By Michael Warren Davis

How much do you pray at Mass? It’s an odd question. If you’re like me, your first answer is: “Well, the whole time! That’s the point, isn’t it?” Then your conscience starts to gnaw at you. You remember how much time you spend thinking about what you’re going to have for breakfast, or how sweet that baby is, or how well Father Jones chants, or how badly Father Smith chants, or how that man should iron his trousers….

Then, every five minutes or so, we might snap back to attention. We’ve been following along in the missal with our eyes—seeing, but not reading.

Of course, the most important thing is that we do snap back to attention. Distraction in prayer is inevitable. That’s not an excuse, but it can help us guard against discouragement. I’m sure you’ve heard the story of St. Bernard of Clairvaux who challenged a farmer to say one Paternoster without getting distracted. If so, Bernard would give him his mule. The farmer agreed, and so began: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy… Wait, does that include the saddle?”

No doubt I’m preaching to the choir, but this is one of the reasons I’m so grateful for the Latin Mass.

Growing up as a Protestant in the Catholic school system, I didn’t even know the Old Mass existed until I became friends with a traditional Catholic in college.

I have to admit: at first, I hated it. Even if I spoke Latin, the priest was talking so quietly that I couldn’t hear what he was saying. Half the people were reading from a brick of text—something that looked like the Book of Common Prayer we used in the Episcopal Church, only much thicker. Others were fingering rosary beads. An alarming number were wrestling with small children. What was the point?

Looking back years later I realize: They were praying.

Why couldn’t I see that? Because I had been brainwashed by the Cult of Participation. I would have insisted that, since I was there, I should be given some role to play. No, it wasn’t all about me. But it was partially about me. Wasn’t it?

Of course, it is, in the sense that Our Lord died on the Cross for me (and for you). But I never stopped to think that the Mass could get along perfectly well if I wasn’t there. In fact, it could get along perfectly well if nobody was there. Christ doesn’t need an audience to change the bread and wine into His body and blood.

There’s nothing I can do to make the Holy Sacrifice any better or worse. It is complete. It is sufficient. It is perfect.

So, what are we there to do? To be fed on the Body and Blood, yes. But we don’t have to be physically present at Mass in order to do that (although, of course, we should). The reason we attend Mass is to pray.

That’s what strikes me as so mortally dangerous about the Cult of Participation. For many of us, we can spend so much time fretting about whether or not we’re “participating” that we forget to pray.

This is also one of the great paradoxes of the post-conciliar Church, which has often come under the power of that Cult, often without realizing it.

We’re told that Vatican II was intended to make it easier for folks to “participate” in the Mass. And no doubt some of the Council Fathers meant this literally. They took the Modernist view that the Holy Sacrifice is somehow incomplete without the involvement of the laity. (Last year, the website of the German Bishops’ Conference said that private Masses do not “fit with contemporary ideas of the Eucharist” because the priest alone cannot provide “representation of the community.”)

But no doubt others felt the liturgical changes would assist the laity in their prayer. Like me, they noticed how many laymen appeared to have no interest in what the priest was saying. They might not have used the word “participation”; they might have preferred engagement. They wanted to make it easier for us to engage in the Mass.

These bishops meant well, but they were wrong. And while we would like to give them the benefit of the doubt, they should have known. Those who championed the error tended to be academic theologians from Europe. Meanwhile, Vatican II’s most vocal critic was a gentleman called Marcel Lefebvre. When he arrived at the Council, Archbishop Lefebvre was already known as the most effective missionary in Africa. He might have known a thing or two about the laity’s prayer habits.

Of course, His Excellency was ignored. But so were many of the great Catholic minds of our age, who cautioned against this attempt to make the liturgy more rigid and impose a one-size-fits-all prayer life on the laity.

Yes: one of the great casualties of the post-conciliar era is the sheer variety, the glorious diversity, of Catholic spiritualities. The great Vincent McNabb, O.P., anticipated this new comformism as early as 1951. That was the year he published “Prayer—How Easy It Is.” It’s a beautiful essay. Fr. McNabb writes,

Thank God, when we go into a church where there are numbers of poor people, we see real prayer. There is old Bridget in the corner, asthmatical and can’t hear; others are following the ritual in Latin or Greek; some are saying the Rosary; others looking at the candlesticks; a mother is looking after her baby,—perhaps she is praying best of all.

He goes on to warn against those who would assert that their way is the best, the proper, the only way of worshiping God. Here’s where it becomes a little eerie:

Probably the best way [to follow Mass] is the way that humbled us most. If we preened ourselves that nobody else was following Mass as well as we were, that would be the worst way for us. There is that difficulty about the modern liturgical movement. It might become a sort of stunt. The Liturgy for me is a land flowering with milk and honey; but I must not despise someone who is saying the Rosary. That may be far more prayer. For God’s sake let us never criticize anyone who is praying. The Pharisee did that, and he was a most loathsome person.

Fr. McNabb saw very clearly that this “modern liturgical movement” was nothing more than spiritual snobbery. That’s why it’s difficult to ignore the Pharisaical spirit that runs through Vatican II.

Curiously enough, the renowned Catholic novelist Evelyn Waugh made the same exact point during the Council. He, too, perceived the movement for “reform” as an attack on the spirituality of ordinary Catholics.

In November of 1962—less than a month after Vatican II was convened—Waugh wrote in The Spectator that those who desired to impose a single standard for “full participation by the laity” could not possibly understand how most Catholic laymen operate.

He observed that, “The time we spend in church—little enough—is what we set aside for renewing in our various ways our neglected contact with God”:

Some of us are following the missal, turning the pages adroitly to introits and extra collects, silently speaking all that the liturgists would like us to utter aloud and in unison. Some are saying the rosary. Some are wrestling with refractory children. Some are rapt in prayer. Some are thinking of all manner of irrelevant things until intermittently called together by the bell.

Would that we could all spend the Mass rapt in ecstasies, as did St. John of the Cross. Would that we could all at least keep our eyes fixed in front of us. But we can’t. “It is not how it should be,” said Waugh, “but it is, I think, how it has always been for the majority of us and the Church in wisdom and charity has always taken care of the second-rate.” Hear, hear.

You have to chuckle when Waugh talks about “silently speaking all that the liturgists would like us to utter aloud and in unison.” To think that, in the autumn of 1962, the worst traditional Catholics had to fear was being forced to read out of the Missale Romanum! We know now, of course, that the reformists had a great deal more in mind.

As Fr. McNabb and Waugh both noted, the Old Mass made allowances for a great variety of prayers. We have the missal, but also our rosary beads. If we can’t focus on either of those, we might try mental prayer. The parents soothing fussy babies are given graces simply by being present. And even if our minds should wander, they will wander to the altar candles, or to the priest’s ornate chasuble, or to the mural of Christ the King over the altar, or to the marble statues of Our Lady and St. Joseph. Otherwise, we may turn over the beads in our fingers, or take a whiff of incense, or simply listen to the chant.

Our eyes will wander, yes. But at the Latin Mass they wander from God, to God. That’s one of the glories of Catholic tradition. There’s always some anchor for our senses; we may drift from our prayers, but we can’t drift far. Really, we must try very hard to completely draw our minds away from heavenly things.

The same is obviously not true with the Novus Ordo. Anyone who has attended the New Mass will know the anxiety of trying to keep time with the rest of the congregation during the responses. Is my voice too high? Is it too low?

I can’t be worse than Debbie. Why do they let her cantor?

What’s with that banner on the wall? What’s it supposed to be? Is that the Holy Spirit? It looks like someone spilled mayonnaise. And who’s that meant to be a statue of? It’s either St. Anne or one of the Wise Men, I can’t tell.

Oh gosh, the psalm. What was the response again? If you hear his voice today... No! If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. If you hear... No, no! If today you hear his voice...

“The Lord be with you.” And also with… I mean, And with your spirit.

Time for the Gospel. Hal-le-LU-jah... Oh, we’re doing the A-A-A LE-E LU-U-U YA-A-A one. Right. A-A-A LE-E-E...

Peace be with you. Peace be with you. God’s peace. Hello, Debbie, peace be with you. Peace be with you.

“The Body of Christ.” Hi, Bob. Didn’t know you were a Eucharistic Minister. You washed your hands, didn’t you? Yes, amen. Thanks. See you later.

Great, my favorite hymn. “Rejoice, and be glad!/ Blessed are you; holy are you!” Remember when hymns used to be about God? I wonder why they stopped that.

Whew! Now that Mass is over maybe I can get a quick prayer in. Or maybe not. I guess we’re all going to stand in the aisle and chat, then? Good. Let’s make sure we all shout, so we can hear each other over the organ.

Of course, we shouldn’t think this way. But we will. Perhaps not all of us, and perhaps not all the time. But it’s inevitable.

Some would argue that this is not in keeping with the true spirit of Vatican II. They would point out that Latin is still supposed to be the normative language. They would observe that Gregorian chant is still meant to be the standard for church music. They would explain that Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion are only supposed to be used in emergencies. And that would all be true.

Yet even before Vatican II was convened, it was clear to men like Fr. McNabb that the point of this “modern liturgical movement” was not to foster a deeper sense of prayer. It was to encourage “participation.” More precisely, it was to ensure that laymen had only one way of following the Mass, which was to “participate” as the reformers saw fit.

That is the Spirit of Vatican II, at least so far as the liturgy goes. The use of the vernacular instead of Latin, tone-deaf cantors, Extraordinary Ministers in Bermuda shorts and golf shirts... All of these naturally follow from the reformers’ ideals.

After all, why shouldn’t we take a break during the consecration for a meet-and-greet? Why shouldn’t we sing hymns about how lovely and virtuous we all are? And why should we say prayers of thanksgiving after Mass when we just spent the last 45 minutes talking to God? Why not see if Cheryl’s managed to house-train her new Pomeranian yet?

At some point, we’ll have to accept that the drive for lay “participation” was a failure. It has not succeeded in making the average Catholic more prayerful. On the contrary: it has prevented us from “renewing in our various ways our neglected contact with God,” as Waugh so beautifully put it.

So, what do we do with this knowledge? It would be easy to slip into triumphalism, to congratulate ourselves for attending the Latin Mass, and be done with it. We could easily forget those God-fearing, Christ-loving Christians who grew up in the Novus Ordo. Few of them know about the Latin Mass and reject it. Most simply don’t know anything beyond female altar boys and “Blessed are you; holy are you!”

But, really, it’s no virtue of ours. It’s a gift. And so we should be grateful, unutterably grateful, that God has put the Latin Mass in our lives. It’s not just the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass—blessed, approved, ratified, reasonable, and acceptable. It’s also the near occasion of prayer. It’s an irresistible temptation to commune with Our Blessed Lord, not only in the Host, but also in our minds and hearts, and through all of our senses. There can be no greater gift this side of Paradise.