Having your own missal: a 35-year tradition?

[MarkThompson]

Thank you Mark for your response.

Like I said, most of the Mass is audible so I was in no way saying that there wasn’t a time during the Mass where the faithful wouldn’t be able to understand what was being said by the priest. Secondly I get your point about the gradual but I’m confused about something. If people can understand what they are singing then why can’t they understand what they are hearing? Sure it’s not something you’re going to be able to pick up right away but like I said earlier, if picking up these things and training yourself to listen for them was an indispensable practice for being able to understand what was going on, then how is it not possible that this ability might have been common place for people back then? For example would it be right for me to assume that the proper way for riding a horse was not common knowledge amongst people in the old days because it’s not common knowledge amongst people in our present time?

It doesn’t really work out that way, though. I could read a rap song out loud if I had the words in front of me, but that doesn’t mean that when I tune the dial to a hip-hop station I have any idea what those guys are saying most of the time. In a 1956 letter published in The Catholic Choirmaster, a Sister Monique from a convent in New York wrote, “[N]o Catholic choir that I have heard yet . . . including our own Sisters’ Schola Cantorum, ever sings so you can understand a word they say.”

Besides which, for people at the time, listening and picking out the words was the farthest thing from an “indispensable practice” – it could easily be dispensed with by not paying attention, and going to low Mass at all costs, as so many people did. I remember how Thomas Day described those times in Why Catholics Can’t Sing. On one occasion when the priest announced that an expected low Mass would actually be celebrated as a high Mass:
All the members of my family looked at one another in terror. You would have thought the pastor had just announced that there was a bomb hidden somewhere in the church. My family did not need any discussion. We all got up at once and headed for the exits, as did three-fourths of the congregation… I can remember the relief we all felt when we stepped into the sunshine. It was like escaping from a dangerous coal mine, just before the roof collapsed.
And even if you stuck around and were able to hear the words, what would you have heard? When bands weren’t playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” at the Offertory (W.F.P. Stockley, Reforms in Church Music, in Catholic World, vol. LXXIV (1902)), the choir might have been singing a mutilated Credo with heretical lyrics like “genitum non factum, factum non genitum” (The Pope and the Reform in Church Music, American Ecclesiastical Review, vol. XXX (1904)).

Sadly Mark I feel that this could be applied to the state of affairs at a typical Mass even today. Although I do wonder where this myth that “silence = nonparticipation” came from? If it’s not a myth then I better tell people in the adoration chapels to start talking more because if they remain silent they’re not really participating in adoration!

Silence isn’t the issue, of course. People who think that the congregation has to be making noise and moving around have little understanding of how the individual ought to connect with the liturgy. The issue is whether people are disengaged, e.g. “just saying and doing nothing at all, being physically present with the minimum of attention and intention demanded.”

 

[Saint_Anonymous]

Do they, in fact, understand what they are singing? Do the members of a schola singing Gregorian chant really understand what they are singing or do they just sing words? I’m not saying they don’t but consider this: Céline Dion first English album was a hit but she didn’t understand anything but ‘yes’ and ‘no’. She had to do an intensive study of the language to know what she was singing.

A local harmony group sings “Gaudete!” None are Catholic and I know none of them understand Latin. Yet they do a great job on that beautiful song.

Thanks for the response Phemie.

You’re arguing the point I’m trying to make and that is opinions aren’t fact. Sorry I know my methods of getting a point across or rather confusing and unorthodox but hey I like em.

 

[Denise1957]

I suppose that depends on what you mean. I don’t understand any German beyond “Ich bin ein Berliner,” but I could “attend a mass” in German. I know what is is going on at the various points, and in short order I could pick up on things like “Und mit deinem Geiste,” which is apparently, the German for “And with your ghost.” In that sense, anyone can “attend” a Mass in Latin.

But if your hypothesis is that in the good old days most people could sit and listen to, say, an Epistle read out loud in Latin and know what was being said, I think you will find that there is no evidence that that is true. And this would be doubly so at most Masses, since the Epistle, like most everything else, would be read inaudibly. Or consider, too, something like the Gradual. It would either be read silently, or it would be sung by a choir or schola. As someone who knows Latin and Gregorian chant, I can safely say that I find it virtually impossible to just pick up the words of a sung melismatic Gradual from hearing it. Give it it a try yourself as an exercise: listen to this recording of the Gradual for this coming Sunday, and see how many of the words you can pick out. Without a missal or some other adequate aid, one’s hopes of praying the Mass rather than just praying at Mass just aren’t very good.

In 1959, Canon J.B. O’Connell – an astute observer whom you may know best as the prelate who took up the mantle of Fortescue’s Ceremonies of the Roman Rite Described, or as the editor of the Roman Martyrology – painted the state of affairs at a typical Mass this way:
The priest celebrated “his” Mass at the altar, taking no account of anyone except the server; and the people “heard” their Mass, while, for the most part, saying their private prayers, or just saying and doing nothing at all, being physically present with the minimum of attention and intention demanded by the moral theologians to fulfil the obligation of “hearing Mass.”
Sounds great, right?

It’s interesting how Catholics who are against the TLM/EF will find things such as this to prove their point. The above quote by Canon J.B. O’Connell is simply his opinion. What criteria does he use to judge whether or not Catholics are “saying and doing nothing at all, being physically present with the minimum attention and intention demanded by the moral theologians to fulfil the obligation of hearing Mass?”

Furthermore, could you please give examples of what the moral theologians have supposedly demanded regarding how much attention and intention must be visibly and obviously paid by the faithful at Mass in order to fulfil the obligation of hearing Mass? Who is it that is supposed to judge this?

 

[roadsend]

I think if the truth were known, most clergy who speak against Latin are doing so because they are just too lazy to learn it or use it.

Same with the laity. If one doesn’t understand the EF or can’t follow along, it’s simply a lack of effort. Folks with reading disorders or the like, understandable. But for most of us, if we don’t understand or can’t participate in the EF, then it’s simply because we don’t want to.

And that’s fine, there are vernacular OF’s aplenty. But it just seems silly some would put forth so much effort to convince the Catholic world that a Latin Mass is too hard to understand, when in fact so much less effort is required to do so.

Jews world wide learn enough Hebrew to read Haftorah by thirteen when they Bar Mitzva.

More than a billion Muslims in more than 50 countries learn to understand enough Arabic to read Koran and participate in prayer call, even though many of these folks are otherwise illiterate.

Yet Roman Catholics are somehow too stupid or lazy to learn enough Latin to sing our traditional Latin hymns or follow a Traditional Mass even with a Latin-vernacular Missal in their hands?
What a bunch of whiners and slackers we have in our Church.

 

[Monica4316]

I think this probably requires greater research.

For example, in Protestant websites, they sometimes talk about how the Catholic Church “banned” the Bible in the vernacular during the Reformation, - when really it banned the Protestant translations of the Bible which had errors (in one case, “faith alone” was even inserted where it just said “faith”).

 

[MarkThompson]

It’s interesting how Catholics who are against the TLM/EF will find things such as this to prove their point.

Who ever said I’m against it? I like going to the TLM, so you can count yourself wrong on that one. The problem is when people like you make it impossible to conduct any sort of historical discussion or inquiry about the actual state of the liturgy and Catholic practice before Vatican II, because even the most factual, blandly-phrased criticism – even when made by respected, traditional churchmen of the time – draws cries of, “See!?! You hate the TLM!!!” Why don’t you just accept that I am not against the TLM, and take it from there?

The above quote by Canon J.B. O’Connell is simply his opinion. What criteria does he use to judge whether or not Catholics are “saying and doing nothing at all, being physically present with the minimum attention and intention demanded by the moral theologians to fulfil the obligation of hearing Mass?”

Furthermore, could you please give examples of what the moral theologians have supposedly demanded regarding how much attention and intention must be visibly and obviously paid by the faithful at Mass in order to fulfil the obligation of hearing Mass? Who is it that is supposed to judge this?

I think you already know the answers to these questions, which is presumably why you are so troubled. Besides which, the man was the author of a wide variety of ceremonials, books on rubrics, a book on the Sacred Heart, did the official translations of numerous Holy See documents on the liturgy, edited the Martyrology, and was a diocesan priest for about 60 years. Since he died in 1977, I’m afraid I can’t ask him about the specifics of what he observed over those decades, though.

 

[ProVobis]

I think if the truth were known, most clergy who speak against Latin are doing so because they are just too lazy to learn it or use it.

Or as Dom Gueranger pointed out:

"Since the liturgical reform had for one of its principal aims the abolition of actions and formulas of mystical signification, it is a logical consequence that its authors had to vindicate the use of the vernacular in divine worship. This in the eyes of the sectarians is a most important item. Cult is no secret matter. The people, they say, must understand what they sing.

"Hatred for the Latin language is inborn in the heart of all enemies of Rome. They recognize it as the bond of Catholics throughout the universe, as the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit. They consider it the most efficient weapon of the papacy. 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 cult than the Protestant people.

"At every hour of the day divine worship takes place in Catholic churches. (It had been that) The faithful Catholic who assists leaves his mother tongue at the door. Apart from 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 latter does not 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 destroying it, it would be well on its way to victory.”

 

[Denise1957]

Who ever said I’m against it? I like going to the TLM, so you can count yourself wrong on that one. The problem is when people like you make it impossible to conduct any sort of historical discussion or inquiry about the actual state of the liturgy and Catholic practice before Vatican II, because even the most factual, blandly-phrased criticism – even when made by respected, traditional churchmen of the time – draws cries of, “See!?! You hate the TLM!!!” Why don’t you just accept that I am not against the TLM, and take it from there?

I think you already know the answers to these questions, which is presumably why you are so troubled. Besides which, the man was the author of a wide variety of ceremonials, books on rubrics, a book on the Sacred Heart, did the official translations of numerous Holy See documents on the liturgy, edited the Martyrology, and was a diocesan priest for about 60 years. Since he died in 1977, I’m afraid I can’t ask him about the specifics of what he observed over those decades, though.

No, I do not know the answers to the questions I asked you. And you obviously don’t know the answers either. And yet you are willing to take his word for it that, for the most part, Catholics didn’t pay much attention at Mass in those days, and that they were not then fulfilling the requirement of the moral theologians (or according to the moral theologians, rather). I would like to know what these moral theologians required, exactly, and who is supposed to judge as to whether or not Catholics are paying attention at Mass, and how they judge this.

 

[George_Stegmeir]

For what its worth to those who wrote of illiterate priests who did not understand Latin:
NEVAH HOPPENED!!! As far back as the Dark Ages, the priest was the most educated individual in the community. Not only was he often was the only literate person in his community, (he had to be to read the Gospel and the Epistles at Mass) He was fluent in the Latin language. This tradition continued until the mid 20th century. I attended a juniorette run by Franciscan brothers on Long Island in the late 1940’s and remember visiting priests from foriegn countries who had no common language with the Local priests and brothers conversing with their American counterparts in fluent Latin.
Several years later, at a Jesuit parish in Miami, Florida, I remember visiting priests from Asia conversing with the parish priests in Latin.
As for the Holy Missal, I can’t speak for the American (Irish based) Catholic tradition, but I have a Missal in Polish/Latin from my Grandmother. The publishing date is 1890, and it has a Warsaw imprimatur and an approved stamp from an Imperial Russian Censor. have also seen German/Latin Missals dating from the early 1800’s.
In the US, except for States that were originally Spanish Colonies, the earliest Catholic Churches date from the early 1800’s ( Boston, MA and Richmond VA, 1805)
and the fact that the Catholic Church was rigorously repressed by the Brittish until the 20th Century, it is understandable that pre 20th Century English/Latin Missals are rare.

 

[MarkThompson]

No, I do not know the answers to the questions I asked you. And you obviously don’t know the answers either. And yet you are willing to take his word for it that, for the most part, Catholics didn’t pay much attention at Mass in those days, and that they were not then fulfilling the requirement of the moral theologians. I would like to know what these moral theologians required, exactly, and who is supposed to judge as to whether or not Catholics are paying attention at Mass, and how they judge this.

I certainly don’t know, but as you’re aware the standard is clearly extremely low. As far as I’m aware, it mostly amounts to “being there” with the intention to assist at Mass (i.e., not just being there by accident), even if you spend much of the time in a confessional doing a private Confession, then pop out and grab a smoke during the sermon, etc. Sort of the lay equivalent of the generic intention to “do what the Church does.” And I don’t know what you mean about who “judges” it. God? I suppose six decades of careful pastoral and liturgical work would at least give you some picture, though.

I can tell this really hit a nerve with you; you have my apologies and my assurance that that wasn’t my intent. Rather, I would hope that the discussion could be less about what the absolute theoretical minimum is, and more about how things actually were and what, if anything, the Church did or might have done to encourage and help people to rise above that.

 

[ProVobis]

…and the fact that the Catholic Church was rigorously repressed by the Brittish until the 20th Century, it is understandable that pre 20th Century English/Latin Missals are rare.

Good point. And even those translations seemed to be heavily influenced by the Church of England.

 

[Saint_Anonymous]

It’s interesting how Catholics who are against the TLM/EF will find things such as this to prove their point. The above quote by Canon J.B. O’Connell is simply his opinion. What criteria does he use to judge whether or not Catholics are “saying and doing nothing at all, being physically present with the minimum attention and intention demanded by the moral theologians to fulfil the obligation of hearing Mass?”

Furthermore, could you please give examples of what the moral theologians have supposedly demanded regarding how much attention and intention must be visibly and obviously paid by the faithful at Mass in order to fulfil the obligation of hearing Mass? Who is it that is supposed to judge this?

I find it very interesting as well.

Originally Posted by Mark

And even if you stuck around and were able to hear the words, what would you have heard? When bands weren’t playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” at the Offertory (W.F.P. Stockley, Reforms in Church Music, in Catholic World, vol. LXXIV (1902)),

I really do not understand why you even mentioned this? Although thanks for mentioning it. I looked it up and enjoyed reading a defence of the Church’s sacred music and its importance: especially that it be preserved from abuses like “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and other secular styles. If only Catholics these days had the same view and love for sacred music. In fact if anything the theme of the article supports my theory that the Catholics that cared about the Mass back then did their best to offer a Mass (a Latin Mass nonetheless) that could be understood by the faithful and that this type attitude was seen not just as a normal practice amongst good Catholics but as a moral obligation. I don’t know something tells me that the good Catholics back then probably knew their Latin Mass better than the ones today.

If anyone else wants to read it or listen to it here is a link. The “read aloud” option is in the upper right corner, it’s the icon that looks like a speaker.

archive.org/stream/catholicworld74pauluoft#page/282/mode/2up/search/283

 

[MarkThompson]

I really do not understand why you even mentioned this? Although thanks for mentioning it. I looked it up and enjoyed reading a defence of the Church’s sacred music and its importance: especially that it be preserved from abuses like “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and other secular styles. If only Catholics these days had the same view and love for sacred music. In fact if anything the theme of the article supports my theory that the Catholics that cared about the Mass back then did their best to offer a Mass (a Latin Mass nonetheless) that could be understood by the faithful and that this type attitude was seen not just as a normal practice amongst good Catholics but as a moral obligation. I don’t know something tells me that the good Catholics back then probably knew their Latin Mass better than the ones today.

Yes, wasn’t if funny how much that article – a list of devastating complaints about pervasive abuses and deficiencies, with proposed solutions – reads like a post from Fr. Z or Rorate Caeli? I guess the main difference between then and now is that this article didn’t draw 100 derisive comments about how all this abuse and gross disrespect of the sacred liturgy was proof of the “Nervous Disordo mentality.”

 

[Saint_Anonymous]

I guess the main difference between then and now is that this article didn’t draw 100 derisive comments about how all this abuse and gross disrespect of the sacred liturgy was proof of the “Nervous Disordo mentality.”

I dont know Mark I got this weird feeling that if the technology was available back then they would have pulled in 100,000,000 comments about how all this abuse and gross disresepct of the sacred liturgy was proof of the “Nervous Disordo mentality.” if such a mentality existed.

 

[At_Trent]

I think there is a great difference between understanding what is happening at Mass and understanding the language in which it is celebrated. If I attend an OF Mass in Japanese I’m not even going to be able to make one audible response but I’ll still know what’s going on and I’ll be participating in my own way. It should be the same if one attends an EF Mass. We know what is going on. That in no way means we understand the language.

But we are not required to become fluent in Latin. And there are so few words and phrases we need to learn in the EF. It’s not hard at all to know what those words mean, and the rest is in the missal.

Vernacular doesn’t solve anything anyhow, except regionally, as you noted.

 

[Warrenton]

How was this even possible? I’m greatly confused…

Additionally, since most peasants were often too afraid to take Communion, what did anyone actually get out of God from Mass before missals? This is disgusting!

We have a French missal from the mid 1800s, so they were around.

The main thing is, however, that the mentality of Catholics was different in prior to the late 19th Century.

This is better, or worse, depending on whom you ask.

If you asked the typical Catholic of 1840 what the mass was, he would tell you it was Christ made flesh. He knew it was holy, and that the priest was performing a miracle. He knew he was bound to attend when the priest said to do so. But our good man put the mass in a context that we no longer have.

The average Catholic also knew a number of other prayers that discipline required, for example the Angelus, morning and evening prayer, local rituals in honor of this or that saint or miraculous occurence. The average Catholic probably knew the basic sense of those prayers, and knew the purpose of asking the Lord for help. The average Catholic probably had a family member in the clergy, also, so the distance between the laity and the clergy was less for more people than today.

They believed in a hierachy of society: they did not expect the bishop to reap wheat, and they did not expect to be asked to say the mass. That kind of levelling they eschewed as Protestant, and to be fair, by the 1800s, most European Protestants had returned to the Catholic understanding of the world and its order.

If they did not take communion with the frequency we do, it was because they understood its holiness better. Many Orthodox do not commune weekly for the same reason to this day. St. Paul cautioned us not to take the blessed sacrament unworthily.

The daily and weekly practices of Catholicism began to change with urbanization. Even an Italian factory worker was no longer free to stop working at sunset to pray the Angelus. But Sunday was preserved thanks to the clear prohibition against servile work, and perforce, the Church had to gather her flock as changing times permitted. Hence, the extreme focus on the mass, to the exclusion of many other types of prayer.

Which, really, is better knowing the literal words of the closing prayer, or the secret, or having the inner conviction that Christ is present in body and spirit in His Church, and that His Church is the sole means of salvation?

I sum it up this way: then, they believed more and understood less. Now, we understand more but don’t believe it.

Your own dear Domincan, St. Thomas, teaches us which is more pleasing to the Lord.

 

[At_Trent]

Jews world wide learn enough Hebrew to read Haftorah by thirteen when they Bar Mitzva.

More than a billion Muslims in more than 50 countries learn to understand enough Arabic to read Koran and participate in prayer call, even though many of these folks are otherwise illiterate.

Yet Roman Catholics are somehow too stupid or lazy to learn enough Latin to sing our traditional Latin hymns or follow a Traditional Mass even with a Latin-vernacular Missal in their hands?
What a bunch of whiners and slackers we have in our Church.

Good point

 

[Will_S]

Not having read the thread, it is not too difficult to find Vernacular/Latin hand missals from the 1700s and 1800s on google books…

 

[At_Trent]

Or as Dom Gueranger pointed out:

I’ll have to read more of his writings. Interesting opinion he has.

 

[Like]

They have their whole beings to offer.

I know this is off topic, but believe it or not, there are protestants who live their whole lives in a way that they believe is pleasing to God, even if though are unknowingly in error and I believe God takes note of that.

Spot on TrueLight!!!