Church Reporter: In search of the perfect Mass

Destination masses 11 years ago and still so: Black, Irish, Traditional, Opus Dei, Northlake

(POSTED: 10/31/11) Most are happy with liturgy as they find it, I suppose; but many are not, which is why we have destination parishes throughout the archdiocese. The two destinations of longest standing are St. Sabina, on 78th Place (black, robustly musical, liturgically bold, political, home of the three-hour mass with provocative guest preachers), and Old St. Pat’s, at Adams and Des Plaines (Irish, centrally located in hot neighborhood, richly staffed, lots of weddings, home of the world’s biggest block party).

Much more recently came St. John Cantius, on Carpenter just off Chicago, saved from extinction by an entrepreneurial Resurrectionist priest, with Tridentine Mass and music and traditionalism seeping through every crevice, also centrally located, also in a hot neighborhood.

Ditto for the more recently revived St. Mary of the Angels, on Hermitage south of Armitage, resurrected by Opus Dei priests, a beautiful church which parish leaders are much praised for saving from wrecking ball or at least gradual decrepitude. Here Mass is reverent in a manner that eludes some churches, where new-church norms seem easily used to casualize worship. St. Mary is also in a hot neighborhood (Bucktown).

In all of these, the faithful gather and communicate faith to each other, as do all the others in our far-flung archdiocese. Not lookin’ for trouble, this columnist.

The Northlake experience: Meanwhile, I keep (kept) trying different places, most recently St. John Vianney in Northlake (Wolf Rd. half-block north of North Ave.), which (still) has a Tridentine Latin Mass at 10 a.m. Sunday in the basement church while the novus ordo (regular English) Mass is celebrated just above in the church proper.

Both services are distinguished for prayerfulness of priest at altar and of people in pews. They are more vertical (God-directed) than horizontal (neighbor-directed) -- a handy distinction in these days of liturgical flux. At each Mass on three recent Sundays (two Latin, one English), the priest read the sermon he had composed beforehand, a practice I have urged in earlier columns.

This made for organization and clarity. They were delivered well and thus were listenable and worth one’s time. The Latin Mass preacher actually explained actual and sanctifying grace in one sermon, analyzed anger and its makeup and ways to keep it under control in another. For the latter he called extensively on Thomas Aquinas. I’ve studied anger in Seneca, the Roman stoic. Aquinas takes the matter several steps further, as one might imagine.

Music at the Latin Mass was provided by a trio that chanted the Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, etc. off to the side at a small organ. There was nothing intrusive about it. It did not call attention to itself. Rather, it was background for the altar, never at center stage. It was not performance but part of the service, integral to it as an aid to prayer.

In general, I couldn’t get over the calmness of it all. There’s something energetic, even frenetic, about the usual novus ordo Mass, with its barrage of recitation, explanation, and exhortation from up front, not to mention the sometimes downright explosive handshake of peace - all of which constitutes its appeal to many. In the Tridentine (Latin) Mass, there’s nothing like it, which is part of its appeal for others.

For that matter, the English Mass at St. John Vianney, as at St. Mary of the Angels above, also avoids the frenetic. It too is an exercise in prayerfulness, even with its horizontalism as in the prescribed handclasp of peace. In other words, it shows that there’s nothing inevitably busy-busy about the novus ordo mass.

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Jim Bowman was religion editor for The Chicago Daily News, 1968 to its closing in 1978, and since then has written many books and articles, including his Bending the Rules: What American Priests Tell American Catholics (Crossroad, 1994). He blogs at blithespirit.wordpress.com and elsewhere. Links are at jimbowman.com.