I
Irishmom2
Guest
That’s what it sounds like sometimes. 
- Status
catholic03
Well-known member
Especially as both forms are routinely celebrated all around the world.
T
TK421
Guest
In addition to Masses offered in Latin, the presence of Latin within the vernacular is entirely permitted in Sacrosanctum Concilium and indeed was encouraged by the Council Fathers. I am very optimistic that it will continue to reassert itself within Masses said in the vernacular.
After a major Council, it usually takes over 50 years for the ball to get rolling but eventually it does get rolling. It’s a very beautiful language and it points us both towards our unity and towards our ancient roots. No institution is like the Church in universality or in endurance.
After a major Council, it usually takes over 50 years for the ball to get rolling but eventually it does get rolling. It’s a very beautiful language and it points us both towards our unity and towards our ancient roots. No institution is like the Church in universality or in endurance.
Last edited:
S
stpurl
Guest
Who they?
A few extremists?
Let’s not forget there are extremists on the other side (including priests, one of whom was on these forums a couple of years ago and specifically said he would NEVER ever celebrate the Vetus Ordo and thought Pope Benedict XVI wrong to have issued the Motu Proprio on it) who to this day insist that the EF was only ‘reluctantly’ offered to ‘make the SSPX come in’ and that since it wasn’t successful it should be revoked and that contrary to what Pope Benedict said, Pope Paul VI DID revoke it. Etc. etc.
The vast majority of people who prefer the EF have had decades of people telling them they’d never hear the EF again, that it was stupid, elitist, etc. etc. And there are still people telling them that, telling them how WRONG they are to want to attend an EF, how ‘nasty’ and anti Pope Francis and hateful these people are, and how the EF should indeed just ‘go away’.
And frankly, you’ll hear a lot more of that (and as I said, it’s been 50 years) than you’ll have heard any extremist person claim that the OF is nasty and invalid. Furthermore, since the Motu Proprio has only been in place since 2007 (and even with Pope St. John Paul II’s easing of perceived restrictions in the 1980s, the vast majority of Catholics in the US had almost no access to the handful of sites where an EF was offered), any even remotely conceivable possibility of the OF being superseded has been around barely a decade, or only 1/5 of the time the far, far more numerous hollerings of “the Latin Mass is dead” crowd.
Again, I am no extremist. I find both extremes repugnant.
But I feel that the loudest and longest extremism has come from the “OF only” side. And the denial of that is troublesome because not only is it not fair, it leads to a constant ‘defensive’ posture on the part of those who love the EF, in that from the get go it is THEY who are assumed to be the problem.
A few extremists?
Let’s not forget there are extremists on the other side (including priests, one of whom was on these forums a couple of years ago and specifically said he would NEVER ever celebrate the Vetus Ordo and thought Pope Benedict XVI wrong to have issued the Motu Proprio on it) who to this day insist that the EF was only ‘reluctantly’ offered to ‘make the SSPX come in’ and that since it wasn’t successful it should be revoked and that contrary to what Pope Benedict said, Pope Paul VI DID revoke it. Etc. etc.
The vast majority of people who prefer the EF have had decades of people telling them they’d never hear the EF again, that it was stupid, elitist, etc. etc. And there are still people telling them that, telling them how WRONG they are to want to attend an EF, how ‘nasty’ and anti Pope Francis and hateful these people are, and how the EF should indeed just ‘go away’.
And frankly, you’ll hear a lot more of that (and as I said, it’s been 50 years) than you’ll have heard any extremist person claim that the OF is nasty and invalid. Furthermore, since the Motu Proprio has only been in place since 2007 (and even with Pope St. John Paul II’s easing of perceived restrictions in the 1980s, the vast majority of Catholics in the US had almost no access to the handful of sites where an EF was offered), any even remotely conceivable possibility of the OF being superseded has been around barely a decade, or only 1/5 of the time the far, far more numerous hollerings of “the Latin Mass is dead” crowd.
Again, I am no extremist. I find both extremes repugnant.
But I feel that the loudest and longest extremism has come from the “OF only” side. And the denial of that is troublesome because not only is it not fair, it leads to a constant ‘defensive’ posture on the part of those who love the EF, in that from the get go it is THEY who are assumed to be the problem.
Tis_Bearself
Patron
Not gonna happen. Not even after every Boomer shuffles off the face of the planet. Next!
O
otjm
Guest
There is danger in projecting one’s wishes on something which one has little perspective.
There are approximately 17,000 parishes in the US. Out of that total, there are fewer than 3% (fewer than 510) parishes which may have an EF Mass.
And there are among the less than 3%m a goodly number which have only EF Masses; they are in larger cities which can draw from other surrounding parishes those who prefer the EF.
The rest may have 1 Mass in the EF on each Sunday;; others have one EF per week on a weekday (Saturday being the most prevalent) and then it falls off to parishes which periodically have an EF Mass.
A parish near me has an EF on every Sunday morning. It is at 6:30 a.m., and is attended by a bit more than about 75 peopleaverage. In addition to that Mass, they have 5 Sunday Masses in English, 1 in Vietnamese, and 4 in Spanish. And that is a parish with ;more than 3,000 families. There are 3 other parishes within a 20 minute drive from there. Among them they have 4 Masses in Spanish, 8 in English, and once a month, one in Tagalog.
Is that typical? No, there are parishes which are EF parishes. But in an area of 213,000, that is b y no means unusual.
It has been 11 years and almost 9 months since Summorum Pontificum was promulgated. The EF has, it appears, come close to reaching stasis or equilibrium, and there appears no reason that it will make any significant inroads beyond that.
We sometimes seem to think that English is the common language; as noited above there are other communities which are celebrating the Mass in the vernacular.
Without getting into rubrics, it appears that the single most obvious desire of people - not just English speaking, but other languages too - is the Mass in the vernacular.
Supporting the concept of the EF becoming more prevalent would be an indication that the OF is being said widely, or even in any significant amount in Latin - which is the language in which it is promulgated. My understanding is that there maybe a few parishes out of the 17,000 which celebrate the OF in Latin; but one rarely hears of them.
It has been implied that I am “anti” EF. I was raised on the EF, was an altar server at them, including being an MC at Solemn High Masses, and entered college seminary when the EF was all we had. I am not anti EF; I am just a realist who looks at the real world numbers and sees the OF spread world wide. And world wide, it has an extremely small portion of the Masses said every week.
catholic03
Well-known member
I agree, and I also think that people who believe that ‘only baby boomers like the OF’ are misguided.
I am a teenager and I attend the OF. I can guarantee that more young people attend the OF than the EF.
C
commenter
Guest
What you say was more true a few decades ago than now (yes I’m sure it still exists).
There was a generation of priests and sisters that came if age a decade or two before or during V2. For them, throwing out the Latin Mass was symbolic of what they considered renewing the paternal, rigid, cold inhuman institution. Anyone who hinted of restoring it was ridiculed or worse, like someone who wants to reopen the Bastille.
But that generation is mostly dead or retired. The (rare) young sisters I know and younger priests express no objection to it. The attitude now is usually like “if that’s what some people want, ok”.
Last edited:
P
Peeps
Guest
If trends continue, BOTH forms of the Mass will see lower and lower numbers attending, as will all of the Protestant denominations, and for that matter, ALL religions that are not Christians as well.
According to the statistics from General Social Survey, 1972 - 2016, in the early 1980s, more than 90% of high school seniors identified as part of a religious group.
As late as 2003, 87 % of 8th graders affiliated with a religion.
But beginning in the 1990s and accelerating into the 2000s, religious affiliation among young adults dropped to 66% (2016)–a full one-third of young adults do not affiliate with ANY religion.
But it’s not just young people. in the 2016 college student student (same organization), 17% of the students’ parents did not belong to a religion. Not surprisingly, 31% of college students themselves did not affiliate with a religio.
In 2015, 22% of 12th graders said they NEVER attended religious services, not even once a year, and only 28% of 12th graders attended services once a week–down from 40% in 1976.
It’s pretty glum, friends.
However, the surveys also show that most young people consider themselves “spiritual.”
I think one of the main reasons why young people have stopped affiliating with formal religion/church is that they don’t feel SAFE there.
Research (and your own observation) demonstrates that one of the biggest priorities of the people born after 1995 is SAFETY. They were raised in an era where every child is in a car seat, no children walk to school or wander their neighborhoods, every adult who is around children is required to prove that they are not sexual predators, and teenagers don’t want to get their drivers’ licenses until they are over 18!
Churches are definitely NOT safe places! Not only is God asking us to do “scary” things like commit our lives to Him and do His will (which may involved doing something unsafe like befriending people that we don’t like or agree with!), but churches are full of conflicts!
And in Catholic churches, we see an image of a man cruelly executed–horrifying! I have a friend my own age (early 60s!) who hates going to any Catholic church (funerals and weddings) because she hates seeing this horrific image–she hates any kind of violence or scary things.
Consider the CAF–how many of these threads stay totally friendly? Not many! I would bet that almost member of CAF has been involved in some kind of church conflict–Peeps has. I’ve mentioned it in many of my posts since joining, and described my lack of trust in almost everyone because of the horrible conflict in our last Protestant church that ended with my husband and me being asked to leave by a “tribunal” that accused us of heinous actions–frightening and definitely not “safe.”
I’m not sure that the Catholic Church can ever be as “safe” as the young people born in 1995 and later want. So I think we’ll continue to see more and more people give up any type of “religion” and count on their own “spirituality” to get them through life. So sad.
According to the statistics from General Social Survey, 1972 - 2016, in the early 1980s, more than 90% of high school seniors identified as part of a religious group.
As late as 2003, 87 % of 8th graders affiliated with a religion.
But beginning in the 1990s and accelerating into the 2000s, religious affiliation among young adults dropped to 66% (2016)–a full one-third of young adults do not affiliate with ANY religion.
But it’s not just young people. in the 2016 college student student (same organization), 17% of the students’ parents did not belong to a religion. Not surprisingly, 31% of college students themselves did not affiliate with a religio.
In 2015, 22% of 12th graders said they NEVER attended religious services, not even once a year, and only 28% of 12th graders attended services once a week–down from 40% in 1976.
It’s pretty glum, friends.
However, the surveys also show that most young people consider themselves “spiritual.”
I think one of the main reasons why young people have stopped affiliating with formal religion/church is that they don’t feel SAFE there.
Research (and your own observation) demonstrates that one of the biggest priorities of the people born after 1995 is SAFETY. They were raised in an era where every child is in a car seat, no children walk to school or wander their neighborhoods, every adult who is around children is required to prove that they are not sexual predators, and teenagers don’t want to get their drivers’ licenses until they are over 18!
Churches are definitely NOT safe places! Not only is God asking us to do “scary” things like commit our lives to Him and do His will (which may involved doing something unsafe like befriending people that we don’t like or agree with!), but churches are full of conflicts!
And in Catholic churches, we see an image of a man cruelly executed–horrifying! I have a friend my own age (early 60s!) who hates going to any Catholic church (funerals and weddings) because she hates seeing this horrific image–she hates any kind of violence or scary things.
Consider the CAF–how many of these threads stay totally friendly? Not many! I would bet that almost member of CAF has been involved in some kind of church conflict–Peeps has. I’ve mentioned it in many of my posts since joining, and described my lack of trust in almost everyone because of the horrible conflict in our last Protestant church that ended with my husband and me being asked to leave by a “tribunal” that accused us of heinous actions–frightening and definitely not “safe.”
I’m not sure that the Catholic Church can ever be as “safe” as the young people born in 1995 and later want. So I think we’ll continue to see more and more people give up any type of “religion” and count on their own “spirituality” to get them through life. So sad.
C
commenter
Guest
Good post. Young people (all age groups actually) of today probably are the least adventurous generations in history.
But Latin Mass commumities tend to also be committed to fixed doctrine, which can be very adventurous (if I could, I’d insert the whole book " Orthodoxy" by G. K. Chesterton).
Most young people don’t want adventure (or orthodoxy) but those who do, want it intensely. Some may attend the Latin Mass for this reason.
R
Randolph
Guest
You need to get your facts straight, and you are wrong. My family is from Asia. My mother and my grandmother spoke fondly to me of the days when only Latin Mass was said there. I recently visited Asia and visited my old retired parish priest. He too was speaking to me about his early years as a young priest saying only the Latin Mass. Furthermore, he even showed me pictures of him—in the early 1960’s—saying the Latin Mass. The configuration of Church I attended as a child was designed for the Latin Mass. The retired nuns in the country of my birth told me the Latin Mass was used until after Vatican II. I also visited the Carmelite nuns. Mother Superior and I were praying in Latin together.
Last edited:
blackforest
Well-known member
You didn’t. You still have that option.
Some Catholics think I’m weird, but I love hearing Mass in a language I don’t understand. It engages me on a spiritual and intuitive level. On an intellectual level, I love learning languages, so I can pick up some from prayers that I already know in English. Above all, it conveys a universality to me - so many differences but one bread, one body.Do you travel often and can’t understand the mass in different languages?
Right??? By all means, let’s nitpick how Mass is conducted when we can’t even go.
In other words, you’re upset at the rest of us plebeian OFers and want to force us to fall in line with you. Nice.
Yep. Let’s also nitpick the Mass form when we can’t even attract the secular world to Catholicism in the first place.
Forgive my sarcasm. It’s frustrating to hear so much pettiness in a world of bigger Lenten fish to fry. (And no, this is not the time for, “But I thought you were vegetarian, Blackforest!”
)blackforest
Well-known member
I hate speaking for her, but I don’t think she was referring to you. There have been references in this thread to “bring[ing] back full” and “universal” Latin Mass, i.e. banning the Ordinary Form, as well as to Vatican II “derogating” the Mass.
Hence you’ll hear the continued reminders that TLM isn’t a morally or spiritually superior form of worship . . . . and that our attendance at OF Masses in no way poses any threat to the option of TLM.
Mark121359
Well-known member
Say what??? I’m nitpicking? I want to remind you that the topic of this thread is the LATIN MASS!!! And since that is the Mass that I attend, I was merely saying how much I miss it. Nothing more. Please stop seeing animus where none exists.Right??? By all means, let’s nitpick how Mass is conducted when we can’t even go.
Last edited:
blackforest
Well-known member
I was agreeing with you in a playfully sarcastic way. I’m sorry that I didn’t convey/word that well.
Cheers.
Cheers.
Last edited:
Mark121359
Well-known member
Oops…my bad! As you probably can tell, I’m quite dense! Take care! 
S
stpurl
Guest
But you will also have had —and if like me you’ve been here from 2004– that’s 16 years—of drumbeats of how SUPERIOR the OF is to the EF. How having the vernacular is the ‘only thing’ keeping people in churches. Of how dreadful the EF was, how it should never have been brought back. How ‘elitist’ people who like Latin are. How selfish they are to demand the EF when “The OF is here and is much much better for everybody except the haters”. And of course all that and more was said, and acted, well before the Internet.
I think the EF is indeed superior in the ‘vertical’ approach. I think the OF is superior in the horizontal approach. Both approaches are necessary.
One could argue that prior to Vatican II our focus was too much on the vertical. One could equally argue that since Vatican II our focus has been too much on the horizontal.
Therefore, for many people, a ‘corrective’ is necessary.
Thankfully the very ‘horizontal’ aspect of the OF with nearly no ‘vertical’ has been in many places and to a great degree corrected. Therefore, a lot of people whose personal view inclines toward a need for ‘knowing what is said’ would have difficulty with the EF (until they, depending on whether their learning style was more visual, auditory, or other, found sufficient understanding with the Latin, just as all Catholics managed to do prior to Vatican II) but no difficulty with the OF, so for them the OF is ‘superior’ in that sense.
But for the many whose OF is still lacking in some degree, but whose personal style is receptive to Latin and other parts of the EF, the EF would be superior for their needs to balance horizontal and vertical.
In no way does this mean that for a given person the OF would not only be their preference, but also a necessary ‘balance’; just as the EF would for a given person be the same.
So for person A the EF they wish to attend is superior to the OF they have attended, but they can legitimately state the EF and OF are equally valid, equally good in and of themselves. This means that in stating the EF for this person is superior to the OF, it is the same kind of thing as stating that, for example, for a person with early stage 2 diabetes Januvia is preferable to insulin. A person in that stage may indeed reverse or limit the progression of disease to stay on Januvia for life, or even to control the disease with diet alone, or the person may even with the greatest care at some point need to go on insulin. The specific drugs are superior in a case depending on the need of the individuals, not the intrinsic worth of the drug itself.
I know the analogy is not perfect, but perhaps it gives some idea of how to view how a person might use the word ‘superior’ regarding a choice and not necessarily view the other choice as INFERIOR.
I know that many do use the terms (sadly) truly thinking that one rite is ‘intrinsically superior’ in all cases, and the other is inferior, but that is not the way I think of it, and I believe it is not the way the majority of people who like the EF think of it.
I think the EF is indeed superior in the ‘vertical’ approach. I think the OF is superior in the horizontal approach. Both approaches are necessary.
One could argue that prior to Vatican II our focus was too much on the vertical. One could equally argue that since Vatican II our focus has been too much on the horizontal.
Therefore, for many people, a ‘corrective’ is necessary.
Thankfully the very ‘horizontal’ aspect of the OF with nearly no ‘vertical’ has been in many places and to a great degree corrected. Therefore, a lot of people whose personal view inclines toward a need for ‘knowing what is said’ would have difficulty with the EF (until they, depending on whether their learning style was more visual, auditory, or other, found sufficient understanding with the Latin, just as all Catholics managed to do prior to Vatican II) but no difficulty with the OF, so for them the OF is ‘superior’ in that sense.
But for the many whose OF is still lacking in some degree, but whose personal style is receptive to Latin and other parts of the EF, the EF would be superior for their needs to balance horizontal and vertical.
In no way does this mean that for a given person the OF would not only be their preference, but also a necessary ‘balance’; just as the EF would for a given person be the same.
So for person A the EF they wish to attend is superior to the OF they have attended, but they can legitimately state the EF and OF are equally valid, equally good in and of themselves. This means that in stating the EF for this person is superior to the OF, it is the same kind of thing as stating that, for example, for a person with early stage 2 diabetes Januvia is preferable to insulin. A person in that stage may indeed reverse or limit the progression of disease to stay on Januvia for life, or even to control the disease with diet alone, or the person may even with the greatest care at some point need to go on insulin. The specific drugs are superior in a case depending on the need of the individuals, not the intrinsic worth of the drug itself.
I know the analogy is not perfect, but perhaps it gives some idea of how to view how a person might use the word ‘superior’ regarding a choice and not necessarily view the other choice as INFERIOR.
I know that many do use the terms (sadly) truly thinking that one rite is ‘intrinsically superior’ in all cases, and the other is inferior, but that is not the way I think of it, and I believe it is not the way the majority of people who like the EF think of it.
Last edited:
blackforest
Well-known member
I am here to address this thread alone, not threads from 2004 or even any other thread from 2020. I’m sorry that you’ve felt your EF preferences disparaged in the past. But as far as this specific thread is concerned, there has been no call for getting rid of all EF Masses and imposing the OF on all Catholics.
Those words in bolding are key. You and I both know that the decision is a personal one between the parishioner and God. But the tone of the OP is about EF for all, regardless of this factor. In short, this thread is about superior for all, not superior for some.
Last edited:
M
Mi_Rose
Guest
My sister is 58 and considered a Baby Boomer. You have a long wait.
R
rf9661
Guest
I can’t seem to understand how it is that the Vatican at that time thought that removing, even going as far as prohibiting, Priests from saying the traditional Latin Mass that had been used for 500 years was a good idea and a way to be more “inclusive”.
- Status