Yes and before the changes this was the Mass they would have had. The TLM has blessed many generations across an eon.
It can, but the key word is “can.” I tend to think that anyone can get a lot out of the Latin Mass (or the Mass in any language that is not their own) if they are willing and able to put in the time required to understand and process what all the things are.
Should the Mass in Latin speak to every culture? Pope Saint Gregory the Great said to Saint Augustine of Canterbury concerning (introducing) liturgical customs in England, “let the minds of the English grow accustomed to it”. And they did. Our liturgy is sacred. So, let the culture adapt to the Latin liturgy, and not the other way around.
The Latin liturgy was common in Roman Africa long before it was common in Rome. We probably have Pope Saint Victor I, an African, to thank for the use of Latin in the liturgy in Rome. Latin was the language of the Roman Empire which stretched far beyond Europe. It is a fitting language for the Roman Church.
The question should be, can the minds of the people grow accustomed to the Latin Mass? I believe they can.
I really don’t think that Latin in particular is the issue. I think that any person can come to the understanding that the language being used is sacred, and therefore is supposed to be different than ordinary language. For example, Ge’ez is the language used by the Ethiopian Orthodox/Ethiopian Catholic churches. Though it may be their traditional language, it has been dead for centuries; nobody actually speaks it.
I once asked a lady at a bus stop where parishes were that had good Masses. She named a few, giving their locations. Of one she said that they do some latin there, which she guessed was ok, but, she said, “To me, that is going backwards.” I just looked at her like she had just spoken in a foreign language. I found it interesting that she did not mention the FSSP parish that was only a few blocks away.
Disagree. Performing the liturgy in the vernacular is and can be an enormous blessing to Catholic worship. Ask yourself this: is it more important that, as an American, I could go into a church in rural Nigeria and understand the liturgy word for word, or is it more important that anyone anywhere, Catholic or not, could go to mass and understand what was happening?
Completely beside the point. Have yourself a read of Veterum Sapientia.
The mystery of the mass should be found in what is actually taking place - the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. I point out again, when the mass started, Latin WAS the vernacular. We shouldn’t need to cloak the mass in incomprehensible (to most people) linguistics in order to make it reverent. We need a faith and a worship that can reach directly out to people and pull them in and give a clear relation to modern life. We need people to leave the mass seeing directly how it connects to them, and why they need to come back next week.
And, is there no point to be made that the Latin liturgy was largely incomprehensible to most people for over 1000 years?
I agree. The trend back toward Latin was part of the reaction to all the liturgical abuses that were happening but wrongly blamed, IMO, on the vernacular. Granted, the vernacular facilitated some of the looseness. So did the faulty translation and the foot-dragging to correct it. If I can’t understand the Latin, how would I know if the words being used are correct or not anyway? Hearing the vernacular permits hearing it incorrectly and opens the door to correction of abuses. It may take awhile and it did take awhile. If the abuses were in Latin, I wouldn’t know. And what I don’t know wouldn’t hurt me. I think it’s better for more people to be able to understand. I realize some people love Latin and it’s good if there is some accomodation for that. I also realize some people understand Latin and it is very beautiful also. My dad understood it and loved it.
I agree! And if I didn’t need to go to work to make a living, I would be there faithfully every single morning, every day of the year. This to me would be heaven.