No Mercy for Latin Mass Lovers?

By Msgr. Charles Fink Let me be perfectly clear, as the politicians like to say: I have no vested interest in promoting the traditional Latin Mass. In fact, I was brought up Episcopalian and so, if overcome by a fit of nostalgia, I would pine for the King James Version of the Bible and liturgy modeled on the unsurpassably elegant English of the old Book of Common Prayer. Moreover, I entered the Catholic Church after the close of the Second Vatican Council and didn't experience a Tridentine Mass until I was thirty or so years into my priesthood, serving as Director of Spiritual Formation in a seminary. That Mass was offered once a semester, as I recall, so that the seminarians would be familiar with it. I can't say how many were transported by the experience. I wasn't. I sometimes joke that the Holy Spirit's primary motive in permitting the almost complete abandonment of Latin liturgy in favor of the vernacular was to make possible my ordination, for I have grave doubts that I could ever have mastered Latin. And even now, if suddenly Latin Masses were restored and mandated, I would probably have to slip into invisibility and seek permission to offer private Masses in English. I am certainly, then, no strident advocate or promoter of the traditional Latin Mass and even more certainly no questioner of the validity or efficacy of the Mass I've been celebrating daily for nearly fifty years. That said, I can affirm without hesitation that some of the finest, most dedicated, most pastoral, most faithful priests I have known over the course of these many decades, priests of all ages, have loved the traditional Latin Mass and have wished, and continue to wish, that it were made available to the faithful whose experience of it has been very different from my own. Many of these faithful are young, and among them quite a few feel the tug of a religious vocation. Some few of these may be extreme in their criticism of the Novus Ordo and in their desire, should they be ordained, to serve only those whose liturgical vision coincides with theirs. But they are the exception, not the rule. So I ask myself, how is that in a Church of multiple approved liturgical rites and many cultural adaptations of liturgical practice, a Church that is willing to reach out without reserve to Communist China (which brutally persecutes religious minorities), and to the LGBTQ community, which recently showed its utter disdain for all things Catholic by turning a funeral liturgy at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City into a circus, the Vatican cannot find it in its compassionate and accompanying heart to allow Catholics who love the traditional Latin Mass, which existed for centuries, to worship in the way they wish, with the Church's blessing. Doing so might even contribute to easing the strain of having to celebrate Masses in dozens of languages on any given Sunday in the same diocese. Years ago, an elderly woman in a parish where I was the pastor approached me with tears in her eyes. I hadn't seen her in quite a while, and she wanted to explain. She loved our parish, she said, but especially after the death of her husband, she was emotionally drained, grieving, and trying to feel as at home with the Novus Ordo as she had with the Tridentine Mass. And so she had found a parish where she did feel at home and comforted. She continued to support our parish, but on Sundays would go off to another church, one I'm pretty sure was not at the time approved by Rome. What does the Vatican have to say to such a person, "Let her eat cake"? Granted, she was elderly and emotionally attached to something she had actually known and loved most of her life. Granted, this is not the case with most of those currently enamored of the traditional Latin Mass. Nevertheless, many of these Catholics are experiencing God, His grace, and His transcendent love at this Mass in a way they do not at the Novus Ordo (in the way, I repeat, that I do). Why impugn their motives? Why mock the...