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Young Catholics want the Latin Mass back. So on 5 October they took to the streets in Washington DC calling for Pope Francis to restore the Latin Mass.
Scores of protesters joined the 11-kilometre “National Summorum Pontificum” march – so dubbed in honour of Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 apostolic letter about celebrating the Latin Mass.
Young Catholics
According to Newmax, most marchers were young. Young enough, that is, to have been born after the Second Vatican Council’s reforms of the 1960s, which was when the 500-year Latin Mass tradition was phased out.
With these reforms, the priest no longer faced the altar (ad orientum) but faced the congregation. Rather than say Mass in Latin, he used the country’s everyday language.
Young Catholics who spoke to Newsmax said they loved the Latin Mass and were prepared to actively work against threats to its continuance.
“It is folly to try to restrict a particular Mass to which people are so devoted,” one marcher said.
“It’s a defining part of my life,” another said.
“I first went to a Latin Mass when I was 13 … Now I’m 35 and the Latin Mass has been a defining part of my life — it’s incredibly beautiful.”
“Some Catholics feel uncomfortable with the vernacular Mass and the priest facing the worshipers.”
What prompted the march?
In July 2021, Pope Francis issued his apostolic letter “Traditionis custodes” to curtail traditional worship. Priests wanting to celebrate the Latin Mass had to get permission from their bishop.
Celebrating the Latin rite was banned from funerals, weddings and baptisms.
These instructions are startlingly different from those prescribed by Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict.
St John Paul II’s 1988 document “Ecclesia Dei” calls for “wide and generous application” of previous orders permitting celebration of the Latin Mass.
“Respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition” he cautioned.
Benedict’s “Summorum Pontificum” went further, saying priests could freely celebrate the Latin Mass privately.
They could also celebrate it “in parishes where a group of the faithful attached to the previous liturgical tradition stably exists…”.
Summorum Pontificum says that in these cases the “parish priest should willingly accede to their requests to celebrate Holy Mass according to the rite of the 1962 Roman Missal” [the last Catholic prayer book containing the words and choreography of the Latin Mass].
Rules vs devotion
While Francis is clear that he wants the Latin Mass completely sidelined, adherents to the traditional form of worship are digging their heels in.
Newsmax says in July 2021 nine churches in the Washington DC area offered at least one Latin Mass on Sundays. Today there are just three.
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