REGINA: Anecdotally, I have heard many people say that they were converted to Catholicism through the beauty of their experience of the Extraordinary Form. Do you find this to be true?
Dr Shaw: I can’t say I know many atheists, but a good non-Catholic friend of mine certainly finds the EF more attractive than the OF (he also for a time went to the Orthodox). I know a number of young men who lapsed and came back for the TLM, or could have lapsed were it not for the TLM. A good female friend converted from Judaism in the context of the EF.
The aesthetics and emotionality of many Novus Ordo celebrations can be exquisitely painful, particularly to young men. When they find the TLM, they can fall in love with it instantly – that happened to me, in a Low Mass. That’s not aestheticism, even if we agree we are using the term in a non-pejorative sense: it is glimpsing Christ made present in the liturgy.
‘Beauty’ is perhaps a misleading term here. No doubt some people will go to a Mozart Mass because of the Mozart, but such Masses are actually quite rare. The music and the vestments vary from the ‘decent’ to the ‘not very good’ in a lot of places, and there are a lot of Low Masses going on.
They can be very attractive, nevertheless, because of the contemplative quality, the peace, the reverence, the invitation to pray and be quiet with God. A better term than 'beauty' here would be 'spirituality': they are attracted by the spirituality of the TLM.
Latin Mass Society of England and Wales
About the author: Dr Joseph Shaw is Research Fellow at St Benet's Hall, a Permanent Private Hall of Oxford University. He is a member of the Philosophy Faculty, and teaches and lectures at the University. After doing a first degree in Oxford (Politics and Philosophy: 2.1 in 1994) he did a year's theology (Diploma in Theology: Distinction, 1995), followed by the Bachelor of Philosophy (1997) and a doctorate in Philosophy (DPhil, submitted Trinity Term 2000).
Photos: Latin Mass Society of England and Wales, Ed Masters,
Jon Aron, Michael Durnan
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