Please don’t mistake love of one Mass for dislike of the other

How do you read your Catholic Register? Living overseas, I get mine over the Internet. A notice appears in my inbox around 10 p.m. on Wednesdays, just before I shut down my computer for the night. And of course I summon the issue at once and click directly to the letters page.

“Yikes!” I recently cried.

“Hmm? Ha? Whaaa--?” asked my husband, formerly dozing over his crossword puzzle.

“This chap says I put down the new Mass,” I said. “Ooh! Eeek! And he’s a deacon. I’m being denounced by the clergy!”

“Don’t worry, darling,” my husband murmured, falling again into the arms of Morpheus.

“No, but I have to worry,” I said. “This sort of thing can ruin a Catholic columnist’s reputation. Ooh! He seems to think I want to ban the new Mass! What about my fulsome praise of the Edinburgh Polish Masses and of St. Casimir’s? And of St. Paul’s in Boston? And of my dear old Regis College days?”

My husband’s reply was rather indistinct.

“I shall write another column about Mass,” I declared, and my husband snored his assent.

As far as I can remember, I have never put down the “new Mass,” the Novus Ordo, in my life. I certainly have never done so in print. In conversations with people who really dislike it, I am wont to say that there is nothing wrong with the Novus Ordo if it is celebrated as it is actually written down. My attitude is “Do the red, say the black, and trust the Mass to console the hearts of the people.” And in this I think I have a lot more faith in the “new Mass” than those who act as though it needs livening up.

The problem with telling people how much you love the Extraordinary Form of the Mass — its ancient calendar, its prayers, its vestments, its chant, its silences — is that some people assume that you must therefore despise the Ordinary Form. I am not sure why this is although it may have something to do with 50 years of people seeking to praise the “new Mass” by insulting the old one. When I asked around why readers might think I disliked the “new Mass,” someone volunteered that it was because I neglect to mention that the “liturgical changes to the Mass were long-overdue reliefs from an arrogant clerical-centric ahistorical baroque snoozefest.” As this is what people are used to hearing about the old Mass, an alternative view can make some nervous.

I am not nostalgic about the “old Mass”: I discovered it only in my late 30s and now attend it almost every Sunday. I am instead nostalgic for the beautiful Yonge Street church of my 1970s/80s childhood, long since sold and bulldozed. It was a lovely 1940s build, and the post-Vatican II reordering of the sanctuary was all I knew. I remember with great affection Fr. Robinson, Fr. Swift, Fr. Bernie and Fr. Bill. To my recollection, none of these priests took the slightest liberty with the Novus Ordo, never sped through it, never treated it like a talk show, never permitted giant puppets or body-stockinged dancers or rock bands, never celebrated it with anything but the greatest reverence. One of my fondest childhood Mass memories is of Fr. Bernie processing up the aisle happily roaring out the opening hymn.

Like my parents, the priests of my post-Vatican II childhood parish loved and revered Holy Mass, so I learned to do so, too. I was astonished that we girls were allowed to talk all through Mass at high school, but I suppose the teachers had long since given us up as a lost cause. The choir directors were certainly devout, so why they directed the choir to sing “Send in the Clowns” after Mass one day is a mystery. At least it wasn’t before Mass, as my mother pointed out. And maybe it was a commentary on our behaviour.

No, I have no objection to the continued use of the Novus Ordo. My objection is with how it is too often treated: as a duty to endure as best we may, or to jazz up, until we can make a beeline for the doughnut store. I object to homilies that are pitched to adults as if we were children, and to congregants who expect to be entertained like children. I object to ministers of music who sing not to assist worship but to perform. I object to jokes made at the bishop’s or archbishop’s expense. I object to confusing, sometimes hurtful, liturgical experiments. I object to loud chatter when others are praying. This is not because I dislike the new Mass but because I LOVE the Mass, nova et vetera.

(Cummings McLean is a Canadian writer and author of Ceremony of Innocence.)