The easing of permission for the Tridentine Rite is surely a great leap backward. Mind you, this is not a matter for levity in the eyes of the Vatican. It is serious business as the unfortunate Cardinal Archbishop of Manila discovered when he announced that after consulting his clergy there was no need for a Latin Mass in the diocese. He was very smartly put in his place by those experts in pastoral practice in the Vatican.

I wonder if the promoters of the Mass in Latin have ever read the Decree of the Congregation for Divine Worship which states that by mandate of Pope Paul VI it “now promulgates and declares the new edition of the Roman Missal to be the Editio Tipica in accord with the decrees of Vatican Council II – all things to the contrary notwithstanding”. Obviously this document no longer has any status. Of course, since many people who ardently promote the Latin Mass seem to be Vatican II deniers this is not a worry to them.

I wonder if the people promoting the Latin Mass really believe that it will bring about some kind of renaissance in the Church, will return it to “the good old days”. In their dreams! That Church has gone forever. The need is for new pastoral strategies and initiatives, not a retreat into nostalgia. Cardinal Hume wrote that unless this kind of renewal is happening in the local church it is not going to happen at all. This was clearly the Spirit-inspired vision of Pope John XXIII who called us to engage with the world, not to retreat from it.

I guess priests of my generation on can be excused for feeling a sense of betrayal. After all that commitment to what we truly believed was the work of the Holy Spirit (how could 3000 bishops get it wrong?) in giving reality to the call to renewal by the Council, to find now so many in senior positions of governance in the Church trying to turn the clock back has become a real test of loyalty. As parish priests we have a duty of obedience and loyalty – but to whom do we direct that loyalty? As the pastors who have the most immediate contact with our parishioners surely we have a duty of loyalty to the people who have been entrusted to us and whom we led to the renewed vision of Church given to us by the Fathers of the Council.

The reality is that most of the people in our churches know no other Mass than the present mandated liturgy and most of those that do remember the Tridentine Mass don’t want a bar of it.

I sometimes wonder where the Holy Spirit is in this present anti-Vatican II push. Perhaps we became too smug in thinking we had implemented the vision of Vatican II and He is permitting this ecclesial vandalism as a wake-up call to tell us that there is still much work to be done, that the course is for stayers, not sprinters. I think there is a moral for us in the story of that French diocese which finally got round to implementing the Tridentine Mass during the first half of the twentieth century, four centuries after Trent.

L F Donnelly, Port Macquarie NSW