Fred Sneesby - Observations on Culture, Faith and Politics

The Latin Mass and the Kingston Trio

July 2, 2007

The Kingston Trio disbanded in 1967. That was about the time that the Catholic Latin Mass was disappearing. No, the Kingston Trio was not a group of political activists on trial in Jamaica. They were three guys who formed a singing group performing spirited folk songs with tight harmonies starting in 1957. They were very successful; at one time in the early 1960’s, they had four of the top ten best selling record albums in the country. Folk was really big for a few years back then. But soon rock n’ roll and rhythm n’ blues echoed back from across the ocean in the British Invasion and the Kingston Trio was swept away never to dominate the charts again. I’m sure they still have their fans even today but their sound ceased to be the “currency” in the music industry.

It took a few years for the Latin Mass to disappear. Reform of the Catholic Liturgy (the Mass and the Sacraments) actually began in the 1950’s but a tsunami of change passed through in the late 1960’s. Piece by piece, the ritual was changed from Latin into English as the directives begun in the 50’s and promulgated by 1965 through the Second Vatican Council were instituted. More important than the language change was the shift to the Mass being a prayer in which the whole people participated.

Now, “participation” is a relative thing. Back in the twelfth century, Church leaders felt good about increasing participation by beginning the practice of the elevation of the Host (the bread) after the Consecration (when, in Catholic belief, the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus). At that point in time, the congregation’s gazing at the Host pretty much summed up their participation: hardly anyone received Communion and no one said anything during the Mass except the clerics.

There was much weeping and gnashing teeth in the late 1960’s as the familiar Latin Mass went away and Catholic folks found themselves staring at the priest, hearing the prayers in their own language, and being expected to pray out loud themselves as a group, a community. Lots of people hated it. They said that the Mass had lost its “mystery”; they felt that Latin gave the prayers and the ritual a sense of the holy; they found the experience altogether too pedestrian.

There is much to be said in analyzing that experience of loss and of people’s notion of the holy. For our purposes today, though, I want to see it in the context of change in the 1960’s and wonder out loud about the meaning of Pope Benedict’s recent ruling that would make it easier for people to celebrate the old Latin Mass because it is a small window through which to see the changing relationship between religion and culture.

The world of 1970 was radically different from the world of 1960. It was not just a matter of fast-paced technological changes like we are experiencing today that, in turn, affect the culture. Fundamental change occurred. Generations no longer related to each other in the same way. Gender roles and relationships were fundamentally questioned. The status of governments and institutions was reduced. Authority in general didn’t, well, hold any authority. Truth and beauty and goodness became relative terms. Family structures were altered. A decade begun in idealism and optimism ended in materialism and cynicism.

I suppose every era has its turmoil, but the 1960’s shifts in both personal and national values and identity were seismic. This was true for the United States and for many societies around the globe. And it was true for the Catholic Church. Having passed through the Sixties, there was really no returning to what had been. And that was two generations ago.

Ought we go back? Will increasing the incidence of the Latin Mass help believers recapture something valuable? No, it will not, and we cannot go back. I don’t think that that is what the Pope has in mind. After all, it is only people over 50 years of age who would even remember the Latin Mass. There are younger people in the Church who style themselves as traditionalists who clamor for that sort of thing but they are really misguided in their search for substance and certainty. The Pope is simply satisfying the tastes of a certain “niche market” of Catholics.

The fact is that believers are really called to live in uncertainty, to be forward-looking, and to meet constantly the present challenges of the world head on. That is not to say that they cannot reach into their bag of 2000 year-old tools to help them, but the Church is called to converse with the world in a state-of-the art understandable way. Worshipping in a language that everyone understands is a small part of that.

Religion is part of culture but it also stands apart from culture to some degree and is in constant dialogue with culture(s). It is a bad sign when a Church becomes a silent partner in the conversation. I am not saying that having more Latin Masses does this, but the nostalgia for a time when the Church was sinking into irrelevance will not help the Church help the World.

So, yeah, attend a Latin Mass if you want, and throw on an old album by the Kingston Trio. Nothing wrong with that. But then turn on the radio and find out what the music of today is and how your Church can sing along.