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jmj1984
Guest
Good to know, I wasn’t sure whether the society operated in south america or not.
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JReducation
Guest
Actually, if you read the chronicles of the Jesuits, Dominicans and Franciscans, many accommodations were made for Asia and South America. One of them was the use of Guarani and Quechua for certain parts of the mass and the translation of the scriptures so that they could be read in the local languages. The Franciscans never used Gregorian Chant anyway, so that was never an issue and the Dominicans had their own rite. They asked for permission to make adaptations as they went along. The problem is when you make the adaptations without the proper permission. The Holy Father spoke about this recently. He was talking about the importance of Christianizing culture and avoiding enculturation. European Catholicism belongs to Europe and her offspring. It is proper to reclaim it.
We have to remember, the sacraments are not Latin. They are Catholic. They don’t belong to the Latin Church.
There are letters from St. Francis Xavier to the Jesuit motherhouse in which he insists that it is an error to bring Europe to Asia, but it is better to adapt the liturgy and to incorporate those symbols and practices that could be reconciled with Catholicism.
As late as the 1930s, the Franciscans fought every attempt to introduce European Catholicism in Japan. The last of these was St. Maximilian Kolbe who wrote to the Friars that they must incorporate the Japanese culture into the liturgy. For a long time, the Franciscans in China and Japan did not wear the Franciscan habit. They wore a uniform that mimicked the local dress. I realize that this is outside of the mass. I’m just bringing it up to point out how convinced these missionaries were that they had to Christianize the culture, not replace with the European Catholicism. For hundreds of years they kept asking for permission to adapt one thing or another
I never served in Asia, but I did serve in South America. They had two liturgical expressions, long before we ever dreamed of an EF and OF. There were the churches and parishes that served the Europeans and those that served the indigenous people. Even the architecture is different.
Over the centuries, as the Spanish and Indigenous people intermarried and gave birth to Mestizo children, this became the dominant culture, which leans more toward the European. But there are still about 1/3 of the Catholics in South America who are indigenous people and still follow the customs handed down to them by the early Franciscan and Dominican missionaries.
I was trying to point out that abuse takes many forms. Not every form of abuse is observable to the average person in the pew. Using the Eucharist for power games is definitely a form of abuse. It became frequent enough for the Church to intervene and send letters to bishops and religious superiors telling them that this had to stop. Afterward, the Church added the canon that says that you cannot deny the sacraments to any Catholic in good standing. That canon was added to stop the abuse.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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jmj1984
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Thanks for the reminder Br Jr, my point was simply that the mass was offered in Latin across all those continents long before it was offered in the vernacular, that isnt really disputable its simply a fact. Allowances may well have been made by individual religious on the ground or even groups of them but the diocesan structure which in south america had been around since at least the 1600’s offered masses and the sacraments in Latin and in the normal form.
I really would find it very odd considering the long standing teaching of the church regarding the importance of understanding and praying in the language of the church if latin was completely supplanted by the local language and little or no effort made to teach Latin. Frankly this seems extremely unlikely, especially considering the tradition of the church on this matter as expressed for example by St Francis de Sales who made it clear that it was good and necessary to understand and even pray in Latin, if only basic prayers.
I can’t say I’ve ever heard of these and again interesting but it doesn’t undermine my point, namely that the sacraments were offered in Latin across the length and breadth of the country.
Br Jr, my point was to address the issue of saying that everything must be in a language they understand and in a way they can completely understand as it is in the NO, that idea is obviously false as if it was no one would ever have converted or even attended mass in the first place. It may well be that an ‘adapted’ version of the mass was also celebrated, I cannot say whether they adapted all the sacraments, frankly I doubt it, but the ‘Latin’ was there first and continued alongside and probably was the dominant of the two ‘forms’.
I actually visited the original Dominican Monastery in Spain (sadly now a museam) which was responsible for sending many of these dominican missionaries, that said the TLM was still offered and the same with the traditional Latin sacraments.
Ok thanks Br Jr, I just didn’t understand where it fitted into the context of the TLM discussion.I was trying to point out that abuse takes many forms. Not every form of abuse is observable to the average person in the pew. Using the Eucharist for power games is definitely a form of abuse. It became frequent enough for the Church to intervene and send letters to bishops and religious superiors telling them that this had to stop. Afterward, the Church added the canon that says that you cannot deny the sacraments to any Catholic in good standing. That canon was added to stop the abuse.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Mike30
Guest
Brother, I’m not saying it did or did not happen. I am saying that I would distrust just about anything Martin Luther said about the Church due to his well known agends.This did happen. There are older priests alive from the 1950s who still remember.
That being said, you can’t take Luther’s report the same way. We don’t really know how accurately Luther reported it and how much of his report was embellished.
While this may have been an abuse, one must also put it into proper context. The priests involved were not thinking abuse. They were teasing each other. They ignorantly thought that this was humorous, not that the mass was humorous, but the speed at which some of them could get through it.
We can’t deny something that happened. But we should never add to it either. The men whom I have known, obviously older men, do not have a malicious bone in their body. They thought it was funny.
Of course you would not hear this as I would. There is a great deal about which we speak to each other, but not to the laity, because people won’t understand the context. Not understanding the context can lead to scandal where there should be none.
I’ve always said that the world of the clergy and religious has its own sense of humor. Some of it, in retrospect, is not funny. But at the time, those involved meant no harm. They should not be judged according to our understanding. Hopefully, we can look at people in their context.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
As to the Priests joking about it, it is quite possible that they were joking about the whole thing. Unless you were there, and I happened to be, at least on many occasions, you really don’t know if these things happened at all, and in presenting them as fact, are just perpetuating a rumour that hasn’t died since the midle ages.
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Pfaffenhoffen
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TrueLight, I think I see that you are an adept of the Tridentine mass as it is your logo.
I think the theme is not worthwhile discussing.Look, that video has got 4000 views.
As Nicodemus said: “If it is God’s wish, it will last. If not, it is fade away”. I visited central Africa and I was said to see that African mass.
But, in the end, God’s will be done !!
God Bless You.
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TrueLight
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wina
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Interesting Thread and many good posts here.
I attended once TLM, and I fell in love with it. But I don’t become anti OF, although I don’t agree some of it.
I attended once TLM, and I fell in love with it. But I don’t become anti OF, although I don’t agree some of it.
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markomalley
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The question I have for you is if you are really anti-OF or anti-liturgical abuse in the NO?
Does it make you anti-OF when you cringe at the celebrant ad-libbing?
Does it make you anti-OF when you get physically nauseous at some of the insipid OCP/GIA songs?
and so on…
I, for one, would submit that it doesn’t make you anti-OF, but rather more discerning in what should be expected…
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TheMc
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My thoughts exactly.
It’s not the OF per se that I am extremely frustrated with. It’s the befitting manner that it’s usually celebrated with.
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Hadrianus
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I notice that most of this discussion has been either about Latin or abuses’. But what about those of us who just don’t like the OF because it feels so artificial and “showy”? All the fiddling with microphones and the endless talking.
I can"t get to an EF mass and must just make the best of things, but for 35 years I have been attending the OF and with the exception of a few experiences in Monastic settings, I have always found it more of an ordeal than something conducive to prayer. I am not alone in this I know because many other laypeople say the same. You can imagine my relief when I came across the then cardinal Ratzinger’s book MIlestones in which he openly criticized the OF as benig fabricated liturgy. On the other hand, I agree that if the OF is in a beautiful church and with prayerful music all that helps.
For some of us Latin isn’t the issue. In fact, I’d be perfectly happy with an EF mass in English. The Byzantine rite is also something I can feel at ease with, though it is a bit foreign to me. I’m not anti-OF. If it works for people fine, but for some of us it doesn’t.
Br Joseph, much of what you say rings true. My guess is that in pre Vatican II days some priests had no real love for the liturgy, and saw the reform as something that helped them get it over with even easier. It makes sense that those priests who raced through the TLM were hardly going to care much about reverence in the NOM. The younger generation of priests does seem to be better in this respect.
I can"t get to an EF mass and must just make the best of things, but for 35 years I have been attending the OF and with the exception of a few experiences in Monastic settings, I have always found it more of an ordeal than something conducive to prayer. I am not alone in this I know because many other laypeople say the same. You can imagine my relief when I came across the then cardinal Ratzinger’s book MIlestones in which he openly criticized the OF as benig fabricated liturgy. On the other hand, I agree that if the OF is in a beautiful church and with prayerful music all that helps.
For some of us Latin isn’t the issue. In fact, I’d be perfectly happy with an EF mass in English. The Byzantine rite is also something I can feel at ease with, though it is a bit foreign to me. I’m not anti-OF. If it works for people fine, but for some of us it doesn’t.
Br Joseph, much of what you say rings true. My guess is that in pre Vatican II days some priests had no real love for the liturgy, and saw the reform as something that helped them get it over with even easier. It makes sense that those priests who raced through the TLM were hardly going to care much about reverence in the NOM. The younger generation of priests does seem to be better in this respect.
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Hadrianus
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PS Much of what I wrote doesn’t apply to weekday masses. They tend to be much more reverent and yes, genuinely prayerful. For some reason it’s on Sundays when priests feel the need to jazz it up.
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Dan_Daly
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This is a very good point.
When I came to the EF, I initially thought “I like the EF much more than the OF”. As I learned more though, I discovered that much of what I like about the EF is not necessarily exclusive to the EF.
You could have a perfectly legit OF mass with:
-All male servers
-No EMHCs
-Reception of Communion on the tongue, kneeling, and at an altar rail
-Celebrated Ad Orientem
-traditional liturgial music
-modestly dressed and silent (except for appropriate responses) congregation
-in Latin
A great deal of the changes that have taken place in the OF have been neither mandated or even officially encouraged. Male Alter servers is the norm. Reception on the tongue is the norm. No document ever ordered the removal of altar rails, etc.
That said, there are arguments for preferring one form or the other based upon what truly is different. But, it is really difficult to compare them, when one has never seen an OF mass celebrated the way it could/should be done.
Pax Christi
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jmj1984
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Of course the question then becomes did the NO itself tend towards these so called ‘abuses’?
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JKirkLVNV
Guest
I don’t offer personal commentary on the advisability or the inadvisabilty of any of the above, but merely that:
-the use of female servers is permitted by the legitimate authority
-the use of EMHC’s is permitted by the legitimate authority
-reception of Holy Communion in the hand and in procession is permitted by the legitimate authority.
-the priest facing the congregation is permitted by legitimate authority.
-the vernacular Mass exists and is permitted by the legitimate authority.
-the dialogue Mass exists and is permitted by the legitimate authority.
Which means that even if an OF Mass has all the above, it’s legitimate (because it exists by the legitimate authority), our sentiments about what it SHOULD look like being irrelevant.
I can’t really speak about music, but as far as I know, as egregious as I find most of it, it’s permitted by the legitimate authority (there’s a lot of wiggle room around the pipe organ and Gregorian chant having “pride of place,” and while the Church may commend them to us, she does not require them for “legitimacy” ) Modest attire? Holy Mother Church will have to set a standard. I know “traditionalists” who think pants on a woman are immodest and “liberals” who think shorts above the knee are modest enough.
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Dan_Daly
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I never said that any of those things wasn’t permitted or that the OF was invalid. It’s perfectly valid. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Including all the things I listed in a OF mass would be perfectly valid as well.
There has been a very pervasive movement to stretch the letter of the law as far as it can go in order to do things clearly beyond the spirit- placing the tabernacle in “a place of reverence” that is in reality a closet is probably the most egregious example.
The Liturgy is at the heart of the faith. The Faith, or at least the Faithful are in very big trouble, at least in Europe and the US. It’s reasonable to ask if there is a connection between the changes in the liturgy and the massive decline in the faith (about half of Catholics don’t attend mass, 80%+ contracept, etc). I am not arguing that the problems began with the New Mass, because they didn’t. But the New Mass has been used as a pretext for modernists to advance their agenda in many ways. In cases where the letter of the law wouldn’t stretch far enough, people have simply ignored. For example, you said Holy Mother Church would have to set a standard on modest attire. Well she did, at least one aspect…did you know women were required under Canon law to cover their heads at mass until 1983…long after most has simply decided to simply ignore the law. The law was changed after people had been ignoring it. The same goes for female servers and communion in the hand. There is a strong argument that while these are permitted by the proper authorities, that permission was a reward for disobedience.
I don’t have the gift of prophecy, but if forced to guess I’d say if the Catholic Church is to survive in the US it will be through the EF, or a return of the OF to something very like the EF (if not a return altogether). This may sound outlandish on the surface, but when I go to an OF mass I see a congregation that is many people who will be dead in 10-15 years. When I go to the EF I see plenty of young families with a great many children, and the children are being instructed in the faith and brought up to treasure it. That is not to say that doesn’t also happen at OF parishes, but percentage wise, I think the demographics are going to swing rather dramatically in the next 15-20 years, where the EF presence will become a much bigger part of the picture in the American church, and hopefully the world as well.
Pax Christi
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ProVobis
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So you love the OF conditionally?
Seems to me that someone who prefers the OF should accept all the options, all the vernaculars which are offered, all the music, and all the new church architecture. If you only like certain things about it and only in English, sorry, I don’t see any true love there. Just my opinion.
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TimothyH
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The church has made clear that these are not requirements to make the Mass legitimate.
They are your preferences, but have no bearing on the legitimacy of the Mass in the OF.
-Tim-
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Dan_Daly
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Again, I have never said the OF is not valid- if that is what you mean by legitimacy.
However, some of the things I mentioned- all male servers and communion on the tongue for example are the NORM for the Ordinary Form of the Latin Rite. So the question becomes why are so many so hostile to their own tradition? Your argument cuts both ways, you don’t need to have the approved innovations for a valid mass either.
And again, there is a perfectly valid question to ask…are these innovations, whether they are approved or not, eroding the beliefs of the faithful? Thankfully I am far from the only one asking that question. It seems like some folks pretty high up and a lot smarter than I am are too. Including our Holy Father who now only distributes the Blessed Sacrament to those who receive it on the tongue at his Masses.
Pax Christi
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Dan_Daly
Guest
So if you love the Mass, you have to love ugly buildings that look more like a spaceship than a church? I fail to see how one requires the other.
Pax Christi
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ProVobis
Guest
But the argument is that the Mass is the Mass, regardless of where it takes place or whether the building holding it is ugly. Don’t forget, some EF’s are said in those “ugly” buildings as well, but if we really love the EF, we won’t make it a big deal whether it’s said on a spaceship or on the backend of a truck.
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