c. 2007 Religion News Service

MIDDLETOWN, N.J. _ Emily Blonski is on her knees, praying in a language she does not understand, holding a missal that is older than she is.

But for 17-year-old Blonski, who travels 30 minutes every Sunday to attend the only Latin Mass around, what’s old is what’s new.

“I don’t know what it is about the Latin Mass,” she says, moments after kneeling at the Communion rail to receive the sacrament the old way, on her tongue, not the new way, in her outstretched hands.

“Going to the Latin Mass takes me away from everything going on nowadays. It helps me to relax,” she says at St. Catherine’s Catholic Church, where the local bishop allows the 1,500-year-old rite to be celebrated. “Words just can’t describe why you attend the Latin Mass. You have to see for yourself.”

Starting Sept. 14, more people may be able to do just that.

On that date, priests will no longer need a bishop’s permission to celebrate the 16th-century Tridentine rite _ the old Latin Mass that Blonski loves. With Pope Benedict XVI easing restrictions in place since 1965, Catholics like Blonski are hoping more people will take the step out of time.

“I think it’s something more teens should see, or at least experience once in life,” says Blonski, who first attended Latin Mass with her parents when she was 5 or 6 years old.

Walk into the little white church Blonski frequents each Sunday morning at 9 and this is what you’ll see:

Up to 300 people, some who travel as much as an hour to get here, kneeling in silence, or in prayer, reading from aging Tridentine missals _ half a page printed in Latin, the other half translated into English. Well-dressed women, many wearing white veils, or black veils, or hats. Men in suits and ties, some clutching rosaries.

Families. Children, quiet and well-behaved.

The priest enters, in green and white vestments, and faces the altar, his back to the people. Altar boys _ not girls _ flank him on either side.

Hymns are sung _ some in English, most in Latin.

The priest speaks _ sometimes loudly, sometimes barely audibly _ in a steady stream of Latin until he reads from the Bible in English and gives his homily.

Bells are rung, incense is burned, the priest bows and genuflects, never facing the people from the altar. Never praying in English until the very last.

“Some people are violently against this,” says the Rev. Daniel Hesko, who has been celebrating the Latin Mass at St. Catherine’s for the past six years. “It’s seen as going backwards, a return to rigid conservatism.”

Hesko disagrees. “I was drawn to the Latin Mass,” he says. “I found it beautiful, with a sense of awe, reverence and mystery.”

At 54, Hesko had memories of the Latin Mass from his childhood but was not trained in Latin when he became a priest in 1984, at age 30. He taught himself to celebrate the Latin Mass from an old video instructing priests.

When Hesko was first asked to celebrate the Latin Mass six years ago, he expected a church full of older Catholics attending out of nostalgia. He was surprised by the number of younger folks.

“They feel a sense of transformation, being taken out of self,” he says. “There is a sense of ages, going back into antiquity. This is in many ways counterculture.”

Modern radicalism, he calls it. Which is exactly what the Rev. Ronald Bacovin doesn’t want.

Bacovin, pastor of St. James Church in Pennington, about 40 miles west of here, has been a priest for 41 years and remembers the days of the Latin Mass.

“I couldn’t wait to get to English,” he says. “It should have been a no-brainer.”

Bacovin was in the seminary during the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s, when the church changed from the Latin Mass to the New Mass in the language spoken by the people.

“The change made perfect sense to me,” he says. “Just changing back is kind of a slap in the face to Vatican II.”

The difference between the old and new rites is more than language deep, Bacovin says.

In the old rite, life’s suffering is stressed, he says. “The whole atmosphere seems to say living in this world is a hard burden. In the new liturgy, the priest turns around, opens his arms as if to hug somebody. It’s a whole different attitude, not just Latin,” he says.

It’s an attitude some Catholics don’t want to see change.

“People aren’t going to be clamoring for the Latin Mass,” predicts Linda Pieczynski, spokesperson for Call to Action, a Chicago-based lay Catholic reform group. Pieczynski is upset by the thought of 1950s-style Catholicism making a comeback.

“It makes the Roman Catholic Church look old and stuffy and uninviting to people from the outside,” she said.

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The Rev. Vincent Gartland agrees. Gartland, pastor of St. Ann Church in Lawrence, became a priest 25 years ago, long after Vatican II. Although he’s 68 years old, he’s never said the Latin Mass, or had his back to his congregation.

He remembers attending Latin Mass as a child. “You went and sort of watched,” he recalls.

Gartland feels the Mass of today is a richer experience than the one he remembers as a little boy.

“The participation in Mass is much stronger today. There’s a greater emphasis on Scripture. The priest faces the people. All these little things add up.”

Yet most of the people at St. Catherine’s, such as parishioner Ellen Dorsa, say the older Mass is superior to the newer one. “It’s reverent and holy and respectful,” she said. “The new Mass is not, most of the time.”

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So what is it about a Mass in a dead language that people find fulfilling?

“I feel I’m praying more in the Mass,” says Edward Ryan, who drives an hour each week to attend the Latin Mass at St. Catherine’s. “I read the same words as the priest in Latin and in English. I’m saying the same prayers the priest is saying.”

Robert Dow drives 20 minutes, passing his own church in Red Bank, to attend the Latin Mass at St. Catherine’s. He asked one priest at his home parish if he would celebrate the Latin Mass there.

“He said he didn’t know how but was willing to learn,” Dow says. “I intend to ask all of them.”

(Jeff Trently writes for the The Times of Trenton in Trenton, N.J.)

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