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An Extraordinary Form Mass in Amsterdam – much more inspiring than the usual trendy rubbish
James MacMillan
I was in Amsterdam last week, conducting at the Concertgebouw. I found out that the FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St Peter) have a thriving parish there, in the Sint-Agneskerk. I went along on Sunday for their beautiful Extraordinary Form liturgy. The Dutch church is a wasteland/joke/disaster area because of 30 years of liberalism. Basically there are no Catholics left here! Or so it seems sometimes, thanks to the usual rubbish. Thankfully there are some younger, faithful Catholics willing to swim against the tide.
I’m still a bit of a novice when it comes to the EF – Sunday’s was my third – but I am struck each time by just how devotional the atmosphere is, even on entering the church. Everything seems focused on the tabernacle. There is a palpable presence of God, which tends to be missing from a lot of churches now, which feel more like Glasgow Central station than a house of prayer.
In the FSSP’s Amsterdam church there was a veritable tsunami of mantillas on display! There is a liberal argument in Holland which is opposing the government’s crackdown on Islamic women wearing the hijab/niqab/burka. Those same liberals who would have a fit if they saw a mantilla in a Catholic church, no doubt!
I certainly got the impression that the people present on Sunday were being helped enormously in their faith, much of which has been swept away in Holland. Many ethnic/immigrant faces in evidence. It reminded me of the Newman Beatification Mass at Cofton Park. Compared to this, the anti-Pope demonstrations in London looked terribly white and middle-class. Just like most opponents of Rome, outside and inside the Church.
“Ah, but we can’t go back to the past,” we hear the usual ageing handwringers cry. But the past is the past, and has no bearing any more on the new impetus to sort out the liturgy. Latin Mass can be in the EF and the Novus Ordo – that’s the beauty of Latin, and that’s why the Devil (let alone the Tabletistas) hates it!
“Oh but where is the active participation in the Latin Mass?” cry the liberal killjoys. But lay involvement is clearly possible to the fullest extent in the EF or Latin Novus Ordo. In the three EF liturgies I have attended in the last year, the assembly sang much, much more than one ever sees or hears in a Glasgow “Mass-for-Daily-Record-Man” or its depressing equivalent up and down the country. Everything from the Asperges Me, through the Kyrie, Sanctus and all the Dominus vobiscum/et cum spiritu tuos – sung by EVERYBODY. There is no point in using the past, pre-Vatican II practice as a weapon against the inevitable. None of the young Catholics now committed to good liturgy have any idea what the old curmudgeons are going on about when they moan about the bad old days. Their bad memories are irrelevant and have no bearing at all on the push for improvements. And these improvements will have a bearing on both forms the Mass, especially the English vernacular, I’m sure.
Even the readings – chanted in Latin – were understood by everyone, because we had the translations in Dutch and English in our bulletins. I have never felt so participatory. These “readings” were heightened and holier because they were sung, and in an elevated tongue. The whole experience was sublime – ie, the way it should be every week in the Novus Ordo, and will be again once the Reform of the Reform has been won. Much better this than the usual lackadaisical mumbling and stumbling that we usually get, with all the right-on social/political messages thrown in for good measure. The only bit of the Mass I didn’t understand on Sunday was the homily, in the vernacular – Dutch.
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