Al Masetti:
Nowadays we understand about blood sugar levels and all that… but back then, nothing from supper time until well into the next day… it’s a whole nuther trip. Add some HOT August weather and no airconditioning… packed into a hot room with hundreds of other people… with no air circulation except for a couple of tall fans. Nowadays we might actually be able to measure the temperature of the room.
The ushers used to set out folding chairs in the vestibule of the church and carry out the folks who fainted.
I think you’re perhaps a little misleading here. The rule was nothing from midnight until one made one’s communion; and there were plenty of very early Masses, both Sundays and weekdays. People who went ‘well into the next day’, and heard Mass at, say, 10 or 11 o’clock, often didn’t receive Communion - there was no stigma about that, and those around simply assumed that the non-receivers had broken their fast.
Don’t you feel it’s gone too far the other way? One hour before Communion, reduced to 15 minutes for those who have problems: it just means not eating from about the Gospel onwards! The three-hour fast introduced well before VII was a reasonable compromise, I’ve always thought - not medically unwise (even for diabetics), but enough to make one realise that one is fasting just a little. Heavens, I’ll refrain from food for most of the day if I’m going to eat out in a good restaurant: can’t I do far less than that to honour our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament?
On the overall question: I don’t know whether I’m a pre- or post-VII Catholic because of my odd religious background. Briefly: I’m Jewish by birth, but was attracted to Catholicism from the age of 12, and secretly attended Mass, read Catholic books, etc, without my parents’ knowledge - that was from 1965 - but when I was 16, fell in love with a boy who was ‘converted’ to Evangelical Protestantism in his first term at Cambridge, so I obediently became an Evangelical too. After 28 years as an Evangelical, married to a guy I’d met through the Oxford Christian Union, I had a sudden and rather extraordinary conversion to Catholicism.
The Mass as I’d known it was ‘Tridentine’, but always dialogue - I don’t think I ever attended a High Mass; in Latin, obviously, but I did seven years of Latin at school, and that wasn’t a problem. When I was received, in 1998, it was all Novus Ordo. My parish doesn’t go in for abuses on the whole, and although I missed the Latin and thought that much of the ICEL version was rather poor, I didn’t immediately realise what was going on in the wider church, so to speak. That took time. Meanwhile, an elderly friend with no transport needed to go to the Indult Masses which took place at times in our area, and I would take her. Initially I was very puzzled by the old rite - no dialogue, so much silence…I remember being horrified that the Elevation took place before I’d even realised that the Host had been consecrated! However, it grew on me - I’d now go quite a long way for an traditional Mass. (In fact, when we were in the USA on holiday earlier this month, I drove across Chicago, where we were staying for two days, to get to the 6.30 am Mass at St John Cantius, which is in the old rite.)
So where do I fit in? I certainly was attending Mass and reading Catholic stuff before 1969, when the rite was changed; but I’m not really a pre-Vatican II Catholic, as when the Council started, I was about 8! My spiritual nourishment these days is about 60% pre-VII stuff, though there are a lot of good books out there written more recently: we had to buy an extra suitcase to hold all the books - largely Ignatius Press - which I’d bought in the States!
There - I’ve obeyed the instruction ‘Please explain’, and I’m sorry if it’s gone on too long.
Sue
