While the Latin Mass has strong advocates, it also has strong detractors.Kate McCarthy, a professor of religious studies at Chico State University, is among the latter.
A Roman Catholic herself, McCarthy said in an interview she was disappointed in the pope's decision making the Latin Mass more available.
Although it is esthetically beautiful and provides many people a wonderful spiritual experience, the Latin Mass is "attached to a history and theology that I thought Vatican II repudiated," she said.
The pope's recent action "reasserts a model of Catholicism I was glad to have seen disappear," she added.
Vatican II (The Second Ecumenical Council) was a series of conferences in the early 1960s that made many changes in the Catholic Church. It made the vernacular Mass, rather than the Latin Mass, the norm for Catholic worship.
Throughout its history, the Catholic Church has "defined itself against the rest of the world" and "seen itself as above the world," McCarthy said. The church saw its mission as "heaven and salvation, not the world and service."
As she views it, Vatican II changed all that, she said. "It was about redefining the church's mission as service in the world to everybody."
Praise for pope
McCarthy's comments contrast sharply with those of Jeff Culbreath of Orland, who applauds Pope Benedict's promotion of the Latin Mass.
Culbreath lamented that when he attended a Catholic Church in Sacramento that celebrated the English Mass, "there was an exaggerated focus on community and social justice (and) not much concern about the salvation of souls."
"There seemed to be a disconnect between the new Mass and what the Catholic Church had professed through the ages," he added.
Culbreath praised Pope Benedict, saying under him, "the church is recovering its identity. He knows there's a crisis in the church."
By crisis, Culbreath said he meant things like the fact that in some countries many Catholics have stopped attending Mass.
But McCarthy sees a different kind of crisis in the church — a growing split in American Catholicism along "progressive-conservative" lines. It's like the divide running through many Christian denominations today, she said.
The professor said she worries that the return of the Latin Mass may worsen that split. As it's been, she said, having one form of the Mass has held people together. Now, with two forms being allowed, parishes may wind up with two groups who "have nothing to say to each other," one attending a Latin Mass at 11 a.m. and the other an English Mass at 1 p.m., she said.
Last month, when Benedict issued his proclamation on the Latin Mass, he added an explanatory letter that, among other things, addressed fears about potential divisiveness.
The pope argued such concerns were groundless because the vernacular Mass will surely remain the most common form while use of the Latin Mass won't be very widespread.
Quest for unity
In fact, according to the Rev. Michael Newman of Chico, by relaxing the rules regarding the Latin Mass, the pope is seeking unity among Catholics.
Newman, who was pastor of the Newman Catholic Center in Chico, said it's estimated between 500,000 and 1 million Catholics worship using the Latin Mass at churches that operate independently of Catholic bishops.
Benedict hopes by making the Latin Mass more available, many of these Catholics will return to the fold, Newman said.
A small number of such traditionalists worship in Chico at St. Therese Roman Catholic Chapel.
On a typical Sunday morning, about 35 people attend a Latin Mass there, said Lou DeMeyer of Durham, who was among those who started the little church nearly 20 years ago.
The founders were mainly people who attended Chico's St. John the Baptist Church and who were unhappy with the new form of the Mass, he said.
Will they now accept the authority of the bishop of Sacramento? DeMeyer said he's not sure.
While he's happy about the new rules concerning the Latin Mass, "some of the liberal ideas" held by leaders of the mainstream Catholic Church are troubling, he said.
Criticism for pope
While Benedict may be seeking Catholic unity in one area, at least, his actions seem likely to create disunity on some other fronts, according to McCarthy.
"I think his papacy is beginning to define itself in terms of a reaffirmation of a kind of orthodoxy — a defensive orthodoxy — shoring up the boundaries of Catholicism against ecumenism, in particular."
Ecumenism is the movement to heal the divisions in Christianity, for example, among the various Protestant denominations and between the Protestant churches and the Roman Catholic Church.
On July 10, three days after Pope Benedict issued his letter on the Latin Mass, he signed a statement on the "doctrine of the Church," reasserting a previously stated position that the Roman Catholic Church is the only true church.
The statement said Orthodox churches are defective and other Christian bodies, such as Protestant denominations, cannot truly be called churches.
In a statement the next day, the Rev. Mark Hanson, presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, one of the largest Protestant groups in the United States, responded by stating, among other things, that "the anguished response of Christians around the world to the Vatican's statement ... clearly indicates that what may have been meant to clarify has caused pain."
In his statement, Hanson urged Benedict "not to pull back from your own personal commitment to ecumenism."
Improving relations among Catholics and other Christian groups was an important goal of Vatican II.
It's apparent views differ on what the Vatican II reforms accomplished in this area and on how much progress ecumenism has made.
Some, like McCarthy and United Church of Christ theologian Gabriel Fackre, say that, in fact, Protestants and Catholics now largely share similar views on some important matters concerning justification (how people are made right with God) and Holy Communion.
But others, like Lutheran minister and professor Kent Burreson of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis and the Rev. Robert Novokowsky of St. Stephen the First Martyr Catholic Church in Sacramento, say the similarities are mainly superficial or even fictitious — they are convergences people believe exist because nearly everyone keeps quiet about the large differences in Protestant and Catholic understandings that remain.
Because the Latin Mass tends to emphasize those differences, where the vernacular Mass "muted" them, Burreson said he's somewhat troubled by Benedict's promotion of the older worship form.
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