Today <em>The Times</em> has published a <a href="http://www.fiuv.org/p/sir-james-macmillans-petition-to-save.html"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">letter</mark></a> from 48 intellectuals, artists, politicians and celebrities, both Catholic and non-Catholic, begging the Holy See to reconsider the rumoured ban on the Traditional Mass.
The letter is accompanied by an article by Sir James MacMillan, and includes both unsurprising and surprising names: Lord Moore (the journalist Charles Moore), who like Sir James is a Patron of the Latin Mass Society; the pro-life activist Lord Alton; the non-Catholic politicians Michael Gove and Rory Stewart; the interior designer Nina Campbell; the historians Lady Antonia Fraser and Tom Holland, and many others.
There is a remarkable parallel with the letter published by <em>The Times</em> on 6<sup>th</sup> July 1971, which today’s letter references. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, the New Zealand soprano, takes the place of Joan Sutherland, the Australian soprano. The veteran celebrity Bianca Jagger channels Nancy Mitford, the novelist and socialite. Fraser Nelson, Editor of <em>The Spectator,</em> steps in for William Rees-Mogg, the Editor of <em>The Times</em>. Princess Michael of Kent outdoes the two Catholic aristocrats who signed in 1971: the Earl of Oxford and Asquith, and Miles Fitzalan-Howard, who would become the 17<sup>th</sup> Duke of Norfolk.
The parallel in the letter’s argument is also striking, but not complete. The 1971 letter stressed the cultural value of the ancient Mass, and explicitly drew back from arguments based on its spiritual value:
"We are not at this moment considering the religious or spiritual experience of millions of individuals. The rite in question, in its magnificent Latin text, has also inspired a host of priceless achievements in the arts—not only mystical works, but works by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians."
This approach would seem to make sense given the ecumenical and cultural range of the signatories, including non-Catholics who engaged with the Catholic liturgy primarily in terms of the sacred music composed for it, or the devotional art created to adorn Catholic Churches.
There was another reason, however. The reformed Mass had only been promulgated in 1969, and the older Mass was to be banned after a two-year transition. The period of incremental reform, from 1964, had been one of constant change, experiments and liturgical abuses. Pope Paul VI hoped the definitive new Missal would end the chaos, but by 1971 it was still not wholly tamed. He looked forward to things calming down, people getting used to the reformed Mass, and appreciating its value more and more.
In this context, it was very difficult to make the case that the Traditional Mass should be allowed for the sake of its spiritual riches. The supporters of the reformed Mass would simply reply that Catholics had not yet had time to experience the superior riches of the new Mass.
Instead, three arguments for the old Mass tended to be made. First, its sudden disappearance was unnecessarily cruel to older Catholics. Second, it was the Mass of the English and Welsh Martyrs: the Forty Martyrs had been canonised the previous year. Third came the argument from culture.
The argument from culture was stressed by the 1971 petition, but the other two arguments also influenced the Holy See. The permission for the Traditional Mass – the "Indult" – was until 1984 limited to the land of the Forty Martyrs, and many bishops assumed it was intended for older people, despite the contrasting reality of the congregations who actually attended.
Today’s petition also makes the cultural argument, but it goes beyond it. The men and women of culture, of music and art and the intellectual life, who have signed it, including many non-Catholics, acknowledge that its cultural value cannot be separated from its spiritual power:
"[T]o destroy it seems an unnecessary and insensitive act in a world where history can all too easily slip away forgotten. The old rite's ability to encourage silence and contemplation is a treasure not easily replicated, and, when gone, impossible to reconstruct."
Similarly, Sir James MacMillan commented for the Latin Mass Society’s <a href="https://lms.org.uk/sites/default/files/resource_documents/letter_to_the_times_2024.pdf"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">Press Release</mark></a>:
"The people who have signed this letter are an impressively mixed bunch! Catholics, Protestants, Jews, agnostics atheists – all convinced that the Traditional Latin Mass is a thing of great beauty, wonder and awe, and a profound shaper of our culture, one way or another over the centuries."
Indeed, if I were asked to sign a petition to save a historical mosque or Hindu temple, I would happily do so in view of its <em>spiritual</em> significance. A great building used for worship for centuries creates a sense of "awe", of the presence of the spiritual realm, over everyone of sensitivity who approaches it: and the ancient Catholic Mass does the same.
There is no doubt that the 1971 petitioners would have agreed, even if it was not politic to put this argument forward at the time. Kenneth Clark, the great art historian and Director of the National Gallery, who put his name to the earlier petition, was a death-bed convert to the Catholic Church. His widow recollected that "whenever he went into a church in search of works of art he would first kneel and pray". The art he loved was not cultural first and spiritual second: the two aspects are inseparable.
Today, with the benefit of six decades of hindsight about the liturgical reform, Catholics and non-Catholics alike can agree that the disappearance of the Traditional Mass would impoverish the world, not just culturally, but spiritually as well. <br><br><em>Photo: A girl smiles at her mother before the start of a traditional Latin Mass at St. Michael the Archangel Chapel in Farmingville, N.Y., US, 16 July 2012. (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz.)</em>
