Latin & the Power of Silence

Rare Latin Mass A Return to Ritual

By Michelle Boorstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 4, 2006; A12

The ringing of bells. Latin wafting high into the church rafters. Women's heads draped in lace.

There is a solemn aura to 9 a.m. Sunday Mass at Saint Mary Mother of God, a D.C. parish on Fifth Street NW where hundreds of Catholics who long for ancient ritual gather each week to celebrate what is among the most traditional and complex of Roman Catholic rites: the Tridentine Mass.

The sounds are few and particular. Latin is the language of prayer, and the only ones who speak it during the service are the nearly inaudible priest and the Gregorian Chant Choir that performs on the third Sunday of each month. Robed altar servers -- there are as many as 10 -- ring bells several times during the hour-long service. Pews creak and shoes shuffle as some 400 people kneel and stand, kneel and stand.

But mostly there is a powerful silence, a seriousness created by the absence of contemporary church: no responsive readings, no guitars, no congregants walking to a microphone to read from Scripture or to make bingo announcements. There is just a centuries-old script, which dictates the near-constant, intricate movements of the altar servers -- circling the altar, kneeling, pressing hands together, bowing -- as well as the position of the priest, whose back is to parishioners. Together, everyone faces East, acknowledging that Jesus is the true dawn.

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And for a magnificent clip from their choir click here. Its enough to make one think that there may be hope for the Western Church.