The Latin Mass Society of New Zealand
Briefing from the Chairman 9 (madmimi.com)
LMS Patrons lead a joint letter to save the Traditional Mass
PRESS RELEASE – Latin Mass Society Patrons lead a joint letter to save the Traditional Mass
The Latin Mass Society welcomes the intervention of 48 prominent figures of culture, academia, and politics, including Catholics and non-Catholics, in a letter to The Times published today, in support of the Traditional Mass.
The letter appeals to the value of the ancient Mass both as a cultural artefact—‘a cathedral of text and gesture’—and an irreplaceable spiritual treasure, with a unique ability to ‘encourage silence and contemplation’.
It was organised by Sir James MacMillan, a Patron of the Latin Mass Society, whose article accompanies the letter in The Times, and is signed by another Patron, Lord Moore of Etchingham (Charles Moore).
Sir James MacMillan comments:
The people who have signed this letter are an impressively mixed bunch! Catholics, Protestants, Jews, agnostics, atheists – all convinced that the Traditional Latin Mass is a thing of great beauty, wonder and awe, and a profound shaper of our culture, one way or another over the centuries. I stand with them in my appreciation of the form – ‘a cathedral of text and gesture’, which has given rise to great music and poetry through the ages. But it is as an observant and loyally practising Catholic that I wrote my cover article for The Times. If Rome were to do what is rumoured, it would be grossly unjust and make an utter mockery of ‘synodality’. And many observers outside the Church, in these difficult days of ideological and political tension, see this now as an issue of religious freedom. It is surely a mark of diversity, inclusion and equity that the Church can celebrate different rites – the Old Dominican rite, the liturgy of the Ordinariate, the rites of our eastern co-religionists, the Novus Ordo and, God willing, the Traditional Latin Mass.
Today’s letter references the petition of 1971, signed by 105 intellectuals, musicians, politicians, and cultural figures, which prompted Pope Paul VI to allow the continued celebration of the Traditional Mass. This permission applied at first only to England and Wales, but it was extended to the whole world in 1984. This permission is threatened today.
The 1971 petition was signed by many of the most prominent cultural figures of the day: not only Agatha Christie, but the Controller of Radio 3, the Director of the National Gallery, a former Director of Music at Westminster Cathedral, two Anglican bishops, the philosopher Iris Murdoch, the sculptress Barbara Hepworth, the soprano Joan Sutherland, the novelist Robert Graves, and many others. An earlier petition, in 1966, had been signed by Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden; a later petition, in 2007, was signed by Franco Zeffirelli and René Girard.
The strong support for the Traditional Mass by non-Catholic cultural figures derives from its place in world culture. As the 1971 petition expressed it:
The rite in question, in its magnificent Latin text, has also inspired a host of priceless achievements in the arts— not only mystical works, but works by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians.
Full text of the Letter, with signatories
Latin Mass at risk
Sir,
On July 6, 1971, The Times printed an appeal to Pope Paul VI in defence of the Latin Mass signed by Catholic and non-Catholic artists and writers, including Agatha Christie, Graham Greene and Yehudi Menuhin. This became known as the “Agatha Christie letter”, because it was reportedly her name that prompted the Pope to issue an indult, or permission, for celebration of the Latin Mass in England and Wales. The letter argued that “the rite in question, in its magnificent Latin text, has also inspired priceless achievements … by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture.”
Recently there have been worrying reports from Rome that the Latin Mass is to be banished from nearly every Catholic church. This is a painful and confusing prospect, especially for the growing number of young Catholics whose faith has been nurtured by it. The traditional liturgy is a “cathedral” of text and gesture, developing as those venerable buildings did over many centuries. Not everyone appreciates its value and that is fine; but to destroy it seems an unnecessary and insensitive act in a world where history can all too easily slip away forgotten. The old rite’s ability to encourage silence and contemplation is a treasure not easily replicated, and, when gone, impossible to reconstruct. This appeal, like its predecessor, is “entirely ecumenical and non-political”. The signatories include Catholics and non-Catholics, believers and non-believers. We implore the Holy See to reconsider any further restriction of access to this magnificent spiritual and cultural heritage.
Robert Agostinelli; Lord Alton of Liverpool; Lord Bailey of Paddington; Lord Bamford; Lord Berkeley of Knighton; Sophie Bevan; Ian Bostridge; Nina Campbell; Meghan Cassidy; Sir Nicholas Coleridge; Dame Imogen Cooper; Lord Fellowes of West Stafford; Sir Rocco Forte; Lady Antonia Fraser; Martin Fuller; Lady Getty; John Gilhooly; Dame Jane Glover; Michael Gove; Susan Hampshire; Lord Hesketh; Tom Holland; Sir Stephen Hough; Tristram Hunt; Steven Isserlis; Bianca Jagger; Igor Levit; Lord Lloyd-Webber; Julian Lloyd Webber; Dame Felicity Lott; Sir James MacMillan; Princess Michael of Kent; Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest; Lord Moore of Etchingham; Fraser Nelson; Alex Polizzi; Mishka Rushdie Momen; Sir Andras Schiff; Lord Skidelsky; Lord Smith of Finsbury; Sir Paul Smith; Rory Stewart; Lord Stirrup; Dame Kiri Te Kanawa; Dame Mitsuko Uchida; Ryan Wigglesworth; AN Wilson; Adam Zamoyski
A PDF Version of this press release is available here
Full text of the 1971 Petition and its signatories, as it appeared in The Times on 6 th July 1971, here.
Additional signatories of the 1971 petition, published in Italy, here.
Full text of the 1966 Petition and its signatories, here.
Notes for Editors
The Latin Mass Society was founded in 1965 to support the continued celebration of the Catholic liturgy in the form it took at the eve of the Second Vatican Council: the ‘1962 Missal’ or Traditional Mass.
The 1971 petition and others like it were the subject of a major historical study published in 2023:
The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals: Petitions to Save the ancient Mass from 1966 to 2007, Edited by Joseph Shaw, with a preface by Martin Mosebach (more information here).
Latin Mass Society
Press contacts:
Communications Officer, Portia Berry-Kilby
portia@lms.org.uk
Chairman, Joseph Shaw
oxford@lms.org.uk
Registered Office: 9 Mallow Street
London
EC1Y 8RQ
020 7404 7284
info@lms.org.uk
Registered Charity Number: 248388
Among the Petition Signatories
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa
HRH Princess Michael of Kent
James MacMillan
Bianca Jagger
Lord Lloyd-Webber
Rt Hon Michael Gove
Tristram Hunt
Lady Antonia Fraser
Sir Nicholas Coleridge
Lord (Charles) Moore of Etchingham
Fraser Nelson
Rory Stewart
Lord (Jock) Stirrup
A N Wilson
Tom Holland
Lord (Julian) Fellowes
Social Links
Gregorius Magnus: biannual
magazine of the Una Voce
Federation
Dear FIUV Members and Friends: New Edition of Gregorius Magnus |
From the FIUV President, Joseph ShawGregorius Magnus 16 is now available!See it on ISSUU, optimised for mobile devices. Download the pdf for viewing on a screen. Download the high-res pdf for printing. This edition includes features on the summer’s walking pilgrimages, the TLM and the media, and a new book about the Traditional movement:The Latin Mass and the Intellectuals: Petitions to Save the Ancient Mass, 1966-2007The deadline for the next issue of Gregorius Magnus is 1st February 2024. Please let us have your local news! We want to hear from all over the world. Email president@fiuv.org.uk Would you like to advertise? Or to contribute to future editions? Click on the links. |
President’s Message
by Joseph Shaw
Welcome to a new edition of Gregorius Magnus, devoted particularly to walking pilgrimages, which have shown enormous growth this year, despite, or perhaps because of, the more hostile ecclesial environment in which we find ourselves. This edition will appear in the final days of the much-anticipated Synod on Synodality. Since the Synod will take place behind closed doors, it is particularly difficult to anticipate the general atmosphere when these words will be read. What I can say is that, whatever may happen at the Synod, the FIUV and its member associations, and in general the movement in support of the Traditional Mass, took part in the Synod consultation in a serious and sincere way, and that, as far as the diocesan, national, and continental stages went – whose reports can be read online – our voices were not entirely drowned out. In a previous edition of Gregorius Magnus, I picked out passages in some of these documents noting our concerns. The focus of the Synod seems destined to lie elsewhere, of course, and we will not be surprised if the systematic marginalisation of Catholics attached to the Traditional Mass will not capture the attention of the Synod Fathers – not forgetting the lay participants – for very long.
Nevertheless, the framing of our contributions in the reports is interesting. We have been set down, not unreasonably, as one of various ‘marginalised’ groups. We tend to be mentioned at the end of a list of disaffected groups of Catholics, such as those in illicit unions and those with same-sex attraction. Several of these reports were at pains to emphasise that we constitute a very small minority, but the same is clearly true of the other groups they mention as well. I wonder what the reaction would be if homosexual Catholics were told that they must not attend Mass in the same ecclesiastical building as respectable people, but would have to make do with the parish hall or a nearby gymnasium, as some Traditional Catholics have been told in the United States and elsewhere. What
would people say, again, if divorced and (invalidly) remarried Catholics were told that they would in future have to drive for an hour or more to attend services?
I don’t think we would need a specially convened Synod in Rome, at vast cost, to work out that such rules are ‘unpastoral’. Pope Francis would not lose any time in reminding us that the Church is a ‘field hospital’, a remedy for the sick, and not a prize for the righteous. And he would be right to do so. The Church is indeed a hospital for the sick, and this fact should focus our attention on the spiritual remedies the Church must employ, not to gratify patients’ disordered appetites but to restore them to spiritual health. The remedies certainly include the sacraments. Following the fashion in politics for medicalising disagreements, some of our opponents like to imply that Traditional Catholics are suffering from some psychological pathology, but if so, making it more difficult for us to access the sacraments, or trying to make us do so in conditions designed to demoralise us, doesn’t seem a very logical response The saying, of obscure origin, that ‘beatings will continue until morale improves’, could have been invented for our situation. Those wondering about the resilience of the traditional movement should remember, however, that this has always been our lot. Even under Summorum Pontificum, many of the Federation’s member associations faced extraordinary opposition, and even open hostility, from those charged with providing them with pastoral care. Our lay associations, religious communities, and priestly institutes were not founded to bask in the approval of bien pensant opinion or the favour of the ecclesial establishment. Our movement was formed in the grief of Catholics deprived of the liturgy they loved, and since then it has been engaged in unending difficulties, and sometimes outright persecution. However imperfect we ourselves may be, we know the value of what we are defending, and we also know that, in end, the Church will remember it too.
Qui seminant in lacrimis, in exsultatione metent.
Those who sow in tears, shall reap in joy. (Ps 125:5)
Read the full online version of Gregorius Magnus here: https://lms.org.uk/sites/default/files/resource_documents/gregmag/winter2024web.pdf