What is the Tridentine Mass?
Tridentine Mass
The Tridentine Mass is the old form of Mass that was authorised for use throughout the Roman Catholic Church from 1570 until it was replaced following the second Vatican Council in the 1960s.
The Tridentine Mass is also known as the 'Old Mass according to the 1962 Missal', and sometimes inaccurately called 'The Latin Mass'.
Catholic altar
In a Tridentine Mass:
- everything is in Latin,
- the priest conducts the liturgy facing East, leading the community who are behind him
- everything happens strictly and precisely according to the rubrics (instructions)
- the congregation follows the Mass in private prayer and doesn't play an active part
Before the 1960s the Tridentine Mass was never called by that name; it was simply 'The Mass', because there was no other sort of Mass.
The Tridentine Mass was never banned by the Vatican, although it was restricted in many places. The intention was always that the old liturgy should continue where it was appropriate, but that for most churches the new liturgy would more suitable.
On 11th October 2006 The Times reported that:
Pope Benedict XVI is understood to have signed a universal indult - or permission - for priests to celebrate again the Mass used throughout the Church for nearly 1,500 years. The indult could be published in the next few weeks, sources told The Times.Ruth Gledhill, The Times (London) 11 October 2006
On 7th July 2007 BBC News reported that Pope Benedict had lifted restrictions on celebrating the Mass, although the Church believes the majority of its congregation will continue to hear Mass in their local languages.
Why people like the Tridentine Mass
- It's a theatrical and poetic experience of great spiritual power
- It has more of a sense of the mystery and the sacred
- It's more clearly sacrificial than the modern Mass
- It's part of a tradition of worship that's centuries old
- It's always the same - there's no freedom for personal variations
- The language has a brevity and power that vernacular versions don't achieve
- Modern texts are often banal
- Because it was the same in every country, it produced a sense of community with other Catholics worldwide
- Because it's what they grew up with
- Because they don't like change
Some people also feel that the modern mass downgrades the status of the priest unacceptably, and weakens the theological content of the service in order to make it more readily understood.
Where this has happened, and it's very much a matter of opinion, it is the result of local liturgical initiatives and not due to the specific changes made by Vatican II.
The experience of the Old Mass is powerfully evoked in this passage:
Even non-believers like Carl Jung have acknowledged that the Tridentine Mass is a solemn rite of extraordinary power.
The very entrance of the priest, bearing the veiled chalice and paten and preceded by servers, announces that an action of extraordinary importance is about to be re-enacted. It may be re-enacted daily, but it is no everyday action.
From the repeated allusions to offering, oblation, and victim, it becomes clear that the action is a sacrifice. By its nature the Mass is always a sacrifice, but its sacrificial character is more insistently affirmed and articulated in the Tridentine than in the present rite.
Bill Shuter, The Tridentine Mass, Commonweal, 2000
Why was the Mass changed?
In changing the Mass the Church saw that there were two types of content in the liturgy.
Some of it, especially the sacraments, was unchangeable, because it was 'of divine institution' and the Church had a duty to guard it.
But other parts of the liturgy were changeable and the Church decided that it could (and sometimes should) alter and adapt those to serve the community better and make it easier for people to take the liturgy to their hearts.
People and priest
In the new version of the Mass the priest faces the congregation as part of the community and the congregation themselves play a much more active part in the service.
The liturgists believed that the Mass was the concern of the whole Body of Christ - including the members of the Church, and therefore they said liturgy should be "celebrated in community with the active participation of the faithful".
They added
To promote active participation, acclamations by the people are favoured, responses, the chanting of the psalms, antiphons, canticles, also actions or gestures and bodily postures. One should also observe a period of sacred silence at an appropriate time
Latin
The most obvious difference between the old Mass and the new Mass was that it promoted the use of the language of the place where the mass was being celebrated (vernacular language) rather than Latin. (Many people think that Vatican II banned the use of Latin; it didn't do that at all.)
An average Christian without specialist liturgical formation would find it difficult to distinguish between a Mass sung in Latin according to the old Missal and a sung Latin Mass according to the new Missal.Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, 1998
This was done, as Pope John Paul II put it, "so that every individual can understand and proclaim in his or her mother tongue the wonders of God".
This wasn't a total rejection of history, as some thought; in the earliest days of Christianity liturgy would have been in the local languages of Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. Latin became a popular church language first in Africa, later spreading to Rome. Latin did not achieve total supremacy in the Church until the 7th century.
Was the Tridentine Mass banned?
The Tridentine Mass wasn't banned by Vatican II but most Bishops restricted its use. In 1984 the Mass was allowed wider use by an indult (a canonical permission).
Pope John Paul II gave the Mass a new lease of life in 1988 when he wrote:
...respect must everywhere be shown for the feelings of all those who are attached to the Latin liturgical tradition, by a wide and generous application of the directives already issued some time ago by the Apostolic See for the use of the Roman Missal according to the typical edition of 1962.Apostolic Letter Ecclesia Dei, 1998