by michaelsbradley | 2025-04-23 20:00:27+00:00
When I was in high school ('91-95), I had quite a few friends involved in band and other music programs at the public school we attended. One of those programs was "choir", though it wasn't affiliated with a church, of course, because it was a public school. I remember being amazed at their performances of polyphonic music from the 16th Century, Palestrina and the like – my parents never played recordings of music like that at home and I had not heard it elsewhere. As a kid I was curious about most everything, and I found it interesting but puzzling that some of those musical pieces were described as parts of a Mass – "what does that mean? can you explain the context, I don't get it?" My family was Catholic, but I grew up in a predominantly Protestant area of the country (eastern Tennessee); neither Catholic nor Protestant adults that I talked to could provide a clear explanation and I didn't know the the music teachers so didn't ask them. I looked up what I could in printed encyclopedias, but it was a jumble to me, and it wasn't until years later that I acquired a bigger picture.

All around the world, there exists (or survives, sometimes only in parts) beautiful art and architecture and music that, with a little examination, is directly connected to the Latin Rite as it was celebrated for centuries. You can't really get the full picture of why those things are the way they are without knowledge of the classical Latin Rite. Likewise, a study of the Latin Rite on paper would be impoverished without knowledge of the historical cultural developments and artistic treasures that enriched it over the centuries.

"Rite is the liturgical, theological, spiritual and disciplinary heritage, distinguished according to peoples' culture and historical circumstances, that finds expression in each autonomous church's way of living the faith." — according to the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches (28 §1)[1]

It is remarkable that in the Western Church we have passed through a period from the mid 20th Century during which so much of our Latin Rite heritage has been ignored, forgotten, even tossed aside or rent violently. The term wreckovation[2] is used, and it's pretty accurate though it causes some to bristle.

The TLM movement is, in many respects, about recovering our Western Catholic heritage. That's not accomplished in equal measure everywhere, but the most vibrant communities around it place an emphasis on sacred music, restoring art and architecture as circumstances allow, and educating — catechizing is probably the better term — ourselves and our children so those efforts aren't merely about appearances or performance art, but an integral part of loving and worshipping God as we look to rebuild local Catholic culture.

So "obscurantism"? No, rather traditional expressions of the Catholic Faith given new sails (sometimes the winds are a bit stormy, to be sure). Some of us are learning Latin as we go along — the ordinary parts of the Mass are easy to pick up, and if you're coming from the Novus Ordo you already know what they mean even if you don't fully understand the Latin grammar. Certainly the priests of the ICKSP and FSSP study Latin in their seminaries, and many homeschooling families I know have Latin in their kids' curriculums. It's pretty amazing how quickly little kids pick it up when they participate in choir or serve as altar boys.

I want to provide one more response re: the SSPX/Williamson and whackjobs stuff, but I've already blown my HN comments time-budget today, so it will have to wait.

[1] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/la/apost_constit...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wreckovation

> I hope my "it's complicated" gives me some cover from the idea that I'm a folk-group C&E Catholic just looking to dunk on some tradcaths. I mean, I may be that too; it's complicated.

I don't take offense, Dominus vobiscum.