Senior Cardinal backs Australians’ right to celebrate Latin mass despite Vatican ban

A senior Roman cardinal has backed the right of Melbourne ­Catholics to attend a weekly traditional Latin mass after it was banned on the orders of the Vatican.

Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke. picture: Stefano Montesi-Corbis/Getty Images

A senior Roman cardinal has backed the right of Melbourne ­Catholics to attend a weekly traditional Latin mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral after it was banned by Archbishop Peter Comensoli on the orders of the Vatican.

Speaking from Rome, Cardinal Raymond Burke, who was the church’s top canon law authority under Benedict XVI, said: “The centuries-long proven beauty of the more ancient usage (Usus Antiquior) of the Roman rite, which continues in its vitality to the present day, will endure. While the use of Latin, the ancient language of the church, is integral to its beauty, the beauty is in the form or usage itself.”

Cardinal Burke’s view is in stark contrast to that of Francis, who has waged a three-year campaign to eliminate the traditional rite, which evolved through the early centuries of the church and was largely unchanged for about 1500 years until the mid-1960s.

It was replaced by the more prosaic novus ordo (New Mass), usually said in the vernacular.

The traditional mass was given fresh impetus by Saint John Paul II in the 1980s and by Pope Benedict in 2007. It has become one of the strongest growth areas of Christianity around the world.

The final traditional mass in St Patrick’s will be said on Wednesday, June 19, at 5.30pm. By essentially ordering traditional Cath­olics to get out of their own cathedral, the ban has stirred tensions and divisions.

Last week, the mass attracted more than 150 people.

The priest who said that mass, Father Shawn Murphy, 34, the assistant priest of the St John Henry Newman old rite parish in Caulfield North, who was ordained a year ago, told The Australian: “The cathedral is the mother church of the archdiocese and like a mother should be welcoming to all her children.’’

Archbishop Comensoli, who declined to comment, had no choice after a direction from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Divine Worship. Francis overturned his predecessors’ initiatives three years ago, in a document ironically entitled Traditionis Custodes (Custodians of Tradition), which crushed centuries of tradition.

Father Shawn Murphy at mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral. Picture: Supplied

Cardinal George Pell, an adherent of the New Mass, respected the principle of choice for Catholics who preferred the Old Mass. Before his death in January last year, he predicted that Traditionis Custodes “would not outlive the current pon­tificate’’.

The differences between the New and Old Masses run much deeper than language, Latin or vernacular. The themes and form differ markedly. Both are grounded in Christ’s Last Supper but the Old Mass’s emphasis is on transcendence and the sacrifice of Christ on Calvary, with attendees receiving communion on the tongue, while kneeling. The New Mass, at which most worshippers receive communion in the hand, while standing, places greater emphasis on community. The text of the New Mass is much simplified.

Traditionis Custodes stipulates that the traditional mass is “not to take place any longer’’ in normal parishes but Australian bishops, including Archbishop Comensoli, have used their authority and discretion implementing it, with a view to the pastoral needs of growing numbers of worshippers, especially young people.

The Wednesday evening cathedral mass survived until Archbishop Comensoli sought further guidance from the Vatican.

Father Glen Tattersall, parish priest of Newman parish in Caulfield in Melbourne, who has said most of the traditional masses in St Patrick’s since 2011 when permission was granted in response to a petition by Catholic laity, said the mass “was loved by many’’ and “celebrated peacefully up to now’’.

“It was fitting that the rite of mass for which the cathedral was built was returned to it,’’ Father Tattersall said. “I can personally attest to the many graces, including those of conversion, that have been granted through this mass. It has borne only good fruit.’’