Do Not Turn Into a Fight - 10 Reasons to Love the EF

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Sorry to interrupt an amusing side conversation, but if I may post the reasons why I love the Extraordinary Form:

Note: Sorry if my theology is dodgy here; my catechesis is not as complete as I would like it to be, and I am working to correct that. Please let me know if anything I say isn’t in line with orthodoxy.
  1. The silence! It’s like an invitation to contemplative prayer. I grew up in an OF parish whose members love to “make a joyful noise”, which is wonderful for them, but I simply can’t focus on praying the Mass! I find myself craving silence after receiving Holy Communion, and I’ve found that the EF allows more time for personal communion with the Most High.
  2. Also, the music. I’ve been told (and I don’t know if this is actually true or not) that sacred Chant, particularly Gregorian Chant, is the form of sound most pleasing to the human brain. When implemented well and with zeal, I find that the Extraordinary Form provides the perfect balance of sacred silence and sacred music.
  3. As others have said, it’s essentially the same Mass celebrated by St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Pio, St. Louis de Montefort, and loved by St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Edith Stein, Chesterton, St. Gianna Molla, Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, and so many other spiritual heroes!
  4. The Latin. There is an old story that Dr. John Tolkien (he of the Lord of the Rings) adored the Latin Mass, and was greatly perturbed at the post-Vatican II linguistic changes. He was so irritated, in fact, that he continued to respond in Latin even after his parish began celebrating the Ordinary Form, much to his family’s horror. 😃 Of course, Tolkien was a gifted linguist, so he probably understood the Latin better than 99% of the other congregants.
  5. The beauty. For me, there is nothing on earth so beautiful as the Elevation of the Eucharist at the Consecration. To see Christ’s presence manifested at last, and His total gift of Self made for our salvation presented with such reverence and love…My heart breaks every time. It is truly an invitation to us to unite ourselves to Him.
  6. This is kind of silly, but the option to cover my head with a pretty piece of lace! It makes me feel like a bride. 🙂
  7. The completeness of it. I once brought a Jewish friend of mine (who occasionally goes to OF Mass) with me to an EF Mass, after which she told me that it was “easy to see” where the Mass is taken directly from the Hebrew liturgy. I mean, our faith is the fulfillment of the Law of Moses, right?
  8. The sense of continuity, of the permeation of faith throughout the rest of one’s life. Perhaps this is a culturally- and geographically-specific thing, but I find it easier to “live the Mass” after being part of such a beautiful manifestation of it.
  9. The people! We Catholics are all a rag-tag bunch of fallen sinners anyway, but I find that the EF tends to attract certain types of people who understand each other. It’s as though we fogies, young and old alike, are banding together to survive, but our uniting force is Life Itself.
  10. My grandmother loved the Latin Mass. We have her daily missal from 1962, and, even though she died before I was born, attending the same Mass she attended makes me feel closer to her. (She attended the OF, but I’m told she had a special love for the EF.)
Also, this ballad is hilarious! Good and licit, I say! 😃
 
triumphguy said:
Er… forgive me, I may be wrong - but I don’t think they had electricity then.😛

They did have wood and cats and that’s what they used!

And having played the violin to grade 5 I can tell you I would rather listen to a guitar in church than a poorly played violin!
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There’s too much violins in society. I’m against violins on TV.

We are supposed to love each other. Of all places, why in the world would we want violins at Mass? What if there was an act of violins against the priest or one of your family? How would you feel?

Wasn’t Christ into non-violins?

No, I’m against it.

-Tim-
 
triumphguy said:
St. Francis was a troubadour.

St. Clare sang about unobtainable love.

I bet a few saints have played the guitar.

St. Cecilia, patron saint of music and NOT playing the organ.
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That’s a bit of a stretch to support that guitar music, especially the soppy kind,is OK at a sacrifice offered to a god.

[Wonders if pagans, at the key moment in their sombre ceremony before a strange effigy, then get a teenager to strum a few bars of “We love you, Mammon, you are so nice”]
 
RogerDeCourcy said:
That’s a bit of a stretch to support that guitar music, especially the soppy kind,is OK at a sacrifice offered to a god.

[Wonders if pagans, at the key moment in their sombre ceremony before a strange effigy, then get a teenager to strum a few bars of “We love you, Mammon, you are so nice”]
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I suppose not, but then again they probably would’ve done all sorts of lovely things like sacrificing children, ‘religious’ sexual orgies, ‘worshipful’ drunkenness or drug-taking, or at least sacrificing animals, that we wouldn’t dream of incorporating into our worship.

And most of their ceremonies, unsurprisingly, would actually have been anything but somber. Naked young men running around Rome giving women a playful whipping anyone? The Lupercalia sounds very lively to say the least 😉

Not everything traditional is better, especially when we’re talking pagan methods of worship!
 
My point is, that if one esteems one’s god and he is powerful and judgemental, one doesn’t ladle on banality to the sacred rite. Stand back and look at what’s happened to the Roman rite, from the perspective of an outsider. Or someone who hadn’t gone to mass in fifty years. It’s strange, to put it mildly. And if it’s supposed to reinvigorate the Church, it hasn’t worked.

Another fifty years of explanations will likely produce the same effect as the previous fifty.
 
And not to mention all the musical instruments named in Psalm 150 (and perhaps more if the psalm was written today…:p)
 
Joy_Therese said:
Sorry to interrupt an amusing side conversation, but if I may post the reasons why I love the Extraordinary Form:

Note: Sorry if my theology is dodgy here; my catechesis is not as complete as I would like it to be, and I am working to correct that. Please let me know if anything I say isn’t in line with orthodoxy.
  1. The silence! It’s like an invitation to contemplative prayer. I grew up in an OF parish whose members love to “make a joyful noise”, which is wonderful for them, but I simply can’t focus on praying the Mass! I find myself craving silence after receiving Holy Communion, and I’ve found that the EF allows more time for personal communion with the Most High.
  2. Also, the music. I’ve been told (and I don’t know if this is actually true or not) that sacred Chant, particularly Gregorian Chant, is the form of sound most pleasing to the human brain. When implemented well and with zeal, I find that the Extraordinary Form provides the perfect balance of sacred silence and sacred music.
  3. As others have said, it’s essentially the same Mass celebrated by St. Maximilian Kolbe, St. Pio, St. Louis de Montefort, and loved by St. Therese of Lisieux, St. Edith Stein, Chesterton, St. Gianna Molla, Bl. Pier Giorgio Frassati, and so many other spiritual heroes!
  4. The Latin. There is an old story that Dr. John Tolkien (he of the Lord of the Rings) adored the Latin Mass, and was greatly perturbed at the post-Vatican II linguistic changes. He was so irritated, in fact, that he continued to respond in Latin even after his parish began celebrating the Ordinary Form, much to his family’s horror. 😃 Of course, Tolkien was a gifted linguist, so he probably understood the Latin better than 99% of the other congregants.
  5. The beauty. For me, there is nothing on earth so beautiful as the Elevation of the Eucharist at the Consecration. To see Christ’s presence manifested at last, and His total gift of Self made for our salvation presented with such reverence and love…My heart breaks every time. It is truly an invitation to us to unite ourselves to Him.
  6. This is kind of silly, but the option to cover my head with a pretty piece of lace! It makes me feel like a bride. 🙂
  7. The completeness of it. I once brought a Jewish friend of mine (who occasionally goes to OF Mass) with me to an EF Mass, after which she told me that it was “easy to see” where the Mass is taken directly from the Hebrew liturgy. I mean, our faith is the fulfillment of the Law of Moses, right?
  8. The sense of continuity, of the permeation of faith throughout the rest of one’s life. Perhaps this is a culturally- and geographically-specific thing, but I find it easier to “live the Mass” after being part of such a beautiful manifestation of it.
  9. The people! We Catholics are all a rag-tag bunch of fallen sinners anyway, but I find that the EF tends to attract certain types of people who understand each other. It’s as though we fogies, young and old alike, are banding together to survive, but our uniting force is Life Itself.
  10. My grandmother loved the Latin Mass. We have her daily missal from 1962, and, even though she died before I was born, attending the same Mass she attended makes me feel closer to her. (She attended the OF, but I’m told she had a special love for the EF.)
Also, this ballad is hilarious! Good and licit, I say! 😃
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Great list. One of my greatest spiritual guides is St. Francis de Sales, and I love reading his sermons and know it was practically the same Mass – even the Sunday readings he is using are still the same!
 
Rich_C said:
Great list. One of my greatest spiritual guides is St. Francis de Sales, and I love reading his sermons and know it was practically the same Mass – even the Sunday readings he is using are still the same!
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Thank you! I’m not as familiar with St. Francis de Sales as I should be, so I’ll have to check those out. One resource I love is an old book called “From Sunday to Sunday”, written in 1948 by Fr. Thomas Plassmann, OFM; he provides meditations on each week’s readings and propers, along with the history of each special feast and its origins.
 
RogerDeCourcy said:
You are in a minority about organ music. The scholas I know are very happy when they can get an organist to play.
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Yes I am aware that I am in a minority with this preference. I am also aware that the choice of musical instruments used in Church is a matter of preference and that there is nothing inherently profane or sacrilegious with the use of any musical instrument. They are inherently neutral. It is how they are used that is the problem.
 
ByzCath said:
Yes I am aware that I am in a minority with this preference. I am also aware that the choice of musical instruments used in Church is a matter of preference and that there is nothing inherently profane or sacrilegious with the use of any musical instrument. They are inherently neutral. It is how they are used that is the problem.
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As a musician myself, instruments being “inherently neutral” (as created things are not inherently neutral) is flat out false. It has to do with the final causality of the instrument, what is it meant for and whether or not they are applicable to certain situations. Instruments are designed for an intended end such as some are meant for treble clef, some were designed for symphony and not solo, others were created for a demand in genre, some for learning and practice, some for solo, some for baroque period, some for folk setting such as the guitar, and some for solemn worship, etc… In other words, the design of the instrument is dictated by it’s final cause. And trying to cross instruments in application most of the time, never works out. This is even evident at the micro level of periods and even within a composer’s own musical system. An example is within Bach’s system, trying to cross instruments in even different suites they were not intended for most of the time sounds awful. A cello can hardly play the lute suites and the lute can hardly play the French suites, everything was written and composed with a certain instrument/s in mind by Bach. Crossing instruments with periods is just as, if not more so, destructive. You don’t play Chopin’s Nocturne #1 In F Minor, Op. 55 with a harpsichord because you destroy the very meaning of the piece that the piano carries out inherently that the harpsichord cannot. Let’s take a more modern example, you don’t play Metallica’s Jump in the Fire with a clarinet because the electric guitar played through an amp that has a distortion effect carries the meaning that the song intended for that the clarinet can hardly replicate.

Likewise, you don’t mix secular music and instruments with sacred worship, it doesn’t even carry the same formal cause of chant or pipe organs, though the former is far greater in form of worship then pipe organ. Yet another example of how modernism has distorted everyone into thinking there is no formal or final causes in things, whether they are material things, conceptual thought or say the order of Mass. When the final cause does not dictate the material cause and the formal cause anymore, you have achieved chaos.
 
This is mere intellectualism; playing around with words and concepts. Sounds fine in theory. In practice, it means pap every Sunday. We now associate the pipe organ, when accompanying Chant, with holiness. Guitars have mundane associations. Pop songs even more so.

Someday a large swathe of the Catholic Church will wake up and realise how it has been cheated. But it might be God’s mercy at work. If those people who think that mass-as- tinker-toy is fine were let loose on the old rite, it would be even worse.
 
My ten reasons (but each of them are important to me):
  1. I can wear a veil, hat or mantilla and know that I will not get strange looks
  2. Receiving Communion on the tongue and kneeling at the rail
  3. The Bells at certain moments of the Mass.
  4. The Confiteor is always said
  5. Most people show up dressed decently and modestly regardless of weather
  6. The quiet before and after Mass in the worship space
  7. The Leonine prayers after Low Mass
  8. Some churches have the Rosary recited before Mass
  9. The silence in parts of the Mass
  10. English only for the re-readings and then the homily, Latin for the rest of Mass
 
Joy_Therese said:
Thank you! I’m not as familiar with St. Francis de Sales as I should be, so I’ll have to check those out. One resource I love is an old book called “From Sunday to Sunday”, written in 1948 by Fr. Thomas Plassmann, OFM; he provides meditations on each week’s readings and propers, along with the history of each special feast and its origins.
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That sounds like a wonderful book, I’ll have to get a copy. You know a lot of the propers for the EF Mass were written before the Middle Ages, it’s just amazing. They are treasures.

I guess that’s one more think I love about the EF: there is no three-year cycle of readings. I love getting to know the same Sunday readings year after year, so I can really dig into them with commentaries such as you suggested, or what’s in my missal.
 
TS_Aquinas said:
As a musician myself, instruments being “inherently neutral” (as created things are not inherently neutral) is flat out false.
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When I speak of “inherently neutral” I am speaking of morality, not causality or usage. A musical instrument is morally neutral.

As for sacred music. I am not aware of any instrument that is strictly religious nor am I aware of any that is strictly secular. It all depends on culture.
Yet another example of how modernism has distorted everyone into thinking there is no formal or final causes in things, whether they are material things, conceptual thought or say the order of Mass.
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Not quite sure what you are trying to get at here but this is just another example of the use of “modernism” as some sort of bogeyman to scare everyone.

Again, I was not speaking philosophically but morally. All inanimate objects are morally neutral. It is in their usage that morality, either good or evil, is found.
 
I believe musical instruments, like a sculpture’s mallet and chisel, or an artist’s paintbrush are also aesthetically neutral.

It’s banal music and mediocre playing/singing that I abhor whether traditional or modern.

There was a time when the organ was seen as a horrendous intrusion into Churches.

There was a time when an eight note scale was seen as foreign and frivolous.
 
triumphguy said:
I believe musical instruments, like a sculpture’s mallet and chisel, or an artist’s paintbrush are also aesthetically neutral.

It’s banal music and mediocre playing/singing that I abhor whether traditional or modern.

There was a time when the organ was seen as a horrendous intrusion into Churches.

There was a time when an eight note scale was seen as foreign and frivolous.
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:confused: First I was told that Jesus didn’t use Latin or a whisper the words of institution at the Last Supper now are you trying to tell me that a pipe organ and gregorian chant were not part of it as well? :confused:
 
justme said:
:confused: First I was told that Jesus didn’t use Latin or a whisper the words of institution at the Last Supper now are you trying to tell me that a pipe organ and gregorian chant were not part of it as well? :confused:
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Shocking… but there you are.

I hope you survive as a Catholic:p
 
justme said:
:confused: First I was told that Jesus didn’t use Latin or a whisper the words of institution at the Last Supper now are you trying to tell me that a pipe organ and gregorian chant were not part of it as well? :confused:
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Using the Last Supper as an excuse for guitars at mass, or not using Latin, is bogus. At that supper, Christ Himself presided. The others present were the first bishops. The Crucifixion hadn’t happened yet.

A better example would be the 10th mass, after the Crucifxion. Or the 200th Mass. And then you must ask, why is that 200th Mass better than a High Mass with chant and organ said in 1923? Even assuming we could recreate it accurately.

When you try to recreate the past you just show your current fashionable preferences. In 20 years, they look dated and embarassing.

Look instead at the overall effect of the reforms, the intended ones and the ‘popular’ touches added on later. Are they more inspiring than a Missa Cantata with chant and an organ playing? Do they convey the meaning and intent of a Holy Sacrifice to the Creator of All Things? Do they at least not distract those attending from offering their prayers to God intently?

You could have a bunch of kids play ‘On Eagle’s Wings’ on the recorder at Mass, by the logic of some of the posters here.
 
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