By Fr Paul Chandler
JULY 7 was the seventh anniversary of Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio that allowed a wider use of what is now called the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.
Sometimes it is called the Traditional Mass or Latin Mass. It was the Mass of the Church for many centuries.
Over the past three years, like a number of Catholic priests throughout the world, I have come to celebrate both forms of the Mass.
My coming to know and love the Extraordinary Form has been an interesting, and indeed a surprising journey.
I have moved from ignorance to devotion; from suspicion to openness, and also towards a genuine historical perspective on the Mass.
I speak for no one else but myself and from my own experience, but it is that experience I wish to share.
I grew up in the years following the Second Vatican Council. I have some memories of the Latin Mass but those are fleeting and fragmented memories.
Most of my childhood and teenage years were with the New Mass.
Like all the faithful at that time, we took the changes in obedience and trusting in the Pope and the Bishops. Since I had known nothing else, I didn’t have the same difficulties that I remember my parents and grandparents having with the new form of the Mass.
During my years as a teacher I enthusiastically attended, prepared children to celebrate, and undertook liturgical ministries at the Novus Ordo.
It was no different when I went to the seminary, where there was little mention of the Traditional Mass, except to mention what used to be and what was changed.
It was travel to Europe and the USA that first began to open my eyes and heart to another narrative about the Mass.
I began to encounter the Mass celebrated ad orientem, that is, with the priest not facing the people, which I wrongly thought had been banned.
In some older churches in Europe, there was only the possibility of celebrating this way because forward altars had never been installed.
When I first celebrated a Mass this way at the tomb of St James in Santiago de Compostella, I remember being so deeply moved and feeling I was standing with my pilgrim group and, as a priest, that gave me great consolation. I was literally leading them, as faced the same direction.
Pope Benedict XVI’s motu proprio of 2007 came with all these other experiences and I remember thinking two things.
How could I possibly do this as I have never had any training to celebrate Mass that way?
And, as well, where were the books and vestments to do it?
Also, I realised that if I was to think along with the Holy Father and the Church I needed to find out more. Which is what I did.
After some time, I sought out priests who could remember or who had been trained to celebrate the Latin Mass.
I wanted to learn it so that I could experience for myself what the generations before me had known and had loved.
This made me a little uncomfortable because the thought was still within me that this form of the Mass had been removed because what took its place was thought to be better.
This period of learning took some years and perseverance. It involved celebrating the Extraordinary Form privately for a long time before plucking up courage to have others present.
It is more complicated, but my experience is that this adds to its beauty.
Now, with the support of a growing group of lay people who have a preference for the Latin Mass, I celebrate both forms of the Mass and I have come to appreciate both forms.
I can see now that Pope Benedict’s action in 2007 was reading the signs of the times in and for the Church.
The Church now is in its own particular era of history.
My experience is not that the Extraordinary Form takes the Church backwards and neither does it push aside the Ordinary Form.
What is amazing is that the young adults want to know about their heritage and seem inexplicably drawn to the Latin Mass.
From my observations, it seems this cannot be nostalgia for times past. They did not know the past.
This is their discovering a Church and a Faith that stands solidly different from the relative and secular culture they grew up in and live in.
For them, the Extraordinary Form is truly other-worldly because it is like nothing else they have experienced. It has a transcendence that leads the mind and soul to God.
I am sometimes asked if I have a preference between the two forms of the Mass. I don’t because they are both the same Mass.
I love the simplicity and adaptability of the Novus Ordo, as given to us by Pope Paul VI and renewed by the Roman Missal in English of 2011.
Equally, I love the transcendence and beauty of the Traditional Mass, as given to us by St John XXIII in 1962.
Some ask whether the two forms will become one. I can’t answer that and it’s not my place to offer an opinion.
Pope Benedict XVI asked for a mutual enrichment between the two forms of the Mass and also stated that the two Missals, and thus the two forms of the Mass, are not contradictory. He also asked that there be a sense of continuity with the past.
We are a Church both of tradition and of reform.
It is ultimately Christ’s own Church and He will guide it.
Fr Paul Chandler is priest-in-residence at Annerley-Ekibin Parish.
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