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Latin is necessary.

Its benefits are so numerous that they shouldn’t have to be enumerated.

And yet here we are, faced with a clergy of the LATIN Church who are nearly totally ignorant of Latin!

QUAERITUR:

I ask you, Reverend and Most Reverend gentlemen, what does it mean for our Catholic identity if our clergy don’t know the language – and therefore what goes with the language – of their Rite and their Church?

Do you think that that’s a problem?

I do. I think that that vast gap is an opening through which the winds of the world’s ways and the smoke of Satan howl and, eventually, toss priests about on the deck of Peter’s barque with nary a lifeline in sight.

“But Father! But Father!”, some of these priests and bishops will respond, “We have so many more pressing problems to address!”

Is that so?

Our Catholic identity is THE pressing problem.

Our identity has been severely enervated over the last half dozen decades. Let’s do something about this, starting with elementary and high schools! Let’s do something about this starting in homeschooling!

We have to recover these lost tools or we will, very soon, begin to pay even more massively than we do now for the wounds to our identity.

Consider how the demographics of the Church are being reported. There are now more people who identity as former-Catholics than as Catholics, and the majority of the later barely go to church. What will that mean for, inter alia, vocations?

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Oh… and by the way… when rectors or others stand up during ordinations to attest before God that the men to be ordained for the Latin Church have been properly trained…. is that true if they have no Latin? No, it is not.

So what are they stating before God and the Church?

In order to revitalize our Catholic identity, we have to revitalize our sacred liturgical worship. Everything starts there and returns there.

Our worship, especially in the Eucharistic liturgy around which all other rites orbit, is our source and our goal, our fons et culmen.

We are our rites.

No other activity, pastoral or not, rivals the importance of our sacred liturgical worship. No other activity, pastoral of not, will succeed if it doesn’t begin in and return to worship of God.

What we do or don’t do, what we lose or what we recover, has long-term impact on our identity and, therefore, on our vocations.

This is why it is so important for priests and bishops to prioritize liturgical renewal.

To do that we have to go beyond just “better” celebrations of the Novus Ordo (which, though valid, is compromised). Yes, “better” is also needed. But, what we also need, urgently, is the side-by-side use of our traditional Roman Rite, conducted in a stable manner, without tinkering, for a goodly long period of years.

What popped into my mind is a scene in the movie Seabicuit, in which the crafty trainer figures out why this amazing horse is not performing well. In the movie line, the horse had been treated very badly as a colt, thus limiting his potential.

Analogies limp, but that clip might give you a sense of what I am talking about.

It seems to me that, these days, priests are so beat up that it’s hard to tell what we are supposed to do. I can’t help feeling they’ve got us so screwed up running in a circle that we’ve forgotten what we were born to do.

We have to learn how to be Roman priests again.

How do you do that?

That requires the Roman Rite in its fullness.

We are our Rites.

With small differences our Collect for the 22nd Ordinary Sunday is based on a prayer in the 8th century Gelasian Sacramentary. A closely related form serves as the Collect for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost in the 1962 Missale Romanum.

Deus virtutum, cuius est totum quod est optimum,
insere pectoribus nostris tui nominis amorem,
et praesta, ut in nobis, religionis augmento,
quae sunt bona nutrias,
ac, vigilanti studio, quae nutrita custodias.

About this prayers pedigree, in the more ancient version in the Gelasian we find vigilanti studio, which is reclaimed in the Novus Ordo version, while in the 1962 Missale, indeed in the 1570 Missale, we have pietatis studio, “by the zeal of piety/devotion”.

Insero means “to sow, plant in, engraft, implant.” I like “graft”. Optimum is “best”, but seeing that we are applying “best” to God, we can get away with “perfect”.

Our Collect summons images of, on the one hand, armies and, on the other, an orchard and vine tending. On the one hand, the God of hosts guards the good things we have. On the other, this same mighty God is grafting love into us and then nourishing it so it can grow.

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Lest we forget….

OBSOLETE ICEL (1973):

Almighty God, every good thing comes from you. Fill our hearts with love for you, increase our faith, and by your constant care protect the good you have given us.

It’s amazing that there we still anyone in our churches after the decades of verbal abuse that drummed against us.

The norms underlying the new, corrected translation stated that “deficiency in translating the varying forms of addressing God, such as Domine, Deus, Omnipotens aeterne Deus, Pater, and so forth, as well as the various words expressing supplication, may render the translation monotonous and obscure the rich and beautiful way in which the relationship between the faithful and God is expressed in the Latin text” (Liturgiam authenticam 51).

Today the priest invokes God as Deus virtutum. In the Gallican Psalter traditionally used by the Roman Church, Deus virtutum stands behind the familiar biblical title “God of hosts.” Don’t confuse “host”, which is “army, multitude”, with the wheat wafer used at Mass. The Latin virtutes renders the Greek δυνάμεις, which represents the Hebrew ṣĕbā’ôth: armies, hosts, or ordered multitudes. These hosts can be earthly, celestial, or angelic ranks. Virtutum is genitive plural of virtus, “manliness, strength, courage, aptness, capacity, power” etc. St Jerome chose virtutum to render the Hebrew tsaba’, “that which goes forth, an army, war, a host”. In the Sanctus of Holy Mass and, in the great Te Deum, we echo the myriads of angels bowed low in the liturgy of heaven before God’s throne: “Holy, Holy, Holy LORD GOD SABAOTH .... God of “heavenly hosts”.

LITERAL RENDERING:

O God of hosts, of whom is the entirety of what is best,
graft into our hearts the love of Your Name,
and grant, that by means of an increase of the virtue of religion,
You may nourish in us the things which are good,
and, by means of vigilant zeal, guard the things which have been nourished.

CURRENT ICEL (2011):

God of might, giver of every good gift, put into our hearts the love of your name, so that, by deepening our sense of reverence, you may nurture in us what is good and, by your watchful care, keep safe what you have nurtured.

And English Jesuit and liturgical writer, Fr. C.C. Martindale (+1963) in his commentary on Collects gave us this pithy:

“What is good, do Thou foster;
what is fostered, do Thou guard.”

Lovely.

Today we pray to God for an increase in “religion.” This is precisely the virtue of Religion.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines “religion” as a set of beliefs and practices followed by those committed to the service and worship of God. The First Commandment requires us to believe in God, to worship and serve him, as the first duty of the virtue of religion (cf also CCC 2084, 2135). St Thomas Aquinas (d 1274) says that religion is the virtue by which men exhibit due worship and reverence to God as the creator and supreme ruler of all things (STh II-II, 81, 1). We must acknowledge dependence on God by rendering Him a due and fitting worship both interiorly (eg, by acts of devotion, reverence, thanksgiving, etc.) and exteriorly (eg, external reverence, liturgical acts, etc.). The virtue of religion can be sinned against by idolatry, superstitions, sacrilege, and blasphemy. We creatures must recognize who God is and act accordingly both inwardly and outwardly. When this at last becomes habitual for us, then we have the virtue of religion. A virtue is a habit. One good act does not make us virtuous. If being prudent or temperate or just, etc., is hard for us, then we don’t yet have the virtue.

Our petition for religion follows immediately from our desire that God “graft” (insere) love of His Holy Name into our hearts. We can also say “implant”. Romans 11 uses grafting to describe incorporation into the cultivated olive tree, while John 15 presents Christ as the vine in whom His disciples must abide. The 2011 translation has “put into” which seems impoverished to me. Insere is more forceful than a bland “put.” God does not merely deposit an idea in the mind. He implants, engrafts, and establishes within the pectora, the innermost chambers of the human person, love for His Name. What is grafted must take hold, draw life from its source, and bear fruit. Hence the growth progression within the Collect: God implants … nourishes … guards.

God begins the work in us, gives its growth, and preserves its fruit. This echoes Philippians 1:6: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion”, which is pronounced at ordinations.

We move from the title of God the angels and saints never tire of repeating in their everlasting liturgy in heaven: HOLY. Then we beg for all good things to be nourished in us by God as He increases in us the virtue of religion. This leads to the proper interior and exterior actions that necessarily flow from recognizing who God truly is and who we are.

We pray, through the mediating priest, for “love of Your Name”, that is, love for all that the Holy Name signifies, identity, glory, authority, God Himself who gave us the 2nd Commandment. Our Lord in the Our Father prayed sanctificetur nomen tuum.

There is also an examination of conscience buried in this ancient prayer. God has already planted many good things in us through Baptism, Confirmation, the sacraments, sound teaching, good examples, and countless actual graces. Have we cultivated them? Have we guarded them?

Grace is not a decorative possession which we can do without. What is grafted must be nourished. What is nourished must be defended. Hence the Mass, confession, daily prayer, works of mercy, mortification, and the careful avoidance of occasions of sin.

The God of hosts supplies the strength. The divine cultivator supplies the growth. We must remain where He has planted us and cooperate with His vigilant care.

You can find more of Fr. Z’s writing at Fr. Z’s Blog.

Firstly, let’s get some details.

You will note the flaming heart and the light on the left with the word “veritas... truth”. There is a quill, for Augustine was a writer. There are texts under foot identified with the names of heretics like Pelagius, Celestinus, and Julian of Eclanum.

On a stand on the left is the Bible with its pages in motion, indicate that Scripture is in-breathed by the Holy Spirit.

Augustine peers leftward towards divine Truth. On the right, his burning heart’s flames are stretching towards Truth through Augustine’s head.

The affective affects the intellective in accordance with the Augustinian phrase,

“Nisi credideritis non intelligetis... unless you will have first believed you will not understand”.

What’s going on with that heart?

Augustine, who authored the unforgettable “our hearts are unquiet/restless until they rest in Thee”, described us and our love as working like gravity. In ancient times gravity was thought to be a force within a thing that sought to go to its proper place of balance in relation to all other things.

“Amor meus pondus meum” (conf 13, 9, 10) said Augustine, “My love is my weight”, drawing the restless soul to God, the only source of lasting peace.

Moreover, Augustine’s flaming heart is often shown transfixed by an arrow, which recalls his line,

“Sagittaveras tu cor nostrum caritate tua … You had pierced our heart with your charity” (conf 9, 2, 3).

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We are all made in God’s image and likeness, made to act as God acts. He reveals something of His will to us.

When we obey Him we act in accordance with the way He made us and what He intended for us.

All things that live and move and have their being must come to rest in God or forever be in conflict with themselves and the cosmos.

In the painting the burning heart is by it’s internal need striving to go to the divine light. In turn it enflames the intellect which can then find its way to the divine light of Truth.

In the dynamic of this tension, Augustine is writing both under the illumination of Truth and the insights of his restless heart.

One might be tempted to subtitle this work “continuous conversion” or “work in progress”.

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.

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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.”

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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.

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Why this, why now?

It’s time to “adapt, improvise, and overcome”. I sense that how people are accessing information is shifting.

When I originally started by blog - “Fr. Z’s Blog” it was named “What Does The Prayer Really Say?” This was the title of a column that I wrote for many years in the Catholic weekly The Wanderer (still around, still faithful). It was about liturgical translation of the prayers of Holy Mass according to the Novus Ordo.

Back in the day, before the ICEL (International Committee for English in the Liturgy) translation of the Novus Ordo Missal was reworked in 2011, the 1970 translation was, simply put, horrific in every respect. Hence, I began to offer readers of The Wanderer something that I had done on Compuserve (remember that?) during the 90’s when I was the head of the Catholic Forum. I offered the upcoming Sunday’s Collect or Opening Prayer in Latin along with a super-literal translation to show what the prayer really said, and then showed the 1970 ICEL version. I added commentary about the historical roots of the prayer as well as observations about theological and spiritual impact in the context of that Sunday’s Mass. I still do this on Fr. Z’s Blog.

At a certain point, I determined that I should create an online archive for my articles, stretching by then over many years. That was the birth of the blog. It had a meteoric start which left me gob smacked. The blog rapidly evolved into something I had not anticipated.

It is time to evolve again.

As I learn the Substack ropes, I’ll ask for your patience (and subscription). I’ll do some cross-posting with “Fr Z’s Blog” as I get my sea legs and get to know this new platform.

My goal is to post something here every day.

I also want to have comments open for you, as well as - perhaps - chat. That might mean bringing on a collaborator or two to keep watch on things.

In honor of WDTPRS aka Fr. Z’s Blog, here is the very first post from “over there” on 8 December 2005. At that time, I lived in a clerical residence on the Via della Scrofa (sort of between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. I was on the highest floor in the corner room and had a 270° unobstructed view of the City.

A view from my window… really
Posted on 8 December 2005 by Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Here is a shot across the City on the night that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI was elected to succeed the late Pope John Paul II as Bishop of Rome and Vicar of Christ. It is not very often that the Apostolic Palace is also illuminated in the manner we see in this photo.

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