A Cathedral of Text and Gesture

The Catholic Thing

By Brad Miner One of the axioms of contemporary publicity, religious as well as secular, is that modern man in general, and intellectuals in particular, have become intolerant of all forms of tradition and are anxious to suppress them and put something else in their place. But, like many other affirmations of our publicity machines, this axiom is false. From the so-called Agatha Christie Letter sent to Pope Paul VI in 1971 That letter, to which 57 notable English names were appended (the mystery novelist's name being just one), bears Christie's name because it is reported (reliably) that when the pope saw her name on the list he exclaimed, "Ah, Agatha Christie!" The letter was a plea to the Holy Father not to "obliterate" the Latin Mass, as rumor had it, he intended to do. Some of the signatories were Catholic; most were not. But all of them admired the Tridentine Mass because "in its magnificent Latin text, it has. . .inspired a host of priceless achievements in the arts - not only mystical works, but works by poets, philosophers, musicians, architects, painters and sculptors in all countries and epochs. Thus, it belongs to universal culture as well as to churchmen and formal Christians." Among the notable Catholics who signed the letter were Graham Greene and Malcolm Muggeridge, and the non-Catholics included Christie, musicians Vladimir Ashkenazy, Yehudi Menuhin, and Joan Sutherland, art historian Kenneth Clark, writers Robert Graves and Iris Murdoch, poet Cecil Day-Lewis, and included two Anglican bishops to boot. It was a distinguished list. No punches were pulled: "[We] wish to call to the attention of the Holy See, the appalling responsibility it would incur in the history of the human spirit were it to refuse to allow the Traditional Mass to survive, even though this survival took place side by side with other liturgical forms." And that is the telling point, isn't it? That there's no reason not to allow the new to coexist with the old. Pope St. Paul VI responded to the Christie letter with an indultallowing the TLM in Britain. As you may know, just this month a similar letter was published in The Times of London over the names of forty-eight "prominent figures of culture, academia, and politics, including Catholics and non-Catholics." It's been called Agatha Christie Letter 2.0 but is more properly the MacMillan Letter, after Catholic composer Sir James MacMillan, the organizer. And, again, there are Catholic and non-Catholic signatories. Believers and non-believers. Just as in 1971, rumors from Rome about further restrictions on the TLM are what motivated Sir James to initiate the plea: This is a painful and confusing prospect, especially for the growing number of young Catholics whose faith has been nurtured by it. The traditional liturgy is a "cathedral" of text and gesture, developing as those venerable buildings did over many centuries. Not everyone appreciates its value and that is fine; but to destroy it seems an unnecessary and insensitive act in a world where history can all too easily slip away forgotten. I must admit that one thing I learned from this iteration of pleading with the Holy See is that today I know far less about distinguished Britons than I did in 1971. There are names I know - composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, author Antonia Fraser, historian Tom Holland, biographer A.N. Wilson, soprano Kiri Te Kanawa, and Princess Michael of Kent. There is a greater emphasis on peerage this time. But the point is unchanged: Why jettison the Old simply because the New is to be more widely preferred? (Note too that a similar letter from the Americas was sent to the pope earlier this month.) I'm a conservative, but I don't expect the world to be configured to my personal preferences, although I fondly recall how Richard Weaver (1910-1963) defined conservatism: "A paradigm of essences toward which the phenomenology of the world is in continuing approximation." Of paradigms and essences, the Roman Catholic Church ...