I suspect where there is smoke there is fire and that some restrictions will be placed upon the EF Mass.
I tend not to get overly worked up about these things at my age. But what might these restrictions look like?
1. Bishops will be given authority over who, when and where this Mass will be celebrated. In reality this has already been the case but not codified.
2. We have to admit that some EF adherents have been and still are obnoxious and have to a certain extent brought restrictions upon themselves. If we wish to play the blame game, let’s begin with traditionalist who are far from traditional in their rebellion against Vatican II, their bishops and the pope. Sorry, that’s Protestant, not Catholic.
3. Pope Francis while myopic about the problems of the heterodox and their super flexibility, has consistently condemned rigid Catholic, especially priests, and has intimated that they are psychologically compromised. This indeed could be true, so let’s give the Holy Father credit at his pop pyschology diagnosis.
4. Let’s face it, EF Mass goers are a small number of laity in terms of Catholics and Mass. Ordinary Form Catholics far outnumber EF Mass goers, pure and simple and that is true in my parish and diocese.
5. Basically, I don’t think the number of Masses offered in the Extraordinary Form will be reduced and could increase if bishops are open to this Mass.
Finally, let’s improve the ordinary form. Encourage ad orientem and kneeling for Holy Communion and chanting/saying the propers.
42 comments:
I really feel for the thriving traditional communities which have large numbers striving to love God with all their heart, mind and strength, and raising their children to do the same. And them unfortunate enough to have a bishop hostile to a second rite.
Not that I have ever seen such, but surely they must exist somewhere. I HAVE seen parishes in major metro areas packed at traditional Mass while the Novus Ordo Masses sparsely attended as normal, but that because the Latin Mass is rarer and draws folk from all over.
The demand for Latin is low in my diocese, and the two places which offer one, a monastery and an FSSP parish in the city, are more than sufficient to meet desire in the diocese apart from the handful away from the largest city who would desire one, which there is not one offered.
Normally what I have seen as for folk at traditional parishes spending non-Mass time praying and spending time with God is maybe two handfuls as opposed to one handful at a Novus Ordo parish, and that is if either church is unlocked besides Mass time, which is rare. Nor have I seen much more caring for what happens to people who attend, most parishoners could die at home and nobody miss them at all unless them a wealthy member, except in very rare parishes.
So, I am not one to get worked up over an issue which really does not involve me, lacking a Latin Mass unless I relocate to a major metro area for that one purpose only and to the detriment of every other aspect of my life.
The funny thing is this will undermine Francis even more. He already doesn't help himself as is.
If anything defines our modern age, it's this: People will do terrible things and justify it by blaming others and it is demanded that the "other" (often a group with authority) must publicly grovel, self-accuse and generally humiliate themselves and wallow in self-blame and admit "We've brought it on ourselves!"
BLM demands that ALL white people do this.
ANTIFA demands all sectors of society that are even mildly conservative to do this.
Both groups demand the police to do it.
So it does not matter that the Traditional Mass, which was never abrogated and formed the overwhelming majority of our saints is a good thing. No, no, no! All that matters is that some Catholics who prefer this Mass have been "obnoxious" or "rigid" or "uncharitable". Therefore, we who prefer this Mass have brought it on ourselves and we need to start repenting by being more tolerant of modernism and smile while the Church violates its own traditions by stripping us of the most valuable part of our spiritual lives. And because any of us DARE to so much as QUESTION Vatican II, we have lost our right to call ourselves Catholic and must now tolerate the "respectable" Catholics who fall in with the zeitgeist of our time, label us "Protestants" (while they so "tolerantly" accept a Mass that was concocted by Protestants).
Bullcookies.
Traditional Catholics owe no apologies for the horrors that have been dumped upon us since 1970 and the slanders that have been exaggerated to "define" us to suit the narrative of those 70's Catholics. No apologies. None. There is no justification for this false vilification. If we don't stand up to it, we will be mowed down.
I choose to stand.
I'll be absolutely heartbroken if my Latin Mass Community is taken away. However, I've decided at this time to not chase after the EF if that happens. I won't play the Church's game of jumping here and there and being treated like trash. I've seen what that has done to many traditionalists over time and it isn't what I want for me or my family. I'll attend the best OF in town and if that's taken away, I'll attend the prettiest church so at least I'll have something nice to look at.
The EF communities tend to be the most faithful and generous of Catholics so naturally the doubleknit dinosaurs during their last gasps want to stick it to them while slobbering over the heterodox cheapskates. Brilliant strategy
Back to the catacombs.
The complaint about the personalities of EF supporters seems contrived. The Church is still valid although it tries to attract sinners. The EF is in trouble because it encourages faithful adherence to the teachings of the Faith and respect for God over man. It is the same vanity whether the Catholic attempts to claim the mantle of judgement as a pedantic Latinist or as a moral relativist; both assume that which belongs only to God. The difference is that the EF leads to humility and the OF does not.
It is only very recently that I’ve come to believe it is likely there simply must be some truth to the allegations made by Bella Dodd (sp?) and others about the deliberate infiltration of Catholic seminaries way back in the 1920s and the 1930s (and possibly after that too?)…
I can’t think of any other possible explanation regarding the extent of the mess the Church is now in…
Meanwhile, Mass attendance dwindles. These plotting and planning prelates don't love the Church and don't give a fig about the salvation of souls. Christ said "feed my sheep" but these same churchmen close churches and schools and actively thwart the handing down of the Faith. Vatican II was/is a disaster.
While I am quite concerned about what could happen with the EF in the larger Church, I don't see what has been predicted as having mush effect in the Diocese of Savannah, Ga. Our new bishop has shown that he is more supportive of the expansion of the EF in this diocese and has sanctioned the Masses that have been recently established in the various deaneries outside of Savannah.
Some people who are against abortion are obnoxious.
A few, really far-out wacko fanatics even went so far as to bomb clinics.
A lot of anti-abortion people are fundamentalist, King James Bible-thumping Protestants who hate Catholics and reject many scientific discoveries.
Many anti-abortion people are smug and sanctimonious.
But guess what? ALL OF THAT IS IRRELEVANT. Abortion is still wrong.
It doesn't matter what some TLM folks have said or done or what kind of personalities they have. The TLM is the rightful patrimony of every single Catholic, it is unquestionably a good thing that needs no "excuses" or caveats as if it were some sort of extreme medication with side effects. It is still the Mass of the ages.
Left-wing shaming is a trap. It only works when you choose to step into it.
Yes 100% that the TLM communities are the MOST faithful, all believe in the teachings of the Holy Roman Catholic Church but we and our priests are "RIDID" mean, nasty, yet just less than 50 years ago we would have been the NORMAL ones!! Just like everything in the world the Church is upside down and cannot right itself. I still want anyone here on this blog including the good Father please please explain the hatred for the Traditional Latin Mass by the current Pope and other Leftwing clerics for the last 5 decades! One would think HEY, the TLM communities are packed with huge families they all believe in the teachings of the Church, the F.S.S.P., S.S.P.X. and the Institute of Christ the King all have waiting lists for young men to enter their seminaries BUT NO it is just the opposite from Rome explain??????
The folks criticizing the demeanor of EF are engaging in classic projection. They only need look in the mirror if they want to see the real nasties
Churches and Schools are rarely, if ever, closed when they are thriving. Yes, it CAN happen, but it is extremely rare.
Churches and schools are closed because there are too few clergy to keep every parish ever established up and running. And they are closed because there are too few congregants to justify their continued operation. In many cases, the people have simply moved to other places or parts of town. When I was in seminary 35 years ago, the Diocese of Pittsburgh had just over 1,000 priests. Today there are 184 active clergy in the diocese. They have undergone a massive re-organization in the last 10 years, one that simply had to happen given the realities.
The merging in Sacred Heart, Immaculate Conception, and Holy Tirnity in Augusta is a prime example. Located almost within the proverbial stone's throw of each other, there simply weren't anough folks left in downtown Augusta to keep them going as most everybody had moved out of downtown Augusta. Whatever one might think about the choice to maintain a parish at the Holy Trinity campus, the merging of three into one was entirely justified.
Three schools in Savannah have closed in the last two decades, Sacred Heart (aka Notre Dame Academy), St. Michael's at Tybee Island, and St. Frances Cabrini on Savannah's southside. In all three cases, the number of students had declined to unsustainable levels. When a parish was diverting 75% of its offertory to keep a tiny school up and running, things had gone way too far. (Most of us who have been around will tell you that the Cabrini location was bad from the start - a locale far away from likely parishioners which abutted a large military installation on one side and miles and miles of marshland on another.)
Some places are opening parishes almost as fast as they can, the Archdiocese of Atlanta being one of them. Migration to north Georgia has, I suspect, driven the building boom. the Diocese of Rockville Center has 15,000 received into the Church in 2017-2018. The Diocese of Dallas went from 226,129 Catholic in 1990 to 1.3 million in 2019.
Things can be better. Things ALWAYS can be better. That's everyone's aim I suspect.
Let's just do EF in English and be done with it. The Orthodox have their Liturgies in the vernacular. Let it be done in the West.
Anonymous at 11:30 AM,
So we should discard over 1500 years tradition of Gregorian chant? What about Palestrina and Lassus?
Never!!! Latin forever!!!
Curious to me...no, silly....is the "Latin forever" by people by and large who neither speak nor read Latin. As if there is magic involved for incantations.
Palestrina and etc and even decently performed Gregorian chant presuppose large wealthy parishes with trained/talented singers, who mostly sing in entirely incorrect operatic style, and once again betrays a large slice of elitism as well as ignoring smaller and poorer parishes as if they do not matter.
All which matters are those poster's glorious churches and rites. The reality of local Masses has often been one of excruciatingly bad music due to lack of talent, old or new rite.
Chip,
I belong to a small, country Church and we do chant and polyphony very well
And, Father, I agree with you that a lot of this is self-inflicted. The traditionally oriented folk have largely gone very publically militant and rebellious.
Especially in very public media, which they have allowed to whip them into a nasty and schismatic frenzy, which only has firmed up opposition to their cause, while largely not showing a shred of proof their better way of doing things has made them one bit better than their equally nasty opponents.
All they have done is sunk to their opponent's level, which was a very bad move, as they are an extreme minority who abandoned the high ground and now are fighting on a level and nasty field against a vastly more numerous opponent.
I freely admit and am allowed to say that I think we have a very poor pope who has surrounded himself with equally bad sycophantic minions, who are seriously steering Holy Church off course.
We have been here before and will be here again. We will have (another) true reform movement, which in its own time will (again) grow lax and corrupt and soft. And this will continue until the end of time.
Open schism will not fix that, and instead only accelerates the bad. There has been NO example of schism ever helping, but only hurting, and we have numerous examples in 2000yrs of this fact.
If it was up to me, I’d discard Latin tomorrow PROVIDED most priests actually believed in the Mass as a true sacrifice and taught Catholic children and Catholic lay people that the Mass is a true sacrifice.
The Latin language is not an eighth sacrament.
Anonymous at 11.30am,
I agree. But I believe it is NOT just the Latin language that “progressive”, liberal priests regard as problematic in the EF or the traditional Mass - far from it!
Chip:
Latin, dead language that it is, is immune from the mutations of a living language whose meaning changes with each subsequent generation or social phenomenon.
Latin is one of the three languages used on the Titulus Crucis, the sign above Jesus' head while he was crucified. It has long been held that the languages were consecrated by the shedding of Christ's blood.
Latin is the preferred language of exorcists, who have seen the demons overreact and fall into submission when vernacular exorcism formulas have failed. Demons HATE the use of Latin.
Latin is the unifying language, the Una Voce, of the Church. A Latin rite Catholic could once go anywhere and be assured that the same Mass would be available, whether he was in Birmingham or Barcelona. Most missals still have a Latin and a vernacular side, so one can see the prayers, which are soon recognizable and learned.
Do you need more reasons? Take a look hereL
https://www.prayinglatin.com/why-pray-in-latin
I hear decently performed Gregorian chant at my EF church, which is both a smaller church and hardly the wealthiest in town. I know for a fact that out of the small choir only the organist is trained and can read music, but week after week they produce good music, even if it isn't complex choral works.
I'm not sure how Father McDonald arrives at the idea that more restrictions on the EF will lead to more EF Masses? If bishops are open to EF worship now, then they would have more EF liturgy in their dioceses now and not after Rome sends the message to slow down. Nor do I think that more restrictions on the EF will lead us to a better Novus Ordo Mass. A better climate for better all-around worship is not created by slicing off the right wing in hopes that the left wing will compensate for its loss. Chop off the right wing and the plane spirals into a crash.
I prefer a better Novos Ordo Mass much like the Miles Christi order celebrates. The EF Mass would benefit from more participation from the congregation, but if you look back on the product we got from "reform" I agree that it was best to leave it alone.
I've witnessed what happens in a diocese where the bishop imposes restrictions on EF and generally traditional minded priests. Canceled is the result. Please support the Coalition for Canceled Priests. The ideas that might be in the works in Rome will lead to more good priests sent into internal exile in their dioceses. The chances of more EF Masses being the result are 0%.
Ah the true hate comes out at last against the TLM, the Novus Ordo at it nastiest!!! We have been quiet to long and put up with your giant puppets, altar girls, lesbian nuns, hand holding, kiss of peace, EM"S, lay lectors, rock, folk, jazz, and stop with the "schism" name calling it does not work anymore!!! We are the loyal ones.
I am a firm believer in "by their fruits you shall know them".
What I have seen at assorted parishes, new and old rite, is essentially no difference in the people.
No more selfless, no more centered on love of God and lives of prayer, no more caring for each other, no more inclined to live simpler and less world centered materialistic lives, the wealthier no more inclined for any excess past needs being met applied to those in the parish who lack, no more true community and living shared love of God and each other, no more churches even open for worship and prayer past regimented hours.
I see the same entrenched folk and methods running both, the same business management "pastoral" style, zero spiritual catechesis, and same folk commuting in and leaving after whatever formal group activity, whether Mass or on-the-clock adoration, and most folk unknown by even name where everyone runs/commutes back to what really matters, their worldly lives and pursuit of material goods and leisure, chasing "the good life" and "security", because they really know they are on their own.
I see one camp firmly believing changing the rite and rules will fix eveything, despite all evidence to the contrary, and I see the other camp firmly believing keeping the rites and rules constant will fix everything, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Both sides argue over which rite is more beautiful and meaningful while both sides ignore the spiritual conversion and reordering of their lives of which the religion is truly about. Without that spiritual reordering of their lives, they are only the pharisees and sadducees all over again while overrun by outside forces who do not CARE.
And although SOME traditional parishes are thriving at the moment, that is mainly because they are drawing from the same finite but shrinking pool as supplies the others but at far fewer churches, and those seekers looking for more meaning, hoping to find this God and have answers and true peace. But when they find all they are getting is a fancier version of what they left, and otherwise the same, they will bail out there, too, finding it just as dead, and they WILL.
Granted, the more contemplative Latin Mass has objectively a superior chance of allowing one to place one's self in the presence of God at formal worahip, but is that actually happening there or (especially) at any other time? And granted, with that higher opportunity of recollection, a higher chance some rare folk might actually do that, and perhaps even try to dedicate their lives to love of God as of primary importance, but this is nothing but a long string of mights and maybes, making as much sense to count upon as Shakespeare contracting a room full of monkeys with typewriters to produce his works randomly, and especially unlikely given the majority of monkeys have no intention of even trying to type and so raise themselves up to a higher order.
In short, I see mainly the blind leading the blind on both sides minus what is really needed, which is a great spiritual awakening and getting back to lives centered on love of God above any created thing, and only a very sad and sinful sideshow filled with virulence and anger, otherwise.
Latin is immune from changes. 99.999999% of the people in the pews don't understand it, BUT, it is immune from changes. (It's not, but you can continue to say it...)
Using a language that 99.999999% of the people don't understand tells the people two things: 1) Your understanding us not wanted, and 2) Your understanding make no difference.
Your position as a Person in the Pew is negligible. Whether you are present or not doesn't matter, the sacrifice is offered. Whether you recieve communion or not doesn't matter, the sacrifice is complete when the priest comsumes the Body and Blood of Christ. Whether you "hear" the Mass or sit reading a pious book or pray the Rosary doesn't matter, because what happens on the altar, inside the altar railing with closed gates is what matters. Whether you understand the prayers or not doesn't matter, because that has no impact whatsoever on what happens on the altar.
(OH! But they can read along in a handy-dandy bi-lingual missal. But WAIT, there's that pesky matter of the vernacular they will understand that IS subject to changes, so the translations they read in a handy-dandy bi-lingual missal will change, subjecting them to poor translations, mistranslations, and some undoubtedly intentional glosses made by "progressive/liberal/community/Masonic/gay priests who infiltrated the Church to destroy it from the inside.)
Latin was "consecrated" because it was used on the signage on the cross of Christ. WHAT? Where do people get these peculiar notions? And why do they think that these peculiar notions matter? I've been a practicing Catholic my entire life and never heard such a peculiar thought.
Demons HATE the use of Latin. More peculiar notions being peddled as something substantial and authoritative. The power of Christ, not the language used, drives out demons.
Latin us unifying . . . . EXCEPT that it excludes those present who don't know the language. "Give them missals!" They might rather have nutrition, paved roads, running water, electricity, vaccines, education for their children... But, But, But... GIVE THEM MISSALS!
I like Tom Marcus's comments. The tornado solution was excellent for its humor, it was a true LOL for me, and the serious post about Latin and exorcism is equally good. I had heard the same thing about the use of Latin in exorcism and I believe that Tom has is correct. Just as a black mass is not valid without a consecrated Catholic host the use of Latin in effective exorcism should make us take notice. A pretty good rule is to take the opposite side of what the devil wants. At the minimum we should agree on, more Latin not less. The devil likes it when we make things more complicated than they need to be.
Michael A,
I grew up before the Council and in my parish the Missa Cantata was the norm. We sang the Ordinary and the Propers which is more than the typical Novus Ordo congregation does. We also believed in the Real Presence (Transubstantiation) which a majority of the Novus Ordo crowd does not. So I do not know what you are talking about.
Pierre,
I'm thinking that the EF could benefit from some adjustments and I agree with you that a deeper faith likely exists now among those who appreciate reverential liturgy. However, the problem of converting more souls and making the world a better place doesn't rest solely on good liturgical practices otherwise you wouldn't have gotten a "cathedral" in Lincoln Nebraska in 1963 that needs the bulldozer ASAP. It was only the EF being practiced in 1963 but that didn't stop hideous modern churches from sprouting up long before Vatican II. They were an indication of the spirit of the times that was simmering beneath. It might best to correct my thought and say that the best place to start, is to change the Novos Ordo Mass and leave the TLM alone.
My experience with the EF Mass is limited because I was denied the benefit of that tradition. I was born in 1962. What I have noticed is that at a Low Mass there has been no participation from the congregation. I think I can count only one High Mass that I attended and it was beautiful and there seemed to be more participation, however being a post Vatican II child I have virtually no Latin language skills. These are my impressions and I'm more than willing to accept my error in thinking.
Over It,
What is all over your tirade is, yet again, a strong whiff of hysteria.
Yours SINcerely,
Billy Clutterbuck.
Michael A,
Thank you for your thoughtful response. The low Mass I attend has the faithful reciting all of the responses, including the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar. You really don’t need Latin language skills. At the age of 10 I could chant by heart 5 Latin ordinaries. The sisters that taught me were well versed in the chant. When I attend the EF I feel connected with the past and the future.
https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2016/02/the-devil-hates-latin-says-exorcist.html?m=1#.YN-ylxNKiV4
Feel free to dismiss this as a "peculiar notion", but read it anyway.
The Devil Hates Latin, Says Exorcist
DAVID CLAYTON
I just attended a talk by the exorcist for diocese of San Jose, Fr Gary Thomas. He is the subject of a book and a film called The Rite, starring Anthony Hopkins. (The talk was organized by a group called Catholics at Work.)
First, he was a great speaker. He described how almost by accident, and after 20 years as a parish priest, he found himself sent to Rome to learn how to perform the Rite of Exorcism. He was very clear in saying that, in his opinion, the recent rise in interest in New Age paganism has opened the door to adherence to the occult for greater numbers of people than before, which in turn opens the way to diabolical possession. He has always been inundated with requests, even before the publicity.
The fact that he described these things pretty much in the same straightforward, matter-of-fact way that one might describe what goes on in a marriage or baptism in a parish RCIA class only served to reinforce the truth of it all for me. And I would say that if anything is to increase your faith, it is listening to accounts of how the Church overcomes the effects of possession by the devil and demons, and the suffering of those poor people who are affected by them.
I wanted to pass on one little comment that he made almost in passing. I do not know where he stands liturgically in regard to the Mass - there was nothing in what he said that led me to believe that he celebrates the Latin Mass, for example. However, he did explain that the Rite of Exorcism is only said in Latin. One reason is practical - there is no approved translation in English as yet. He gave another reason why he was so strongly in favor of the use of Latin in the Rite of Exorcism: “The Devil hates Latin, it is the universal language of the Church.” I asked him about this afterwards, and he repeated it, saying that his personal experiences as an exorcist who has performed many, many exorcisms have convinced him of this. He told me he had heard from exorcists who did exorcisms in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (the only approved vernaculars for this Rite) that Latin was the most effective language.
http://www.catholicapologetics.info/languages/why/sacred.htm
ANOTHER "PECULIAR NOTION":
The Church regards three, and only three, languages as "sacred." These, as referred to several times in Sacred Scripture (Luke 23:38, John
19:20, Apocalypse 9:11), are Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. As history clearly shows, Providence consecrated these three languages at different periods to
divine purposes. Each of these languages was, in some form, specially dedicated to religious purposes in contrast to the vernacular.
It is a common misconception that the Jews of Christ's time spoke Hebrew. They did not. When the Jews returned from the Babylonian
captivity in 538 B.C., they were speaking a form of Syriac, sometimes called Aramaic, as their vernacular. Hebrew had become a sacred
language, not a vernacular, reserved for religious services and the teaching of the rabbis, much as Latin came to be used in the Roman
Catholic Church. (Hebrew is related to Syriac in somewhat the same way as French to Italian. They have a common ancestor, but the speaker of
one would not easily understand the other.)
CONTINUED
continued...
However, there is no reason to believe that the two could not have used Latin. There would be some justification for this assumption. It
is known that the Roman emperor Tiberius (r. A.D. 14-37) was passionate about the Latin language, and defendants could be forced to address the courts in
Latin. The emperor Claudius (r. 41-54) "not only struck from the list of jurors a man of high birth, a leading citizen of the province of Greece,
because he did not know Latin, but even deprived him of the rights of citizenship, and he would not allow anyone to render at law a defense of his
life except in his own words, as well as he could, without the help of a lawyer" (Suetonius, Divus Claudius, XVI.2). Even Cleopatra (51-30 B.C)
studied Latin in order to negotiate with Marc Anthony (ca. 83-30 B.C), although the two could easily have used Greek.
Moreover, Pilate was known, both in the Sacred Scripture and in the secular historians, to have laid the heavy hand of Rome upon Jewish
insurrectionists. Pilate may, therefore, have been disposed to enforce the language of Rome upon his administration. Christ, from His human nature,
would certainly have been exposed to at least some Latin, even in the eastern empire. There is a sense, when one reads the Latin Bible, that in the
Gospels the Latin quotations of the colloquy between Christ and Pilate could be the original, which were only afterward translated into Greek when written
down.
We learn from Epistle XII of the Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca to St. Paul, one of fourteen letters between the two, that St. Paul,
during his captivity in Rome, wrote in Latin, and good Latin at that. St. Paul's Latin ad a cadence intrinsic to the language, "the organ tone of
Latinity."
Another misconception is that the Church, even in Rome and Italy, used a Greek vernacular exclusively for the first two or three
centuries, then changed to a vernacular Latin. Until recently, this had been the common scholarly opinion.
More recent evidence, however, in the form of a Latin inscription of ca. A.D. 79, discovered in 1862 at Pompeii, indicates already the
liturgical use of Latin. We known from the Acts of the Apostles (28:13) that St. Paul visited the nearby city of Puteoli for seven days, where
there already existed a community of Latin-speaking Christians. Of the 1800 inscriptions cataloged in that city, all appear in Latin, none in
Greek.
On the basis of a scholarly analysis of this evidence, it has been demonstrated that the language of the Christian ritual at Rome, from the
groundline of its existence, was Latin and not Greek.... The language that mattered in the Apostolic Age was not Greek, but Latin" (Paul
Berry, The Christian Inscription at Pompeii [Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, c. 1995]).
It is regarded as highly unlikely that a Roman would participate in a Christian ritual celebrated in Greek. Even the Greek of the Kyrie
Eleison was not officially added to the liturgy until the close of the fifth century. The chanting of the Latin hymn Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus
can be traced to a time before the papacy of Pope Clement (91-100), and a Christianized Latin, harkening back to a formal, classical Latin, was
already beginning to be reserved for religious and sacred use.
BTW guys, let's keep it friendly here...I'm starting to notice little whiffs of hostility and oneupsmanship--my own included. Let's all just dial it down a bit.
Hey Billy,
Any chance you're related to Bobby Clatterbuck? He was the backup QB to Jack Kemp on the very first Chargers team in 1960.
Great name! Not so great player.
99.999999% amounts to ten in a billion, and there are approximately 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide. So there are only about 13 lay Catholics in the entire world who 'understand' Latin. Really?
I think we need to qualify what is meant by 'understand'. Take the Gloria, Credo, Sanctus/Benedictus and Agnus Dei. Those who habitually attend Mass in the vernacular will know the texts off by heart (the current translation has been in use for ten years). Their understanding is not diminished if they hear these sung, or sing them themselves, in Latin.
English speakers have the added advantage in that they speak and read a heavily Latinized language; there are not many words in the Gloria which do not have an English cognate. Paradoxically, the vernacular Mass has helped, rather than hindered, comprehension of the Latin.
Latin texts, like vernacular ones, become familiar with repetition. When I served Mass aged eight I learned the responses by heart. It was another three years before I was taught Latin at school, but I understood what I was saying.
The complaint about the personalities of EF supporters seems to be validated by the “traditionalist” contributors to this blog!
Why is it that no one begrudges Hindus the use of Sanskrit, no one has a problem with Muslims using their Arabic languages, no one complains of being forced to read from the Torah in Hebrew, but OMIGOSH, THOSE FUNDAMENTALIST INTOLERANT CRAZY .00000000001 PERCENT MINORITY BIGOTED, WHITE SUPREMACIST, INTOLERANT, HATE FILLED, FRANCIS-DESPISING, MEAT-EATING, CONSERVATIVE, LIBERAL, TRADITIONAL CATHOLICS WANT LATIN? NO! NO! NO! NEVER! WE HAVE GOT TO PUT THEM IN THEIR PLACE NOW!
Ahem! I mean, peace be with all of our brethren, be they Muslim, Anglican, Buddhist, Hindu, Methodist, Mormon or whatever. Praises to Pachmanmama! Traditional Catholics, burn in the infernal regions.
Over It sounds like a priest who never excelled at Latin and totally disregards the wisdom of Veterum Sapientia
Post a Comment