Dear Cardinal Cupich, have mercy on the Latin Mass
A recent Sunday, my family and I attended the final traditional Latin Mass at St. Mary of Perpetual Help in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. Our priest broke the news gently: Cardinal Blase Cupich denied the parish’s request to continue celebrating what is also known as the Tridentine Mass, which has nourished the faithful for five centuries and then some. There’d be no more celebrations of it at St. Mary’s. Nor would there be in most of Chicagoland.
Incense lingered. A somber, obedient silence fell upon the pews. I thanked God for St. Mary’s, her parishioners, our beloved priest. It is a blessing to experience Mass as most saints did — laced with ancient prayers, intoned in strange tongues, set to otherworldly chant, reverent toward Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary made actually present on the altar.
After the organ blew its last chord, we shuffled out into freshly fallen snow, smiling at each other’s babies, planning brunches, wondering what God might throw our way next.
What brought us here involves theological insider-baseball that would make most readers’ eyes roll up into their heads. Here’s the gist: In the 1960s, a church council called Vatican II called for liturgical reforms. Four years
later, Pope Paul VI promulgated a new Mass that removed or amended many prayers, added more scriptural readings, overhauled the liturgical calendar and allowed the use of the local language, among other changes.
Fierce debate continues today over whether it achieved the goal of evangelizing the modern world. Regardless, a minority of Catholics remained devoted to the Latin Mass, and in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI gave all priests permission to celebrate it. Then, last summer, Pope Francis abrogated Benedict’s decision. He gave bishops the power to curtail the old Mass, and he declared the
new one “the unique expression” of the Roman Rite. Most U.S. bishops have continued to permit the Tridentine Mass, but Cupich has taken a harder line, prohibiting it at most churches.
The goal is laudable: unity. The Holy Father and Cupich wish to reestablish throughout the Catholic Church “a single and identical prayer that expresses its unity.” They worry that the remarkable growth of interest in the Latin Mass — especially among the young — represents an affront to Vatican II and Pope Francis. The liturgy has been “weaponized” for political gain, some say, and a new generation of
Catholics clings stubbornly to a “rigid” nostalgia.
The goal is laudable, but I humbly submit that the diagnosis is flawed.
In five years at St. Mary’s, and in many conversations with traditional Catholics, I have never encountered someone who rejects Vatican II, or says the new Mass is invalid, or otherwise wishes to sow disunity. Can one find this talk on Twitter? Of course, but Lord knows that the internet elevates the loudest, coarsest voices over the average person’s quiet nuance. My concern with Cupich’s policy is that it punishes the sane majority of traditional Catholics for a minority who howl on the internet. My concern is that it mistakes an unreal commentariat for real, orthodox Catholics.
I am not aware of Cupich ever visiting my parish. I pray he does. I pray that, in the spirit of dialogue, he meets my wife, my children, my fellow parishioners and me. At the minimum, I would appreciate hearing directly from my episcopal shepherd how depriving us of our grandparents’ Mass nurtures his already COVID-19-weary flock. I don’t think he would find Catholics who, as the pope wrote, “encourage disagreements that injure the Church.”
I don’t think he would consider St. Mary’s a rebellion against Vatican II, but instead a fulfillment of its desire to preserve Latin, give Gregorian chant pride of place, foster a new zeal for the Mass, and enable active internal and external participation among the faithful. I hope he would conclude that our aim is to worship God as our ancestors did and to pass on intact these wellworn rites to our children. May they nourish our descendants long after we give up the ghost.
I submit to my bishop’s authority. I remain obedient to him. But I, like all Catholics, follow a conscience formed by two millenniums of church teaching. Sometimes, it leads me to respectfully disagree with my earthly superiors. The pope can and does speak infallibly, but only rarely and narrowly. The rest of the time, he, like all humans, is vulnerable to error. History abundantly demonstrates this regrettable fact. Thankfully, it also provides us with tradition and precedents to anchor St. Peter’s barque against stormy waters.
With all due respect toward Cupich, I humbly request that his eminence reconsider his policy on the Latin Mass in dialogue with the parishioners who attend it.