Latin mass as stumbling block?

Lawrence Downes is a Catholic of my generation who was raised without the Tridentine mass. Now that Pope Benedict has liberalized its use, Downes took the trouble to go to a Trid mass, and wrote about it for the New York Times. His experience was a lot like mine on the occasions I worshiped at a Trid mass: he couldn't understand the appeal, inasmuch as you couldn't hear anything (indeed, it was for me like I imagine a Quaker meeting must be). I, however, welcome the Trid mass being made more available, in part because the people I know who respond to it are among the most faithful Catholics I know. Downes recognizes its strengths, it seems, especially compared to the lackluster new mass. But his conclusion is downbeat:

It’s easy enough to see where this is going: same God, same church, but separate camps, each with an affinity for vernacular or Latin, John XXIII or Benedict XVI. Smart, devout, ambitious Catholics — ecclesial young Republicans, home-schoolers, seminarians and other shock troops of the faith — will have their Mass. The rest of us — a lumpy assortment of cafeteria Catholics, guilty parents, peace-’n’-justice lefties, stubborn Vatican II die-hards — will have ours. We’ll have to prod our snoozing pewmates when to sit and stand; they’ll have to rein in their zealots.

And we probably won’t see one another on Sunday mornings, if ever.

Andrew Sullivan tends to agree, adding:

One of the consequences of the collapse in the moral authority of the Catholic hierarchy, in the wake of Humanae Vitae and then the child and teen abuse revelations, is the inability to hold the Catholicity of the church together. The hierarchy does not command all of us any more.

He ends by speculating that the Latin mass revival is part of a deliberate campaign to drive progressives from the Church.

Unsurprisingly, I disagree. I don't understand how it is that the Latin mass can be something that nobody but the tiniest sliver of Catholics want, but it can also be a nuclear bomb that obliterates the Catholic Church. Benedict is making a slight accomodation to help a certain number of Catholics who have endured a lot of very, very difficult times, and who are in many cases making extraordinary sacrifices to keep the faith. I don't understand why making the Tridentine mass more widely available should be interpreted as a move designed to force non-traditionalists out of the Church. If the Pope were withdrawing the Paul VI mass and replacing it with the old mass, they'd have a point. But he's not; he's only offering more choices to the faithful, within the Church's continuing tradition. And that's wrong ... why?

Downes' point about the pope's latest move exacerbating the factionalizing of contemporary Catholicism is more on point, but it says more about Downes' lack of paying attention these past decades than it does about the pope. Many engaged Catholics of the left and the right already parish-shop. Everybody knows which parishes in a given diocese have the reputation for being orthodox, and which have the reputation for being progressive. It shouldn't be that way, I recognize, but that's how it's shaken out since the Council. The divisions Downes sees coming have been with us for some time now. True, most Catholics continue on at their parish, and probably don't get involved with the faith at the level of caring overmuch whether the pastor is orthodox or progressive. But is that a good thing? In most of the parishes I was involved in as a Catholic, peace was kept because the priests/deacons avoided talking about controversial aspects of Catholic teaching. Even Downes recognizes that traddies have a point:

They’re right that Mass can be listless, with little solemnity and multiple sources of irritation: parents sedating children with Cheerios; priests preaching refrigerator-magnet truisms; amateur guitar strumming that was lame in 1973; teenagers slumping back after communion, hands in pockets, as if wishing they had been given gum instead.

Does Downes prefer the dispiriting mediocrity of the "refrigerator-magnet truisms" and the like? Because if he wants a Catholicism that has meat on its bones at the parish level, he's going to have to reconcile himself to the fact that some people are going to be offended, and the congregation is going to therefore be divided. But others are going to rise to the challenge of living out the Church's teachings -- even the difficult ones -- and becoming saints. Not conservative saints, not liberal saints, but saints.

Andrew and I disagree on most things religious, but he is right that the moral authority of the Catholic bishops over their flocks has dissipated. I think it's impossible to argue credibly that the sex scandals didn't have their effect. But I think it's probably the case that clones of the Cure d'Ars could have held every American bishopric since the close of the Second Vatican Council, and the situation regarding episcopal authority wouldn't be much better. We are in a time of radical chaos in the West, a time in which the notion of authority itself is deeply suspect. It seems to me the better strategy for Pope Benedict to shore up those who are still willing to recognize the Catholic Church's teaching authority, and build on that (even though it means a smaller church), rather than waste precious time and effort on trying to please everybody, especially Catholics who are going to do what they want to do anyway, no matter what the local bishop, or the Bishop of Rome, says.