Latin Makes a Comeback

"I knew there would be some interest, but I didn't know how quickly it would spread and how really deep the interest was," said the Rev. Scott Haynes, a priest in the Archdiocese of Chicago who started a Web site in August offering instructions in celebrating the Mass.

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So far, the Web site, http://www.sanctamissa.org, has received 1 million hits, Haynes said, adding that he receives several hundred e-mails a day from fans of the service. "I was surprised by how many people have latched on to this," he said.

Portions of the Tridentine Mass date back to the sixth century, but it was standardized at the Council of Trent in 1570 -- hence the name Tridentine. It was largely supplanted by the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, which modernized the Mass liturgy and translated it into modern languages.

The modern Mass, or Novus Ordo, can be said in Latin, but it is a radically different service from the Tridentine Mass. Until September, when the pope issued his Motu Proprio allowing greater freedom in celebrating the Tridentine Mass, priests who wanted to celebrate it needed special permission from their bishop, and it was celebrated at only a few churches in the Washington area.

In the Diocese of Arlington, where the bishop and priests are considered more conservative than in Washington, the number of churches where the service is celebrated has increased from two to seven since the Motu Proprio. The Arlington diocese, which stretches from Northern Virginia south to Lancaster and west to the Shenandoah, has sent six priests to a training center in Nebraska, at the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter seminary, for an intensive seminar.

In the Archdiocese of Washington, no more churches have added the Mass. Monsignor Charles Pope, who celebrates the Mass at St. Mary's in Chinatown, thinks that it's because of the number of parishioners demanding the Tridentine Mass is small. But those who want it "are very interested and very passionate about it," he said.

Priests who know the ritual are training other priests, and the diocese plans to offer training next year, said archdiocese spokeswoman Susan Gibbs.

But the service is not without controversy. Jewish groups have protested a Good Friday prayer in the Mass that refers to the "blindness" of the Jews and calls for their conversion. Vatican officials have suggested that the prayer could be removed but have not done so.

For those who have fallen in love with the Mass, though, it is a part of what marks Catholics as unique among Christians.

"Before Vatican II, there were a lot of things that marked Catholics as Catholic: the Tridentine Mass in Latin, fish on Fridays, those kinds of things," said Monsignor Kevin Irwin, dean of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at Catholic University. "And I think that 40 years after the [Second Vatican] Council, there is a revival of questions asking what is Catholic identity, and for some, this is an external manifestation of saying, 'We're Catholic.' "

At St. Rita's Church, more than 150 worshipers listened and watched in silence as four black-and-gold-robed priests, accompanied by a half-dozen servers and a five-person choir, spoke and sang the hour-long liturgy. There was no homily, no English and no lay participation. In a throwback to the past, some women wore lace head coverings.

In a crystalline tenor, the celebrant, the Rev. Paul D. Scalia, recited the Lord's Prayer :

Pater noster, qui es in caelis: sanctificetur nomen tuum . . .

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .

Scalia, St. Rita's parochial vicar, added the Mass within days of the pope lifting the restrictions.

Scalia, 36, said he loves "the beauty of it, the silence . . . the antiquity. . . . It has a much more a contemplative feel to it. . . . This is the Mass that so many saints were raised on and themselves offered and prayed."