MASS APPEAL
Some
local Catholics defy doctrine in favor of Latin services
Devotion has rubbed gilt off the little
book's fragile pages. The binding is worn, the leather cover cracked. Pressed
inside are a scrap of schoolgirl scrawl in Latin and a holy card dated from
1967.
It's Sunday, and Greg Lux,
a middle-aged man with a growing family, stands in the choir loft of his York
City church, thumbs his dead mother's missal, and seeks his God.
Lux and other
members of Saints Peter and Paul Roman Catholic Mission are Traditional
Catholics who observe the Tridentine Mass, spoken in
Latin by a priest facing away from them.
But Lux says the
service -- austere, stark and solemn -- is the unchanging heart of Catholic
worship back to the sixth century.
And for Lux, who
finds little solace in the modern Catholic Church, the Tridentine
Mass represents a closer tie to God.
Now 38, Lux grew
up in the Roman Catholic Church attending the Novus Ordo
Mass, where churches follow the liturgical changes made during the Second
Vatican Council three decades ago.
The first time he attended a Tridentine Mass, he said, it was as if a longing inside of
him had been answered by the ancient Latin prayers.
The Mass is more reverent, he says. The
Latin prayers and song, the same saints died for.
The traditional rites and rituals -- such
as the priest facing away from the people, toward the altar -- symbolize, for
him, a greater respect for God.
Rite opposed: But while
he believes he's showing respect, the Catholic Diocese in Harrisburg disagrees.
Practicing the Tridentine Mass is considered renegade
by local Roman Catholic officials -- the late Bishop Dattilo
of the Diocese of Harrisburg refused to acknowledge it -- and its members risk
excommunication.
The Roman Catholic Diocese in Harrisburg
labels the Traditional Catholics a sect, out of step with major changes made to
open the church up to the people after the Second Vatican Council in 1962-65.
Those changes can be seen in Roman Catholic
Masses today: an altar turned around so that the priest faces the people, and
parish members, not just priests, allowed to administer the Eucharist.
Before Vatican II, Mass was an individual
experience. Worshippers paid little attention to anything except what was going
on at the altar, if they could understand it, or to their own prayers. But
since the 60s, church members turn in their pews and offer their neighbors
peace with a hug or a handshake.
But these changes opened a rift among some
Catholics about how to worship God -- with distant individualism, or a
collective familiarity.
Intended to bring the church into modern
times, the post-Vatican II changes showed a "greater devotion and
connection to people," said Gregg Roeber,
professor of history and religious studies at Penn State University. But he is
sympathetic with the old rites' pull. "Take away the Latin you take away
the most universal and most ancient part of the prayer."
After Vatican II, Latin prayers by the
priest were discarded for more communal prayers in English.
"It was reminding the church that she
had a connection to the world," the director of the diocese's office of
worship the Rev. Neil Sullivan says.
"The history of the liturgy is a very
wonderful and beautiful thing," he said. "It's ever changing and ever
new."
And although Traditional Catholics believe
their rite is in line with the early Catholic Church, some experts say the
Novus Ordus Mass connects the modern church to the earliest
rites.
In medieval times, local churches often
translated portions of hymns to the vernacular, such as English, German or
French, and interspersed them with Latin. Church members often prayed the
rosary in their own language while the priest conducted the service in Latin.
"They weren't really attuned to what the priest was doing because they
didn't understand what he was saying," Roeber
said.
It was not until the Council of Trent in
the 1500s that the church attempted to create one, universal Mass, Roeber said.
Still, Roeber
said, there are rumblings in the modern church that the most recent changes may
have gone too far, taking too much of the past out of Mass.
Pope John Paul II has allowed the Tridentine Mass to continue at the local bishop's
discretion. Dattilo limited the service to one
Saturday evening a month at Camp Hill's Trinity High School. But churches must
be formed under the diocese's direction, diocesan officials say, using the
church's current rite.
The chapel on South Beaver Street and its
members are causing a schism in the diocese, diocesan officials say. They are
breaking Catholic law.
Growing congregation: Facing
such opposition is nothing new for those who attend the chapel. Organized
locally by Dr. David Drew, a West Manchester Township anesthesiologist, the
Traditional congregation long had no building of its own and spent the last two
years worshipping in a Lancaster County Comfort Inn conference room. A banquet
table draped with ornate cloth served as a makeshift altar. Church families
stored holy statues of Mary and Joseph at their houses during the week. Retired
priests traveled from as far as Miami to perform Sunday Mass.
Now the church claims about 125 members,
mostly families with young children. Many of them once attended the Novus Ordo Mass.
And despite opposition from the Roman
Catholic Church , the devotion of Traditional
Catholics has fueled a national movement, which was spurred recently by Mel
Gibson, himself a Traditional Catholic, whose movie, "The Passion of the
Christ," re-interprets the last days of Jesus.
His film has spoken in dollars -- it
knocked "Forrest Gump" off the top-10 of highest-money making movies
of all time earlier this spring.
But the divide between what Traditional
Catholics think is right spiritually and obeying the highest leaders of their
local diocese also cuts deeply. "We are taught much more (than modern
Catholics) to listen to authority. It's hurtful and scary," Lux said.
But while the movement is growing many
Traditional Catholics say pursuing their faith has been difficult. Lux and his family live in Swatara
Township, but three years ago, their home was Illinois, where they drove 60
miles round-trip each Sunday to attend church in Latin. Once, they made a
160-mile drive for a Christmas midnight Mass and arrived home at 4 a.m.
Without a parish pastor to call and living
about 30 miles away from other church families, he feels isolated. Without
acknowledgment from the bishop, he feels shunned.
"I have to chose
between the right thing to do and what the person in authority is telling
me," he says. "Our church is founded on thousands of years of
tradition. Are you going to disappoint God or are you going to disappoint the
church?"
Differences: The Rev.
Philip Stark performs the Tridentine Mass up and down
the East Coast, traveling each Sunday from his home in Rhode Island.
On a recent Sunday in York, the dark wooden
pews of the chapel were about three-quarters full. Women and girls in long
dresses and skirts stood next to middle-aged men in dark suits and ties, their
lace mantillas -- which they wear to show respect for God -- brushed their
cheeks as they kneel to pray.
Stark finished, turned to the altar, where
a pair of altar boys lifted the hem of his purple and gold robes off the floor.
He began the Nicene Creed in a low mumble: Credo
in decum, Catrem omnipotentem, factorem caeli et terrae...
Church members followed along silently in
their missals: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and
earth...
"You could be completely ignorant of
Latin," Anna Luther, a York College sophomore and choir member, says.
"But you know that it mattered."
The 19-year-old stood up in the choir loft
with other singers, many young women, like bright
flowers in a window box overlooking the families praying below them.
Anna and her family have sought a home in
various churches. They started at a Novus Ordo church
in Hanover. Later, they drove to a Tridentine Mass in
Baltimore. The York City church means they can worship near home.
In Latin, the Mass takes on an reverence that she found lacking in English services.
"You start to think about
yourself," she says. "And in today's world it's so easy to lose that.
Here your soul can be quiet."
Home in York: The old
stone building in York came to the congregation in a roundabout way. The church
first looked to rent a church in Columbia -- but the diocese interceded, Drew
said, and the Lutheran owners declined to rent it, citing their long-standing
relationship with the diocese.
Hungry for a home, the congregation
collected nearly $37,000 in 10 days to buy the York City church, Drew said.
It was a miracle, slightly worn.
The men's toilet backed up. Plumbers got to
know the old pipes well. One church member, a carpenter, installed a vintage
communion rail bought on eBay. Parishioners gave old walls fresh coats of
paint. An electrical engineer, Lux helped replace
wiring and emergency lighting.
The church's congregation is growing, too,
Drew says, with more young, large families filling the dark wooden pews for the
old service. "Novus Ordo Catholics have this
whole idea that it's kind of run by old men," Drew says. "They like
to paint a picture that we're old people stuck to old habits."
Now, on Sundays after Mass, a freshly
painted downstairs room fills with adults sipping coffee and eating donuts.
Toddlers chase each other with powered-suga s.
Teenage girls, members of the choir talk in small groups.
"This is where all the young children
are," Luther says. "This is the future."
Reach Laura Giovanelli
at lgiovanelli@yorkdispatch.com
.
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