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Sunday, June 17, 2018

WHAT THE CATHOLIC LITURGY NEEDS IS A RECOVERY OF BEAUTY AND PEACE AND THE EXTRAORDINARY FORM OF THE MASS IS THE ANSWER

Commonweal is a progressive Catholic periodical. Thus it is heartening to read this article from it. The author gets it.

The other thing that ad orientem gets extremely right to the question, "who is the priest celebrating the Mass in the photo below?," is the answer "it doesn't matter!"

(Creative Commons)

Silent Grace

Finding Peace in the Latin Mass

3 comments:

Henry said...

The author’s account of the immediate and palpable effect the TLM had on him, even before he understood either a word of it, or enough to know when the consecration occurred, illustrates the fact that the message of the traditional Mass is conveyed not by words but by actions, in gesture and ceremonial. After all, almost all the words of the priest in a sung Mass are inaudible, so they make little difference to those in attendance. They can see and smell and feel the action, and that’s what makes the difference.

I recalled that most Catholics were happy with the initial reforms in the mid-60s, when they largely involved only some vernacular in the faithful translations of familiar old hand missals. The ceremony and ritual of the Mass were not yet affected, so despite the vernacular that sounded fresh and inviting, it still had the look and feel of the familiar old Catholic Mass.

So while they could still assume that the “new Mass” would be simply an English translation of the familiar Latin Mass, there were few complaints in the pews.

It was only when the ceremony and ritual gestures were stripped out that many devoted Catholics began to drop out, because the result seemed no longer recognizable as the Catholic Mass they’d known. Indeed, the new Church being “sung into being” no longer seemed recognizable as the Catholic Church of old, so how could it still be a mortal sin to miss Sunday Mass. Indeed, if neither the Church nor the Mass no longer existed recognizably, was there still any such thing as mortal sin? Of course, the answer now, a half century later, for most Catholics, is … No, there’s not.

Joseph Johnson said...

My pastor reads Commonweal. Right now he is at the AUSCP convention (he has called that organization a priests' "union" of sorts--I laughed when he said that). I hope he read this article.

rcg said...

FrAJM, you are saying all the right things. Have you tried to find a ‘small but stable group’ in your parish?