As I prayerfully watched the magnificent Pontifical EF Mass from the Basilica Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC with Archbishop Samples as celebrant, I thought to myself, this is Catholicism, that is a bishop, this is the way we were.
The only people that complained against the Mass in this or even simpler forms were Protestants prior to the Protestantization of the Church and liturgy after Vatican II.
Today, those Catholics who have only experienced the Ordinary Form of the Mass with all of the banal embellisments that priests add to it or corrupt is are the ones who are the most vociferous detractors of the EF form of the Mass--not Protestants, but protestantized Roman Catholics--they don't get it! They think as Protestants do.
There is a symbolic meaning in all of the "kingdom" visuals of the EF Mass.
How can the EF Mass influence the Ordinary Form and recover for it the reverence, solemnity and respect for the Sacred that the EF far better engenders than the manner in which the Ordinary Form is celebrated today?
Let me bang my drum once again!
1. Chant the Propers in a Gregorian form, Latin or English, simple or complex
2. Latin for all the fixed parts of the Mass--the option of the vernacular for the changing parts
3. The low voice Canon, even if using a modern concoction of the Canon.
3. Ad orientem at least for the Liturgy of the Eucharist--although it is only for a Pontifical Mass, the use of the "throne" or "presidential chair" after the PATFOTA as was done with Archbishop Samples, but also for a lowly priest-celebrant
4. The addition of the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar as the Introit is chanted
5. Kneeling for Holy Communion with intinction as an option for the Precious Blood given to the laity--this could be extended to EF Mass too.
21 comments:
Father you asked “Why is it that the EF Mass makes me feel more Catholic and more like a priest?l
What about the question , why I said the traditional Mass so hated and despised by a vast number of priest and hierarchy? You answered that question. It is precisely because the traditional Mass is so CATHOLIC that the pro adultery, pro active homosexual, pro contraceptive priest and bishops can’t stomach it. The Traditional Mass is enfused with 2000 years of tradition/Tradition. From the beginnin* of the Mass to the end it focuses on God and God and God and how we his children need to do the right and avoid the wrong. It speaks of real mercy and fear of the Lord. Attending the traditional Mass one is brought right to the slopes of Calvary. The majesty, the silence, the piety. It is unspeakably beautiful and it is absolutley unbelievable to think that anyone in the Church would want to abolish it. That is unless you were deliberately trying to destroy the Faith. Go into any Novus Ordo parish around the world and what do we find. #1 without exception NOISE and irreverence that is unheard of in the history of the Church. #2 liturgical abuse that is almost done purposely to make the Mass as sloppy and irreverent as possible. #3 complete loss of Faith. When I go to a Novus Ordo Mass the irreverence starts in the parking lot. I see people waiting in their cars reading newspapers and going throug their phones drinking coffee and donuts before going into the church in their jeans or shorts and tee shirts and flip flops. They ignore the MBS present in the tabernacle and greet each other at the top of their lungs. And they all go to communion with their hands held out and popping the host like a potato chip. And it goes downhill from there. And they are all middle aged or ancient, no young people at all.
Go to a traditional Mass parish. You encounter quiet, reverance, people dressed nicely, families, young, middle aged and old people.
There is no comparison between the new and the old. A rati9nal person has to acknowledge that.
"...this is the way we were."
"Mem'ries light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored mem'ries of the way we were.
Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another for the way we were.
Can it be that it was all so simple then
Or has time rewritten every line
If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we, could we?
Mem'ries may be beautiful and yet
What's too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget.
So it's the laughter we will remember
Whenever we remember the way we were.
The way we were..."
One review of the movie: "a distended, talky, redundant and moody melodrama"
Seems appropriate.
"Go into any Novus Ordo parish around the world and what do we find. #1 without exception NOISE and irreverence that is unheard of in the history of the Church. #2 liturgical abuse that is almost done purposely to make the Mass as sloppy and irreverent as possible. #3 complete loss of Faith. When I go to a Novus Ordo Mass the irreverence starts in the parking lot. I see people waiting in their cars reading newspapers and going throug their phones drinking coffee and donuts before going into the church in their jeans or shorts and tee shirts and flip flops. They ignore the MBS present in the tabernacle and greet each other at the top of their lungs. And they all go to communion with their hands held out and popping the host like a potato chip. And it goes downhill from there. And they are all middle aged or ancient, no young people at all."
Rot and Balderdash.
A. Laurents, is that you Kavanaugh? This snarky comment has a scent of "Eau de Kavanaugh" about it. The only thing you forgot, was the Way We Were was about a political lefty fantasizing about life, kind of like you.
"How can the EF Mass influence the Ordinary Form and recover for it the...etc"
Well the Novus Ordo (NO) cannot recover those wonderful things. The NO was fabricated from the ground up for the modern man, a creature that no longer exists, and probably never did exist except in the minds of the ivory tower inhabitants that belonged to the liturgical movement.
For example, the "liturgist" Josef Jungmann, who had inestimable influence on the fabric of the Novus Ordo, thought that all those priestly "gestures" that were added over the long period of the middle ages to the EF no longer spoke to modern man and were eliminated in the NO. For instance all those wonderful signs of the cross during the Roman Canon which even Aquinas greatly praised and spoke so much about, disappeared overnight. You were left with a Eucharistic prayer that resembled the watered down Protestant version, where what you see is what you get, that is to say, there is nothing beyond what you see and hear.
The EF has a deep vocabulary of non-verbal expression through its signs, symbols, and allegorical liturgical choreography. This is what makes the EF so powerful, because it speaks directly to the heart of man without words. The EF had an even deeper nonverbal, that is, spiritual, vocabulary until the mid 1950's when the Modernist zeitgeist of the academy began to bring down the Mass into the pit of the Enlightenment where the goddess reason is worshiped. Simply put, Jungmann and the Modernists were wrong, as are many in control of the Church today. It is all this spiritual vocabulary that attracts the youth, as it does those of every generation who are open to it in Silence, something which the Novus Ordo specifically eliminated. If you try to bring back this spiritual vocabulary into the NO, you will no longer have the NO.
I think the main premise of the NO Mass is that the “message” be interpreted for the local “culture”. So making the changes suggested by FrAJM are contrary to its goals because we would simply have two variants of the EF.
During his sermon covered by Father McDonald, Archbishop Sample supported Pope Benedict XVI's declarations that...
1. The Novus Ordo and TLM are simply "two forms of the one Roman Rite."
2. The notion of "mutual enrichment."
3. That the Novus Ordo is here to stay.
The radical Latin Church liturgical reform movement that Pope Venerable Pius XII supported — and empowered the likes of Monsignor Bugnini to develop — was launched in good faith.
However, the liturgical reform has flopped. Despite their best intentions, the men behind the Latin Church's liturgical movement initiated the Latin Church's Liturgical War.
Nevertheless, the reality is that Novus Ordo is here to stay as none of our Popes along the way...none of our Cardinals and bishops today...not Archbishop Sample, Cardinals Burke and Sarah, etc...has been, or is, willing to discard the Novus Ordo.
If the Novus Ordo, as compared to the TLM, is as deficient in promoting a strong sense of Catholicism as the peacemakers have acknowledged, then why not return exclusively to the TLM?
I know that that will not happen.
Therefore, the liturgical peacemakers face the monumental task of presenting two very different liturgies, the Novus Ordo and TLM, as simply the "one Roman Rite"...
...then determining as to how to create an atmosphere within the Latin Church that will allow the TLM and Novus Ordo, two very different liturgical experiences, to coexist at our parishes peacefully.
As they will not discard the Novus Ordo — again, if the Novus Ordo is so deficient, so lacking, in conveying a strong sense of Catholicism, then why bother with the Novus Ordo?...I know, it's too gut-wrenching to discard the Novus Ordo — our peacemakers need the Holy Ghost to aid them in their quest to end the Latin Church's Liturgical War.
May God Bless Archbishop Sample, Father McDonald, and each person who desires to end the Liturgical War.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
I confess it is a bit surreal to see Roman Catholics make arguments about the Eucharist that are nearly identical to the ones Richard Hooker made as a self-conscious Protestant in Elizabethan England. He waxes at length about problematic "wafer cakes" and insists that we should not focus on the metaphysical arguments because, after all, we all agree that we experience grace through the reception of the Eucharist (ie participation in it). Sound familiar?
I'm convinced that one of the unfortunate fruits of the last 50 years that people have no idea they're even making Protestant arguments, and very few people correct them on it.
Father McDonald said..."How can the EF Mass influence the Ordinary Form and recover for it the reverence, solemnity and respect for the Sacred that the EF far better engenders than the manner in which the Ordinary Form is celebrated today?"
If the Novus Ordo was supposed to have conveyed the ethos associated with the TLM, then why was the Novus Ordo concocted to differ greatly from the TLM?
In fact, why not simply have kept the TLM...or reformed slightly, some vernacular...perhaps kept in the form present in the 1965 A.D. Missal?
Although it's a "traditionalist" pipe dream that the Novus Ordo will be discarded in favor of the TLM — Rome and our bishops don't consider that a possibility — there is a sense in which "traditionalists" ask a fair question:
If the Novus Ordo is broken beyond belief, unable to convey "the reverence, solemnity and respect for the Sacred" that the TLM conveys in abundance, then why bother with the Novus Ordo?
Vernacularize the Ordinary of the TLM...then restore the TLM to altars throughout the Latin Church...simple solution.
I know that that won't happen as the reality is that the Novus Ordo is here to stay.
But if the Novus Ordo is not on the same level remotely as the TLM in conveying "reverence, solemnity, and respect for the Sacred," then why not return to the TLM?
Pax.
Mark Thomas
I said that the liturgical reform had flopped. In fairness, I must note that millions of Catholics are happy with the liturgical reform.
The Latin Church/Novus Ordo is booming throughout Africa and Asia. Elsewhere, millions of Catholics favor the Novus Ordo.
That is true especially among Catholics who had grown up with the TLM. Many younger Catholics have embraced the TLM. But time again, older Catholics who had grown up with the TLM have made it clear that they don't want any part of the TLM.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
In fairness to those who favor the Novus Ordo, I should note also than Cardinal Ratzinger had painted a bleak picture of liturgical life that existed prior to the development of the Novus Ordo.
Cardinal Ratzinger claimed that when the TLM was in place throughout the Latin Church, that "one has to admit that the celebration of the ancient liturgy was too lost in the realm of the individual and the private."
"One must admit that the communion between the priest and the faithful was lacking.
"I have great respect for our ancestors who during the Low Mass, said the prayers "during Mass" which their prayer book recommended. Certainly one cannot consider that as the ideal of the liturgical celebration!
"Perhaps, these reduced forms of celebration are the fundamental reason why the disappearance of the ancient liturgical books had no importance in many countries and caused no pain, There was never any contact with the liturgy itself."
=============================================================================
That is a very bleak assessment of the Latin Church's liturgical life when the TLM was in place throughout the Latin Church.
Cardinal Ratzinger's bleak assessment of the state of Latin Church liturgy recalls the assessments offered by Catholics who had grown up with the TLM...
-- Father had his back to us.
-- Father mumbled his way through Mass in 20 minutes.
-- Even if we could've heard him, we wouldn't have understood anything in Latin.
-- Nobody understood what was going on.
-- Mass, in effect, consisted of praying the Rosary.
==================================================================================
Cardinal Ratzinger's above assessment corresponds to "traditional" Catholic literature that was produced during the 1940s and 1950s.
Father Leonard Feeney, for example, claimed repeatedly during that time that Catholics were ignorant of the Faith. He said they didn't understand the Mass.
In line with Cardinal Ratzinger, Father Feeney painted a bleak picture of pre-Vatican II Church life.
Millions of Catholics who had grown up with the TLM agree obviously as they prefer the Novus Ordo over the TLM. They are thankful for the reform of Church life that Pope Venerable Pius XII initiated in earnest.
Therefore, I need to temper my statement, that the liturgical reform has flopped.
Millions of Catholics have welcomed the reform of Church life that our Popes, from Venerable Pius XII to Francis, instituted.
Pax.
Mark Thomas
“But time again, older Catholics who had grown up with the TLM have made it clear that they don't want any part of the TLM.”
The older “Catholics” who want no part of the TLM were the Woodstock generation. They are they silly old people in church with their flip flops and tattoos who still act like they are 16 instead of 70. Of course they want nothing to do with the TLM just like they want nothing to do with the Catholic Faith. The Catholic Faith doesn’t exist in a Novus Ordo parish. It’s not even Protestantism. At least protestants understand their faith, show respect in church and try to live a good Christian life. Today’s “Catholics” on the other hand are nasty, rude, vulgarians who couldn’t give a dam about the Christian Fatith let alone Catholicism. Even when they try and copy protestants they can’t do it right. The whole usher and greeter thing that they have nowadays. In their sneakers and jeans shouting at the top of their voices as you enter a church. And they could care less who are they kidding. Mark Thomas you can have your filthy Novus Ordo Church with your heretic pope, your pedophile priests and your faithless laity. I have had enough of it. It’s Tradition or nothing life is to short to put up with the silly nonsense of the Novus Ordo sect.
I have to agree with rcg. If the outlined options were to be accepted, the NO would probably be qualified and footnoted such that the traditional approach would be allowed but, almost no one would be celebrating in that way. It would be an additional battle field on which those who favor tradition would have to fight.
Anonymous at 8:13 pm, you may for the foreseeable future just have to accept that you, like many who favor tradition, do not seem to matter.
MT,
I grew up with the EF and from the time of Vatican Disaster II I wanted nothing to do with the evil changes to the Mass. As a matter of fact, it was the juvenile delinquents in their 40s and 50s that were all captivated by the ersatz changes. In the future, please comment on what YOU have personally experienced and not speak for my generation. It is intensely disliked.
Anonymous said..."The older “Catholics” who want no part of the TLM were the Woodstock generation. They are they silly old people in church with their flip flops and tattoos who still act like they are 16 instead of 70. Of course they want nothing to do with the TLM just like they want nothing to do with the Catholic Faith."
We are not dealing with flip-flop-wearing elderly Catholics. We are dealing with "average" Catholics who had grown up with the TLM. They don't want any part of the TLM. They have not fueled the TLM's growth.
Without question, younger Catholics who had not known the TLM have fueled the TLM's growth.
As Cardinal Ratzinger had noted, 's
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Trying to fix the OF is like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Gene,
Agreed, but lefties invested in the failure will not agree with us.
I would say the Baby Boomers are split about 'liking' the EF vs OF. One of the reasons that boosted me to change parishes from a *very* NO parish to one operated by the FSSP was the almost pathological resistance of many towards the Third Revision of the OF Mass and lectionary. I was very excited about it and looking forward to dusting of my Latin and experiencing the reverence. The Baby Boomers varied from noncommittal to gentle mocking ("Consubstantial?? Heh"), to openly derisive and threatening to leave. Since I actually knew many of the fairly well, it appeared to me that they felt threatened in some way. The decades of Vatican II had accelerated 'laicization' of the parish where many of the functions of the priest were now done by the 'lay ministers'. Permanent deacons were a dime a dozen and relished in their new found role as preacher. The actual priest was prone to New Age diversions, such as power stones and peaceful coexistence with pagan religions, so the hegemony of the laity went uninterrupted.
Yet in my new parish the age demographic is much more balanced with the proportions of elderly, older, middle aged, young single, teens and young children being roughly even. This is not the distribution of the national, state, or local population, which trends to the older populations. So this suggests that we have an attraction disproportionately towards younger people. The ethnic distribution is mostly white European ancestry, although we have a significant proportion of east Asians with only a few of African ancestry. The majority are well educated professionals with the older groups being doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, and professors of languages, history, etc. The younger will have several years of university, if not degreed, but are following Information Technology and self-employment profiles, although many of our younger group are teaching at the local university. Families trend large, often with several adopted children added to the mix.
Of course this is only my personal observation. But this sort of observation, reading people, is what I do. So I am confident that if any frequent flier on this blog with pretenses of pedantry wants to challenge it by visiting and interviewing people for (him)self then that can be arranged.
No need to spill lots of words with reams of quotes. Of course, it is true that in many places the engagement of the people in the old Mass called out for rejuvenation.
This "active participation" in the traditional Roman rite is what Vatican II called for. However, it was forestalled after the Council by activists who hijacked liturgical reform and--rather than promoting this prayerful lay engagement in the liturgy--instead introduced a new rite that effectively prevented it.
So now, in order to see vibrant liturgy with vibrant lay engagement, with few exceptions you must go to a traditional Latin Mass where the vision of Vatican II is actually materialized.
But, Henry, do you think it was the delivery and exhaustion of the clergy and not the lack of relevance of the Word? I was thunderstruck when I went to the lecture at the FSSP, and heard those words again, as if anew. It was so obvious they *meant it*!!
The participation is significant. The families vie to have their boys enrolled in the Server class. The young girls help the Altar Rosary Society with flower arrangements, dying wood chips for the Corpus Christi procession pathway and manage the parish hall and storage. The responses in the Low Mass are audible and clear. The postures are assumed in unison. There is close attention paid to everything in the Sanctuary so that when one of the tiny servers falters you sometimes hear a quiet, collective gasp.
People here know their liturgy and the order of Mass by heart. The lines for confession are long. The responses to prayers are often startlingly loud. The OF parish I attended had, and still has, good attendence in events and even in Mass. But don't know that they understand the Church as well and so don't know what to do to help Her when it is needed.
rcg,
In the old pre-conciliar days, low Mass was the normal Sunday experience of most Catholics. In a 2- or 3-priest parish, only the last Sunday Mass would be a sung high Mass (though without incense)--and even that would be suspended for the summer in churches lacking air conditioning (as most did then}--while the first 3 or 5 or more Masses on Sunday morning would be low Masses without music. And the first one or two of these would be the most heavily attended, perhaps by preference for brevity, perhaps because of fasting from midnight before communion. I remember reading that, in the early 20th century heyday of St. John Cantius as Chicago’s largest Polish parish, it had 18 rapid-fire low Masses and a single high Mass (in season) per Sunday. So a SJC parishioner from those days would not recognize the liturgical splendor of St. John Cantius today.
Nowadays, even at low Mass, all the priest’s prayers are typically audible—except the rubrically low-voice offertory prayers, the canon, and the priest’s private prayers preparatory to his own communion--(ostensibly, though there are differing opinions on this) to aid participation. But the older low Mass was often mostly silent, with many of the lay present not following in hand missals.
I dearly love the intensely spiritual experience of a quiet weekday low Mass, but most of us might agree that it's not ideal for the typical parish Sunday Mass. Whereas, nowadays, perhaps because of Vatican II, perhaps for other reasons, the Sunday sung high Mass with incense and Gregorian propers and perhaps a polyphonic ordinary is de rigueur for many or most EF communities (52 Sundays a year in my small community).
Actually, in the southern parishes I attended back then, I don’t recall genuine Gregorian chant propers a la the Liber Usualis (without a copy of which no one could sing in an EF choir now). Probably more typical at sung Masses then were psalm-tone propers (google “Rossini propers”). I have no memory at all of sacred polyphony then, though I’d feel deprived now if I didn’t hear it least on the principal solemnities.
Many or most EF Catholics today are familiar with solemn high Masses, but back then they occurred only at principal feasts like Christmas and Easter when perhaps a seminarian home for the holidays was available to serve as subdeacon. Of course, the one-priest parish—common in rural areas even then—never saw one at all. So even in my small local TLM community, I’ve seen more solemn high Masses in the past decade than the average Catholic in the old days saw in a long lifetime, the relatively rare exceptions being in urban areas with concentrated Catholic populations.
And though bishops back then undoubtedly celebrated (mostly low) pontifical Masses and a rare but modestly ceremonial solemn pontifical Mass, the typical non-metropolitan U.S. Catholic had never even heard so much as a vague reference to a splendiferous solemn pontifical Mass remotely resembling the one we all saw via EWTN Saturday.
So the TLM experience that’s attracting the best and brightest of today’s Catholic youth is a far cry from that available to their predecessors a half-century ago. Perhaps the message in all this is that for century after century, the traditional Latin liturgy, even when sub-optimal by current standards, sustained a level of faith and Catholic identity that seems unimaginable in the larger Novus Ordo world today.
Post a Comment