A week ago, I attended a Latin ('Extraordinary Form') Mass. It was my third time doing so, and I would certainly go again. It's a very interesting experience.

A lot of people in the Church have very complex and oftentimes conflicting views about the Latin Mass and about the legacy of the Second Vatican Council ('Vatican II') in general. I'm not a historian, nor a liturgist, nor a theologian (though I am a theology minor). I don't have the competence to adequately discuss all of that, nor do I much want to. I do, however, want to comment on two things about the Latin Mass and the phenomenon of its presence in the Church following Pope Benedict's 2007 apostolic letter granting all Latin Rite priests permission to celebrate it. Firstly, as a poet, I'd like to make an aesthetic comment on the Latin Mass. Secondly, as a young Catholic, I'd like to comment on the very strong fascination with the Latin Mass sometimes felt by Catholics in my generation.

The Latin Mass is very beautiful. It is different from the Ordinary Form ("normal") Mass in several ways: the priest, instead of facing the congregation, faces the altar; the altar is set back against the wall instead of standing alone like a table; laypeople do not serve as lectors or Eucharistic ministers; and large portions of the Mass, including all but a tiny bit of the Eucharistic Prayer, are said silently. This creates an effect entirely different from that of the Ordinary Form. Where the Ordinary Form is open, energetic, and accessible, the Extraordinary Form is remarkably closed, quiet, and solemn. It's a tremendously strange experience for anyone (like myself) who grew up with the Ordinary Form Mass. A good poem, by differing from "normal" speech, wakes the reader up from a conventional experience of life. The Extraordinary Form does something similar to the person attending Mass.

Now as to the phenomenon of young Catholics who prefer the Extraordinary Form to the Ordinary Form. A few months ago I wrote an article commenting on young Catholics who exhibit extreme reactionary behaviors when it comes to rejecting the secularized society we live in. I wrote that article thinking above all of a particular friend of mine. That friend is a Latin Mass devotee. For young Catholics like him, the Latin Mass is a badge of loyalty to what they consider a pure expression of the Catholic faith and Catholic civilization. Their idealization of an era that passed away before they were born is, I think, a manifestation of a serious problem in the Church. Never mind (for the moment) the young Catholics who don't care much about their faith, those who have rejected their faith, or those who willingly practice but know very little about the Church's dogmas. Coming of age today is doubtless a tremendously stressful struggle; we all, to one extent or another, have obsessive behaviors. The obsession of some young Catholics with the Extraordinary Form, however, is a particularly serious behavior. I'm not taking a dig at the Extraordinary Form, nor at those young Catholics who attend it because they appreciate its beauty and love the culture associated with it. I am, however, warning against the fetishization of it.

The communion of saints notwithstanding, the generation that lived through Vatican II will in the future have died out, and the Church's administration will eventually be left in the hands of my generation. A relentlessly ideologized spin on the liturgy of the Church is unhealthy, and such an obsession does not leave much room for the Spirit of God's Love. The Church, as Jesus promised, is not hopelessly divided. But it will continue to appear that way if today's Catholics foster a situation of aestheticized division.

One more thing: the cover photo for this article is not of a Catholic church. St. Mary the Virgin in Times Square is Episcopalian, and worships in the 'Anglo-Catholic' tradition. I attended a service there a little while ago, and it was the closest approximation of the Extraordinary Form you're likely to get in an Episcopalian church today, as far as I know. Aesthetically beautiful worship is a great thing; but too much focus on it can make us miss the point: God may wish us to worship him reverently, but our fine prayers will be to no avail if, at the same time, we are not careful to keep them from being spoken from cold hearts, however justified we think our coldness is.