by Kevin Tierney
for Rorate Cæli
I thought about this question today when I saw an ad promoting the latest work of Dr. Brant Pitre, a 32 hour, 130 dollar, 25 CD (or MP3) collection entitled Mass of All Ages which argues that actually, the Novus Ordo is the truly Traditional Mass!
Now before everyone starts groaning or rolling their eyes, I’m not going to go through this series bit by bit and interact with it. I know several other writers are in the process of doing that, and I salute their endurance and bravery. My focus will be on something different. I ask one simple question:
Who is this for?
In this work Professor Pitre, a Scripture scholar of some renown and legitimate gravitas, tries to ride the coattails of the YouTube documentary series Mass of the Ages, a trilogy with nearly a million views each in a world where most Catholic content gets a few thousand views. The series served as a gateway for the Latin Mass to re-enter popular discussion, including interviews with individual Catholics (such as Scripture scholar Scott Hahn and well-known apologist Patrick Madrid) who speak of their love for the Latin Mass.
So far as one can tell, there will be no such testimonials in this 32-hour longform podcast.
Those who produced Mass of the Ages made it free to the world, as a labor of love, with requests for donations to help offset the costs. Making it available for free was the point: its director wanted to get the word out to as many as possible, a sign of that evangelical zeal that animates traditionalism. Professor Pitre is doing this for a check, and his publisher wants to restrict access to those who are willing to pay 130 dollars or are willing to enter a financing agreement to listen to a longform podcast for the price of four installments of 34 dollars. That is right, dear reader: they want you to put your podcast feed on credit.
Another Pointless Rehash
Let us engage in a thought exercise. Suppose Professor Pitre’s podcast lays out a point and proves it persuasively: that the Novus Ordo is in fact “traditional,” however he defines traditional. Then what? Do people think this is going to turn the tide? That people will suddenly learn to love something that few have loved, even if most have accepted it, over the past six decades? Do people think that, if somehow felt banners and guitars at Mass could be proved to be traditional by some odd definition, they would now gain widespread acceptance and the desire to move past them would fade away?
Consider the reverse. Suppose one could prove conclusively that the Novus Ordo was a rupture with tradition. Would Professor Pitre then stop attending it? Unlikely. His goal isn’t to faithfully understand and transmit tradition, regardless of where the conclusion takes him, but to rationalize or justify a position in a way he can monetize.
My Culture Is Not Your Tradition
The reason he is (and others are) so interested in proving that “actually the thing I like is the truly traditional thing” is that Tradition is making a bit of a comeback in the Church, a reflection/parallel trend of the slow but undeniable shift in secular society away from the age of Liberalism that dominated the post-WW2 West.
From the 1970s to the early 2000s, defenders commonly portrayed the Novus Ordo as a necessary break from the “bad old days." Tradition wasn’t necessarily evil, but the Church had grown stale, so we had to move away from the old practices after the Second Vatican Council. This itself was largely a reflection of the mentality of the society of its time. (A trend that even reformers like St. Paul VI were worried about.)
Now as society shifts from “the bad days need to stay in the past” to “Maybe today we can learn from yesterday for tomorrow’s sake,” lo and behold!, the New Mass’s proponents suddenly argue that the Novus Ordo is “truly traditional.”' What will be the fashionable defense in twenty years?
Check the cultural trends. You can love or hate various traditional liturgies, but the serious defense of them has always been made on principles other than momentary cultural trends. Indeed, a liturgy that is just an expression of today’s culture will not outlast it.
Missing the Point
When I argue for the superiority of the Latin Mass, I must accept that there are those that won’t agree with me, but we are at least speaking about the same topic and language. The problem with Professor Pitre’s position is that nobody cares about what he is arguing. That the argument has shifted from “tradition was a fossil” to “we’re the true trads” is just a reminder that nobody believed the arguments from the 1970s to the 2000s. Does one really think it will be possible to convince them of the latter view today? The only way you are going to be able to accomplish that is by subverting the understanding of the word “traditional.” Maybe you are right, but it’s also just as likely the audience will see that the author is saying that “traditional” as they understand it is bad, yet the proponents of the Novus Ordo still want to lay claim to the name for branding purposes.
This all misses the point. We don’t worship at the Latin Mass because it is “traditional,” if one understands traditional as a lengthy tracing of this or that practice back to this or that time frame. There are those who can do that, but even they will be the first to say they don’t treat the TLM as an intellectual construct. They go because the TLM, like Peter’s message at Pentecost, pierces their heart. Slapping the phrase “traditional” on the Novus Ordo will not change the fundamental challenge it faces: there are butts in seats, but there are few hearts on fire. For those whose hearts are on fire, they care little about debates over who is more traditional. Even after Traditionis Custodes, these individuals in the Novus Ordo have warm and friendly relations with TLM attendees. For them, tradition is not a set of rituals, it is a disposition. They are clearly not the audience.
So, I conclude with the question I began with: who is this new CD series for?
It’s not for Catholics in the pews. The promotional material says it is for those who wonder why the Church did what it did around the time of Vatican II. But they don’t care. They want to know what the Church will do now to help ignite hearts. They aren’t going to buy a podcast on credit to learn that.
The series also clearly isn’t for the lover of liturgical history, since, as will be demonstrated shortly by others, much of the Professor’s historical narrative is not only incorrect, it contains sloppy and amateurish mistakes.
The real audience of this will be diocesan workshops and the parish industrial complex, known for shelling out donor money on a bunch of things that serve as shiny objects to show they take this very seriously. It will become the audio version of a coffee table book, something people own but never read. If one thinks renewal comes from the diocesan bureaucracy and another podcast, this might be for you. Me? I’m tired of this debate.
