By Mark Judge
I always found it interesting that the Beatles were rising right at the point that the Catholic Church was modernizing.
On October 5, 1962, the Beatles released their first single, "Love Me Do." Less than a week later, the first session of Vatican II convened. On June 25, 1963, Pope John XXIII, who had called for Vatican II, died. For days later, on June 29, the Beatles have their first US charting single -- "From Me to You." For the next few years, the Beatles gained dominance and caused a musical revolution as the Church was itself going through a revolution.
The Beatles revolution succeeded. The Catholic Church's did not.
I think the reason for this is as simple as language. After Vatican II, the Church lost the language of love. From the Psalms to the Song of Songs and the words of Jesus, the Bible is loaded with powerful sensual imagery that poetically explore human desires and transcendent truths. After some awful translations of the Mass into English following Vatican II, the Church lost that language.
And rock and roll picked it up.
This is why the new translation of the Catholic Mass, which will be implemented on November 27, is such a seminal event. Orthodox Catholics are always quick to note that "the Mass itself is not changing at all -- only some words are."
But that fact that the words are changing is no small thing. When Paul McCartney was thinking of lyrics for the song "Yesterday," he used the phrase "scrambled eggs" as a placeholder until he could come up with something better. I would argue that there is a difference between "scrambled eggs" and"yesterday" -- a difference that profoundly changes the very song itself.
The new translation of the Mass adheres much more closely to the original Latin text. The first thing that jumped out at me was the added muscle during the penitential rite. Instead of admitting that I have sinned, I must say that I have "greatly" sinned. Then come these two lines, which one says while hitting the chest:
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault
It is often said that the Catholic Church is "a sign of contradiction," and the addition of grievous fault is a bright neon sign in a world that has gone dark with self-justification and the dictatorship of relativism. No one can tell me that this physical, penetrating addition will not have an affect on the soul, and for the better.
Chesterton once said the the reality of sin was "as plain as a pikestaff," but he didn't live to see gay marriage, legal abortion and frivolous lawsuits. It will be interesting to see the reaction of liberal Catholics who are still waiting for the "revolution" they thought was coming after Vatican II.
Many probably just won't say the words at all.
The other thing that jumped out at me about the new translation was the word "adore," which is now part of the "Gloria":
we praise you
we bless you
we adore you
we glorify you
"Adore" conjures a very specific image. One usually adores a lover.
This is completely appropriate for a religion that boasts the Song of Songs, Bernard of Clairvaux and St. Teresa of Avila, who used the metaphor of lovers to explain the journey to God. Modern culture has pornified absolutely everything, and would no doubt mock Catholics who celebrate marriage while talking of the love of lovers (they secular culture always assumes married people are not lovers); but this doesn't mean that Catholic should simple cede to them the language of love.
We should in fact reclaim it -- reclaim the deep love that grows in holiness as it grows in self-giving. The love, as Pope Benedict phrased it, that "goes all the way to the cross."
This is what happened to generations of Catholics growing up in the 1960s and 1970s.
For me the music of human sensuality and love came from Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Joy Division, the Doors, the Twilight Sad. Growing up in the wake of Vatican II -- I was born in 1964, the year the Beatles landed in America -- I could never understand the disconnect between the joy, love, and earthy sensuality of the music I loved, not to mention my Catholic family and friends, and the galactic boredom of the modern Mass.
I was from the Irish heritage that gave us Joyce, Yeats, and Flannery O'Connor. On Sundays I was getting "Kumbaya." From what I read in the Bible, what I saw during the Stations of the Cross, and from what I gleaned from movies like The Greatest Story Every Told all pointed to the idea of Catholicism as a palatable, dynamic, and explosive penetration into the deepest mystery and reality about what we are as human beings -- and as more than human beings. So why was everyone half asleep and mumbling tepid phrases?
Even this small addition to the Introductory Rite marks a great change:
Brethren (brothers and sisters)
let us acknowledge our sins,
and so prepare ourselves
to celebrate the sacred mysteries
In the shift from the prosaic old form, "let us call to mind our sins," to this, with it's graceful anticipation of the joy that comes from the forgiveness of sins, there is a change from prose to poetry. It becomes like a lyric from U2, the Irish band that began as four young Christian men.
Indeed, the U2 anthem "Gloria" has lyrics in Latin:
Gloria...in te domine
Gloria...exultate
Gloria...Gloria
Oh Lord, loosen my lips
So the Mass is indeed changing. It is once again reflecting the passion of the faith. Let it be.
God Alone...
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