Listen to the sheep, not just the shepherds Joseph Shaw discusses the FIUV World-Wide Report on the Traditional Mass

Listen to the sheep, not just the shepherds

Joseph Shaw discusses the FIUV World-Wide Report on the Traditional Mass

Back 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 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 ofAges 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. The bishop comes in and soon wants to shut down the TLM. Fortunately, our priest is also a canon lawyer and has instructed them that it cannot be legally done.’

Keen to learn: The training of Altar servers in St James’, Spanish Place, in London, in March 2020. Training was organised by the Society of St Tarcisius, a sodality of Altar Servers affiliated with the Latin Mass Society.

Episcopal hostility, or more often mere indifference, often blights the growth of stable communities attached to the EF, as priests who have initiated regular celebrations are rotated around their dioceses. This is a perennial problem when the EF is celebrated by diocesan clergy, and will continue to be a problem until the number of such clergy able to celebrate it rises to a sufficiently high proportion of the total.

Even when this happens, pressures of parish life can make it difficult for the EF to have the space it needs to flourish. In one diocese, again in the USA, 10 per cent of the diocesan clergy are able to celebrate the EF, but the priestly institutions are not present in the diocese, and there is only one official EF Chaplaincy. The result is that despite the favour shown to the EF, many of these priests only celebrate it publicly a few times a year, and most Sunday EF Masses are celebrated in the graveyard, afternoon slot.

The final stage, therefore, is where stability is achieved, when churches, parishes, or individual priests are given a special commission for the EF, whether exclusively or alongside the Ordinary Form. This might be formalised as a personal parish or chaplaincy, an apostolate of one of the traditional priestly institutes, or it may naturally result from an Oratory or religious community where the EF has become established. At this point it becomes practical for people to take the existence of the EF in a particular location into consideration when moving house, something we have seen in this country to some extent, and the community can really put down roots. Those large families famously associated with the Traditional Mass start supplying altar servers, and then vocations and new families.

One can expect to wait at least thirty years between creating an environment attractive to young couples, and the children of those couples themselves becoming priests or parents. One can, however, see much faster results from the EF because it attracts people at all stages of life. Families adopt it with children at various ages, and above all, ‘young persons’, as Pope Benedict wrote, ‘have discovered this liturgical form, felt its attraction and found in it a form of encounter with the Mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist, particularly suited to them’.

It is clear from the report, what I have also seen first-hand, that many young people find their way to the Traditional Mass as part of a process of coming to take the Faith more seriously, perhaps after a period of lapsation, and during their discernment of their future state of life. Sometimes they have discovered it online despite living in places where it is completely unavailable, and young people are often at the forefront of requesting and organising the EF.

The result is that, surprising as it may seem, EF congregations can start producing vocations and new families even before there is a stably organised EF celebration. Is this the Traditional Mass producing the vocations, or the young people with vocations demanding the Traditional Mass? It is both. The EF is attractive to these young people because it offers a spiritually stabilising and nourishing environment in which their discernment can take place fruitfully.

It is to be hoped that this will be widely appreciated in the Holy See, and elsewhere, as discussion of the future of the Extraordinary Form continues.