c. 2007 Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY _ Pope Benedict XVI has approved a document that will make it easier for Mass to be celebrated in Latin, a practice sidelined in the 1960s when church officials made local-language Mass the norm.

Benedict met with representatives of various bishops’ conferences from around the world on Wednesday (June 27) to discuss the document, which will be issued “in the next few days” along with a personal letter from the pope, the Vatican said Thursday.

The move is seen in part as an attempt to bring back into the fold ultra-traditionalist Catholics who split with the Vatican over the decision to restrict the old Latin Mass. The Vatican gave no indication to what extent those restrictions would be lifted.

The “Latin Mass,” as it is commonly called _ traditionalists call it the “Tridentine Mass” or “classical Roman liturgy” _ employs songs, rites and Gregorian chants that were common before the Second Vatican Council ushered in a host of church reforms in the 1960s. Among other features of the older rite, Latin is spoken and sung almost exclusively and the priest celebrates the Mass facing away from the pews.

Proponents say the Tridentine Mass strikes a more reverent and transcendent tone, in which worship is clearly directed toward God. But the Mass can only be celebrated under the special permission of the local bishop, which some have been reluctant to grant.

Benedict, however, has expressed admiration for the traditional rites, and anticipation has steadily built over whether he would try to foster more widespread celebration of the Tridentine Mass through a “motu proprio,” or personal papal declaration.

Benedict has also reached out to the Society of Pius X, a group founded by the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in 1969 to oppose the Second Vatican Council’s reforms. The Vatican excommunicated Lefebvre in 1988 after he consecrated four bishops without Rome’s consent.

Last March, in a letter to Catholic bishops on divorce and priestly celibacy, Benedict also encouraged the celebration of Mass in Latin at international gatherings “in order to express more clearly the unity and universality of the Church.”

Richard Dobbins, secretary of the New Haven, Conn.-based St. Gregory Society, which is devoted to celebrating and spreading the Tridentine Mass, said the Vatican’s announcement will it bring greater visibility.

The society draws between 50 and 80 worshippers to its Masses each Sunday, Dobbins said, including Catholics from New York and Boston. It would almost certainly draw more if the society was given more flexibility from the Hartford Archdiocese, he said.

“In general there won’t be an instant effect,” after the Vatican document is released, Dobbins said. “We won’t have bargaining power immediately to do something. But it will increase our visibility … to build something up to where we become a credible dialogue partner with the bishop.”

Some U.S. Catholics, though, have questioned whether there is widespread demand for the Tridentine Mass in the U.S.

“Other than embarrassing the bishops and pastors who have opposed wider use of the Tridentine Mass, the Motu propio will probably have little effect,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

“Public opinion polls show overwhelming support for the new liturgy among Catholics,” he added.

That may change, Dobbins said, once Benedict’s support for the old liturgy becomes more clear.

“Those people might find that they are challenged to think a little differently about it when they see how emphatically the pope appreciates this rite,” he said.

(Peter Mayer reported from Vatican City and Daniel Burke reported from Washington.)

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