You can not “defend” the Mass. The Mass in Latin is a beautiful thing, but your grandma is right. It was in a language that the VAST majority of the faithful could not understand, very few people did anything more than walk in, go to communion and walk out when the Mass ended.
I would ask YOU a question. Why do you, who obviously did not live during the era when the Tridentenine Mass was the only Mass used in the Latin Rite, prefer it to the Mass that the Church uses? I would bet that it seems more mysterious, because it is in a foreign language.
Having lived in the ear before Vatican II, and converting to the Catholic Church before Vatican II, I sincerely hope and pray that the next Pope will permanently outlaw the use of that Mass.
It’s about time that the “traditionalists” rejoin the church as it is, and stop trying to yank it back to the middle ages again.
O_M,
Surely you don’t mean that one needs to be fluent in Latin in order to derive graces/blessings from the TLM? After all, for us American folks, the English translation parallels the Latin text in order to surmount that very obstacle.
As for those who apparently do little more than walk in, receive Holy Communion, then walk out of Mass (with the inference that such people “got” little or nothing from the TLM), that very same depiction would suit most NO Masses that I attend. Sure, they walk out right after receiving: skipping the post-Communion prayer, the final blessing and the dismissal. Pre-Vatican II Masses, in the manner you describe them, did not have exclusive domain in that respect.
In answer to your question, Why?–please o.k. my interception–I attend the TLM because, for me, it more soundly, more richly and more beautifully expresses the Catholic Faith which I have come to embrace as a convert from Pentecostalism (long after the Council adjourned). Those like myself cannot be cataloged as looking backward (i.e. into the years prior to Vatican II), since such a reference point, for us, does not exist. To the contrary, we are forward-looking, full of hope nurtured by the TLM. And for me to say that the “mysteriousness” of Latin as a foreign language constituted the primary attractant would be short-changing the Mass at best, profaning it at worst.
You seem disgruntled with our current Holy Father, Benedict XVI, because he is taking resolute and positive measures to preserve the precious patrimony of the Traditional Latin Mass. Your express desire that the TLM be permanently outlawed (!) by the “next pope” baffles me, especially since you offer no supporting rationale for that sort of violent predisposition toward those of us who are devoted to the TLM,
We “Traditionalists”–here I mean those of us not in formal schism–needn’t “rejoin” the Church, since we never forfeited our membership or had it revoked. In fact, our aim is to be Church members more and more fully. with greater zeal and intensity in the Faith, with ever-increasing love for Our Lord and Our Lady.
Lastly, please don’t malign the Middle Ages (I honestly can’t fathom why a Roman Catholic would ever wish to). That era, rightly dubbed the “Age of Faith”, gave us great saints, like Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great and Bonaventure, just to name a few. (Check the new, post-Vatican II calendar; they’re still there.) Terms like “Middle Ages” or “Medieval” have for some reason been given a “negative spin” lately, particularly in reference to the Church. Those who wield them with derision, as bywords, also exhibit the tendency to ignore large chunks of history, disavowing the Church Herself in the process. This amounts to practical–call it “temporal”–schism.
Cordially,
PAB
