The Latin Mass Society has been informed that the Traditional Latin Mass may no longer be celebrated at the High Altar of Westminster Cathedral, as is has been twice a year since 1972.
With a break for Covid, there have therefore been about 100 such Masses over fifty years.
The next one would have been a Requiem Mass on 4 November.
A monthly Low Mass will continue, on First Saturdays in the Blessed Sacrament Chapel, but these two annual Masses are regarded as being for the Latin Mass Society, and therefore not part of the Cathedral’s pastoral provision.
Many Catholic associations have Masses in the Cathedral, and over many years these ones have, indeed, served as the Society’s Annual Requiem and the Mass for our Annual General Meeting.
Nevertheless, they had the same origin as the monthly Masses, as part of Cardinal Heenan’s response to the “English Indult” for the Traditional Mass, which he personally sought and gained from Pope Paul VI.
From 1971 until 1984, when the Indult was made universal, the bishops of England and Wales had the unique privilege of being able to permit celebrations of the Traditional Latin Mass, as existed before the Second Vatican Council.
At least, it was generally regarded as a unique situation: confusingly, in 2007 Pope Benedict XVI declared that in principle permission had never been needed.
In 2021 the wind changed direction again, and the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass in parish churches – of which Westminster Cathedral is one – now needs permission not just from the local bishop, but from the Dicastery of Divine Worship in Rome, headed up by Cardinal Arthur Roche.
What does it mean for the Traditional Latin Mass to be celebrated at the High Altar of Westminster Cathedral, and what does it mean for this half-century arrangement to end?
Cardinal Heenan’s gesture conveyed his pastoral concern for the spiritual welfare of Catholics attached to the older Missal, but there was more to it than that.
As a matter of fact, according to the Latin Mass Society’s archives, at the time of the first of these Masses in July 1972, “the old rite has been used in Low Masses all this time without interruption both in the Cathedral, the Brompton Oratory, and numerous other churches.”
What was significant about this Mass was not that it was a rare opportunity to attend the ancient Mass. Rather, it was the fact that it took place at the Cathedral’s very splendid High Altar, and was sung.
In later years, it was celebrated as a High Mass with deacon and subdeacon, and even a Pontifical Mass celebrated by an auxiliary bishop.
This gave Catholics attached to this Mass the opportunity to demonstrate their willingness to seek it at the Cardinal’s hand, and at the hands of his successors. It is no exaggeration to say that the Latin Mass Society has been fundamentally shaped, in its attitude and way of operating, by collaboration with successive Archbishops of Westminster over these Masses.
The Society is not simply a group of Catholics who facilitate Masses here or there: it has, or had until now, an intimate connection with the most senior bishop in England and Wales, a relationship that has survived all manner of friction, and endured through all kinds of difficulties, symbolised by these splendid biannual celebrations.
Cardinal Heenan was also publicly acknowledging the dignity and importance of the ancient liturgy, and its place in the life of the Church.
This was the liturgy, after all, for which Westminster Cathedral had been built, and for which the English martyrs, forty of whom had been canonised in 1971, had given their lives.
One might compare it with the survival of the Mozarabic Rite for centuries in just two chapels in Spain: it is just too venerable and too important to let go entirely.
It should be noted that when, in the early 1970s, the Holy See was asked for a clear and authoritative statement that the older Missal was completely forbidden, the official attitude, recorded by no less a person than the architect of the liturgical reform, Annibale Buggnini, recoiled against “casting odium on the liturgical tradition”.
Similarly, Pope Benedict XVI (when still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) later observed: “A community is calling its very being into question when it suddenly declares that what until now was its holiest and highest possession is strictly forbidden and when it makes the longing for it seem downright indecent.
Can it be trusted any more about anything else? Won’t it proscribe again tomorrow what it prescribes today?”
If to say the ancient Mass could be celebrated on the High Altar of Westminster Cathedral, as Cardinal Heenan did, created a bond between the Archbishops of Westminster and the Latin Mass Society, and made a statement of the continuing value of the Mass the Society was founded to preserve, the reversal of this policy inevitably suggests the opposite message.
This is distressing for those Catholics attached to the Traditional Latin Mass, but it also has a significance for the whole Catholic community.
Certainly, this venerable Mass will continue to be celebrated in London, but in ending this custom at the mother church of England & Wales something has been lost which will not easily be replaced.