This essay is going to seem incredibly surreal to many people. I am going to make an argument about the Latin Mass by making an analogy to Dungeons & Dragons.
If you think I am insane, I do not judge you. But hear me out.
There are few groups perhaps more dissimilar with each other currently than Latin Mass Catholics and Dungeon & Dragons players. Yet a current experience of the D&D crowd I think presents a case study for us Catholics to remember.
Recently, the Wizards of the Coast, the company that publishes the D&D game (which, yes, I am aware many of my brethren regard as Satanic) claimed to have the authority to revoke the “perpetual” license given to the community to use the core rules of D&D in their own publications. This was called the “Open Game License.”
Eventually Wizards had to back down. In the interim though numerous legal theories abounded. Some said WotC had the authority to do this. Some said they didn’t, that “perpetual” meant “irrevocable.” Still others said that the text of the Open Game License could be revoked but the rights it conferred could not because they were rights enjoyed by the community anyway due to the limitations of copyright and trademark law anyway.
Does this sound familiar to anyone?
Latin Mass Catholics agree (or at least hope) that the Latin mass cannot be abrogated. But reasons why very widely. Some want to live and die on the Quo Primum hill. Some want to invoke older principles. Others want (I cynically perceive) to have a “strategic ambiguity” so they can move the goal posts as needed.
I find it interesting that, even though the average Latin Mass Catholic, at best, regards D&D as childish and stupid, and the average D&D player, despite being indebted to a Latin Mass Catholic named JRR Tolkien, regards the Catholic Church and its Liturgy as evil, that despite all of this – they both are in the same situation.
Both say a promise was made to them. And both have, in various ways, been told that times change and “equals cannot bind equals.”
Wizards of the Coast said that they were “Stewards of the Game” and being a good steward meant they had to revoke the prior promise. Stewards of the Game? Does that not sound familiar? Did not Francis say that he is the “Guardian of Tradition” and with that role came a responsibility to restrict a prior promise?
These groups are so radically different. Both (sadly) regard the other as evil (Fantasy fans vs Latin Mass fans) and yet both have been told by an Authority, that as the rightful Guardian of X they cannot be bound by a prior promise. Things change. Equals cannot bind equals. Our duty to be a Guardian means the prior promise must fall.
And both groups, across this radically different context, are both saying NO!
If anyone is still reading and not just laughing, I am sure some will try to throw me under the bus with this comparison. LOOK THE LATIN MASS CATHOLICS HAVE MORE IN COMMON WITH PAGANS THAN US “REAL” CATHOLICS!
I don’t think that is the inference we should draw. I think this irony points us to (does not “prove” but points us to) a quite funny fact – opponents of the Latin Mass have forgotten a Moral Law that even the most pagan of communities have not forgotten.
In the Open Game License War, numerous legal theories were advanced, everyone disagreed with everyone else as to what was legally true. And yet the Open Game Movement won the day. The reason being, that despite everyone disagreeing about the letter of the law, they all agreed on a moral law.
The promise made by the Wizards of the Coast in the Open Game License did bind. That promise either made true or recognized as true that the core rules of this game were too important to belong to any one person or company. The community embraced that promise. We made choices based on that promise and that understanding that we would not have made otherwise.
Thus, regardless of whatever legalisms Wizards wanted to invoke to kill the promise, regardless of whether the new management could be bound by the decisions of past management, the cat was out of the bag. They had declared that the rules of D&D were bigger than any one person’s managerial whims. And we, the D&D community, believed them. These rules had become bigger than Wizards.
So what does this have to do with the Latin Mass?
Yes, the promise of Quo Primum is in effect, now and forever. This is true regardless of whether the letter of the law of Quo Primum is in effect. Regardless of whether “Equals can bind equals.” Regardless of whatever legalisms are brought forward.
For those who don’t know, Quo Primum made a promise to the faithful about the Latin Mass:
“Furthermore, by these presents [this law], in virtue of Our Apostolic authority, We grant and concede in perpetuity that, for the chanting or reading of the Mass in any church whatsoever, this Missal is hereafter to be followed absolutely, without any scruple of conscience or fear of incurring any penalty, judgment, or censure, and may freely and lawfully be used. Nor are superiors, administrators, canons, chaplains, and other secular priests, or religious, of whatever title designated, obliged to celebrate the Mass otherwise than as enjoined by Us. We likewise declare and ordain that no one whosoever is forced or coerced to alter this Missal, and that this present document cannot be revoked or modified, but remain always valid . . . ”
Quo Primum
There is no way to read Quo Primum without understanding that the promise presupposes a truth – that the Latin Mass is a shared heritage, that it, by right, belongs to everyone. Quo Primum not only promised this, but it commanded us to believe it. We were commanded to believe it elsewhere too – the Profession of Faith of the Council of Trent includes the reception of the Church’s rites alongside doctrinal beliefs. Quo Primum itself presents itself as working to ensure a “Pure” liturgy, one that has a true continuity with its past. This is presented as a necessity, not a whimsy “pastoral practice.”
The Church commanded us to believe that the Rite of Rome was something that in a very True sense belonged to everyone. That we had a RIGHT to it in its “Pure” instead of its committee made (de)form.
Regardless of whether equals can bind equals, regardless of whether Apostolic Constitutions can be revoked and under what circumstances, the Church commanded us to view the Latin Mass as bigger than any one person. And, we, the Community, believed it. We developed beliefs, took actions, and suffered martyrdoms inspired by that promise.
There is no going back. Just as the RPG community came to view the rules of D&D as being bigger than any one person’s whims and thus there was no going back, there is no going back on this. And all D&D is, literally all it is, is a social cultural custom at best. One that is very very replaceable. One, that I argue, can, has, and should be replaced by better alternatives.
How much more solid is the promise regarding the ireplaceable Latin Mass irrevocable? I am not saying that the squabbles of Pagans set precedent for how we handle Canon law. But I do think the situation serves as a good common-place metaphor. Some promises truly can be revoked later under the guise that equals cannot bind equals and that times have changed. Some, even regarding petty matters, cannot.
A promise that has as its subtext (and considering the Council of Trent it isn’t even subtext) that something is so valuable that it, in some sense, belongs to everyone, cannot be revoked, at least if its underlying premise is true.
Whether the issue is big or small, if you say that X is valuable in such a way that it is fitting for it to be granted to the community in perpetuity, and that community believes you there is no going back. By virtue of commanding that community to believe in and celebrate your promise and the communal understanding of the thing promised, you have eliminated any way to go back. To believe otherwise is to believe in duties that do not grant rights. It is insane to say I had the duty to view the Roman Rite as an eternal part of my heritage, but not the right to have it as an eternal part of my heritage.
Those who say that Quo Primum can be revoked I want you to imagine yourself meeting Jesus right after he said this:
““Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘If any one swears by the temple, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.’ 17 You blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that has made the gold sacred? 18 And you say, ‘If any one swears by the altar, it is nothing; but if any one swears by the gift that is on the altar, he is bound by his oath.’ 19 You blind men! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that makes the gift sacred? 20 So he who swears by the altar, swears by it and by everything on it; 21 and he who swears by the temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it; 22 and he who swears by heaven, swears by the throne of God and by him who sits upon it.[1]”
Mt 23:16-22
I want you to imagine yourself raising your hand after this and saying “Rome gave its word about a matter concerning the altar, but We did not swear by the Altar. We just, you know, made a normal-promise on a matter that had its material and final cause in the Altar and everything on it and then solemnly commanded everyone to believe the theological worldview that made our promise rational – can we have backsies?”
I do not think this conversation would go well.
The Council of Trent and the Popes that followed, perhaps most dramatically in Quo Primum but consistently elsewhere as well, made a promise. And it was a promise with a premise. That something was bigger than any one person. And we believed you.
No. Even Rome on this does not get backsies. Especially when allowing you to break your promise would force us to break ours – our promise to worship God according to his Truth, not the “truths” of Protestants and seeming Free Mason sympathizers.
You made a promise by the Altar. A promise that was received and even commanded on the faithful. We intend to keep you to it.
Once a community conceives of something as part of their heritage, even if it’s something as simple as a pretend-dragon game, killing that idea is impossible.
How much more is this true, about sacred matters?
[1] Catholic Biblical Association (Great Britain), The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (New York: National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA, 1994), Mt 23:16–22.
