Tradition

Tired of the happy-clappy modernism taking root in churches? You do have a choice. Find a path to truth through the rites of the past, says Rod Dreher. I'll give Rod Dreher the benefit of the doubt and assume his condescending sub-headline on the DMN column was written by an editor trying to be clever. But the rest of the column is no different. It contains enough put-downs of anyone who doesn't share Mr Dreher's desperate need to find a patriarchal society to subserve himself to that the unknown headline writer may deserve more credit than not. For Mr Dreher, the ability to achieve holiness and understand truth depends on what language you pray in it's better if you don't speak the languge, and a dead language like Latin is best of all. He says "how breathtaking and exalting the Mass can be when said reverently, using the ancient liturgical language of the church." Whether you understand a word of it or not is apparently unimportant. Maybe the Mass is like a symphony, where the words don't matter. Mr Dreher recommends embracing a more traditional form of Christianity for the "binding" it gives to the generations of Christians who came before. Like a monk in a monastery, Mr Dreher derives great satisfaction in copying and preserving ancient manuscripts, letter by letter, whether he understands the language or not. I'm reminded of a story a Western traveler in the land of Islam tells about a discussion he had with a Muslim about a finer point of Islam. The Muslim said he was an expert in Islam because he had memorized the entire text of the Quran. But he couldn't cite the chapter and verse that would answer the question at hand because he didn't speak Arabic, the language of the Quran. Also important to Mr Dreher is "the freedom that comes from not having to reinvent the faith every time the cultural Zeitgeist shifts." Yes, it is so much easier to mindlessly adhere to biblical accounts of history and science and morals no matter what discoveries and advances in science and philosophy and archaeology are made in the meantime. Mr Dreher claims that "if it is to have any weight, tradition must be viewed as the most trustworthy conveyor of religious truth." Instead, it's a lazy, defeatist way of dealing with the complexity of life. Mr Dreher quotes (approvingly, it seems) a New Testament professor, who admits the awful truth, that students considering converting to Orthodoxy "want existential relief from having to decide what to believe among these thousands of denominations with their truth claims." In other words, if it's too hard to reason it out, just accept tradition as truth. Whew, that was easy. Mr Dreher and those like him repeatedly grow dissatisfied with whatever church they find themselves in, endlessly seeking something new. This time, what's old is new. Orthodoxy is the new fashion. For people like Mr Dreher, religion is like a scented candle: The purpose of its light is to provide a comforting psychological ambience. No, wait. That's supposedly the failing of those churches Mr Dreher is dissatisfied with ... today.

I deleted Jaybird, the second commenter, because I was reminded of why he got booted in the first place: he's not here to be constructive in his criticism, but merely to be nasty. He admits as much in an earlier post on another thread.

I can understand why two homosexuals might choose a maison de vieux gar ons as a way of life. What it don't get is why they both boast of this way of life and claim priesthood in a church whose revelation and traditions condemn it as profoundly sinful. There has always been and always will be hypocrisy and sin in the church, including sexual sin, but this one is bizarre. Doesn't one of the 39 Articles condemn "chutzpah"?

My one complaint with Rod's column is that it conflates the very thing that most Catholics are arguing about. I'm all for Latin Masses. The Novus Ordo Mass is said in Latin, after all, and not just by Fr. Paul Weinberger. The battle regarding the Tridentine Mass cuts deeper than the question of language, and has to do in some cases with the complete rejection of the Second Vatican Council, its documents and decisions, and in the extreme case of the sedevacantists, the rejection of the popes who have occupied the chair of Peter since Vatican II's completion (and in some cases, stretching back even further than that.) There are some Catholic scholars in complete union with Rome who nonetheless opine that the Novus Ordo Missae itself is deficient, that it does not express the purity of worship to be found in the Tridentine. Others disagree, and point out that it's pretty serious to indite a Mass approved by a Pope and a Council with the charge of deficiency of worship. These are grave and important questions; many of the tensions felt in the Church today are repercussions of this debate, and I believe that for real harmony to be restored they must be resolved. To reduce the substance of this debate to a quibble over language is to reduce it to gibberish. If those who yearn for the return of the Tridentine Mass could be pacified merely by a widespread and generous celebration of the Novus Ordo Missae in Latin, this would have been done long ago. The fact is, some who only worship at approved Tridentine Masses will refuse to receive the Blessed Sacrament if It has been confected at a Novus Ordo Mass, because they believe the Sacrament to be invalidly consecrated and possibly even (objectively) sacrilegious. Such deep (even if, I believe, wrong) concerns have little to do with language, and everything to do with the liturgy itself. Into a situation fraught with so much tension Pope Benedict XVI will issue his Motu Proprio. Will it have the effect of diffusing the potential schism of those who believe that the Tridentine Mass is infinitely superior to the Novus Ordo? Will it create and foster greater unity among Catholics? Or will it further fragment those Catholics who have already begun to pull apart from the Church?
I have no doubt that the Holy Spirit is guiding Pope Benedict XVI, and I do think the Motu Proprio has the potential to be a very good thing for the Church. I also think that the internal divisions among Catholics are about far more than Latin, and speak to the very question of what it means to be a Christian, and to offer worship pleasing to God as a community of the faithful.

I do realize that the depth of the issue re: Catholics and Tradition is beyond the scope of a column, Rod; however, it concerns me when someone refers to the Traditional or Tridentine Mass as the "Latin Mass" with no qualifiers. The N.O. Mass may be said in Latin, after all; and as for tradition, I believe that the liturgy in Syriac which my Chaldean Catholic sister-in-law attended for much of her life may be one of the earliest forms of the liturgy in the Catholic Church. Even in the Tridentine Mass the Kyrie is retained in Greek, as you know.
In other words, it's simply not true that for Catholics Latin = Tradition. A yearning for tradition may involve a desire to return to the rich heritage of the Church's liturgical past, which may include Latin, but a decree issued tomorrow which mandated the use of Latin as the language of the liturgy would not in and of itself guarantee a return to tradition.

Ah, I see where you were going, Erin. You know, I went back in the final edit of the piece and took out "Tridentine," replacing it with "Latin mass," on the advice of a knowledgeable orthodox Catholic friend I'd asked to review the article, who explained why using the term "Tridentine" in this context was more confusing than simply saying "the Latin mass" or "the traditional mass."

All this quibbling over types of masses, vatican councils, yada yada, is one of the things that turns me off to Catholicism. Is this really relevant to our salvation? No. But people sure love to shout and argue like it is.

Oh, I understand that it's important. But so many people argue and get upset about it like it's essential. I completely understand wanting to worship in different ways, but even some of the doctrinal issues are inconsequential. I think John 3:16 makes it all pretty clear about what is really important.

The problem (which, having no controlling theological authority, haunts Protestantism even more than Catholicism) is that one man's adiaphora is another man's dianpheronta (apologies if I've misspelled those) -- that is, one person regards one thing as essential, while another considers it inessential.

Irenaeus, I agree with your point, in principle. But judging by this thread and many others there doesn't seem to be all that much control at times!

David, that's fascinating! I've honestly never heard that before--thanks for the correction!