Late night thoughts on the Latin Mass while listening to Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony and sipping burgundy

It’s 10:45 pm on June 17, 2007. I’ll explain the headline at the end.

In March 2006 in the Orange Punch blog, I joined my colleague Steven Greenhut in publicizing the kneeling controversy at St. Mary’s by the Sea church. After the administrator, Fr. Martin Tran, said kneeling after the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) in the Mass was a mortal sin, I blogged that the Vatican and canon lawyers said that was incorrect. Greenhut blogged:

At the last minute, the Diocese literally dumped the brochures that would have invited 55 traditionalists at St. Mary’s of the Sea to leave the church and the diocese for daring to kneel before communion.

These blogs went “viral” — every blogger’s dream of infecting blogs across the globe. For some reason, the Register management ordered me to cease and desist writing about this topic, despite those blogs going “viral.” That’s not a problem here because it’s my own blog.

One viral blog item is here, mentioning both Steve and me. First Things magazine wrote about it.

Part of the controversy stemmed from the retirement by Bishop Tod Brown of the Tridentine Latin Mass at St. Mary’s when its pastor, Fr. Daniel Johnson, retired in 2004. First Things noted:

Nearly all the three hundred parishioners who regularly attended that Mass, one fifth of the parish, promptly left—many of them badly catechized enough to head off to Our Lady Help of Christians in Grove City, a strange little schismatic chapel whose only attraction appears to be its Tridentine rite.

By contrast, as I noted in a blog last year, the kneeling controversy punished the ones who stayed at St. Mary’s and remained united to Bishop Brown and the Pope. (Johnson died earlier this year. His funeral was a Tridentine Mass said by Bishop Brown.)

(As for me, despite my disagreements with Bishop Brown, I would never attend Mass at a church not under his and the Pope’s jurisdiction, except as a journalistic observer. To borrow a phrase from the gun rights movement, you’ll get me out of a church tied to the Pope when you pry my cold, dead knees from the kneelers.)

Anyway, eventually, the L.A. Times wrote about the kneeling controversy, although neglecting to mention our blogs. After that, in 2006 Bishop Brown gave in on the kneeling issue.

On June 17, just last month, Pope Benedict XVI issued a Motu proprio, or decree, allowing any priest to say the Tridentine Mass. It’s a good question how it will be implemented across the world. Frank Mickadeit has an excellent column today on the matter, and promises more tomorrow, June 18.

My sources tell me that one of the first places the Tridentine Latin Mass will be said again will be none other than at St. Mary’s by the Sea. They sent me a copy of the Sunday Bulletin, posted by me here, which includes this message from Fr. Tran:

Therefore, as your Administrator/Pastor, I wholeheartedly “accede”: We will have the Tridentine Mass officially started on September 16 at 12:00 Noon Mass (with the readings in English, following the current Lectionary)…. This is a great opportunity for all of us to be united and to move forward together in love, respect, humility, harmony and collaboration, letting go of all divisions and discord. May God bless all of you!

Sincerely,

Your servant/brother in Christ,
Fr. Martin

I hear Fr. Tran has been practicing diligently to say the Tridentine Mass properly. Good for him.

No doubt some Tridentine Mass purists will gripe that Fr. Tran will be using the readings from the modern lectionary, instead of the traditional readings, which are different. They have a point. But I’m the last one to look a gift Tridentine Mass in the mouth.

After 40 years of prayer and suffering, the Tridentine Mass is back, just when its exaltation of the sacred is needed most.

Special thanks is owed to all the St. Mary’s folks to stood by, protested, cajoled, prayed, suffered, and prevailed.

They’re like the Persistent Widow of Jesus’ parable in Luke 18: “And will not God revenge his elect who cry to him day and night: and will he have patience in their regard? I say to you, that he will quickly revenge them. But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?”

As to my title of this blog, it refers to the musings of Lewis Thomas in “Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Symphony.” For some reason as I began writing I wanted to listen to some Bruckner, the holiest of symphonists, who dedicated all his works to God. Claudio Abbado’s rendition of the Fourth Symphony, the “Romantische,” was sitting atop some CDs, so I slipped it in the player.

I didn’t much like all that Bruckner heavy romanticism when I was younger, but he grows on you. (Mahler’s another favorite, although in his case since I was young, around 1972, when I was 17.)

Bruckner also wrote beautiful Masses, one of which was integrated into a Mass I attended at the beautiful Alte Kirche in Garmisch, West Germany, back in 1979 when I was in the U.S. Army at the height of the Cold War. That was a sublime experience. My, what our civilization created when inspired by the Tridentine Mass! — and will again.

The great composers all wrote Masses for the Tridentine rite: Ludwig’s Missa Solemnis, Papa Haydn’s Missa in Tempore Belli (essential in our own time of war), Wolfgang’s Requiem, and Giovanni (that’s John, like me) Pierluigi Palestrina’s divine Missa Papa Marcelli being a few.

Even Bach, a Lutheran, wrote his sublime Mass in B Minor, maybe the greatest of all, although my favorite is Palestrina. By contrast, nobody has written decent music for the 1969 rite, said almost always in the vernacular. That should tell you something right there.

Beethoven, Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Hayden and dozens of other greats — vs. bad imitations of the Byrds. Need I say which will prevail in the long run?

And sipping Burgundy added to the celebratory mood.