COMMENT
Listen to the sheep, not just the shepherds Joseph Shaw discusses the FIUV World-Wide Report on the Traditional Mass
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usual events by the Covid-19 epidemic coordinating a systematic survey of the Federation’s members and other contacts. The result was a 577-page report covering 368 dioceses in 56 countries. It is more a work of reference than a bed-side book: the idea is that in as many cases as possible officials will be able to supplement what they have read about a country or diocese from bishops’ reports, with the relevant section from the FIUV report. What did it say? I have included a lot of material about the report in Gregorius Magnus 10, the latest edition of the FIUV’s in-house magazine, and I recommend interested readers to download the pdf, which is free: you’ll find in on the FIUV website, www.fiuv. org/. It can also be downloaded on the ISSU website and mobile-device app (Mass of Ages is there too), and it is free in either format. Rather than repeat that material here, I shall approach the matter in a slightly different way. The reports from around the world give us glimpses of
what things are like at different stages of the development of the provision of the Traditional Mass: many are stages we have lived through in England. In some countries, Summorum Pontificum has simply not landed yet. This is the case where the clergy are not well-enough informed, and the laity are not well-enough organised to press the issue. In many dioceses, and even whole countries, of Africa and Asia, there are simply no public celebrations of the EF. In many others it is sustained in a very fragile manner by one or two priests who, because of their age or attachment to an international order, know how to do it. The second stage is where it is accepted, though it may have only a tenuous grip, or the authorities may exhibit a degree of reluctance. In one diocese in the USA, I was told: ‘Each and every time a new bishop is installed, we must educate him as to our rights. Each and every time, the vicar general of the diocese has smeared the two TLM groups with the desired effect.
© Joseph Shaw
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ack in 1980, the Australian Cardinal, James Knox, was given the task of assessing the demand for the Traditional Mass around the world. He set about asking bishops for this information, but warned them not to ‘disturb people with questions’: in other words, he didn’t actually want them to find out the information he was supposedly gathering. Quite what he came up with in the end I do not know, but the Foederatio Internationalis Una Voce (FIUV), under the legendary President, Eric de Sanvanthem, set to work to make sure that the Holy See was as well informed as possible. A professional polling firm was engaged in Germany to ask Catholics if they would like to attend the Latin Mass, and in England the Latin Mass Society put adverts in newspapers asking people to write in if they wanted it. With these and other materials in hand, the Federation was able to make the case for the persistence of demand for the ancient Mass. Eventually, the Holy See responded to this demand, with the first world-wide permission for the Extraordinary Form, the 1984 Indult, Quattuor Abhinc Annos. In April this year it again came to the Federation’s attention that the Holy See was seeking information and views from bishops around the world on the Extraordinary Form. After thirteen years of Summorum Pontificum, it is natural to ask how things have been going. Once again, the Federation has sprung into action to ensure it will not only be the voice of the bishops which is heard in Rome. If you want to know the answer to the question, ‘does it [the EF in your diocese] respond to a true pastoral need?’, then it might seem helpful to know what the sheep think, and not just the opinion of the shepherds. As Secretary of the FIUV, it fell to me to devote a summer stripped of its
WINTER 2020
