Old rite, new generation: The Latin Mass finds new life in region

EASTHAMPTON — It’s a fallacy to say that young people are only into new things.

Despite push back from the Vatican against traditional Catholics in recent years, young people in particular are leading a movement to restore many of the rituals that went to the wayside over the past 60 years.

Throughout the 1960s, newspapers and the media chronicled the changes that were sweeping across Catholic churches around the world following the Second Vatican Council — a meeting of the world’s bishops held to bring the 2,000-year-old institution into the modern world.

Statues and towering altars were removed, replaced by white walls and simple tables. Rituals were revised to make celebrations more relevant and accessible for a modern audience.

The story today, however, is the reversal of that trend as more and more Catholics turn back to the traditional Latin Mass, with all of its smells and bells. This form of Mass was the official ritual of the church from the 16th century until 1969.

Locally, the only priest in the Diocese of Springfield, which covers all of western Massachusetts, to hold a Latin Mass is the Rev. Ryan Sliwa of Our Lady of the Valley parish in Easthampton. The rite is limited in each diocese by bishops.

This month, Sliwa explained the appeal before preparing to celebrate the ancient ritual, which draws people from around the region, including Northampton, Southwick, and Connecticut.

His celebrations on Sundays, which are sung with a choir of half a dozen teenage girls, draw some 90 people every week, with numbers reaching as many as 130 churchgoers. This is an increase from more than five years ago when he was saying the traditional Mass in Agawam that would draw 75 or 80 people.

Latin Masses held in the evening of the first Friday of the month average a couple dozen attendees, and Christmas midnight Mass draws 200, said Sliwa.

For one, “It’s just unmistakably vertical,” he said, just one of many elements that draw Latin Mass-goers. “That’s a weird way to say it but you’re offering something to God first, definitely for the people, but it can’t be mistaken as a communal thing.”

Among the changes that were introduced beginning in the 1960s is the priest facing the people.

This, said Sliwa, makes the celebration a “lot more horizontal” by making the focus on the gathered community.

He finds facing his flock in the pews, rather than the back wall of the church, where the image of Christ on the cross and sacred images are placed, disorienting.

“It’s like driving a bus backwards,” he said.

Beginning in 1965, the architect of the new Mass, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, worked under Pope Paul VI with an entire network of committees to revise the rituals of the Mass.

The aim of the reforms was to increase active participation while removing repetitive and obscure elements that had worked their way into celebrations over time. In the new Mass, lectors were assigned to read Biblical readings, including women, who are also able to serve as altar servers. This is not the case in the more ancient ritual where the priest does the majority of the heavy lifting during celebrations.

But many in the Church today are eschewing this participation in favor of serenity, contemplation and a sense of mystery, Sliwa said.

“There’s the silence of the thing. Tonight is Low Mass, so there will be no music. It’s very still and serene. Every one of my movements is controlled, and that’s helpful,” he said prior to a recent Friday night Mass.

Sliwa added, “I think that if I were a laymen I’d prefer this too, because I can just kneel there and lean into the Mass.”

One of roughly 30 people “leaning into” the October mass — the Latin services at Our Lady of the Valley take place every Sunday and on the first Friday of every month — was Michael McLaughlin, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts studying music.

“Whenever I go it’s just striking. I also read along, but I stopped reading just because I wanted to focus on what was happening at the altar,” said McLaughlin. “Every time I go I’m amazed how beautiful everything once was. I can’t believe anyone could go to the Latin Mass and walk out not transformed.”

Another appeal for attendees is the richness of the prayers. McLaughlin, for one, said it astounds him to see how many prayers were removed.

“There’s so much said that isn’t in our Mass now,” he said.

“The new Mass shortened a lot of prayers, and there’s just so much meaning in all these words,” said Claudia Natale, another parishioner. “Some people say, ‘well, I don’t know Latin,’ but I don’t know Latin either, but in the missal it is in English and Latin, and there are sidebars for explanations.”

She further praised the use of Latin because it is a dead language and is not subject to change. She said Latin has strengthened the unity of Catholic celebrations for centuries.

“Before the new Mass you could go anywhere in the world and the Mass would be the same. It would be the same words, the same actions taking place,” said Natale.

Katie Sadakierski, 26, said that the “Latin Mass speaks to me deeper than a Novus Ordo Mass [the common name for the revised Catholic Mass]. I think on the sensory level. We have the incense and the music, and so it is a very tangible experience. And the reverence really speaks to me, the quietness of it.”

She continued, “I think it does offer balance and order that we can’t find in the world. There’s perfect harmony at the Latin Mass. I think it’s the constancy of it. It’s unchanging, it’s eternal.

“And it’s open to everyone,” she said.

Attendees range in ages, but the pulse of the Latin Mass movement is overwhelmingly young.

William Labrie, a young husband, brought his wife and four daughters.

“We’re trying to get a connection back of what came before us as a family. So we kind of fell in love with it,” Labrie said.

One of his youngest daughters, Caroline, knows the Lord’s Prayer “Our Father” in Latin, and like the rest of the girls in the family, she covered her head while in church as a sign of respect.

It is not mandatory, but customary, for women to cover their heads during traditional liturgies. Typically, married women wear black and unmarried women wear white.

Caroline’s favorite aspect of the traditional Mass is how the priest doesn’t face the people.

“It’s more traditional for the priest to face the tabernacle, so I think that’s what he should do.” The tabernacle is the place where Catholics place the reserves of communion for Mass, which is believed to be the true presence of Christ on Earth.

Caroline added that she also likes the Gregorian Chant of Latin Mass more than the newer, often Protestant hymns allowed in the new ritual. In the Latin Mass the organ holds a sole role, while a variety of instruments and artforms are welcomed in the new rituals for Mass, celebrated in most Roman Catholic parishes.

No blessing from Francis

But even within Catholic circles, traditionally inclined people are often not welcomed with open arms.

“There a lot of slander and hate toward traditionally-minded people,” said Sliwa. “There’s this idea that ‘they think they’re better than us,’ or ‘they’re kind of bougie,’ which is, I think, the way Francis conceived of it.”

He was referring Pope Francis, who would frequently crack down on traditionally-minded Catholics and discourage the old rituals from being used. The previous pope’s opinion was that the new ritual is divisive.

Traditional Catholics are hopeful that Pope Leo XIV will be more open minded to the old rite.

“These are just a bunch of normal Catholic people trying to be as devout as they can,” said Sliwa. He added that his interest in the old rituals isn’t a political statement or reactionary thing.

He also said that both Masses, whether old or new, represent the same symbolism, meaning, and are equally valid. Both are truly “Catholic,” and many of those who attend the Latin Masses also attend the new Masses.

Sliwa speculates young people in particular are “done with the silliness,” which is drawing them to the traditional rituals. Silliness includes a relativistic American culture without moral guardrails. And it’s not all about ritual and formality in church. Sliwa, for instance, is not on social media and doesn’t have a TV.

People who seek out the Latin Mass want something militaristic, consistent and devotional … even eternal, he said.

Sliwa, who himself is a young priest and didn’t discover the traditional Mass until about 10 years ago, said about the current popular culture that, “We’ve been sold a false bill of goods.”