This is how the Ordinary Form can and should be celebrated. If only it was throughout the world. It isn't that hard to do it and you don't need a pope or bishop to do it this way.
THANK YOU POPE FRANCIS FOR HELPING THE CHURCH IN THE USA TURN A NEW LEAF! LONG LIVE THE POPE! VIVA IL PAPA!
10 comments:
I thought the music was excellent, mostly. They could have done the Introit after the hymn and there are two issues which continue to nag me.
1. Cantors and Cantresses, put your stupid arms down, the people know when they are to sing.
2. The Offertory is a major problem, too loud, too many instruments, everything St. Pius X was against. Further, no antiphon. Why not just sing the antiphon? The people don't need the distraction, they need to "offer themselves" united with the Sacrifice. Why don't priest get this? Why don't liturgists learn?
It's not a show!
"[The Church] can no longer be content with ephemeral enthusiasm that lasts for the duration of major meetings or liturgical gatherings, as beautiful and rich as they may be. We cannot long do without practical reflection on subjectivism as the root of most contemporary errors. What good is it to know that the pope's Twitter account is followed by thousands if people do not change their lives concretely? What good is it to compile amazing statistics about the crowds that throng to see the popes if we are not sure that their conversions are real and deep and if we do not know whether Jesus and his Gospel are the reference point and guide of our faithful?"
-Robert Cardinal Sarah, God or Nothing
It was nice as far as these things go. The Roman Canon would have fit in better. Agree on the over-instrumentation.
But the larger point is that if a random suburban Sunday Mass was like this, the liturgy wars would be over. That's absolutely correct.
Ryan Ellis, similar thought process on all points. They might not be over, but they'd be considerably lessened. And this does beg the question: by comparison to most USA parish Masses, these papal Masses have been very traditional, and no one has complained...so why is it that the complaints would certainly break out if a random pastor implemented this stuff? Are people just so excited to see the Pope that they suppress their (anti)liturgical tastes?
Well, he certainly left the LGBT crowd happy. They are beside themselves about Mo Rocca being the reader. Onward Christian Soldiers...
For Mass in the Ordinary Form it was a lot better than some I have seen, except it had a touch of Andrew Lloyd Webber about it in parts and the pseudo woman priest singing the parts normally reserved to the priest, with the orans position - aka cantor - did absolutely nothing for the Mass. While there is such a lot of lay involvement in the Ordinary Form of the Mass, with offertory processions and so on, it certainly detracts from the overall concept of a Mass. One gets the feeling that it is more of a show with Sally and Joe making sure they get centre stage. Where is Our Lord in all of this? At least the Extraordinary Ministers of Communion seem to have been relegated to umbrella carriers. But were they necessary at all? The only thing that makes the Ordinary Form a Mass is the Roman Canon - without that I can't warm to it at all. The more the weeks go by the harder it is to attend.
Also I found at 36.45 - a lovely crucifix but it seemed to me the hands were giving a message.
Jan
Better than what it could have been, i.e. no women running around the altar or altar girls thank the Lord. The music was to heavy there should have been more Gregorian chant and less noise very distracting. I do agree with Anonymous at 6:36 AM the woman SCREAMER with her arms flying all over the place and wearing what would appear to be a priest or deacons chasuble leads to assume she is a priest or deacon very confusing for the laity. they should have stopped pointing the camera on her and point it at the altar and the stunning crucifix behind the Pope, once again it is not about the woman with the swinging arms!!! Just like the TLM it is about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Novus Ordo still can't understand this.
Better than what it could have been, i.e. no women running around the altar or altar girls thank the Lord. The music was to heavy there should have been more Gregorian chant and less noise very distracting. I do agree with Anonymous at 6:36 AM the woman SCREAMER with her arms flying all over the place and wearing what would appear to be a priest or deacons chasuble leads to assume she is a priest or deacon very confusing for the laity. they should have stopped pointing the camera on her and point it at the altar and the stunning crucifix behind the Pope, once again it is not about the woman with the swinging arms!!! Just like the TLM it is about the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the Novus Ordo still can't understand this.
Wonderful to see all those YOUNG seminarians greeting the Pope and all wearing CASSOCKS!! See it can be done with these young men wearing cassocks, pray for these young men they give up so much to be our priests and hopefully they will learn the TLM!!
Before V2 popes did not travel the world celebrating mega-Masses. In fact they rarely celebrated Mass in public, not even in Rome, and Pius XII preferred the Pontifical Low Mass, even on great occasions. Large open-air masses were not unknown, for example at Eucharistic congresses, and would be celebrated as a Pontifical High Mass by a cardinal representing the pope.
Had the USA Masses this week been celebrated as such, would the crowd have participated less? They would have sung the responses and joined in with the Latin Ordinary, perhaps more so as they would have been familiar with it. They would have listened to those items sung by the choir or schola. Is their participation enhanced by the fact that two out of three readings are done by lay people, that there are polyglot bidding prayers and that a selected half-dozen bring up the offerings? No, since they can only watch and listen. This so-called lay involvement is a sham. These big occasions actually throw into sharp relief the shortcomings of the Novus Ordo.
Yesterday I attended a Solemn Pontifical Mass at the Oxford Oratory to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its foundation. It was in Latin and sung by the Archbishop of Birmingham. Although it was Novus Ordo there are enough priests to take the roles of deacon and subdeacon, Assistant Priest, and deacons at the throne. The MC was also a priest and there were seven candles on the altar as well as a bugia (hand candle). Celebration was ad altare although this meant that everyone was facing liturgical east but geographical west! Very rarely does a bishop celebrate the new Mass in this way; in fact the norm would be for him to concelebrate at a versus populum altar. It was very Catholic and traditional ('Roman' vestments), but some Novus Ordo elements were anomalous. The 17th century Mass setting assumed a silent Canon and split Sanctus and Benedictus. The Archbishop had to wait for these to be sung before he could begin 'Te igitur, clementissime Pater ...' The so-called 'Prayer of the Faithful' between the Credo and the Offertory is a tiresome vernacular add-on which disrupts the flow of the Mass.
I have to agree with Jan. The better the Novus Ordo is done, the more the superiority of the classic Roman Rite becomes evident.
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