The Bishop of Charlotte, North Carolina Angers Hearers of the Pope John XXIII Mass
The Bishop of Charlotte, North Carolina recently restricted the celebration of the Pope John XXIII Mass also known as The Latin Mass (TLM) in that diocese to a couple shrines. Of course, this incensed many of the TLM attendees worldwide.
The Latin Mass is an older form of the Catholic liturgy. Many complain that the current ordinary form of the Mass which is actually called the Pope Paul VI Mass (PPVI) replaced the ancient Mass celebrated for two thousand years. However, that is incorrect. TLM only existed in one form or another since the Council of Trent in the Sixteenth Century. In fact, that Mass was created to have a uniform celebration of the liturgy in the wake of the Protestant Reformation. Some refer to the current form of the Mass also known as the Ordinary Form as the Novus Ordo but that is a pejorative.
There are great differences between culture of the forms of the Mass. Many will lead you to believe there are only two differences: The priest celebrates with his back to the people, called Ad Orientem (to the East) which as Fr. Dwight Longenecker (@dlongenecker) tweeted recently on X is like the bus driver who heads in the right direction on a bus:
If you're on a bus would you want the driver to face you or face the destination with you?
In the PPVI Mass the priest usually faces the people. Hence, my response on X to Fr. Longenecker:
Many people believe they are on a bus to Heaven and it is job of priests and bishops to pray for them. The fact is God calls us at our baptism to live the Gospel. We are not on a bus when we are at Mass.
In the TLM, the readings are in Latin and only the priest or deacon may proclaim them. The celebrant proclaims the Gospel alone in Latin and then English. Parishioners often bring a missal that contains the entire Mass including readings in Latin and English in a style similar to a parallel Bible.
The TLM is more focused on the Eucharist than the Word of God by default.
The PPVI Mass has a focus on the scriptures and on the Eucharist because Christ is present in both. So, God speaks to us through the four scriptural readings. One is from the Old Testament (during Easter—Acts of the Apostles), a psalm, one from the New Testament and one from the Gospels all proclaimed in the vernacular which is the language of the people. In the early days of the Church, the people spoke Latin because that was the language of the Roman Empire and the scriptures were in Greek and many spoke Greek as well.
The PPVI Mass has a three-year reading cycle on Sundays and a two-year cycle on weekdays. The TLM has a one-year cycle for all 365 days. I maintain one reason many Catholics historically do not know their Bible is because the readings historically were in Latin and on Sundays there were only fifty-two sets of them. Some of the most powerful readings in the Bible were not part of the Sunday Mass.
Keep in mind the focus of TLM is the Eucharist which is obviously the powerful sacrament where Christ comes to us in his Body and Blood, however, due to the structure there is a diminished focus on the Word of God. Whether that is by design of the Council Fathers at Trent or just the way things happen, this is another major difference.
In TLM, the people attend Mass, indeed the terminology they use is to hear mass and have virtually no participation in the liturgy at all. In fact, with the priest having his back to the people, they cannot see the Liturgy of the Eucharist. In the PPVI Mass the people see and participate in the Mass itself through their responses and can see the Eucharist prayers and gestures.
In fact, going back to Fr. Dwight Longenecker’s comment on the Ad Orientem. People not participating and seeing everything from a passive position demonstrated that the message is that Catholic faithful are like passengers on a bus and, therefore, they need not do anything. The message this communicates is one I have heard for decades: It is the role of the priests, bishops and religious to be faithful for us. We are like passengers on a bus on the way to Heaven.
Of course, passengers on a bus do nothing but sit there and/or pray, while Vatican II calls for an active participation of the laity in the liturgy and in the world. They also actively participate in the Mass by saying the responses and proclaiming the reading. They also can act as extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist. Catholics have the vocation to be people of prayer and to allow that prayer to transform their lives into a witness for the Gospel, this is also expressed in the liturgy. Unfortunately, many Catholics prior to Vatican II got that message that they need only “sit on the bus” on the way to Heaven. The AP and other media venues claimed it was Church teaching that the lay faithful were to pay, pray and obey. That is an anti-Catholic message from a media organization hostile to the Catholic faith.
The TLM has only one Eucharistic prayer which is called the Roman Canon and the PPVI Mass has several including Number II which is the oldest Eucharistic Prayer in the Church.
The priest at the TLM must give a sermon which is a talk on a moral or spiritual issue. The priest at the PPVI Mass gives a homily, which is a talk explaining one or more of the days scriptures.
So as you can see the difference between the two liturgies is more than language and where the priest is facing and this is communicated in how the people live their faith.
The god of the Wizard of Oz
Those who know me know I hate the Baltimore Catechism because it was a basic catechism focused on morality. The main teaching was to avoid sin so we could go to Heaven. Contrast this with Jesus’ own mandate—love God and neighbor. Pope Leo XIV put it well in "MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE LEO XIV TO PARTICIPANTS IN THE SEMINAR “EVANGELIZING WITH THE FAMILIES OF TODAY AND TOMORROW: ECCLESIOLOGICAL AND PASTORAL CHALLENGES”, ORGANIZED BY THE DICASTERY FOR LAITY, FAMILY AND LIFE
Faith is primarily a response to God’s love, and the greatest mistake we can make as Christians is, in the words of Saint Augustine, “to claim that Christ’s grace consists in his example and not in the gift of his person” (Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, II, 146). How often, even in the not too distant past, have we forgotten this truth and presented Christian life mostly as a set of rules to be kept, replacing the marvelous experience of encountering Jesus – God who gives himself to us – with a moralistic, burdensome and unappealing religion that, in some ways, is impossible to live in concrete daily life.—Pope Leo XIV
A good example of failure of catechesis is in the words of a member of the older generation to me. He never understood that message that God loves us. He explained that God was to be feared in his day.
He explained that all a Catholic had to do was go to church on Sunday and be a nice person the rest of the week. That is not Catholicism. In fact, later also because of the intense focus on sin, he believed in reincarnation “because a person could not possibly be good enough to get to Heaven in one lifetime.” That is a bad message that he received on how to live the faith. It is a distortion of what we truly believe and is a heresy.
In my own preaching, which parishioners confirmed from their own experiences as well, the image of God many received in the days prior to Vatican II was that of a god like the hologram figure of the Wizard of Oz from the original 1939 movie. He is the figure surrounding by fire who screamed silence and demanded obedience.
A good example of this is Bishop Athanasius Schneider’s catechism CREDO which dismisses Vatican II as a fallible ecumenical council and embraces the Council of Trent as infallible. He calls us to develop the supernatural virtue of guilt and shame for our sins (#451) and even teaches that God uses the death of infants as reparation for the sins against Him.
“Even the suffering of infants, without the use of reason God accepts as atonement for sin.” #58, Schneider, Bishop Athanasius, Credo, 2024, Sophia Press, Manchester, NH.
By their fruits you will know them
However, the real image of God is one we can see in John 15:15: “I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends,* because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.” NABRE John 15:15
We learn to avoid sin because it distances us from God and we do not want to experience this ever.
Many times Catholics will want to return to the TLM and get angry at bishops who subvert it. The truth is the liturgy may be beautiful but there needs to be a deeper understanding between what the Church actually teaches and what Catholics understand is the Catholic teaching of the Church.
Many of the saints understood the actual teaching referring to Jesus in loving terms as His Majesty (St. Teresa of Avila) calling God a good friend (St. Alphonsus Liguori) but many in the TLM hold to a more stern understanding of God as we see in Bishop Schneider. However, that does not mean that he does not also have some powerful teachings to share but they become overshadowed by the negative messages that come out of his words.
There is much more to the difference between the two forms of the liturgy and many when they hear a proposal to the Latin Mass will say they will not go back. What they mean is to the harsh days prior to the Vatican II Council when God was portrayed more like Zeus after he punished Sysiphus. They won’t go back to the condemnation, the veiling, the restriction of the mother of a baby from attending the baptism, and more. They never want to see that again. The harshness of those who demand a return to the Latin Mass is what many protest. They reject seeing God as a cruel taskmaster instead of the Heavenly Father which the Church actually teaches.
No one will have any problem with TLM or PPVI if they find regardless of which Mass Catholics attend, they all seek to a stronger encounter with Christ.
Many associated with TLM claim the PPVI liturgies are not celebrated with royalty. However, the faithful who could add so much to the celebration of the liturgy in PPVI refuse to go and instead choose only to attend TLM. So it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy to the hearers of TLM.
Time will tell how things go for the future but presently, I have to admit, those who demand the TLM prove their critics' points for them. This is especially true in the latest criticism waged against the bishop of Charlotte, North Carolina.
Until that time, the argument will be about the culture found around each version of the Mass. The victor will be the one who seeks to live the actual commands of God which He summed up in Love God and Love neighbor. We discover this by the call of our faith—live in daily encounter with Christ.
Fr. Robert J Carr is pastor of St. Anthony Parish in Allston, MA
The parish podcast is at CatholicAudioMedia.com
The newest edition of Fr Robert J Carr's latest book is now available. Christ in Our Humanity. You can find it here.
I stopped reading after your bus reply.