For a time we did offer the Mass according to the 1962 Missal. It was requested by our (now) Archbishop Emeritus Patrick F. Flores as his response to a petition from a group of Catholics who said they desired the celebration of the Tridentine Rite on a regular basis in the archdiocese. I agreed to provide this rite of the Mass on a weekly basis and on days of obligation. Our parish was an obvious place to offer this. The sanctuary was already arranged for an eastward-facing celebration. Our parish musicians were more than capable of providing the proper music. There was an exisiting dedication to celebrating all aspects of the Church’s liturgy with care and in accordance with the rubrics.At some point -- Fr Phillips doesn't say exactly when -- the parish went from the 1962 Missal to the OF Latin rite, which he reported turned out to be a much better fit.Unfortunately, it wasn’t a happy experience for us. We made every effort to incorporate this into our Mass schedule so it would be seen as an integral part of the parish, but those who had requested the rite wished for it to be very much separate. While we provided bulletins for the Mass, including parish announcements, the Tridentine “organizers” made it a point to throw ours away and provide their own. There were attempts to engage other celebrants for the Mass without even mentioning it to me as the pastor of the parish. There were complaints to me if I used any Sacred Hosts from the tabernacle, and people would refuse Holy Communion if I did, because the Hosts “might be from the English Mass.” In following the rubrics of the Mass, I would receive complaints from some because “that’s not the way I remember it being done.” All I could do was assure them that the rubrics were being followed to the letter. The result was that fewer of those who had requested it continued to attend, and the congregation became more and more comprised of those who didn’t necessarily have an attachment to the tradition Latin Mass, but attended because the time happened to be convenient for them.
I hope our experience might be cautionary for those parishes which will be implementing the provisions of the motu proprio. There will be a temptation for some people to erect an “us and them” attitude. There may be a creeping sense of exclusivity (“We attend the real Mass.”). There may be the danger that some will see their life in the parish as consisting only of taking part in the traditional Latin Mass with little or no need to be integrated into the totality of the parish.My regular correspondent added,
In my review of the interweb on the subject of OLA and the Latin mass I saw a number of references to families who divided their attendance between the local TLM parish (I believe it is St Pius X, San Antonio) and OLA. I think this is a pattern in other dioceses that have both an Ordinariate community and a regular TLM mass. Perhaps the TLM is distant and not always convenient to get to. Perhaps the TLM host parish is otherwise uncongenial. Perhaps “dual citizenship” is a marital compromise. In any event, many seem to have a foot in both camps, which means that for them the Ordinariate is nothing to do with Anglican Patrimony and everything to do with liturgical, musical, and (probably) other forms of conservatism.Well, especially in contemporary political affairs, "conservatism" is hard to define with any precision, since many of the former Buckley-Reagan-Bush "fusion" faction have become bitter never-Trumpers. Our parish has many first- and second-generation Filipinos who are enthusiastic novus ordo but seem to support Trump's populist policies in favor of legal immigration. (They seem very pro-Duterte as well.)
In addition, there may be some reason for skepticism about Fr Phillips's position in the post that adopting the OF Latin mass was a simple solution with a happy ending. Clearly Houston eventually determined that a further adjustment had to be made. I'm of the view that focus on a certain out-of-the-mainstream style of liturgy creates an "us vs them" mentality, no matter it's Latin, English, or Polish. In looking at the problem of Cahenslyism, I find that the issue periodically resurfaces. According to Wikipedia,
[Cahensly] claimed that many [German immigrants to the US] were ending their relationship with Roman Catholicism, part of the problem being the domination of Roman Catholicism in America by English-speaking Irish clerics who were typically unsympathetic with the idea of preserving German culture among German immigrants, some of whom began attending German-speaking Lutheran congregations.Cahenslyism seems to be, broadly, an attempt to divide Catholics along artificial lines using liturgy as one excuse. I can't rule it out in this particular case, but with the odd twist that Houston has determined that Anglican Cahenslyites can't mix profitably with Latin Cahenslyites, and the parties must go their separate ways. But this doesn't solve the basic problem of what smacks of Cahenslyism here.. . . When, during the 1920s, the Vatican administration urged the creation of an African-American seminary, the American hierarchy reacted strongly to what one bishop termed "African Cahenslyism".
I have more problems with Fr Lewis's letter to the parish, which I'll discuss tomorrow.
