Do you prefer the OF or EF of Mass?

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stpurl said:
meaning to make it clear that the average person was not ‘literate’.
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What does that have to do with understanding, hearing, and speaking Latin in the Liturgy?
 
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Let me get this clear. Are you claiming that the ‘average person’ could understand some at least of the Latin liturgy even if he or she could not read or write Latin?

If you are saying that, I agree with you to an extent. I believe that the sense of the liturgy, that is, the understanding of the offering, the understanding of certain words such as “Dominus/i” for Lord, or “peccata/peccatoribus” for sin, 'Oremus" for 'let us pray" was understood, not because the people were using Latin in their common speech, but because through decades and centuries of Catholic Mass and Catholic understanding passed on from priest to people, and family to family, made it so.

However, that does not mean that the average person could for example ‘hear’ the Roman canon word for word and ‘translate’ the Latin into English, French, or German. But they didn’t ‘have to’. They understood that the words were sacred, that it was a prayer of offering of a sacrifice, that the postures, vestments, actions, and words, even if imperfectly heard or understood, were understood in their hearts through all those actions.
 
I don’t mind which form of Mass is celebrated as long as it’s celebrated with reverence and dignity. Out of preference it would be the Ordinariate Use (Divine Worship) as that’s the language and style I remember from when I was younger.
 
stpurl said:
Let me get this clear. Are you claiming that the ‘average person’ could understand some at least of the Latin liturgy even if he or she could not read or write Latin?

If you are saying that, I agree with you to an extent. I believe that the sense of the liturgy, that is, the understanding of the offering, the understanding of certain words such as “Dominus/i” for Lord, or “peccata/peccatoribus” for sin, 'Oremus" for 'let us pray" was understood, not because the people were using Latin in their common speech, but because through decades and centuries of Catholic Mass and Catholic understanding passed on from priest to people, and family to family, made it so.

However, that does not mean that the average person could for example ‘hear’ the Roman canon word for word and ‘translate’ the Latin into English, French, or German. But they didn’t ‘have to’. They understood that the words were sacred, that it was a prayer of offering of a sacrifice, that the postures, vestments, actions, and words, even if imperfectly heard or understood, were understood in their hearts through all those actions
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Perfect! 100% agreed! Well said. 🙂
 
AugustTherese said:
What does that have to do with understanding, hearing, and speaking Latin in the Liturgy?
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Lay people didn’t have to speak a single Latin syllable to assist at Latin Mass for the vast majority of its history.

The Dialogue Mass was a 20th Century innovation, and was never universally offered. The usual situation was for the altar servers to do the responses, not the faithful.
 
I like the OF in Latin, with the Priest facing Ad Orientem. To me, it gives the best of both worlds, is extremely reverent, yet I don’t have to worry about people turning and staring at me when my kids make peeps or move around like kids. The only problem is that it’s difficult to find a parish that does this. I am lucky that in Houston there is one, and another that celebrates the OF in Latin (but Versus Populum).
 
Excessive amplification is one of the most annoying things… In my schools chapel, built in the 1930s, the acoustics are AMAZING. you can say something in a slightly louder than conversational tone and clearly hear it in the choir loft. it sits 300. But, for some reason, we have to use excessive amplification, to the point where it’s jarring and off-putting
 
Maximilian75 said:
Excessive amplification is one of the most annoying things
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I have good hearing, but there is something wrong with the amplifiers and speakers at the parish church. I have a hard time understanding, the way it bounces around.

The church building was finished in 1901, before it would have been electrified at all- the priest ought to turn off the speakers in my view and project his voice. That’s what the building was designed for.
 
Exactly. In newer churches designed with amplification in mind, its fine. In older chapels, it’s a mess
 
Maximilian75 said:
Exactly. In newer churches designed with amplification in mind, its fine. In older chapels, it’s a mess
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I think it can be done in older buildings, but it can’t be done on the cheap. If you have a good sound man, know whether to place and adjust the speakers, it can work out fine. But if you just buy the speakers and plug them in, it isn’t very effective.
 
The one thing I can’t stand honestly are new churches built with the tabernacle not even in the center. I don’t like these new layouts at all. I’ve been to churches that don’t even have kneelers. I don’t understand why altars with kneelers and railings were ever done away with either. I’ve been to churches where the altar is in the middle and pews surrounding it.

I must say the pre Vatican 2 churches are how I think it should be. I don’t understand some of the newer layouts.
 
I understand that. But apparently there were many who despised contemplative prayer and wanted to amplify the Mass and make it more transparent.
 
Consider what Dom Prosper Gueranger, founder of the Benedictine Congregation of France and first abbot of Solesmes after the French revolution, predicted in 1840:
“Hatred for the Latin language is inborn in the hearts of all the enemies of Rome. They recognize it as the bond among Catholics throughout the universe, as the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit. . . . The spirit of rebellion which drives them to confide the universal prayer to the idiom of each people, of each province, of each century, has for the rest produced its fruits, and the reformed themselves constantly perceive that the Catholic people, in spite of their Latin prayers, relish better and accomplish with more zeal the duties of the cult than most do the Protestant people. At every hour of the day, divine worship takes place in Catholic churches. The faithful Catholic, who assists, leaves his mother tongue at the door. Apart form the sermons, he hears nothing but mysterious words which, even so, are not heard in the most solemn moment of the Canon of the Mass. Nevertheless, this mystery charms him in such a way that he is not jealous of the lot of the Protestant, even though the ear of the latter doesn’t hear a single sound without perceiving its meaning .… . . . We must admit it is a master blow of Protestantism to have declared war on the sacred language. If it should ever succeed in ever destroying it, it would be well on the way to victory. Exposed to profane gaze, like a virgin who has been violated, from that moment on the Liturgy has lost much of its sacred character, and very soon people find that it is not worthwhile putting aside one’s work or pleasure in order to go and listen to what is being said in the way one speaks on the marketplace. . . .”
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ProVobis said:
I understand that. But apparently there were many who despised contemplative prayer and wanted to amplify the Mass and make it more transparent.
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Sure. But the faithful really avoided the High Masses back in the day- making all of the masses “high” might not have been as popular as the vernacular Masses.
 
EF for me. I am sacristan and head server for the diocesan EF in my area.
 
Thanks for sharing, @ProVobis!

I love the Latin language, especially when used in the context of the Mass! However, when others claim that the Latin Mass is more ‘reverent’, more ‘traditional’, and it ‘lifts my heart up to God more’ than the Novus Ordo, it makes me think how much of the liturgical norms and elements they really understand along with understanding the language that is used. That is all. 🙂
 
jas84173 said:
The one thing I can’t stand honestly are new churches built with the tabernacle not even in the center
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100% agreed! That I will never understand! As Venerable Fulton Sheen remarked along with Saint Mary Magdalene in reference to the tabernacle moved to the side, “Where have they put my Lord?”. No one should ever have to go looking for the tabernacle, ever. 🙂
 
AugustTherese said:
Of course! My questions pertain to those who consistently invite me to attend the EF Mass and I decline because of my ignorance and lack of Latin. It seems as though the majority who attend EF only do so because of the ‘reverence’ and ‘tradition’ and not to offer their entire selves in worship and sacrifice. @jas84173
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Like non-spanish speaking poeple who would not want to go to a mass in Spanish because they don’t speak the language, not that they do not understand the mass or that their mass obligation is not fulfilled.
 
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