate or imprudent, is a separate question. What seems much harder to maintain is the claim that the Novus Ordo is simply the traditional Latin Mass in English. One of the men who helped create it explicitly denied that. He did not describe it as a translation. He did not describe it as a simplified version of the existing Roman Rite. He described it as "a different liturgy of the Mass" and wrote that "the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists."
Coming from an architect and supporter of the reform rather than a critic, I find that an astonishing admission.
As for the way forward, I don't believe the solution is simply to insist on Latin, valuable though it is, nor do I think it requires High Church English with its "thee's" and "thou's". The Tridentine Mass, or the Mass of the Ages, should be preserved and freely available to every priest as a normal part of the Church's liturgical life. Likewise, the English Missal and the Liturgy of St Gregory should be preserved as magnificent expressions of the Anglican (English) patrimony at its Catholic finest. Alongside these, a translation into clear, modern English that is scrupulously faithful to the Latin of the Tridentine Mass, together with fixed rubrics that neither bishops nor priests are free to alter according to personal preference, would go a long way towards restoring the reverence, doctrinal clarity and sacrificial character that the Roman Rite is meant to express.
It would also go a long way to filling the pews and the seminaries.
Thank you for a thoughtful and passionate article. I particularly appreciated your emphasis that Christianity is fundamentally a sacrificial faith and that our worship should form us in reverence rather than familiarity. Lex orandi, lex credendi remains as true today as ever.
As an Anglican, I would simply broaden the conversation slightly. The deepest crisis facing the Church is not merely one of liturgical form, but of the loss of the fear of God. Whether in Rome, Canterbury, Constantinople, or the Protestant world, whenever reverence is exchanged for casualness, and worship becomes centered on ourselves rather than on the Holy Trinity, the faith is inevitably diminished.
The remedy is not nostalgia for a particular century, but a renewed encounter with the living Christ. The Church must once again recover the conviction that when we gather for the Holy Eucharist, we stand on holy ground. If our people truly believed that, our posture, our prayers, our preaching, and indeed our lives would all begin to reflect it.
On that central point, I believe Christians of many traditions can say, "Amen."
Father, yours is an important and timely essay.
Raised in the 1960s & 1970s, I’m just old enough to remember the Old Rite, in Melbourne, where my father wore a suit & my mother a hat, gloves & stockings, to Sunday Mass at St Finbars, East Brighton.
We fasted before Mass: nothing to eat til after. We were lucky to have an Irish firebrand Parish Priest, Fr Ashe. Ireland is incapable of producing a priest like that anymore.
Mass was an awe-filled experience prior to Vatican II. Should a baby cry during the service, it was understood that the mother took her child outside till it ceased. I attended one Good Friday 3:00pm Service, which took nearly 3 hours, yet the Church was so full, that people stood outside in the rain! And there were no lay assistants with Communion.
After each Mass, we gathered outside for a social chat. Most walked to Mass. It was customary for those with a car to give a lift home for little old ladies. They were delightful, & I miss them.
Yes, I’m reminiscing. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Especially as you’ve provided the more serious theological context of which we ought be aware.
We’re still like fish out of water with the watered down Mass. Fortunately, there are a handful of Parishes which offer the Tridentine Mass.
I grew up in Philadelphia in the 60’s and 70’s at a time when each ethnic neighborhood had a Catholic Church with priests that had 2 masses, one in Latin then after Vatican 2 English and one in (German, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Irish) etc. You LIVED in the part of the city with the parish of your choice/ethnicity. Usually, back in those days your parents or most grandparents came here from the “old country” after the world wars and spoke those language in the home. Our schools were run by each particular parish. Even the bakery baked goods for each particular saint day, or Catholic holiday. The city closed business on Good Friday at noon(you got paid on Thursday that week because banks were closed from noon on). Everyone walked to their neighborhood church. Sunday dinner was an extended family/neighbor event and the priests were invited. Everyone dressed to go to mass. Folks actually stood in line for Confession (now nicely called Reconciliation). Everyone feared the nuns…they had no problem telling your parents in the middle of the grocery store..as they were usually one of their prior students, what you did wrong. And when the local priest came into the taproom, usually on a mission of asking the men for help with money or repairs or to speak sense into the ear of a parishioner…he never paid for his drink.
The church was our life and a lived community. It guided everything. Now, it’s an organization… no longer the heartbeat .. it’s on the rim looking in. It’s afraid of hurting feelings, it’s afraid of truth and light, it’s afraid of offending xyz, it’s afraid of losing funding, it’s closed most schools, stopped CYO, stopped teaching the catechism, the nuns are gone, the priests aren’t part of the community, let alone setting the community standards.
The church is supposed to be “the light of the world” it needs to switch back on.
Very similar to here in Melbourne. There is a marked lack of responsible community now. I miss those days.
❤️❤️❤️
Thankyou. We have found a few.✝️
❤️❤️❤️
God in His mercy has allowed and provided the Church with faithful priests who still celebrate the TLM, namely priests formed by the FSSPX. It is very comforting to meet pious Catholic families who still practice the way you remember. I pray you find an FSSPX priory or chapel where you can experience the reverence and the joy of being Roman Catholic.
Ok. I have read your article, and I appreciate the perspective you are coming from. I stand in unison with you on this key point:
"To Christians, we are the new Israel - the spiritual Israel - the Church is a continuation of God’s chosen people. The Old Testament points toward the coming of Christ, and the New Testament speaks of His fulfilment of the old prophecies and promises of God. No one is replaced, but everyone is welcomed in. The Jews who followed their Messiah - the Christ - became members of the Church, and the Gentiles who joined them were grafted in. This is a marvellous gift our Lord has given us."
This is historical Christianity. And those who deny it simply do not understand how they are undermining the work of the Lord and his Apostles.
But I don't think you made your case well with Protestantism. You may have shown why it is deficient from your perspective, but not why it is Jewish. I would argue that dispensationalism is exactly what you said, it is the Judaisation of Christianity.
But I think this Judaising can creep into any denomination or church. It was even creeping in with Peter in Galatians 2, which demonstrates this, profoundly.
I see many aspects of this in my wider denomination, evangelicalism in particular, and Protestantism in general. But I also see it in the high church denominations, like Catholicism.
For instance the importation of the priesthood, which has the mix of Roman practice, and Hebrew high priestly practice, the emphasis on the tradition of the elders (church tradition) over scripture, instead of an aid and commentary as it should be, and more.
I think it is easier, at times, to see how Judaising has impacted other Christians, rather than ourselves, again highlighted by St Peter.
I really appreciate a lot of your work, even though we are of different traditions. I think seeking to challenge the Judaising of the church is important. Paul spent much of his ministry doing that. He would be horrified to see modern Christians teaching that there is two people's of God, one in Christ, one in the flesh. This is a repudiation of his teaching on the issue. He would be horrified, but not shocked, as he saw this sort of teaching heaps in his day.
Thanks for your thoughtful article.
Thank you for providing a thoughtful reply. 👍
Absolutely 💯 truth. Fr. this is an excellent article and thank you for having the courage to write it. ✝️
Thank you, Catherine. May God bless you. 🙏
This is a very timely article, Father.
I wonder if these shifts are why many have sought Orthodoxy and I would appreciate hearing others thoughts on it.
Dear Fr. Calvin, I am impressed at your insight and understanding of the spiritual depth and meaning of the Traditional Latin Mass. The FSSPX gave me back the Catholic identity by teaching and preaching the truth of our faith.
It is not about criticising others for their beliefs, it is about the TRUTH, about Our Lord Jesus Christ, His Gospel and His revelations in the history of the Church to offer the means of salvation to people.
I believe that much of the discomfort with sacrificial language comes from the fact that the Blessed Sacrament is not offered to the Heavenly Throne e.g. by being burnt as incense, but is rather afforded to the congregation (my Body, broken for you) as a grace to be eaten.
But this is of course still sacrificial, and so watering down the language merely diminishes the proceedings rather than enriching them.
Excellent. Thank you so much Father for clearly and simply spelling out the whole thing. As someonr born into the Catholic faith I've had to wathc it wither and die before my very eyes during to course of my whole life time to the point of it now being an incoherent dog's breakfast.
Cheers, Mr Hanlon. Keep up the faith!
100%
Peter small stone - Jesus the cornerstone
Hear hear.
This is devastatingly true, Fr. Calvin, and I admire you so much for saying this so clearly, and so bravely. We so want to get up to Grand Rapids and meet you, but we want to make sure you're not on some junket with Lawrence!
Thank you!
I am on my summer holiday throughout August. But other than that, I am always around for TLM at 5pm on Saturdays and Sunday Mass at 10am. Look forward to seeing you sometime.
We'll be there, Father! God bless!
Dear Reverend Cal,
Once again, you have, "hit this one ot of the park!"
Thank you, Mr Jorge. Much appreciated!
Beautiful, Father. Excellent! Thank you!! 🙏🏻❤️✝️ To us faithful Catholics, NOTHING will separate us from the fullness and truth of our Faith. I and my Faith are indissoluble. God continue to bless you, Father, as your devotion to Christ blesses us.
Thank you - God bless you, too!
Wow. I must say, I thought I was clear on which side I was on, but I am rethinking every thing now.
Glad to have sparked food for thought.
I’d say gnostic
There is much in this piece, Fr Calvin, with which I wholeheartedly agree.
Where I would differ slightly is on the role of Latin itself. I don't believe the Mass must be in Latin to retain its sacrificial character. The English Missal, for example, or the Liturgy of St Gregory from the American Missal, makes the sacrificial nature of the Eucharist abundantly clear in English. Likewise, I have attended both Book of Common Prayer and even Novus Ordo Masses celebrated ad orientem with genuine reverence and holiness.
Until very recently, I had assumed that the principal deficiency of the Book of Common Prayer and, even more so, the Novus Ordo, lay in the omission of certain sacrificial prayers and a general simplification or lightening of the liturgy.
Over the past week, however, I've been reading material from one of the very men responsible for creating the post-conciliar Mass, and it has fundamentally changed my understanding of what actually happened.
The common claim that the Novus Ordo is simply the traditional Latin Mass translated into the vernacular, with a few simplifications, is not supported by the historical evidence. That isn't merely my opinion; it is contradicted by one of the reformers themselves.
Fr Joseph Gelineau, S.J., was a French Jesuit liturgist, composer, and enthusiastic supporter of the Second Vatican Council and its liturgical reforms. More importantly, he was not a commentator looking on from the outside. He served on Group 10 of the Consilium, the body responsible for revising the Order of Mass, and in 1965 directed the music for a French-language experimental celebration demonstrating what the reformed liturgy would become. In any ordinary sense, he was one of the architects of the new Mass.
That is why his own assessment is so extraordinary.
In Demain la liturgie (The Liturgy Today and Tomorrow), Gelineau urged readers to compare the old Gregorian High Mass with the post-conciliar rite. He noted that the words, melodies, gestures, and liturgical forms had changed.
His conclusion could hardly have been clearer: "The Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists. It has been destroyed."
Elsewhere, he states plainly: "It is a different liturgy of the Mass."
Gelineau's point was that liturgy is not simply a vehicle for conveying theological information. Its prayers, gestures, silences, chants, ceremonial actions, and structure constitute the rite itself. Change those forms comprehensively, and you have changed the rite. That is exactly what he believed had occurred.
The Novus Ordo, therefore, was not created merely by translating the traditional Roman Mass into modern languages and pruning a few ceremonies. Its prayers, rubrics, offertory, lectionary, calendar, ceremonial structure, and many other elements were substantially reconstructed through the work of the Consilium before being promulgated by Paul VI.
Whether one believes that reconstruction was wise or unwise, beneficial or harmful, legitimate or imprudent, is a separate question. What seems much harder to maintain is the claim that the Novus Ordo is simply the traditional Latin Mass in English. One of the men who helped create it explicitly denied that. He did not describe it as a translation. He did not describe it as a simplified version of the existing Roman Rite. He described it as "a different liturgy of the Mass" and wrote that "the Roman Rite as we knew it no longer exists."
Coming from an architect and supporter of the reform rather than a critic, I find that an astonishing admission.
As for the way forward, I don't believe the solution is simply to insist on Latin, valuable though it is, nor do I think it requires High Church English with its "thee's" and "thou's". The Tridentine Mass, or the Mass of the Ages, should be preserved and freely available to every priest as a normal part of the Church's liturgical life. Likewise, the English Missal and the Liturgy of St Gregory should be preserved as magnificent expressions of the Anglican (English) patrimony at its Catholic finest. Alongside these, a translation into clear, modern English that is scrupulously faithful to the Latin of the Tridentine Mass, together with fixed rubrics that neither bishops nor priests are free to alter according to personal preference, would go a long way towards restoring the reverence, doctrinal clarity and sacrificial character that the Roman Rite is meant to express.
It would also go a long way to filling the pews and the seminaries.
Absolutely. It is not the language of the TLM alone, but the theology portrayed by the liturgy as a whole.
The Anglican Missal is fantastic, a direct translation of the TLM into the vernacular. The fullness of the Mass, nothing missing.
The Ordinariate’s Divine Worship Missal is very close, too. 👍
Thank you for a thoughtful and passionate article. I particularly appreciated your emphasis that Christianity is fundamentally a sacrificial faith and that our worship should form us in reverence rather than familiarity. Lex orandi, lex credendi remains as true today as ever.
As an Anglican, I would simply broaden the conversation slightly. The deepest crisis facing the Church is not merely one of liturgical form, but of the loss of the fear of God. Whether in Rome, Canterbury, Constantinople, or the Protestant world, whenever reverence is exchanged for casualness, and worship becomes centered on ourselves rather than on the Holy Trinity, the faith is inevitably diminished.
The remedy is not nostalgia for a particular century, but a renewed encounter with the living Christ. The Church must once again recover the conviction that when we gather for the Holy Eucharist, we stand on holy ground. If our people truly believed that, our posture, our prayers, our preaching, and indeed our lives would all begin to reflect it.
On that central point, I believe Christians of many traditions can say, "Amen."
Thank you for adding a different perspective.