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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