The Need for Anchorage in Troubled Times

 

Reclaiming our Roman Catholic Birthright

The Genius & Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass

by Peter Kwasniewski

Angelico Press, 2020

    My copy of Dr. Kwasniewski's book reached me by mail the other day. From Lincoln, Nebraska to Bern, Switzerland it took over two months (memories of my seminary days in Rome in the 1970's!). That is part of the COVID story as well. All of a sudden the forward march of history/progress no longer seems quite so ineluctable. 

    With the book in my hands finally, the first thing I did was to look at what I had written back then for the cover of the book. I asked myself just what I would change if I were writing my recommendation for the book now these so many months, almost a half year, later. Let me draw out these couple sentences for comment!

    "Overwhelming numbers of practicing Catholics cannot seem to move past the worldly solutions of the last half-century. Dare I say that they cling to the Novus Ordo in desperation, rather than embracing a full project of being the Church, with catechesis and family life, finding in the Vetus Ordo the source and summit of Christian existence? ... May the virtue of hope inspire them to make the leap and the sacrifices involved in what amounts to a true paradigm change!"

    This talk of a "paradigm change" has real urgency for me, as I feel there is nothing too salvific about trying to reassure people with appeals to pursuing a hermeneutic of continuity, whatever that is supposed to entail. In calling for a paradigm change, I am very consciously declaring that the object of the exercise goes far beyond a ritual rerooting. The sad reality of Catholic life/lite in no few places around the globe over this last past half century is the result of a reductio ad absurdum. A once multifaceted Catholic life has been dismissed as unsustainable and the cornerstone of that life, the Holy Sacrifice - Divine Worship, has been reduced to a discursive exercise with nary a hint of the sublime.

    While the situation has been grave and in earnest need of attention, I think I wrote the sentences above, not only not knowing about the consequences of a 21st Century pandemic, but also very much abstracted from the possibility that Corona and COVID lock-down would be more than a bump in the road. Perhaps naively enough back in March or early April, I believed that after a time of deprivation, old rhythms of church practice would pick up where they left off last February. How wrong could I have been! I ask myself whether the measures so tenaciously imposed by civic authorities do not amount to a coup de grâce for the Novus Ordo. 

    My lawyer, a young, regular practicing Swiss Catholic, put it this way: The lock-down deprived us of a sacramental life for longer than we could hold out... I had not thought of it that way. Namely, not only did being cooped up in tiny apartments yield its share of domestic violence, pathological depression, intensified alcohol and drug abuse, suicide attempts and broken families, but the hiatus in Sunday parish life and Mass practice took lots of lay people, who had been faithful, beyond the point of no return. Thanks to the lock-down and the hard-nosed attitude toward church of many civil authorities, Sunday Mass attendance has become discretionary.

    A cousin of mine in the States wrote me telling of an old school mate who had tried to go back to church, but panicked after a couple weeks for the percentage of people in the pews who were not wearing masks and announced he was settling from now on for Sunday TV Mass. I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that the Novus Ordo has been totally relativized by the lock-down and the demands of social distancing; for most ordinary folks the Mass of Paul VI has lost whatever staying power it might have had. The pre-Mass ritual of taking down your contact details and sanitizing your hands in the vestibule has not helped matters either.

    Some people would blame this disaffection, at least in part, on all the live-streaming of Masses on the internet, which took something once done for the edification of elderly shut-ins and as a supplement to Sunday (daily Mass on EWTN) and made it the Sunday experience and in some countries the sole access to church. From family and friends I know of the kind of exchanges which went on among pious folk, recommending to each other their favorite TV or internet Mass experience, whether Word on Fire or somebody's cathedral half way across the continent.

    As far as the Vetus Ordo goes, the TV and live-streaming experience has been rather positive. A young Dominican priest told me the other day, that the size of their tiny traditional Sunday Mass has doubled since their return to public Masses. He attributes it in part to the video offerings of the traditional Mass, which acquainted especially young families with the Mass of all ages. Because of the two-meter-distancing rule, they are presently offering two Sunday Masses. He is hopeful that when restrictions are finally lifted, they will still have a house full in their tiny church. Moreover, news of these increased and constant numbers at Mass has reached the diocesan curia and they are eager to guarantee a sufficient number of priests for this chapel and to guarantee another Vetus Ordo Mass every Sunday in the other major population center of the diocese. Deo gratias!

    I have read any number of glowing reviews of Dr. Kwasniewski's book and I find them all very much to the point. My own hope would be that people will take up his book and read all or part, as their personal interest dictates. We need to read, study and reflect. Because the object of this exercise is not just to encourage choosing a different address for Sunday Mass, but of owning for yourself a new (yes, new) way of articulating your Catholicism, getting your hands on a book or ebook and moving beyond sympathies is a sine qua non. 

    Peter's Conclusion, For a Darkening Church, the Light Is Tradition, might be a good place to start for those of you still new to the business of reading real books (especially of 300+ pages). Some might brand Dr. Kwasniewski as strident or hard-hitting. Don't let those moments put you off but recognize just how upbeat he is in what he has to offer as the "pearl of great price"!

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI