Critical mass
Sir: Damian Thompson, in his excellent article (8 September) on the Pope's motu proprio, which has restored the right to celebrate and attend the liturgical form previously known as the 'Old' or 'Tridentine' Mass, comments that 'it is an exciting time to be Catholic'. He is absolutely right, for more than one reason. Firstly, as he says, because by his action the Pope 'has indicated that the entire worship of the Church — which had become tired and dreary since the Second Vatican council — is on the brink of reformation'. The next stage in this process for us will be the promulgation of the more faithful, and less dogmatically banal, translation of the English version of the 'new mass' which has now been completed.
But there is an even more fundamental reason to be thankful for the motu proprio: that it sweeps away what the Pope has called the 'hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity', a way of interpreting the Second Vatican Council as an event which destroyed the entire preconciliar Catholic tradition. By insisting that the 'old rite' and the 'new rite' are simply different forms of the same liturgy, the Pope has done much to re-establish the essential continuity of the Catholic tradition, and with it the necessary condition for the growth of unity between the growing number of young 'traditionalists' in the Catholic Church, and the now ageing 'liberals' who have dominated it in recent years.
William Oddie Oxford
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