Seven years ago this month, Pope Benedict issued the document Summorum Pontificum, clarifying the legitimacy of the old Latin Mass and giving support to those who remained attached to older rite. Michael Brendan Daugherty praises him as a “brave pope” for doing so, a man who did a “great service for culture and the arts, for the whole world — even for nonbelievers”:
Why does it matter to nonbelievers? Because beauty matters to everyone. In 1971, Agatha Christie, not a Catholic, was so appalled at the disappearance of the traditional Mass and the effect this would have on English culture that she signed a petition to Pope Paul VI to keep it alive in England. It read, in part:
The rite in question, in its magnificent Latin text, has also inspired a host of priceless achievements in the arts — not only mystical works, but works by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians. [Traditio]
Because of Benedict’s intervention, my own parish in Norwalk, Conn., is treated not only to Gregorian chant, but to Renaissance-era motets, and Masses composed by Morales and Monteverdi. It is an aesthetic high crime that so much of the modern church continues to force saccharine and theologically insipid hymns like “Here I am, Lord” on its people, while leaving William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus in a dusty attic.
Also remarking on the anniversary of the Summorum Pontificum, Nicholas Frankovich offers an analogy for understanding what draws traditionalist Catholics to the Latin Mass:
Catholicism lacks as yet a taxonomy that would do justice to the sensibility of the Catholic whose receptors for tradition are especially keen. Contemporary Judaism, with its three main branches—Orthodox (thesis), Reform (antithesis), and Conservative (synthesis)—offers a reasonable model, although, as with any analogy, it will break down if pressed too hard. It will serve its purpose if handled gingerly.
Fifty years ago, in the eyes of many of their Conservative and Reform coreligionists, Orthodox Jews were dinosaurs, eccentric holdouts incapable of adapting to modernity; today, in New York City, the percentage of Jewish children who are Orthodox has been estimated at about 60 percent. When I consider the large young families filling out the pews at traditional Latin Masses I have attended in recent years, and when I read reports of newly ordained priests electing to say their first Masses according to the old missal, I wonder whether the Catholic Church in America may be on the same course but lagging by a few generations.
Update from a reader:
You picked the wrong hymn with which to condemn more modern worship. “Here I Am Lord” is theologically demanding, and – at least sung as I’ve heard it by a thousand hearty Methodists at our annual conference – far from saccharine. (The YouTube version you linked to is ethereal in the worst sense – here’s a much better one.) Catholics, in a poll, picked it as their favorite hymn; Methodists placed it second behind “Amazing Grace.” What’s funny about Michael Brendan Daugherty picking on it is that there are indeed a lot of vapid modern hymns; he managed to pick the meatiest and most musically powerful one to ridicule. Lovers of the Latin Mass can sometimes come off as whiny about other possibilities. Subolesco!
(Video: performance of Ave Verum Corpus by William Byrd)
The Dish 