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Sunday, April 9, 2017

AAH! ORIENTEM


20 comments:

Tom Makin said...

The progressives are on the March now more than ever. Very sad. Was in St Peters Square 4 years ago on Palm Sunday and last year on Easter Sunday. It was soul soaring. Am afraid that we will see more of this than that for a long time to come.

Anonymous said...

I just realized for the first time at Mass this morning during the reading of the Passion that the first sacraligeous communion took place during the First Mass on Holy Thursday by an apostle who was a bishop, Judas Iscariot. It explains a lot about what is going on in Rome these days. I am pretty sure we have another Judah Iscariot, a lot of them in our midst. Malta has proved to be a cesspool that is just as filthy as the Church in Germany and Argentina. I guess things don't change much. So we have another bishop, this time in Romewho is betraying Our Lord again. I wonder what scandalous words or actions are coming during the Sacred Triduum, he always does something scandalous during Holy Week.

James said...

The singing really was poor today compared to earlier years -- messy and badly coordinated -- and the brass group were all over the place too. Such a shame, as the Vatican normally does this ceremony really well.

I had planned to travel to Rome for this Palm Sunday, but in the end spent the money on a painting instead. Good call.

Anonymous said...

"... the first sacraligeous (sic) communion took place during the First Mass on Holy Thursday by an apostle who was a bishop, Judas Iscariot."

While he was among the Twelve when called, Judas was not counted with the Twelve at the time of the Resurrection.

He was not a witness to the Resurrection, as the other apostles/bishops were

Were he a bishop, he would have had to hold and exercise that office - head of a local Church (diocese.) This Judas never did.

I don't agree that it is correct to say Judas Iscariot was a bishop.

Gene said...

Yeah, any day now I expect to hear at a folk Mass, "Jesus Christ is mighty nice, but I like Oreos.."

Anonymous said...

Will the Springtime never end?????? TLM TLM TLM TLM TLM TLM TLM BURKE BURKE BURKE BURKE SAVE HOLY MOTHER CHURCH AND RESTORE THE TRADITIONAL LATIN MASS AND SACRAMENTS, I HAVE ALMOST GIVEN UP.

Anonymous said...

Italian everything in the vulgar tongue of Italian, where oh where is our Official language LATIN?????? Not to be found with the Argentine Jesuit.

rcg said...

We went to Palm Sunday Mass with my youngest at her University's parish. We had electric bass and a BANJO! As much as I have longed for that moment I felt strangely unfulfilled.

John Nolan said...

Back in the 1970s I talked to a lorry driver in a Devonshire pub who had studied for the priesthood but had not gone through with it. He had attended the Gregorian University and had to take 'viva voce' exams in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. He conversed in Latin with the Classics master of a prestigious local school and the latter admitted that the trucker's Latin was better than his.

I understand that the curriculum at the 'Greg' is now conducted in Italian (hardly a world language) and there are few Latinists left in the Vatican. I would not expect a parish priest to be fluent in Latin but he needs to know enough to celebrate the liturgy and pray the Office in that language. I remember Irish priests who were not that well educated but were sufficiently familiar with the Vulgate to be able to read the epistle and gospel at a brisk conversational speed.

Scientia ballistae non est. (It's not rocket science.)

Anonymous said...

"... but he needs to know enough to celebrate the liturgy and pray the Office in that language."

You WANT him to do so, but the PP certainly doesn't "need" to have this ability. It isn't needed for the work he does, for his own personal piety, or for the encouragement of vocations to the priesthood.

If he is teaching Latin in school, then, by all means, he should have that skill.

"I felt called to the priesthood because my PP was able to read the breviary in Latin," said no aspirant, ever.

rcg said...

Anon at 4:42 - of course not. But the Parish Priest gets challenged a lot and needs to be able to explain things with more than populist good feelings. While the Liturgy is not a primary text per se, it does decend closly from them and the Latin does a suprisingly good job of concisely capturing ideas. The priest can then explain at whatever length he needs to help the person.

John Nolan said...

If it's so unnecessary for a priest to have a basic knowledge of Latin, why is it still a requirement (albeit largely ignored) for ordination? Why did Vatican II mandate the Office in Latin for clerics? Why did John XXIII issue Veterum Sapientia?

To say that only teachers of Latin in schools need to know the language is akin to saying that only history teachers need a knowledge of history.

What would one think of a rabbi who despised Hebrew or an Imam who despised Arabic? Not much, I would venture. Yet the Latin-less RC clerics seem to wear their ignorance as a badge of honour.

'I can function without it, ergo it's of no use.' Not an edifying sentiment. 'I don't like Mozart, ergo his music's rubbish.' I haven't had to employ the term 'philistine' for some time now; perhaps it's time to dust it off and give it an airing.

Anonymous said...

I don't "despise" Latin, Mr. Nolan. Having studied Latin and and being a lover of etymologies, I rather enjoy the knowledge I was given.

Your assertion was that a PP "needs" to know Latin to celebrate the liturgy and pray the Office. If the instructions are ignored, maybe, just maybe, it is for good reason.

No, in fact, he does not. You can try to give your words meanings over and above the plain sense, but that won't work.

John Nolan said...

I did not say you despised Latin (whoever you are). I do, however, detect an antipathy towards Latin on the part of many clergy and laity.

Neither would I deny anyone the right to hear Mass in he vernacular. However, if the only Mass available to me were an English Mass with all the music written post-1965 (and we know what that implies), I would not attend it. Fortunately this is far from being the case.

Anonymous said...

Antipathy? No, unless you count as antipathy my assertion that a PP does not "need" Latin to celebrate the liturgy or to pray the breviary.

That's not antipathy in anyone's book but, apparently, your own.

John Nolan said...

Anonymous, it's about time you learned some English, let alone Latin. '...unless you count as antipathy my assertion etc.' Antipathy to what? Feel free to assert what you like, and we will take it at face value and legitimately make inferences from it. But it does not imply any antipathies on your part - why should it? It is, as far as I can see, a simple opinion.

It would help if you were to read what I write more carefully, rather than rush to get your two cents' worth in and make a fool of yourself.

Anonymous said...

It apparently is the rare priest of a certain generation inadequately formed in the seminary, who has learned what it means to offer sacrifice for the propitiation of sins, except through celebration of the traditional Latin Mass, for which he needs the knowledge of Latin that canon law requires of him. A common thread in the testimony of priests who have learned the TLM after ordination is that it gives them a perception of their own priestly vocation that nothing in their previous experience provided.

Indeed, the effects of the traditional Latin liturgy seem to be so transformative that they can often be seen on the face and in the comments of such a priest without hearing a Latin word from his lips. Though it's not the Latin, but the traditional liturgy. Witness the attitudes of some priests who claim a knowledge of Latin, but appear to ignorant about traditional liturgy--or even about what is traditional and what is not.

rcg said...

Anon at 1148 - the parish priest is supposed to be a professional so should know the documents of his profession. Earlier you said there might be a reason for ignoring the instruction. There is none.

rcg said...

The lack of Latin is an indicator of someone who is 'winging it'. Another would be homilies filled with referrences and meditations from popular self-help books, pop psychology, and, yes, social doctrine.

Another example in the USA would be explanations of abstenance from meat on Friday anytime of the year, abstenance during Fridays during Lent, what is required by Canon Law to gain the relief and who may give it. Those requirements are available for everyone in English but many priests don't bother to read them but prefer to go by word of mouth or an article in the periodical of choice. It is laziness, sloth, and is the same as a person who prepares fast food for his family when he knows they hunger for something nourishing and wholesome.

John Nolan said...

I am no Latinist. I had five years of Latin at school, and a brief foray into medieval Latin in my first year at university, studying for a degree in history. That was getting on for fifty years ago. Whether it was Caesar's Gallic War, Vergil's Aeneid or Odo of Dueil's De Profectione Ludovici VII in Orientem, I and just about everyone else found 'cribs' invaluable.

Yet I have no problem with liturgical Latin. My bible is bi-lingual (Clementine Vulgate and Douay-Rheims) and I can follow the epistle and gospel in the Liber Usualis without the benefit of a parallel translation. The Propers I sing are mostly taken from the psalms and I know exactly what I am singing. I can unpick the Collects (although it is a different style of Latin).

Latin is highly inflected and one needs to understand its grammar. But a year of study is all that is needed to do this for all practical liturgical purposes.