jsburbidge | The Tridentine Rite and Social Models

A couple of weeks back I was the MC for a celebration of a Tridentine Rite high mass.

There tend to be two reactions to the rite: either people like it because it's picturesque, or they dislike it because it's more intricate and arguably fussy than the modern rite -- which is seen as "old fashioned" and by association with the positions of the Church of Rome during the period during which it was used actually reactionary.

But it's interesting to note that during the period from about 1890 to 1960 during which the rite was used by Anglo-Catholics with "advanced views" the parishes tended to be more likely to be politically left-wing than their low-church counterparts -- Labour or CCF in their associations rather than the "Conservative Party at prayer".

I think that there's more than an accident of history here. The understanding of human society which underlies the old rite is that of humans as members of groups -- participants function as representative of their orders, and individuality is secondary to having a representative role (this extends in principle to the laity, the sancta plebs Dei, as well, in their participation). Although this allies relatively well with the really old Crown-and-Altar conservatism of Metternich et al., it also has more in common with understandings on the left which make use of class analysis or (these days) identity politics. What it doesn't mesh with is the worldview of Victorian Liberalism (now that of much "conservatism") which is centred around the individual with a laissez-faire, laissez-aller view of government, and a reliance on contract rather than status as a model for regulating human affairs. (Studies such as those in Thompson's Customs in Common indicate that there were in fact frequently larger or smaller-scale alliances between the landowners with old values and the lower classes as against the emerging commercial classes and New Men.)

Well, there aren't very many followers of Metternich, or Bolingbroke (The Idea of a Patriot King), or even Wellington around today: the right-wing space has largely been occupied by followers of Smith and Mill, and the same is true of much of the centre, where it's tempered by slightly less rigorous views of our responsibilities to the unfortunate. It's the left, alone, which retains an understanding of society based on groups. So, somewhat ironically, it's arguable that the old rite, which is less easily reducible to an individual-centred model than the new rite, may be a better expression of Christian Socialism than its more modern successor.