Thanks to Fr. Z for pointing this one out. It takes the cake as far as articles that I have seen reacting to the Motu Proprio. It is negative from start to finish, and it reflects very badly upon Archbishop Michael Sheehan. I certainly hope that he was misquoted or misrepresented. I doubt sincerely that he was, but given the apparent problems the reporter has in covering this topic, it's not out of the question. This story comes from the Albuquerque Journal. Monday, July 30, 2007
Latin Mass Not Popular in Diocese [There's no doubt how this article is going to go]
By Debra Dominguez-Lund
Journal Staff Writer
Although Pope Benedict XVI recently resurrected the Catholic celebration of the Latin Mass, Archbishop Michael J. Sheehan says that probably will have little impact on the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. [We've heard this one before. It seems to be the standard reaction of freaked out bishops who want to minimalize the impact of the Motu Proprio in their Diocese.]
"I don't see it as huge thing here in New Mexico, because people are pretty well settled with Mass in English and like Mass in English," Sheehan said Wednesday during his program, "The Archbishop's Hour," on 98.9 FM, the Immaculate Heart Radio Network. [We'll see about this. However, what is the point in having so much negative reaction? It's something the people SHOULD want if they were properly catechized enough to know to ask for it.]
The archbishop, however, added that he's certain the pope's endorsement of the Latin Mass will bear fruit elsewhere. [Funny! It was meant to bear fruit through the whole Church. A more negative statement couldn't even be imagined. Isn't the Diocese of Santa Fe part of the Catholic Church?]
Benedict issued a document July 7 authorizing priests to celebrate the Latin Mass, known as the Tridentine Mass, beginning Sept. 14 if a "stable group of faithful" parishioners requests it. [Nonsense. The Latin Mass is not known as the "Tridentine Mass." The Mass in Latin can be in either the new or the traditional rite. The Motu Proprio has to do with the Traditional Mass and making it more widely available.]
Currently, the local bishop must approve such requests— an obstacle that supporters of the rite say has greatly limited its availability. [Yes it has, and this is very true in the Diocese of Santa Fe as well.]
Sheehan said that the diocese has very few priests who know Latin, and that those few who know it well enough "don't have the knees to make the 18 genuflections"— an act of reverence usually consisting of falling onto one knee— that the Mass requires. [This is just completely weird. Priests at the time of the Council of Trent had two knees. Today, after the introduction of the Novus Ordo Mass, they still have two knees. Priests at the time of the Council of Trent and up until the 1970 revision seemed to have no problem with that many genuflections, so what in the world is this bishop talking about?]"I think there would be maybe one or two priests who might want to study Latin (to conduct the Masses), but I think most of the priests feel like they already have more than they can handle," Sheehan said. "And if they need another language— Spanish is more important than Latin as far as (meeting the) spiritual needs of more people." [Well your Excellency, if priests in the Diocese used Latin as the standard language, people would become familiar with it again and you wouldn't have to have so many different languages, which would actually reduce the demands upon priests. For this bishop as with so many others, Latin is just not "pastoral" anymore, even though the Latin tongue is considered the sacred language of the Catholic Church. They fundamentally fail to understand the importance of Latin in the unity of the Church.]
The archbishop said that of the diocese's 300,000 Catholics, only 150— at most— attend the diocese's one Latin Mass that's been offered for more than a decade, at noon Sundays at San Ignacio Catholic Church on Walter NE. [DUH. If you only allow one Traditional Mass, how can more people attend it? If you do everything you can to discourage it, as you obviously are, how do you expect people to clamor for it? Properly teach your people what the Mass is all about and they will then ask for it. Don't put the cart in front of the horse.]
"That's a pretty small percentage, but at the same time I wanted to make it available to the people who did find it to be spiritually helpful to them," Sheehan said. "People come from as far as Los Alamos to go to Tridentine Mass there.
"(San Ignacio's) holy father wanted to reach out to Catholics who have attachment to the old Mass," he said. [San Ignacio's Holy Father? Apparently the Bishop was referring to the Pope and the reporter thought he was referring to the priest at the indult parish. Pathetic. Why don't they let committed Catholics who know their stuff cover the Church?]
San Ignacio Deacon Charles Johnson said the Mass does draw high attendance, but no higher than the 9:30 a.m. English Mass.
"Like me, I think people enjoy the Latin Mass because it gives them a feeling of security because it's a tradition of the church— one that's been with us since the
time of the apostles," Johnson said. [At least he admits how old the traditional Mass is. And you're right, it is at least in part about security. One can know that the Faith is very completely expressed in the Traditional Mass. It was not formed by a commission of "experts" who decided, under ecumenical pressures, what was "relevant in today's world."]In reviving the rite, Benedict was reaching out to the followers of an excommunicated ultratraditionalist, the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who split with the Vatican over Vatican II, particularly the introduction of the new Mass celebrated in the vernacular. [This is only partially true. He was, but there is a lot more than that to it. He is seeking reconciliation not just with Lefebvre but with the Church's own past, her own Tradition. To make it seem like this is simply aimed at the SSPX is to again try to minimalize its impact by making it seem irrelevant to most Catholics.]
"It's not going back to pre-Vatican II days as much as it's just recognizing there's this one same Mass," Sheehan said, "whether it's in the extraordinary or ordinary form as the pope points out."
The Associated Press contributed to this report. [And it shows]
4 comments:
here is a response to the article published in the albuquerque journal.
"I was slightly miffed by your article Latin Mass Not Popular in Diocese. If in fact the Archbishop was accurately and fully quoted, I must take exception to remarks that are somewhat disingenuous. It is true that the Latin mass has been made available for some time, but it has only been made available at a single little church in an obscure section of Albuquerque. That is like premiering a Star Wars movie at a small local theatre in Truth or Consequences and saying the movie was a flop because so few people attended the premiere. 150 people in the church of San Ignacio is a full house!
The very fact that people are willing to drive 75-100 miles to attend mass in a tiny out-of-the-way church is a testament to their craving for a beautiful traditional ceremony that has been sacrificed to postmodern fads and intellectual laziness. It’s no wonder that church attendance has been in free fall since Vatican II. New churches resemble Pizza Huts and the ceremony is a hodge-podge of improvised prayers and saccharine songs.
Last year the Archbishop himself celebrated a Latin High Mass at the Cathedral in Santa Fe. The sung prayer was Gregorian chant (Latin) and the place was filled to the rafters. And guess what? The people actually knew and sang the Latin hymns! I guarantee you, if a Latin mass was celebrated in a large, centrally located church at a reasonable hour, there would be standing room only crowds every Sunday and the collection baskets would be bulging.
Our churches were once “Houses of God” where people could worship in a quiet, private respectful fashion. The Latin mass is not nostalgia, it is a reaction to the decaying state of the liturgy and a religion on life support. When I was a young altar boy, I attended many very old priests who were only too happy to genuflect 18 times, even when they had to be steadied by a 13 year old boy.
The previous comment was republished in the ABQ Journal on Tues August 14 2007, the Vigil of the Assumption, along with the folowing two letters.
Archdiocese Hasn't Given Latin Mass Its Due Credit
ARCHBISHOP Michael J. Sheehan is pretty emphatic in the recent article about the restoration of the Latin Mass by Pope Benedict XVI in stating that "people are pretty well settled with Mass in English and like Mass in English."
I would submit to the good archbishop that he is talking only about the people who still attend Mass, not the legions who dropped out as a result of the abolishment of the Latin Mass.
I can recall one Sunday in 1966, over 10,000 miles from home, going to the Catholic Cathedral in Vung Tau, Vietnam, and feeling like I was home because of the familiarity of the Latin Mass I had known all my life. The universality of the Latin Mass bound Catholics worldwide together in the "congregation of the faithful."
The archbishop's astounding comments about priests not being able to genuflect or learn Latin and that "Spanish is more important than Latin as far as (meeting the) spiritual needs of more people" betrays one of the fundamental problems that haunts the Catholic Church today— a complete lack of insight into the minds and hearts of millions of fallen-away Catholics.
It looks like the archbishop plans on continuing to pursue this most interesting strategy. However, Sheehan is right on in his prophecy that the pope's endorsement of the Latin Mass will bear fruit elsewhere. It is clear that in Sheehan's archdiocese it is dead on arrival!
JACK KENNEDY
Ruidoso
Local Language Best To Celebrate Mass
AN ARTICLE about the unpopularity of the Latin Mass contained an implication that Latin in Eucharist celebrations was "since the time of the apostles." The Catholic Encyclopedia and Oxford History of Christian Worship cite Greek as the common liturgical language at that time, with various communities using Aramaic, Syriac and Coptic. Even the first Eucharists at Rome were celebrated in Greek.
The earliest Latin Christian literature is late second and early third century, with the first translation of Greek rites into Latin occurring in the third century. The term Missa— English Mass— was first used by St. Ambrose at Milan in the late fourth century. The Greek Orthodox Church never lost its use of the vernacular, with rites still celebrated in Greek, Russian, Serbian, etc.
The Vatican II Council rightly— and belatedly— updated the 400-year-old Tridentine response to the Reformation by restoring many liturgical practices of the early church, including use of local languages.
Some Catholics may "feel secure" with Latin rites. Fine, yet let's not forget the Holy Spirit as a guiding force constantly bidding us to find renewal and relevance in helping create a vibrant kingdom of God.
ALBERT NOYER
Sandia Park
the archdiocese of santa fe is not a dying diocese. Roman Catholicism is the biggest and fastest growing religion in new mexico(Albuquerque Journal). Even now, the archbishop is going to build (if not already started) five new churches. i hate to say this, but the archbishop is right about the latin mass in new mexico. the majority of the people just want a priest to give them the sacraments. i know from a fact that some priest have used latin in the mass, and even started to show the people of the diocese the beauties of the 1962 mass. the majority though do not want it. they're simple people who want a simple mass. they don't want a clown mass (they rightfully view that as sacralige) and they dont want the beautiful 1962 mass. they want the simplicity that is found in the novus ordo.
Now, one might argue that the cathedral was packed with people for the 1962 mass done by the Bishop. yes, that was correct. but not that many of them were catholic. santa fe is a tourist city. and the cathedral gets a lot of non catholic tourist.
i do ask that you pray for the Archdiocese santa fe and her seminarians. especialy for an increase of a love for the 1962 missal, and the mass.
Like many Catholic bishops, the Abp of Santa Fe seems to think that Catholics are too stupid to learn even the little Latin required to understand the Mass. Indeed, the bishops seem to think that of all their flock except those that agree with them.
As Milton called the bishops of his day:
"Blind mouths that scarce themselves know how to hold a sheep-hook".
Where is Chaucer when we need him? or Langland?
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