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edwest2
Guest
Oh brother. You could get a missal that had the Latin and the English. Latin was taught in my Catholic school. My parents spoke more than one language.
Peace,
Ed
Peace,
Ed
In 500 years time, what will be said of the 50 years since VaticanII?
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L
laszlo
Guest
What I am waiting desperately is the report of TLM churches which have 7 or more masses at a weekend, and which are always full. For some reason although there are many traditionalist people here, I believe almost all the TLM churches are somewhat covered, but no such reports.
It is regular traditionalist slogan that the reason that the Mass attendance shrank is the New Mass. This brings in the numbers.
The only thing what the numbers prove that the agiornamento in the Liturgy, the vernacular and the active participation helped to diminish the trend which otherwise shrank the church attendance. We safely can say, that the English survey was right, and only 10% of the (English) Catholics would even try to attend TLM.
You must understand that the world changed, and it was not the XXI Ecumenical council which changed the world. When I was child the baroness asked the policemen to bring people to the church, and the came, only the sick and the caregivers well allowed to stay home. This world is gone
Also when I was child there was nothing else to do at Sunday morning, but the Mass. No mall, no TV, no theaters, even the Pubs were closed. This time is gone.
The shrunken attendance is consequence of the changes, the new form helped to diminish that shrinkage, and the perspective of the history will show that.
Telling that the XXI Ecumenical council is the reason of the problems, worth as much as if someone would say the the XIX Ecumenical council is the reason that half of Western Europe was lost to the Protestantism, or going further back to say that the decrees of St Leo IX were the reason of the another 50% loss for the Orthodoxy.
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ProVobis
Guest
In my pre-Vatican II parish, we had 7 Masses just on a Sunday morning, most of them not just full, but standing-only people as well. Good enough for you?
That same parish today has only four Sunday morning Masses, minus the balcony and confession boxes, the two Spanish Masses perhaps being the best attended.
We’ll be having a 50-yr reunion later this year and if I hear of 7 or more English Masses there, always full, I will let you know.
C
ConstantineTG
Guest
I find this is a weak argument to support Latin. Why? Not everyone is in the situation as you have. There are people who can speak many different languages, 5 an up. And there are those who only speak one. Does that mean those who speak only one are stupid or lazy? Of course not! But the circumstances of the lives of those who speak more than one language made it possible for them to speak more than one. We can’t expect every person to do or be something just because we did or are. I figured out how to troubleshoot computers by myself, and this was even before the Internet was around. Why are there still people today who just have no clue when a computer starts spitting out errors? Should I be hard on them for not learning how to at least “first aid” their PCs?
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Credo_in_Deum
Guest
Bingo
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JReducation
Guest
That is hard to tell. When you read many of the ancient documents written by the early Franciscans and by people living during his time and in central Italy, around the Umbrian area, you find that they have a lot of things in common with the Venetians. Look at the cross of San Damiano. It’s not a crucifix. It’s an icon. It came from Venice. We know that the Venetians were not strictly Latin Catholics. In fact, they hated Rome. OK, so some things have never changed.
We also know that Francis had great respect for Islam. While he understood the errors of Islam, he also admired some things about the Islamic people and their religion. He incorporated some of these elements into his religious family. For example, he was impressed by their love for Mary. He was also impressed that their laity was much more faithful to the prayer cycle than was the Catholic laity. He liked the simplicity of their prayer environments. Remember, he probably never saw a mosque. He met them in Dalmietta. I’m not sure if they had a mosque. Whatever the case may be, mosque or tent, their environment is usually clutter free. Francis liked that.
He also French. Though he was born in Italy, his Mother Tongue is French. We know that he spoke better French than Italian. That was probably a result of being raised by a French mother with an absent father. By the time that he joins his father in his business and interacts constantly with the Italian speaking world, Francis is in his mid teens, about 16. Prior to that he had lived in this very sheltered French life that his mother provided.
I think that what he brings to the table of liturgy, Church architecture and prayer is a blend of these great traditions through which God found him. It’s very important to remember that this is not a tradition where a man sets out to find God. The Franciscan Tradition is much more in keeping with the Augustinian Tradition. You find God only because you have been found by him. Then God leads you to men.
My academic guess is that those early chapels that Francis built were not French, Venetian or Muslim (Byzantine included) influence. They were a reflection of a relationship with God. God was Trinitarian and yet was one. Therefore, he is the simple God. He is a self-contained community that needs no one else or any outside influence. Therefore, his reach for man is an act of love and generosity. He is not a god who needs men, but a God who loves men. In Francis’ theology, it is very appropriate for God to be present in the same space, but not on the same altar where the sacrifice is taking place. Francis’ understanding of liturgy was that it preserved and presented the oneness of God without blurring the distinctive persons in God. Since there is no way that man can actually reproduce this mystery, the only way was to have three essential components in one place, but not on one table.
He had the Blessed Sacrament on separate piece of furniture, which was to be adorned with the beauty. Here we have the eternal God who is incarnate. He had the sacrifice on the altar. There you have the sacrifice to the Father. And you had the friars around that altar, so that the Church, brought together and bound by the Holy Spirit is also visibly present. The mass and the space for the mass, in Franciscan theology is Trinitarian. We see the Father, Son and Spirit. We see the Incarnation, the Sacrifice and the Communion within the Church.
Everything is in threes and it’s not accidental. Even the furnishings came in threes. There was an altar of sacrifice. A table for the Blessed Sacrament and a table for the proclamation of the Word.
Whether this is Byzantine or Venetian or local, is not clear. What is clear is that the Holy Spirit uses Francis, his sons and daughters to raise up a spirituality that would rescue Catholic Tradition from an imminent collapse, because Franciscan spirituality expresses the mystical dimension of Christian spirituality that the Latin Church had misplaced. I think that Pope Innocent was very clear on this and that’s why he approved the Rule of St. Francis, a year after he rejected the Rule of St. Dominic.
What Innocent saw was two great armies. The Dominicans who would go out to preach and restore the Church through the power of the Word and the Franciscans who would rebuild and protect the Church by doing absolutely nothing, just being present. They were to be the spirit of the reform. As we all know, the Spirit is very simple. That’s why Franciscan liturgical practices are very simple. But more importantly, the whole movement is very simple. It’s so simple that it is adapted to fit many situations and cultures and times, while remaining faithful to the Rule. Francis deliberately left holes in the rule for the future generations to fill in as needed. He was deliberately ambiguous, not because he was mischievous. He was ambiguous because HE KNEW that Christ would lead his sons and daughters through the Holy Spirit. Christ promised him that he would do this. He had promised him that his sons would see the Second Coming. Christ has promised him that he would be like Abraham and would be the father of many sons and daughters.
In Francis’ mind, there is no reason to clutter the spiritual life, when you have what you need, the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit will be your Guardian. Everything, from liturgy to ministry was very simple and always has an element of mysticism to it that is more Byzantine than Latin, without doing it intentionally.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Ruth_Catherine
Guest
Is this a good and accurate site. Does anyone have any experience with it.?
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laszlo
Guest
It is fact that the Mass attendance from the pre Vatican II 60 % went down to 25% or less. The question is, weather reason is the general secularization (God excluded from the public life, anti-religion or at least religion-less media, secular activities at Sunday morning and so on) or the reforms of Vatican II. Also the question is what would be the case w/o the aggiornamento.
Since there are churches with the traditional Mass, we can compare the attendance today on that Masses, and the attendance in the churches which implemented the reforms. Today, in the same environment.
My thesis is that the aggiornamento Mass draws more people, not less, then the traditional Mass, so it helped and not hurt the Church in the struggle to survive the secularism.
There are problems, imho most importantly the lack of confessions, due to the lack of opportunity for confessions, and the chronic shortage of priests. But simply decrying the XXI Ecumenical council, these problem will not disappear. We need unity, unity around the hierarchy, not against it.
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JReducation
Guest
The bold is mine and I agree with you 100%. This is why I strongly believe that we need to become familiar with the traditions found in the different schools of spirituality: Benedictine, Cluny, Carmelite, Franciscan, Augustinian, Cistercian, Jesuit, Salesian or Passionist.
These schools provide unity. They are inspired by masters on Catholic Life. Many Catholics want to recover tradition without the benefit of a Master Teacher. I believe that this effort, without a focus and a real person to drive it, eventually becomes splintered with everyone pulling in the direction that he or she perceives to be Tradition. It seems that the pull is always around the mass, while ignoring the systems that made it possible for these great schools to properly and reverently celebrate the mass.
One of the beauties of Catholic Tradition is the diverse traditions that make up the Church and that support her. While there is a difference between the Jesuit approach to Christian Spirituality and the Cistercian approach to the same, there is an underlying unity so that they are not in conflict with each other, but they complete each other. Today’s Catholic, who is seeking Tradition, would do well to become familiar with one of these schools and merge with it. That’s where and how you achieve unity.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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Lormar
Guest
Catholics will wonder how anyone survived it with their faith and sanity intact.
I have not read through the five pages of comments, but my personal opinion is that there will be no unity in the Church unless and until more time passes. We are still too close to Vatican II and our biases one way or the other have been formed. When the Church is made up totally of objective thinking generations, then progress will definitely be made.
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Sword_Brethren
Guest
? But they left in droves after the new order of Mass.
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edwest2
Guest
I was in the pre-Vatican II Church. After the not even mentioned by Vatican II changes, I did not love God less or change in any other way. I want what Mother Church wants.
Peace,
Ed
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josephback
Guest
It will be remembered as the time that the Church started going back on the offensive after being in defense mode for centuries due to the Protestant Revolution and Enlightenment. If I’m not mistaken Pope John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope in centuries. The Church resurgent and the gates of hell will not prevail!
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archangel04
Guest
Was it kind of like this?It’s funny. Francis put it on the main altar because our brothers did not live in monasteries. Monasteries always had a side chapel next to the sanctuary. That’s where the Blessed Sacrament was kept. Later, architects would use the monastery model to build the great churches with the side chapels and side altars, but place the tabernacle in the Franciscan position – front center.
The only difference was that in our early chapels the tabernacle was not on the altar of sacrifice. There was a small table against the wall on which the tabernacle sat. The altar of sacrifice was very much like the altars in our moder churches. You know, the ones that Traditionalists call table. That’s a Franciscan concept, not a Protestant one. The Protestants took it from us when they left.
The floor plan was the tabernacle against the wall on a little altar that was almost an over sized pedestal and the altar in front of it so that you could stand on either side of it to celebrate mass.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
This is the Madonna Della Strada in Loyola University Chicago, it’s where I was going for school. Although its Jesuit, the style is very similar to what you describe. BTW I don’t really have much problem with the “table” I actually like them, but it also can’t compete in artistic beauty to the wall altars of most churches
One question Br. Jr, did brother-priest celebrate the mass ad orientem from the beginning all the way to Vat 2? Or were they excluded from this rule and celebrate the mass facing the people, hence the table?
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archangel04
Guest
See I think this is what I might have been missing! I notice as one, at least me, attempts to go down the orthodox (not the church) route one tends to look at so many small things that can be annoying or errors. Nothing wrong with that, but there is only so much the heart can take before starting to become negative and bitter. I now see that perhaps this is the other part of traditional Catholicism that might have been missing! I will look for these books and read them and see where it takes me. Thanks again!
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JReducation
Guest
The early Franciscan chapels were not as large or as beautiful as this chapel, but the floor plan is very similar. The tabernacle and altar are closer. That’s why I suggested that one look at the chapels at EWTN and the Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament (Mother Angelica’s monastery). There is enough room to stand between the tabernacle and altar of sacrifice, but not a football field between them.Was it kind of like this?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_2OEJ7oRCG...AAAlQ/dEk6OYRBJ-Q/s1600/Altar_to_Rear_145.jpg
This is the Madonna Della Strada in Loyola University Chicago, it’s where I was going for school. Although its Jesuit, the style is very similar to what you describe. BTW I don’t really have much problem with the “table” I actually like them, but it also can’t compete in artistic beauty to the wall altars of most churches
Yes and no. The brother-priest always faced ad orientem, but the friars were on either side of the altar. They were not looking at his back as in the traditional Tridentine mass. Remember, they were not as concerned as we are today about “blurring” the lines between the priest and the laity. Francis’ point of view was that they were a brotherhood of equals. The brothers who were priests were men with a special duty to protect the Blessed Sacrament, to celebrate the sacred mysteries with great love and devotion, to provide the sacraments to the rest of their brothers. They were really brothers at the service of the brotherhood. Since there were no lines that divided the brothers (the ordained and the non ordained) there was no blurring and no concern with blurring. This whole concern with blurring is very foreign to the Franciscan family and to many other religious families.
As the order spread through Europe it took on pastoral duties. People flocked to them. As the crowds grew larger, the lay faithful filled the chapels to the door. They did face the priest’s back. This was a quick process. By the time Francis died there were 10 Poor Clare houses, 5,000 friars, and several hundred Secular Franciscans. There was a simplicity to the manner of celebrating the mass. That simplicity was never abandoned. Even after the Council of Trent, the friars were always allowed to keep their customs In fact, the mass promulgated by Pius V was a development of the mass adopted by Francis and his friars. Trent and Pius V made some changes to it, but it was the friars who brought it forward from the Middle Ages to Trent. Until the emergence of Francis and his brothers on the scene, this missal was on a shelf collecting dust. Very few priests and dioceses used it.
However, Francis never envisioned it becoming as complicated as it did. In fact, when he asked Pope Innocent for a different missal than what was being used in his region, it was because the mass that was being celebrated required too many books. Francis begged the Holy Father to give them a missal that would be simple enough for poor friars who could not afford to buy so many books. Innocent gave them an old missal that had never been abrogated, but was not popular at the time.
I think this is what many people desiring Traditional Catholicism are missing. There is too much focus on the external and the mystical is often ignored. The spiritual masters gave us way of life that expresses itself through prayer and reaches its summit in the Liturgy: Mass and Breviary. In other words, Traditional Catholicism is broad and beautiful. In order to capture it, we must understand more than encyclicals, conciliar decrees, conflicts and debates. These are all part of our history. But they are not Traditional Catholicism. Even gestures and rubrics changed many times through the history of the Church.
Traditional Catholicism is the unity of these wonderful schools of Christian Spirituality. I truly believe that to achieve what we hope, the recovery of Christian tradition, each of us must embrace one of these schools. Going at it solo is not going to work. It only makes us negative and frustrates us.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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ProVobis
Guest
Then it appears that the defense is better than the offense.
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laszlo
Guest
You will see that only in long term.Then it appears that the defense is better than the offense.
The recent problems in significant part are the consequences of the fact that the Church fought for the earthly power (the Papal state) and meanwhile lost to be primary source of the information, give it up to to the godless secular media. The defense pursued wrong goals and lost.
M
Madaglan
Guest
Someone at my church made the observant remark that every five hundred years there is a major event leading to a schism/widespread heresy in Christendom. The Christians and the non-Christian Jews parted ways early on. In 451 and following, the Non-Chalcedonian Churches and the Chalcedonian Churches experienced separation. 1054: the Catholic and Orthodox experience a break that worsens through the centuries. 1517, the Protestant Reformation. We’re about due right now based on this historical trend. Perhaps one can point to the explosion of largely independent Christian churches in Africa and South America, compared with the increasingly liberal churches of Europe and America.
500 years from now, things will be much different, and the Catholic Churh will be unrecognizable, and likely shocking to many Catholics today. I think future Catholics will look back on Vatican II with a perspective of personal separation not possible today. Catholics will see Vatican II as making many good points and seeking to establish renewal in the Catholic Church, but will see it as a product of the times, where modern and postmodern ideas became integrated into the Church, resulting in an a kind of identity crisis–that is, before Catholics a hundred or so years later reformed and self-corrected themselves where certain teachings were over-emphasized to the over-shadowing of otherrs.
I think that, if things continue as they are, there also is a risk of separation between liberal Catholics and those who abide by the magisterium. Already, for example, there is considerable societal pressure in the West for people to accept that sex before marriage, homosexuality, abortion, etc. are all right. I do not foresee a reversal of this trend, and I think the pressure will lead to something similiar to the division the Anglican Church has experienced, although I do not know how this will look for the Catholic Church, since the identity of a Catholic is strongly linked with communion with the Pope.
I do think that the Catholic Church of the future will have female priests. I think they will be allowed under an argument to the effect that Christ chose 12 men to be his Apostles, and so their successors, the bishops, who are the chief officiators of the Mass, must be male; but since priests are in a sense offering on behalf of the bishop, who is the primary celebrant, women too can serve as priets, as fellow assistants to the bishop. It probably would sound much more official than the way I put it, but that’s the legal loophole I see being used in the future–a distinction between the episcopasy and the regular clergy. They may even use as (dubious) support how the East has made a distinction between its white clergy and black clergy.
500 years from now, things will be much different, and the Catholic Churh will be unrecognizable, and likely shocking to many Catholics today. I think future Catholics will look back on Vatican II with a perspective of personal separation not possible today. Catholics will see Vatican II as making many good points and seeking to establish renewal in the Catholic Church, but will see it as a product of the times, where modern and postmodern ideas became integrated into the Church, resulting in an a kind of identity crisis–that is, before Catholics a hundred or so years later reformed and self-corrected themselves where certain teachings were over-emphasized to the over-shadowing of otherrs.
I think that, if things continue as they are, there also is a risk of separation between liberal Catholics and those who abide by the magisterium. Already, for example, there is considerable societal pressure in the West for people to accept that sex before marriage, homosexuality, abortion, etc. are all right. I do not foresee a reversal of this trend, and I think the pressure will lead to something similiar to the division the Anglican Church has experienced, although I do not know how this will look for the Catholic Church, since the identity of a Catholic is strongly linked with communion with the Pope.
I do think that the Catholic Church of the future will have female priests. I think they will be allowed under an argument to the effect that Christ chose 12 men to be his Apostles, and so their successors, the bishops, who are the chief officiators of the Mass, must be male; but since priests are in a sense offering on behalf of the bishop, who is the primary celebrant, women too can serve as priets, as fellow assistants to the bishop. It probably would sound much more official than the way I put it, but that’s the legal loophole I see being used in the future–a distinction between the episcopasy and the regular clergy. They may even use as (dubious) support how the East has made a distinction between its white clergy and black clergy.
J
JReducation
Guest
I expect them to look back on us as we look back on something like the Lateran Council. The people at that time believed that the Church was in the worse shape it had ever been. The hierarchy lived in fear of heretics. The secular world lived in conflict with the Church. The laity went in whatever direction the wind blew. Then there were all those wonderful saints, teachers and movements that the people of the time hardly notice, but we appreciate, admire and subscribe to. Every time the Church goes through a crisis those living at that time believe that it’s the worse crisis and fear that the Church is going to hell in a hand basket. It has not happened. Man has to be pushed to the precipice before he realizes that he has to change. That’s our nature.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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