DEAR EDITOR: I have read with interest comments on the celebration of the Roman Rite (Catholic News August 3). I note from these comments, and particularly from quotations from Fr Duffy, Founder of Una Voce (One Voice), all the ills that came into world and Church with the change from the Tridentine Mass to the Vernacular. May I mention two good results of that change?

Before Vatican II, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to have the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, chanted in Aramaic on the Parvis of the Cathedral of Notre Dame at the commencement of the funeral of Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger.

It would have been impossible to have his nephew read Psalm 113 in Hebrew and French. In those days very few indeed, and certainly no laity, would have known that this was the psalm which Jesus would have said to open the Passover Meal.

And it is highly unlikely that someone who was Jewish would have been made an Archbishop and a Cardinal over the period covered by the Tridentine Mass.

For me, this reconciliation between Jew and Gentile, which Cardinal Lustiger symbolised and lived, makes Vatican II and the Mass in the Vernacular, worth it. Can you imagine what joy in heaven when the Lord’s own “vernacular” – Aramaic – was recited before the Lord’s own Cathedral in the heart of Paris?

Secondly, it took the change to the Mass in the Vernacular to make me realise that the Una Voce of the Tridentine Mass marginalised some of the oldest communities in the Catholic Church.

Those in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon or the St Thomas Catholics of India trace their history back to the Apostles and sometimes, like the few Catholics left in Sidon and Tyre, to Our Lord Himself.

Their Mass however may be said in Arabic or, for example, in Aramaic. With Vatican II we began to recognise the rich traditions in the Catholic Church and began to be grateful to these relatively small groups of Catholics in India, Syria, Iraq or Lebanon and in other areas who have stubbornly kept the Faith.

I leave aside the awful sense of meaning in my hearing the Mass in English or in French – the two languages of my own lived through experience. It is however pretty scandalous that we have, in one generation, forgotten the beautiful chants and hymns which our parents and grandparents knew.

Some time ago I was at a pooja in a Hindu Temple. To my surprise they had used our Gregorian chant as a basis for their chanting. There are very few Catholic choirs in Trinidad who know the Gregorian chants. Few Catholics here now know the Sanctus or the Salve Regina.

St Francis of Assisi’s beautiful prayer “Lord make me an instrument of Thy Peace” has been replaced by Let there be Peace on Earth. The Anima Christi in English (Soul of my Saviour) and St Patrick’s Breastplate, have almost disappeared.

I must go to an Anglican or Methodist Church to hear Newman or the very beautiful Elizabethan hymns. Yes we do have some modern hymns and chants that are beautiful. However the very push to have only the new and above all a certain “beat” ensures that many of the new hymns say nothing profound.

Even when we choose Protestant hymns we seem to have a particular attraction to the most superficial.

At the same time we have lost much of the prayerfulness and sense of the sacred that was once the hallmark of Catholic liturgy.

The search for chumminess, for feeling good and for what is Caribbean, ends up being the search for the moment, robbing us of what is particularly important for Jews and Catholics: the rooting in a historical Church witness to a God who enters history.

But this is not the result of Vatican II. It is the use of Vatican II for purposes other than the use of the Vernacular.

In all the comments there is the question of the Tridentine Mass being our Catholic identity.

However Our Lord himself defines our identity: "I give you a commandment: love one another; just as I have loved you; you also must love one another. By this love you have for one another, everyone will know that you are my disciples" Jn 13:34-35.

To love as God loves, to give of ourselves as Our Lord did, is enough to keep us occupied – language is at best, lagniappe.

MARION O’CALLAGHAN, Woodbrook