In New Orleans on Sunday we went to Mass at St. Patrick’s, where there is a weekly Sunday morning Tridentine Mass (note to non-Catholics: this is what’s commonly referred to as “the old Mass” or “the old liturgy”—it’s in Latin and is different in other significant ways from the current Mass in local languages). I want to say two quick things about it:
(1) I don’t necessarily want the Church to return to this liturgy, and if it were available in my area I don’t know that I would go regularly. (My fondest dream, as I’ve mentioned before, is of an Anglican Rite.) However, I am pretty convinced that as an aesthetic object the old liturgy is superior. Although there were several points at which I wasn’t sure what was going on, I had a sense that the rite, considered from first words to last, possessed a unity superior to that of the new liturgy, and that this unity really brings out the elegant shape—the architecture, you might say—of the rite. And it’s also superior in many details—many of the prayers, for instance, had a greater spiritual depth than is commonly found in the new texts.
(2) The standard objection to the old liturgy is that the only people who care about it are very old and “never made the adjustment” to the new one, or “couldn’t accept” it—there aren’t many of them, and soon they’ll die and there’ll be no need to discuss this anymore. This is one Mass at one parish, but if it’s any guide, that’s not true. It was well-attended—I’d say the church, which is fairly large, was well over half full. And grey or white heads were distinctly in the minority. I would guess that a majority of the people there were under fifty, and you’d have to be older than that to have experienced the old liturgy as an adult. There were many who were quite young—college age, or a bit older (and it says something that they had gotten up early enough to be at this 9:30 Mass). There were a number of families with young children. And at some point toward the end of Mass I heard one of my favorite Catholic hymns, the crying baby.
A question for those more knowledgeable about the visual arts than I am, or at least about religious art: if you go to the parish web site link above, there’s a picture of the sanctuary. If you click on the picture, you’ll get a much larger version, probably too big to fit on your screen (it may take a minute or two to load, depending on your network speed). Look at the right panel of the painting behind the altar. I don’t much like this representation of Jesus, and part of the reason is the sort of curvy posture of the figure, which strikes me as somewhat effeminate. One sees it fairly often in devotional art. Is there any particular reason for it—some theological idea behind it, or something of that sort? I know that in icons, for instance, there are definite reasons for things that initially seem oddly proportioned etc. (Note to Janet: see Our Lady’s lantern near the top of the panel.)
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