How We Got Here: The Peace of Summorum

 As mentioned yesterday, Benedict's promulgating of Summorum Pontificum, in addition to loosening most restrictions around the Latin Mass, might also be viewed as the Bishop of Rome declaring the revolution after Vatican II completed, and now an attempt to return to some sort of normal governance in the Church began.  While most histories of revolutions focus on how the old order is overthrown, revolutions are at their messiest when they try to establish a new order.

Because that new order lacks the legitimacy of time and tradition, it often requires the use of force to implement, a force that is not meant to be the norm.  The flip side of this is conformity to the new way is rigidly enforced.  The truest sign a revolution is over is when those in power are comfortable enough to not attempt to enforce that rigidity.  (This will become very important later.)  In this sense, Summorum (along with various other moves towards traditionalists regarding how to interpret the Second Vatican Council) as one of the first post-revolutionary documents of the Church since the Council.

While it seems weird to say it now, nobody really knew how this post-revolutionary order would look.  The final decade (at least) of John Paul's pontificate, and the beginning of Benedicts, involved nasty public spats over the liturgy, and a Vatican increasingly unable to reign in the worst of abuses, despite a CDW decree devoted to abuse and a papal encyclical on the Eucharist.  Even those who had a love of the rich Roman liturgical tradition were pretty starkly divided.  Now that Summorum allowed both forms to stand on its own, what would be the vehicle for liturgical reform going forward?  Would it be the Novus Ordo, in a "Reform of the Reform?"  Or would it be the Extraordinary Form?  Perhaps the more precise question is, who would drive the discussion about liturgical reform in the Church?

A funny thing happened with this debate:  there wasn't a debate.  Even those who backed a "reform of the reform" more or less accepted that going forward, the Extraordinary Form would dictate how to think about liturgical reverence, even in the Novus Ordo.  It wasn't just "using latin" in the Ordinary Form:  the sacred music used was often the same music used for pieces of the Latin Mass.  You would not hear "Mass of Creation" at a conservative Novus Ordo, you would have the musical pieces of a Missa de Angelis.  A lot of the priests who wanted the Novus Ordo done with reverence celebrated the Latin Mass freely.  The liturgical reform became less about "what do we change to get back on the path to tradition", but "how can we unlock the richness of liturgical tradition to lift souls to God?"  

Outside of the liturgy, a similar paradigm shift occurred.  During John Paul II's pontificate, you had liberals, you had conservatives, and you had traditionalists.  The nastiest fights happened between traditionalists and conservatives.    With Benedict, those lines blurred.  Conservatives who attended the Novus Ordo dropped a lot of the strident objections they had to traditionalists.  The average person who sat in the pews felt "well the pope has allowed it, so that's fine by me", and even started becoming friends with those who went to the Latin Mass.  People who attended the Novus Ordo nonetheless began intermingling with traditionalists, in some cases marrying them.  There were always differences, but those differences mattered less.

It is for this reason people talk about Benedict's pontificate being a "turn to the right."  John Paul II viewed himself the guardian of the legacy of the Council.  By the time Benedict became pope and talked about a "Hermeneutic of continuity" between Vatican II and the past, most were okay with that, even traditionalists.  There was once a priest who, convinced traditionalists were skeptical of the Second Vatican Council, decided to have every priest who celebrated the weekly TLM give homilies on the Council and how to understand it, for an entire year.  The project was abandoned by two months.  It was not abandoned because people rejected the teaching:  it was rejected because everyone was bored.  The documents simply weren't relevant to their lives.

This was the point a lot of people missed, but I think it becomes increasingly important:  Vatican II started losing relevance to the lives of Catholics.  During the entire pontificate of John Paul, it was believed as an article of faith that you had to read the documents of the Council to understand what was going on in the world, and how to fix it.  Yet as Benedict's return to normal order continued, people just stopped thinking that.  There was no "turn back the clock" movement, but just a general "well, the last four decades were chaotic, hopefully we can move on now."  A lot of problems had arisen that Vatican II offered precious little on.

The final major change relevant to us is that the demographics of the Traditional Latin Mass underwent a profound change during the pontificate of Benedict.  Before 2007, the Latin Mass was mainly the playground of the old.  There were a few people in their young 20's such as this author, but most were 50 and older.  A large minority were 70 and older.  Post Summorum, the demographics shifted dramatically towards the younger.  The average age of your Mass attendee went from in the 50's to the 30's.  Masses became packed with young children and young families  The Latin Mass became primarily a movement centered around youth, and the laity.

These three changes happened without a lot of fanfare or even attention, but I submit they become very important the day Benedict abdicates the papacy, and when Jorge Bergoglio ascends it, for reasons we will talk about next.