Another wedding report

As I reported here at NewGathering, last month I attended a wedding at which the bride and groom custom-designed the ceremony.  I attended another wedding this past weekend, and the approach was different - to say the least.

If you happened to read that earlier post, in which I described (and critiqued - gently, I hope) the  ceremony that was designed by the young bride and groom, you may have inferred that my baseline for a wedding ceremony is the Rite of Marriage within the Roman Missal.  That's the rite that was used for my own wedding, and it's the rite I use when I preside at a wedding.  At the vast majority of Catholic parishes these days, that version of the rite will be the only one on offer.

The wedding I attended this most recent weekend certainly was Catholic; there are those who would consider it really Catholic.  For that matter, there are some few who would say it's more Catholic than the rite under which I was wed.  In short: this one was a Latin wedding.

And when I say Latin, I don't mean the contemporary vernacular rite with a little Latin sprinkled in.  I mean the whole Dominus Vobiscum - it was straight out of the pre-Vatican II missal.   While I was not present for my parents' wedding day in 1959, it's probable that what I witnessed this past weekend was identical, word for word, to what my parents experienced on their special day.

Who would wish to get married that way, these days?  The bride is a friend of ours - someone with whom I collaborate a bit in ministry.  I don't know her exact age, but I assume she's probably a bit younger than my wife and me; I'd say she's somewhere in her 40s.  It always has seemed fair to describe her as a conservative Catholic; but to the best of my knowledge, her Latin mass enthusiasm is pretty recent.  I don't really know the groom at all: I met him for the first time at the reception hall after the wedding, so I don't know whether he is a long-time fan of the so-called "extraordinary form".

Interestingly, the wedding invitation said nothing about the ceremony being in Latin.  My wife, who is more plugged into Facebook than I am, sussed out that it was to be in Latin.  This was newsworthy, not only on its own merits, but also in its impact on what to wear: she wasn't sure whether her head would have to be covered.  She doesn't own any head covering beyond winter hats.  I told her that, if women were expected to have their heads covered, the invitation would so state.  In the end, she attended without a covering, and so did the majority of women (although by no means all).

If one wishes to get married via the old Latin mass, one obvious and practical challenge is to identify a priest* who is willing and able to preside according to that version of the rite.  Both verbs (gerunds?) in that phrase "willing and able" are key.   I've never polled the priests of Chicago on the question, but I'm pretty sure there aren't many who'd be willing to do a Latin wedding, or any sort of Latin mass.  Our priests tend toward the progressive, and I don't think I've ever heard any of them express an affinity for the old Latin style of worship.  And as for "able": the number of priests still alive who were trained in the old mass are relatively few.

The notable exceptions are the members of religious orders whose charism includes the Latin mass.  A handful of these orders are established in Chicago.  We even have a home-grown order: the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius.  I don't know a ton about them, but I have observed them in (liturgical) action once before.  They are based at St. John Cantius Parish, an old (probably historically old) and jaw-droppingly beautiful parish on the near North Side of Chicago.  Unlike some Latin Mass faith communities, St. John Cantius doesn't do the Latin mass exclusively and doesn't  cater solely to the Latin mass crowd.  Their Sunday schedule includes at least one English, "ordinary form" mass each Sunday, and my overall impression is that the parish tries to strike a balance between neighborhood, territorial parish and magnet parish for the Latin mass.  The Canons Regular came about because a large number of young and middle-age single men were attracted to priestly life by attending the Latin mass at the parish.  I may be using the wrong nomenclature in describing them as a religious order: canons, which aren't much known anymore in Roman Catholicism but have a long and eminent history, are sort of their own species; I believe that many cathedrals used to have chapters of canons.  Among other things, the Canons Regular are bound to the parish campus grounds; I read once that they cannot leave without the permission of their superior.

The wedding I attended was not at St. John Cantius, but in an exurban parish church in Volo, IL that has become a sort of satellite location for the Canons Regular.  As at St. John Cantius, St. Peter in Volo offers both English and Latin mass each Sunday.  Volo is a town that goes back to the 19th century when it was tiny, rural and isolated.  The church is of that vintage, even though the town itself has transformed into a suburb with many tracts of subdivisions springing up in former farm fields.  The church building is quite small - the size and scale of a parish church that one is likely to find in small rural towns.  The wedding party filled the church, which I think is nice - better than the typical wedding at our parish, which seats something like 800 people.

I should preface what I'm about to say about the ceremony by explaining that I'm sufficiently young that I have no personal background at all in worshiping in Latin.  When I was in elementary school and had become an altar boy, the mass already had changed to English, the altar was standing in the middle of the sanctuary, the priest was facing the people, English hymnals were appearing in pews, and so on.  So any time I find myself worshiping in Latin, it has no personal resonance for me.  It's exotic, and kind of a historical curiosity.

The celebrant for this ceremony (actually two ceremonies, I think: a wedding and a mass - see below) was one of the Canons Regular.  As this was all according to the prescriptions of the old rite, there were no readers or cantors.  There were two altar servers.  One was adult-size and wearing clerical vesture of some sort; I assume he was a Canon in formation.  The other was a kid who looked to be in 5th or 6th grade, dressed in a cassock and surplice.  But let me tell you: that kid was no slouch at serving the Latin mass.    I mentioned above that I had attended a Latin mass once before, at St. John Cantius.  That time, the two servers were adults (probably Canon seminarians).  What made an impression on me that time was their precision: they kept their hands folded in exactly the same way at exactly the same height; they walked in lockstep; they turned and kneeled in perfect unison.  It was like a ceremonial dance with highly trained dancers.  At this wedding, the kid was every bit as good as the adult at all this stuff.  I can only think that he's worked hard at it.

The music was sung, not by the congregation, but rather by a female schola, whom I later learned were high school girls, friends of the bride's daughter.  They were excellent - high school singers, especially girls, can have clear, pure voices because they're too young to have picked up bad singing habits.  They chanted, a capella, the Missa de Angelis, Mass VIII in the old missal (don't think I'm showing off; the wedding program mentioned this, or I wouldn't have known what it was).  The girls were in the choir loft, and as we were sitting near the back, they were invisible to us, so the effect was of this ethereal, beautiful chant floating down from above and filling the church.  The aesthetic effect was heightened by the statues, stained glass windows and other old, ornamental touches of the space.

One thing immediately struck me, and it was something I hadn't realized before: the way the Latin mass does weddings, the wedding isn't actually a part of the mass.  It's its own rite, which takes place before mass begins.  Some of it was in English and some of it was in Latin.

We were given worship aids with the Latin on one side and the English on the other.  I was grateful, because I was interested in the theology and spirituality of the old form.  Here is one of the prayers that appears in the old marriage rite - I suppose this would be the nuptial blessing, as it was after the vows.  I don't know to what extent it would pass muster with contemporary sensibilities - I suppose the temptation to edit and revise it would be impossible for a lot of people to resist:

Let us pray. Be gracious, O Lord, to our humble supplications: and graciously assist this Thine institution, which Thou hast established for the increase of mankind: that what is joined together by Thine authority, may be preserved by Thine aid. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee..,O God, who by Thine own mighty power, didst make all things out of nothing: who, having set in order the beginnings of the world, didst appoint Woman to be an inseparable helpmeet to Man, made like unto God, so that Thou didst give to woman’s body its beginnings in man’s flesh, thereby teaching that what it pleased Thee to form from one substance, might never be lawfully separated: O God, who, by so excellent a mystery hast consecrated the union of man and wife, as to foreshadow in this nuptial bond the union of Christ with His Church: O God, by whom Woman is joined to Man, and the partnership, ordained from the beginning, is endowed with such blessing that it alone was not withdrawn either by the punishment of original sin, nor by the sentence of the flood: graciously look upon this Thy handmaid, who, about to be joined in wedlock, seeks Thy defense and protection. May it be to her a yoke of love and peace: faithful and chaste, may she be wedded in Christ, and let her ever be the imitator of holy women: let her be dear to her husband, like Rachel: wise, like Rebecca: long-lived and faithful like Sara. Let not the author of deceit work any of his evil deeds in her. May she continue, clinging to the faith and to the commandments. Bound in one union, let her shun all unlawful contact. Let her protect her weakness by the strength of discipline; let her be grave in behavior, respected for modesty, well-instructed in heavenly doctrine. Let her be fruitful in offspring; be approved and innocent; and come to the repose of the blessed and the kingdom of heaven. May they both see their children’s children to the third and fourth generation, and may they reach the old age which they desire. Through the same Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth…

After this, the mass itself began. From that point to the end, virtually all was in Latin - and for the Mass of the Faithful (I think it was called - what today we would call the Liturgy of the Eucharist), the priest turned around and muttered it all with his back to us.  It made me feel that I was watching something with the volume turned down too low.

If last month's wedding was self-constructed, this one was, ritually speaking, perhaps at the other end of the spectrum.  Yet one of the elements from last month's conversation about the nature of ritual was pertinent to this past weekend's experience: to enter into ritual, one has to be initiated into it.  I mentioned, in that prior conversation, that even for Catholic ritual celebrations such as baptisms and funerals, many of the attendees aren't well-formed in the ritual.  Well, that was what I experienced as a pew-sitter (or -kneeler) at this ceremony.  I didn't know the responses, wasn't familiar with the rite, couldn't figure out where we were in the book, didn't know if I should kneel or stand at a particular time.  I'm Catholic, but for this ceremony, I was pretty much a visitor.

I guess, if I criticized last month's couple (and I did) for doing things their own way rather than according to the community's wishes, then this month's couple seems fair game for the same observation.  But this was what they wanted, and the contemporary Zeitgeist is to have one's wedding as one wants it.  I am very glad to have been there, but I wasn't really able to join in as I'd normally do.

* Could a deacon do a wedding according to the old Latin rite?  I don't know the answer.  To my mind, it's a legal question.  Here's how I would think about it: there are two ways of being a deacon: a permanent deacon, like me; or a transitional deacon, i.e. one who is ordained a deacon while training for the priesthood.  At the time the old Latin mass was normative, there were no permanent deacons in the Roman Catholic church (or if there were any, there were only a handful worldwide and they were very exceptional); the permanent diaconate wasn't restored until Vatican II authorized it in the early-mid 60s.  So the question is: was a transitional deacon given faculties, or otherwise empowered, to preside at a wedding in those days?  As I say, I don't know the answer.  I can say with certainty that diocesan permanent deacons aren't trained to preside at a wedding according to the old Latin rite. Some religious orders also have permanent deacons, perhaps including religious orders, like the one I mention in this post, that are devoted to celebrating the old Latin mass.  Could those deacons (if there are any such) preside at an old Latin wedding?  Beats me.