Advice Request: A Protestent's First Mass : Extraordinary or Ordinary?

[Brennan_Doherty]

Sometimes I feel like people who would take a first time visitor to a TLM are more interested in their own agendas, than attracting others to our Faith.

I would take a Protestant (and I have) to a TLM, particularly one with Gregorian chant, precisely because I want them to convert. Beauty and reverence attract, as stated so aptly by Fr. George Rutler in his book, A Crisis of Saints (Ignatius Press):

A Liturgical Parable

The Hard Truth

…We seem to slip out of that golden sense of ultimate truth in two ways. The first is by losing any real awareness of the holy. The second is by denying that it has been lost. Without lapsing into cricitism that would be out of place, suffice it to say that the worship of holiness is weak in our culture, and the beauty of holiness has been smudged in transmission through the revised liturgy. For without impugning its objective authenticity in any degree, its bouleversement [Complete overthrow; a reversal; a turning upside down] of the traditional Roman rite marks the first time in history that the Church has been an agent, however unintentionally, in the deprivation of culture, from the uprooting of classical language and sensibility to wanton depreciation of the arts.

…It is immensely saddening to see so many elements of the Church, in her capacity as Mother of Western Culture, compliant in the promotion of ugliness. **There may be no deterrent more formidable to countless potential converts than the low estate of the Church’s liturgical life, for the liturgy is the Church’s prime means of evangelism. Gone as into a primeval mist are the days not long ago when apologists regularly had to warn against being distracted by, or superficially attracted to, the beauty of the Church’s rites. And the plodding and static nature of the revised rites could not have been more ill-timed for a media culture so attuned to color and form and action."
**
(pp. 107-108)

 

[HOPEFUL_IN_UK]

I voted for the TLM, provided it’s a licit Mass. After all, it’s the Mass you and your family usually go to.

But, you might want to take the feelings of other people into account. What would Grandma like?

If your cousins are Anglican or Lutheran, then the NO may be comfortable to them. If they go to NonDom “megachurch” then they may prefer to be entertained, and I honestly think the TLM is more interesting to see from the POV of an outsider. If they’re nondom megachurchers, they’d still find things to object to in the NO Mass that no amount of guitars can cover up. Plus, it could seem really boring and too much like mainline Protestant services (unless the guitarist is really, really good.)

I can’t read minds or predict the future, but I guess it could go either way, so why not just go where you usually go and not worry about converting anybody else?

 

[Margarite]

what was the grandma’s response to the mass (I assume you went to the TLM?)
I would agree that a reverent NO would be best, but if that was not available, Well the only reason I would chose the liberal NO is that you said your cousin’s only reason for religion is friends and feeling good. Well people like that claim to “feel good” at the NO, so maybe she would feel more fellowship with the NO people. At least she would see that we aren’t evil and weird. Then, no matter her response, ask her to go to the TLM with you, tell her that it is basically the same mass, just in Latin. One of the reasons we use Latin is that it is a “dead” language meaning that the only place it is ever used is during the mass, making the mass even more special (I cannot think of a better way to say this, I have a really bad headache ). That would have been my couse of action, but since she didn’t show, that shows all the more that it is what people think that is most important to her, so NO is the way to go.

Yours Through Our Lady,
Margarite

PS: There are many good, reverent NO masses, it just takes alot of looking to find them. Watch EWTN if you don’t know what one looks like.
PSS: In case you didn’t gather that I love the TLM best of all from this post, you know it now