News Item: : Grace, Tradition and Interiority - Part 1 of 2
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
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Friday 22 July 2016 - 13:36:26

Speaking into Silence

I was recently in conversation with a Catholic lady in her early 80's, as to why we drive so far on Sundays to get to a Traditional Latin Mass.

As there are so many angles from which to come at this, I decided to focus on the one that most resonates at present. And so, I explained how the silence and order of the Low Mass are almost monastic.

Contrasting this with the various jokes which are delivered from the ambo at the start and conclusion of some local Novus Ordo Masses, I tried to convey something of how the Traditional Low Mass allows participants the space for a deep encounter with the living God.

In that gently expressed relativism, which one so often finds among the English of a certain generation, this lady smiled sympathetically and remarked, ''Well...if that is what makes you happy.''

Well, indeed...

A Bitter Trial

About four years ago, in fact during a Pontifical High Mass with an exquisite choir, I experienced a great sense of distress at just how much our generation, and the one following, had been denied by the hierarchy. I remember whispering out loud, ''How could you have got rid of all of this?''

Becoming increasingly concerned about what it must have been like for those Catholics who, less relativistic in their outlook than my above-mentioned friend, did not want to go along with the, excuse me saying, New Order, I began to scout around.

I distinctly remember my late Dad, who converted to the Faith two decades after the Second Vatican Council, telling me that the late Canon Michael Culhane had once admitted that many local Catholics just could not cope with the liturgical changes and stopped coming to Mass in their distress.

I guess they were left in that spiritually perilous state of still having the Faith, but not its practice. But how does that preserve the state of grace? And how long would the gift of Faith itself remain secure without the sustenance of the Sacraments? Especially in such a secularizing age.

Perhaps, too, some used the changes as an excuse to lapse. After all, one local man told us that, even before the Second Vatican Council, a number of local men used to pop outside during the Sunday sermon for a sly smoke...

Still, Canon Michael's assessment is backed up by that clear acknowledgement in Dominicae Cenae (DC 12), which expresses nothing less than a papal apology for any post-Conciliar scandal and disturbance concerning the interpretation and veneration due to the Holy Eucharist.

During my scouting in the summer of 2012, I came across the book A Bitter Trial. This gathers together the correspondence about the sweeping liturgical changes, which passed between Evelyn Waugh and John Carmel Cardinal Heenan.

This book provides some pretty deep insights into the experiences and feelings, at least those encountered by some of the intellectual Catholics, at the time of the radical changes.

Although Waugh's background and education mean that this book cannot give us a complete picture of what it might have been like for the average working-class punters who used to fill the pews, there is something universal in the themes which he so clearly expresses.

For me personally, this book was a conduit of grace, which seemed to tear my heart more open for God and leave a new tenderness for Him there. I recommend it to anyone seeking to go deeper in the Faith.

Fr. Bryan Houghton

It was around that time that I was intrigued to also discover a convert to the Faith, who shared our familial surname. His writings would have a similarly faith-deepening influence on me.

Fr. Bryan Houghton was a remarkable character who served in the military and trained in the field of international banking but, having converted to the Catholic faith, became a priest and used his inheritance to build schools and churches.

Fr. Houghton had been selected for the episcopate, but when he refused to affirm the orthodoxy of Teilhard de Chardin, he was passed over...

During the distressing period of ''liturgical experimentation'' before the close of the Second Vatican Council, Fr. Houghton wrote to his bishop to say that, the moment that the Canon of the Mass was tampered with, he would retire from active parish ministry.

Although his bishop suggested - with hindsight perhaps naively - that the Canon of the Mass would never be changed, Fr. Houghton's resignation came into effect five years later, when this very thing happened.

And so, the day that the Novus Ordo officially came into effect, Fr. Houghton left the leadership of his parish.

Tired of a decade's worth of squabbling between bishops, priests, revolutionaries and traditionalists, he hit the road and purchased a house in the south of France.

As a retired and ageing priest he was ''permitted'' to continue saying the Traditional Latin Mass alone or for a small group in private. He thus found himself feeling rejected and left alone to a life of quietude in a foreign country. In this situation he became the author of three erudite and witty expositions of the overall situation.

In the last decades of his life, Fr. Houghton's practice of silence, solitude and daily offering of the Traditional Mass enabled him to become something of a contemplative. Those who knew him recognized his deep love for God. It is interesting to note that Fr. Houghton claimed that it had been the contemplative silence of the Traditional Latin Mass that instilled in him the discipline necessary to survive for so many years in secluded retirement. Gradually, a local bishop allowed him to offer a weekly Sunday Mass in a 12th-Century chapel and a congregation of around 100 souls gathered around him each week. Many of them, like him, had been bruised by the radical changes and the nature of their enforcement.

Concluding Reflections

There are two things in Fr. Bryan Houghton's writings which particularly speak to today's theme about grace, tradition and interiority. For both of them, I am indebted to R. Michael McGrade's moving tribute Rejected Priest. Let us conclude with these.

1. When Fr. Houghton was but a boy of nine, his parents sent him to a boarding school in France. As a Protestant he used to go every day to the local Mass and watch from the back.

One day, he told a teenaged lad from the chapel that he was an English Protestant, and that he found the Protestant services to be beautiful because they always spoke about Jesus. He then asked the teenager to explain the Catholic Mass to him.

The teenager had replied: ''That's it. There, they talk about Jesus. They are surely very beautiful. But it is not the Mass. The Mass, you see, IS Jesus.''

After hesitating for a moment, the teenager continued: ''You see, God was made flesh in order to redeem us on the Cross. At the Last Supper, He left us His Body and Blood, under the appearances of bread and wine, as pledges of our redemption. That is the Mass: the Real Presence of Jesus Christ. Before such an act, there is nothing to do, or to say. One can only be silent. I would love to join you at the back of the chapel.''

2. Fr. Houghton elsewhere explained how necessary it was for the priest to lose himself before the Real Presence.

He said: ''The Mass is a divine act; it is a liturgy in which God acts, and not men. It includes generous bands of silence in order to permit adoration of the ineffable Presence. What is said in a loud voice is said in Latin to limit intrusions by the personality of the priest... The priest is barely a craftsman. Basically, he operates the altar like a plumber with his apprentice. Once the water is connected, the tap of Eternal Life opened, he leaves again carrying his tools.''

Like I said to the Catholic lady in her 80's, the silence and order of the Low Mass are almost monastic.

And that is worth driving a long way for.   

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This news item is from Torch of The Faith
( http://www.torchofthefaith.com/news.php?extend.1371 )