Cat;3096357:
I’m with the OP. I greatly prefer the NO. I doubt I would have ever become Catholic if the only experience I had was TLM. I think it’s weird and spooky. Sorry to all who consider it reverent and meaningful. I can’t help the way I feel.
I don’t like hearing a foreign language because it means nothing to me, even with a translation. I live in the U.S. and I like the English language…
…the two phrases above carry about as childish an intellectual quotient that I’ve seen on these boards…weird and spooky???
Time honored traditions you haven’t experienced generate fear in you? *Don’t like hearing a foreign language??? *The Bible was composed in Koine Greek, with subsequent translations into many languages…does it also mean nothing to you…
IrishBrigade, I’m afraid it’s so. Perhaps it’s because I have been part of U.S. “culture” for 50 years, and I have been heavily influenced, I’m sorry to say, by horror movies and television shows in which Gregorian chant and Latin (and other languages) are used to convey “spookiness.”
I’ve also been heavily influenced by my 40+ years as an evangelical Protestant. Although I was fortunate that none of my churches were virulently anti-Catholic, we were definitely taught to be suspicious of “ancient traditions.” It’s hard to shake so many years of teaching and experience.
It is a shame, I know, but as I said in my earlier post, I can’t help the way I feel. I just get the heebie-jeebies.
Don’t you have certain situations that creep you out? Darkness? Funeral homes? Hospitals? (I work in a hospital, and I know that some people can’t even force themselves to walk through the front door to see a loved one). Drills? (Dentist pain).
So please cut me some slack. I did make it very clear in my post that I fully support the TLM and firmly believe that ALL Catholics should have access to this Mass. I think it’s a shame that many Catholics have to drive long distances to attend a TLM.
In my city, we are fortunate that the TLM has been offered since the mid-1980s. The bishop back then established it, and the current bishop has continued to support the establishment of TLMs in our city and other cities.
I know several people who attend, and to be honest, they are kind of strange. But just recently, I met a childhood friend who has converted to Catholicism and attends the TLM, and she was very sweet and normal, and she helped me to conquer some of my heebie-jeebies about the TLM attendees. Thank the Lord for her.
And yes, you are right. Greek means nothing to me! I know two words of Greek:
kyrie eleison. I am
extremely grateful that other well-educated and gifted men and women have taken on the task over the centuries of translating the Bible into my language! God bless them! I would be lost without them.
I do know a little German–very little German! I’m just not very good with foreign languages. I can’t do rebuses either–I have never, ever solved a puzzle on “Wheel of Fortune,” even when all the letters except one are revealed!

And I’m awful at things like Rubik’s Cube and other puzzles involving spatial comprehension. And I can’t read upside down.
So you’re probably right–there is an “intellectual childishness” here! But that’s OK–the Lord told us to come to Him like little children, and when it comes to high and mighty things, I am definitely a little child.
And I do have intellect in other areas. I’m not a total dolt. I’m happy with how the Lord created me.