A devotion to tradition

Visitors to the noon Sunday Mass at Holy Trinity Church in Boston's South End might be forgiven for thinking time travel is possible. Women and girls wear mantillas -- a lightweight lace -- to cover their heads. Only men are allowed in the sanctuary, the area hard by the altar. The priest faces east, just as the worshipers do, so for much of the service only his back is visible as he quietly mouths ancient prayers in Latin.

When the time comes for the homily, the priest climbs the steps into a pulpit -- rarely seen in Catholic churches today -- and at Communion, men and women, boys and girls kneel before another architectural relic, an altar rail, their mouths agape as they take care not to touch the transubstantiated wafer with anything but their tongues. Much of the service is sung in Gregorian chant.

This is the only approved Latin Mass in the Archdiocese of Boston -- a concession to traditionalist Catholics who, for reasons of nostalgia, theology, politics, or personal preference, balk at the so-called new Mass celebrated in vernacular languages in parishes around the globe since 1969.

But now, this congregation, one of the smallest and least-known in the archdiocese, is bracing for Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley's scheduled announcement Tuesday of which of the archdiocese's 357 parishes will close. O'Malley is expected to close scores of churches, a response to a shortage of priests, worshipers, and dollars, and Holy Trinity is among the 144 recommended for possible closure.

"We are very fearful, because we just feel we're going to be left out -- it's going to be bye-bye to us, and we don't want to go back to the catacombs," said Dorothy Fresolo, 66, who for years worshiped in an unsanctioned chapel with an "independent priest" in West Roxbury, rather than go to her home parish, St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, which celebrates Mass in English. "I took the new Mass as long as I could, but it just lacked so much for me, it wasn't worship."

The archdiocese is promising to relocate the Latin Mass if Holy Trinity closes, according to the archbishop's spokesman, the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne. O'Malley has in the past accommodated the Latin Mass: In 2002, when he was the bishop of Fall River, he authorized a weekly Latin Mass in Chatham, where it is still celebrated; and his top aide, Bishop Richard G. Lennon, this year sent a Holy Trinity parishioner a letter declaring, "Please be assured the Archbishop is committed to maintaining the celebration of the Latin Mass in the Archdiocese of Boston."

But many of these Latin Mass worshipers, who number 200 to 300 most weeks, don't want to move from Holy Trinity, which was established in 1844 to serve German immigrants and still holds an English/German Mass in addition to the Latin Mass. In ways that are in part unique and in part illustrative of the dilemma facing O'Malley as he tries to reconfigure a vast archdiocese made up of multiple ethnic and geographic constituencies with competing interests, the Holy Trinity congregation is raising an unusual set of arguments, and possible solutions, as it fights a long-shot battle to keep open the church where parishioners have been worshiping since emerging from the underground 14 years ago.

The Latin Mass participants are among several worshiping communities -- others include those who worship in Igbo in Dorchester, Korean in Newton, and American Sign Language in Sudbury -- that are bound together not by geography but by liturgy, and therefore fear their churches are viewed as easy targets for closure because much of the congregation already drives to church. A central location, highway access, and parking, this theory goes, are more important than the particular building.

But two architectural elements of Holy Trinity play a liturgical role for the Latin Mass worshipers and will be difficult to find in the many churches around the archdiocese that have been updated over the last several decades. Holy Trinity still has an ornate high altar, and the church's free-standing table altar, used at the English Mass, is on wheels so it can be removed for the Latin Mass. And then there is the altar rail, a railing separating the sanctuary from the body of the church, which is preferred by traditionalists but avoided in modern churches.

The Latin Mass worshipers in Boston have struggled to win legitimacy -- first to get permission to hold a sanctioned Mass, then, in 1998, to get permission to hold baptisms, weddings, and funerals using the old rite. The community, which boasts multiple large, young families, holds its own religious education classes and, since last year, First Communion celebrations, but still is not allowed to hold Confirmation rites. The community also has three choirs, one of which, the Preces Cantatae, made several CDs as a fund-raiser.

The community, like most, is not unanimous. Some hope the Latin Mass will be moved to the nearby Cathedral of the Holy Cross, which they believe would give it greater stature; others would like to see it move around the archdiocese, so there are more options for locations and times. But the worshipers are focusing their efforts on several strategies to keep Holy Trinity open.

In February, Una Voce Boston, the local chapter of an international organization promoting the traditional Mass, suggested that O'Malley turn over administration of Holy Trinity to a religious order, the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter, which trains priests in the Latin Mass, so the archdiocese wouldn't have to contribute priests or funds to the parish. O'Malley refused, saying he wanted archdiocesan priests to serve the Latin Mass community.

Parishioners have since sent two petitions to O'Malley. One called the recommendation to close Holy Trinity "irregular and ill-advised" and suggested that O'Malley keep Holy Trinity open because of its history, because it claims to be more vibrant than St. James Church in Chinatown, which is thought to be the church's competition, and because the process used to decide which downtown parishes might close violated the archdiocese's own procedures by allowing little lay participation. The second petition suggested that O'Malley could make Holy Trinity a "collegiate church," an obscure designation, apparently with no precedent in the United States, under which the parish would be owned by a nonprofit corporation that would take care of its maintenance, but the liturgy would still be subject to oversight by O'Malley and his successors.

"Our hope is that the archbishop will reject the recommendation and keep Holy Trinity open," said Christine M. Quagan of West Roxbury, chairwoman of Una Voce Boston, who met the man she married at the Latin Mass. "This has been a good place for us."

All Catholic Masses were said in Latin until the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965. But in 1988, Pope John Paul II began actively to encourage bishops to permit the restricted use of the Latin Mass, in part in an effort to reconcile with followers of a schismatic ultraconservative French archbishop, Marcel Lefebvre, as well as other unhappy traditionalists who reject post-Vatican II changes in the Catholic Church, according to the Rev. John Baldovin, a professor of historical and liturgical theology at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge.

Most American bishops now permit one Latin Mass in their dioceses, often said by older priests who were trained before Vatican II. "The Latin Mass appeals not simply to older people, but also to a lot of younger people who have nostalgia for something they never knew," Baldovin said. "You get people going there who are not happy with the contemporary church."

At Holy Trinity, the Massgoers cite the style of worship as their reason for attendance.

"I grew up with the acoustic guitars and that whole thing, and it just made it more difficult to take seriously what it is that Catholics believe happens at Mass -- that bread and wine truly is transformed into the body and blood of Christ," said Francis X. Altiere, 22, a Harvard University history student from Kimberton, Pa. "In the traditional Mass, this is made much more obvious. It's a more perfect expression of the Catholic faith."

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.