An old image of the Tridentine Rite being celebrated

Six Degrees of George Rutler

I had a bit of a Tridentine marathon this morning after narrowly managing to miss the Latin Mass twice within the period of an hour, and then ending up at a church in Trastevere where the priest and congregation were out on the street waiting for a bunch of Guatemalan pilgrims to finish up their (remarkbly raucous) services in honor of their independence day.

San Gregorio ai Muratori (staffed by our good friends from the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter) was the first parish I stopped in. Things got off to a bad start when I misread the schedule and thought they had a polyphonic mass at 10:30 after their usual mass at 9:00--which was in progress. San Gregorio is a tiny, tiny church built into a wall at the end of a narrow sidestreet near the Corso, and frankly I think the only place they could fit the choir is velcro-strapped to the ceiling. Still, it's a very pretty little Baroque oratory. It's the most Tridentine of Rome's parishes, what with being served by the Frat.

Not being the wiser, I returned at 10:15 after pottering around the Corso for about forty-five minutes (including standing in front of the other, much grander Tridentine church in Rome, Gesu e Maria, and watching the cassocked seminarians wander in for their 10:00 mass). Naturally, I found the church locked and the sacristan getting into her car. She was a careworn woman in her mid-forties, still rather handsome, and spoke English very well. She directed me to a parish in Trastevere whose name escapes me at the moment, for their 11:00 Latin Mass. So, still eager not to miss my last chance for the old rite this Sunday, I hotfooted it over there in coat and tie, only to find, like I said, most of the parishioners waiting out front while maracas clattered garishly inside. I had a few words with the cassocked priest, an eager Estonian seminarian in a plaid shirt and a bearded old man in a ratty sweater I'll call Mr. C. More about him later.

This is the second time I'd seen the old rite in person, and there was a good turnout in the pews, both young and old, though no families with children as far as I could see, which struck me as curious. It was quite lovely, though ceremonially it was the lowest of Low Masses. Though it wouldn't kill them to get a cassock and surplice for the sexton instead of him traipsing around the sanctuary in a green sweater-vest. On the other hand, he seemed a reverent sexton. We, rather than this impromptu acolyte, made most of the responses, however, but at breakneck preconciliar speed. The priest preached a vigorous and very good little homily on the feast of the day, while gesticulating with an appropriate and huge bare cross, something I will never forget. I was able to understand quite a lot of it. His gestures throughout the Mass were quick and lively, and I would go as far as to call his Latin delivery, like I said, as distinctly rushed. 1950s liturgical deja vu, though with better architecture: the church was luminous with pale baroque stucco-work, the only light coming from candles and the enormous clerestory windows overhead. The Salve Regina at the end was touching, but the braying chant tone sounded like something out of the old medieval Donkey Mass of Christmastide, where all the prayers ended with a loud and mule-like cry of "ter hinhinnabit!"

Still, it was worth the walk, especially since afterwards I had a long talk with the priest, Fr. I., a Uruguyan cleric who had studied at Dunwoodie in New York and knew both my professor Duncan Stroik and Dan's hero, Fr. Rutler. He even looks a little like him. The funniest thing is that when I met Fr. Rutler, he knew my other professor, Thomas Gordon Smith. Fr. I. seems a very good priest, and not too shrill as are most traditionalists of his age group. I might drop him an email sometime.

One of his close friends was the abovementioned Mr. C., an elderly gentleman who writes for an oddball American Catholic periodical whose name you'd recognize, as it rhymes with The Launderer. When he introduced himself as the Rome correspondent for this publication I knew there wasn't going to be a dull moment for the next hour. This is, I suppose, the one problem with the Tridentine rite, as it attracts both Catholic Nerds and eccentric cranks. Mr. C and his lady wife are both fascinating folk, but perhaps rather on the dour end of the traditionalist scale, with a head-full of odd ideas. For one thing, he (and Fr. I.) really seem down on seminarians spending their time in choir for the recitation of the Office, claiming it's too monastic. Seminarians, apparently, receive too much choral education--not a problem, however, with Fr. I., judging from his recitation of the Marian antiphon.

I think this is an example of the unfortunate tendency towards what Fr. Jim calls a "Low Mass mentality," something one sees particularly among older members of the Latin Mass movement. Indeed, in Continental Europe, massive choral celebrations of the Sacrament in either rite, as at the Oratory or St. John Cantius seem to be rare. The closest thing here seems to be at Gesu e Maria parish, whose mass usually includes multiple assisting clerics, a chant schola and organ accompaniment. Indeed, the Estonian seminarian I met was lauding the sizable resources of the American Latin Mass movement and saying that in the U.S. it was "a great moment" presently for the Tridentine rite, somewhat disorienting to hear. I imagine it's a sliding scale.

There is also, of course, the occasional specter of political crankery associated with Continental traditionalism, as I saw a poster on the church door advertising a semi-monarchist youth group meeting under the Sacred Heart emblem of the old Vendean rebellion. I have a nostalgic love of monarchy but it's not something that would drive me to sign a petition, and it doesn't help the movement look fairly respectable. Of course, in Italy, royalism and legitimism have started to come back out of the woodwork as a consequence of regional disturbances, and even the centralized monarchy of the Savoyards has only been dead less than sixty years. People in Naples, for example, have started to look lovingly back on the days of the Bourbons, when they were still dirt-poor but at least independent of Rome. I even saw the full royal coat of arms of the Two Sicilies on a motorino decal the other day. Still, Mr. C. and Fr. I. didn't get into that.

That being said, I think Mr. C. didn't disapprove of me, and he's not completely a kook as he spoke highly of Vatican II, and could have been far more shrill. At least Masonic conspiracies didn't come out of the woodwork. Though, probably there are those of his stripe who would dismiss younger Catholic Nerds such as my fellow Whapsters as too flippant. He's not a Lefebrist, mercifully, and I have plenty of cranky ideas myself, I just never let them out of their cages. Don't get me started on mitred abbesses or sackbutts.

Still, I hope my tales of Catholic nerddom at Notre Dame gave him some hope, though I imagine the freewheeling humor of the Shrine would probably be beyond him. As someone who belongs to no real faction in the Church and who moves with relative ease between friends who are variously orthodox supporters of the Novus Ordo, devout Charismatics, unsmiling traditionalists (who don't read this blog), Catholic Nerds of all stripes and your typical St. Astrodome's parishioners, it's inevitable for me to find crankery somewhere in any group.

Now, I'm not sure I want to make this Trastevere parish my home for the next year, and I plan to continue going to our English class mass at Sant' Eustachio in the evenings--as well as perhaps one of the Tridentine masses in the morning--but it was a pleasure to meet some fellow English-speaking Catholics, even if their perspective on tradition is perhaps slightly different from my own fairly "conservative" tendencies. I'll drop back sometime probably--they were very hospitable, after all--but I'd also like to go to mass at Gesu e Maria and San Gregorio first. Little San Gregorio has a certain intimacy I could come to love, while Gesu e Maria seems to have the most elaborate Tridentine liturgy in the city. Furthermore, the clergy are younger, and I'm curious to see how young people besides myself react to the old rite. If there is a future for the old Mass (and I hope there is), it is with those eager young seminarians vested in cassock, fascia and cappello romano I saw bounding up the steps at Gesu e Maria, rather than with the curious denizens of Trastevere.

Still, there's something to be said for hearing mass said by a Uruguyan traditionalist who uses props in his homilies.