Thomas Reese, S.J., has written a column at RNS entitled “Why I hate the old Latin Mass: A confession”.
It is presented as satire, even though satire normally requires wit, and confession requires contrition. Reese supplies neither in any detectable quantity.
The conceit of his piece is that a “Penitent” confesses his hatred of the traditional Roman Mass to a priest. Reese proffers a fictional “Penitent”. Coincidentally, the “Penitent” seems to possess opinions, liturgical notions, and grievances rather like those of Reese himself. He even admits to anger and arrogance. This is self-projection disguised as dialogue. Reese supplies the accusations, places them in the “Penitent’s” unrepentant mouth, and then grants himself absolution.
Reese is the “Penitent” (aka R.I.P), who hates the old Mass because it survived his generation’s attempt to bury it, it attracts people without his permission, and it challenges the progressive certainty that history had rendered its final verdict and moved on with the Novus Ordo.
The Jesuit opens his self-projecting confession with:
Penitent: The old Latin Mass is like a zombie. When we went from Latin into English in 1964, we thought it was dead, but it keeps coming back. We thought it would fade away or people would be satisfied with going to a Latin version of the new liturgy. Not so.
Au contraire! The traditional Mass is not the zombie in this dialogue. The zombie is the exhausted liturgical ideology that has been staggering about since the 1970s, still insisting that its enemies are dead.
The priest confessor diagnoses the “Penitent” (aka Reese aka R.I.P) as “full of anger and arrogance,” which is perhaps the soundest judgment in the entire piece. Unfortunately, the fictional (Deo gratias) confessor then absolves R.I.P despite explicitly doubting his repentance. Evidently he was on the other side of the door during sacramental theology.
Reese’s comparison of the ancient Roman rite to a zombie is revealing.
A rite that nourished Roman Catholics for more than a millennium, formed countless saints, and was celebrated by nearly every saint Reese probably fails to invoke in his own Masses is, to him, a corpse inconveniently refusing to remain buried. Its continuing attraction for young Catholics cannot possibly suggest that it possesses beauty, theological density, or spiritual power. No, it must be undead.
When reality contradicts a progressive, reality loses.
About that zombie image. The irony is rich. Aren’t Jesuits supposed to obey without ego, perinde ac cadaver? Their superior’s will virtually replacing their own “as if they were a corpse”! Yes, I read that somewhere…
They live in obedience, they must allow themselves to be led and ruled by divine providence through their Superiors, just as if they were a corpse... Obedientia vivunt, se ferri ac regi a divina providentia per Superiores suos, sinere debent, perinde ac si cadaver essent... 1583 Constitutiones Societatis Iesu, VI.1
Who, again, are the zombies?
Moving along, the patronizing R.I.P. assures us that devotees of the older Mass are “nice, pious people,” although they require “better catechesis.” They may know their prayers, follow the ceremonies, sing the Gregorian chant, and raise large Catholic families, but, taking a page from Sheboygan’s “Oaf For The Year!” Father has decided that their attachment to the Church’s inherited worship is caused by inadequate instruction. He says that he doesn’t hate them. How gracious. After the his opening zombie remark, this is the first thing R.I.P. tells the confessor. It could be that I’m living rent free in his zombie devoured brain, in that I often make the point that the people who hate the traditional rites, really hate the people who want those rites.
Reese’s treatment of obedience is especially weird.
He says that Jesuits accepted the Novus Ordo because, when “the church said the Mass should be in English,” they saluted without asking questions. Perinde ac cadaver... right?
The Church, of course, said no such thing. Sacrosanctum Concilium 36 declared that “the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites,” while article 54 required pastors to ensure that the faithful could sing or say their parts in Latin.
R.I.P’s heroic obedience therefore consists of zombiesque obedience to instructions the Council never issued.
That is vintage progressivist liturgiology: appeal thunderously to Vatican II, then hope nobody reads the documents.
His self-referential obedience also proves to be elastic. Having lectured traditional Catholics on submission, Reese proposes that priests should use the 1998 ICEL translation rejected by the Vatican, invent new prefaces for every Sunday, and compose new Eucharistic prayers modeled upon individual Gospels and Pauline epistles.
Apparently obedience means accepting innovations of which Reese approves while lobbying against authorized texts he dislikes. Perinde ac cadaver, anyone?
R.I.P. famously resents his nemesis Joseph Ratzinger, “a native German speaker,” for influencing an English translation. His complaint is embarrassing. Ratzinger’s objection to the translation he likes concerned theological accuracy and conformity to the Latin original, matters not magically settled by possessing an American accent. By Reese’s reasoning, if a German shouldn’t be permitted to comment on matters of English liturgical translation, then a Jesuit shouldn’t comment on the ancient Roman liturgy unless he is an ancient Roman. That would have spared the Church a lot of trouble.
Then he provides the ritual pinch of incense to Josef Jungmann: the Mass changed throughout history, therefore “our tradition is to change.” This is roughly equivalent to saying that because an oak grows from an acorn, its future is the wood chipper.
In R.I.P.s cadaverous way of thinking, organic development and committee composition are treated as identical because both can be placed beneath in category “change.” Babies grow and buildings are demolished. See? Change!
Only a Jesuit would examine the two processes and announce that they vindicate one another.
Reese/R.I.P. also wrote that he was “sick of hearing” the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins on the feasts of virgin saints. Is there, perhaps, some aspect of it that makes him squirm? Like the ominous words of the Bridegroom “Nescio vos! I do not know you!”, from behind the locked door? The old calendar’s repetitions connected the Gospel directly with the saint being celebrated and lodged its imagery in Catholic memory. Hence, when in the traditional calendar there are several feasts of virgin saints close to each other, we get the same readings.
Reese, however, prefers variety. Our sacred liturgy apparently should be more like a hotel breakfast buffet: if one has already had the prudent virgins twice this week, perhaps tomorrow the cook can provide the one about, say, envying pigs their slop or tying someone up during a banquet and dumping him in the street.
By the way, the proper response to, “Why do we have to read the same readings over and over?” is “No, no. We get to read the same readings over and over.”
R.I.P., moreover, informs us that before the Council Catholics “pretty much ignored the Spirit.” This will be news to anyone acquainted with TLM’s Veni, Creator Spiritus, Veni, Sancte Spiritus, the Ember Days, the Pentecost Octave, Confirmation, the ancient Collects, the Veni Sanctificator during the Offertory, Votive Masses of the Holy Ghost on Thursdays, never mind numerous papal encyclicals. Reese seems to confuse “I was insufficiently attentive to something” with “the Roman Church ignored it.”
This is an occupational hazard among progressive ecclesiastical agitators: their personal discoveries get immediately backdated and overlaid on one of the Church’s alleged deficiencies.
He adds that in the TLM, purportedly “We pray with Jesus, not to him”. This distinction has a legitimate application to the direction of the Eucharistic Prayer, which is ordinarily addressed to the Father through the Son. Stated without qualification, however, that claim is nonsense. The Roman liturgy repeatedly addresses Christ directly. Try: Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Agnus Dei, Domine Iesu Christe, etc.
A man who cannot hear the Church praying to Jesus in the traditional liturgy might need something more remedial than yet another Eucharistic Prayer.
A revealing confession comes late in the piece: Reese is jealous.
Traditional Catholics are few, he complains, yet they are organized and receive attention. There lies the itty bitty pea beneath the pile of progressive mattresses.
After decades of institutional control, suppression, experimentation, committees, conferences, workshops, horrible translations, and ditties like cartoon jingles, the Traditional Latin Mass consistently draws devout and growing congregations. Young people love what they were never supposed to discover.
It will not die.
The horror! It’s like it’s a zombie and it won’t die and … it does things to your brain! Then you become a zombie, too, because we are our rites.
Reese’s column failed as liturgical history, ecclesiology, sacramental discipline, and comedy. It succeeded as a self-portrait. Reese imagined that he was prosecuting the old Roman Mass. In fact, he argues for it’s proliferation. Compared with the thin historicism, selective obedience, therapeutic condescension, and restless fabrication offered by its enemies, the ancient Roman Rite possesses the pesky character of being authentically Catholic.
For a penance R.I.P’s fictional confessor assigned attendance at the TLM, a contrapasso worthy of Dante. Another penance would be to read Sacrosanctum Concilium without a felt-tip marker poised to strike through inconvenient passages. However, sending a real Thomas Reese to the old Mass might prove to be a promising beginning. If he listens carefully, he may even discover the Holy Ghost there and maybe even pray to Jesus. Where there’s life, there’s hope, even for a cadaver.
God bless you Fr Z for reading that drivel so that we don’t have to!!
I worship in a church built by the Jesuits, despoiled by them after Vatican II, and abandoned as they shrunk. The TLM community has taken it over and is restoring the church to its former glory, for God. I hope nobody tells Fr Reese, it might upset him.