The app for independent voices
Dear Lilly,
Thank you for writing this article.
I’m not sure if you’re familiar with my work but I frequently mention the fact that a big renewal in my faith took place in high school through the couple of years I spent in the charismatic movement. It’s quite possible—I’m very willing to admit it—that the Lord knew I need this kind of restart in my spiritual life (after a rather perfunctory suburban Catholicism in my earlier life) in order to get to a deeper level, and it was after this that I discovered Catholic tradition in all its depth—theological, liturgical, musical.
I have subsequently met others who went down the same path, that is, conventional to charismatic to traditional. Some say they have never left the charismatic behind: thus Clement Harrold talks of “Tradismatic Trentecostalism” in an interesting piece at First Things:
Others, like myself, believe that what we discoverered there, we rediscovered at a deeper level in the resources of tradition such as the TLM, lectio divina and meditating with the rosary. I go into this in a lecture I gave at Steubenville in 2020 called “Why Charismatic Catholics Should Love the Traditional Latin Mass”:
This part of your article I can agree with 100%: if Catholics do not develop a personal relationship with the Lord, no amount of beautiful liturgy and methodical devotions will be able to substitute for it. This is one reason I think it’s so important for traditionalist families to carve out time for individual prayer, for family prayer, for personal retreats, visits to monasteries, things of that sort that can open up the soul to the action of the Lord in a way different from “going through the motions” of corporate worship (as necessary and good as those are).
One last thing, I hope you won’t mind if I suggest a correction. You write: “I know that the Latin Mass was stable for 400 years and that many are drawn to its beautiful and holy elements.” Actually, the Latin Mass was stable in its core for about 1,500 years, and the whole thing was quite complete centuries before St. Pius V codified it in 1570. I go into this history and its significance in my book The Once and Future Roman Rite:
God bless you!