Grace builds upon Nature

Be the change you want to see, says Joseph Shaw

Elsewhere in this issue of Mass of Ages I review two books by Professor Stephen Bullivant, ( See page 44. Ed ) which together present a sociological analysis of the current crisis of the Church. Sociology is only one aspect of the situation, but all the same I encourage readers to think about what he has discovered. The key message is that, to survive and flourish, the Catholic Church must again, as it once did, constitute a real community, capable of generating a sense of belonging.

The notion of ‘community’ has been much used by progressives in the Church, so it is a supreme irony that Bullivant’s analysis suggests that it is the changes they have championed which have undermined the Church precisely as a community. A real community is based on shared values, and picked out by markers of identity. It is made up of people who feel they have more than the usual obligations to each other, and with whom they spend more of their time than with others. Values, markers, preferential treatment: all these things were under pressure from post-war mobility, mass consumerism, and the call of the telly, but all have come under extra pressure, for ideological reasons, from Catholic progressives.

They didn’t like the lay sodalities and choirs which were such a feature of parish life up to the 1960s, because they were doing the wrong things: promoting traditional devotions, singing traditional sacred music, undertaking traditional evangelisation, or taking altar serving seriously.

They didn’t like the things which linked one generation to the next, like ex votos and devotional images paid for by pious families, because they were about the intercessions of the saints and prayers for the dead. They didn’t want Catholics to pray using the same words as their grandparents, to honour the same saints, or receive the same blessings from their priests, because they didn’t like those prayers, didn’t like those old saints, and thought blessings were superstitious.

They didn’t like markers of identity like eating fish on Fridays, mantillas on the ladies at Mass, processions and pilgrimages, or the distinctiveness of the Catholic Mass compared with Protestant services, again, for ideological reasons. And for the same reasons they worked to undermine the bonds of shared values and shared cultural references which arise from a thorough and orthodox Catholic education.

Progressives today are sometimes saddened that Catholic parishes, stripped of all shared values, markers of identity, and obligations to each other, have failed to generate a warm and wonderful sense of community. But it is hardly surprising.

We must thank the science of sociology for pointing out the obvious: that for the Church to survive, as a human community, there has to be some content to Catholicism. There must be something distinctive which is taught to Catholic children, something distinctive which Catholics do, and how we relate to each other. And within the Church as a whole, there must be sub-communities, like the lay sodalities of old, taking their tasks seriously, and at the same time supporting their members in their earthly pilgrimage.

In this the Latin Mass Society can be an example to others. Our shared task, to promote the ancient Mass, gives us shared values, bonds with each other and with our predecessors, and a marker of identity. This has also always given the Society a social value. I encourage our readers: do not sit on the sidelines. Come to events, meet like-minded Catholics, establish those social bonds which reflect and reinforce the spiritual bonds of our shared endeavour. The St Catherine’s Trust Summer School for children, our series of talks in London, pilgrimages for all ages, a servers’ sodality, groups for singers, a guild for those who want to restore all things in Christ one embroidery at a time: we are doing much, and with your help we can do more. The Church is not invisible: it is a community of human beings, and grace builds upon nature. To appropriate another slogan of the progressives: be the change you want to see in the world.

John Henry Newman

The copy deadline for this edition of Mass of Ages approximates to the date of the canonisation of John Henry Newman: convert, theologian, Oratorian, Cardinal, ferocious opponent of theological liberalism, and a mighty apologist for the Traditional Latin Mass.

Many readers will be familiar with the wonderful passage in his Apologia, which begins: ‘to me nothing is so consoling, so piercing, so thrilling, so overcoming, as the Mass, as it is said among us. I could attend Masses forever and not be tired.’ Newman had much more to say on this theme, and I am delighted that Peter Kwasniewski has put together a selection of this material in a short book: Newman on Worship, Reverence, and Ritual: A Selection of Texts. Available from the LMS shop, it will make an excellent Christmas present.

‘Come to events, meet like-minded Catholics, establish those social bonds which reflect and reinforce the spiritual bonds of our shared endeavour.’