Folks, thanks for all your replies. It’s been civil, a quality which is all to often missing from Traditionalist threads. Too often they descend into a never-ending debate between Trent and Vatican II.
Perhaps “reverence” was not the right word. I did not intend to pass judgment on the priest.
It just seems to me that if one is praying, one should avoid running through it in a hurry in a flat tone that does not convey the power and sense of what is being said.
I heard Fr. Benedict Groeschel say once that the Mass wasn’t said in Latin, it was said in gibberish, referring the hurried babbling manner in which it was too often recited. I think he also said he got criticized for taking too long in celebrating it. He said he did it slower, with some sense of the drama the words convey.
Of course, keep it within bounds and dont ham it up. It seems to me the gospel where Jesus condemns the scribes and pharisees loses a lot if just dryly recited."Woe unto you Pharisees! " etc.
Likewise, in group recitations of the Rosary, it is dismaying to hear it run together as one long word “Ourfatherwhoartinheaven.”.
I’d be afraid of getting finger blisters running at that rate. Moreover, for the newcomer, it might turn them off to see people praying this way.
Re: LizaAnne, I’m not looking for entertainment. It seems to me it would do better justice to what is been said to slow it down and try to convey the drama contained in the words. Within limits.
If the Wikipedia article referenced above (on the first page of this thread) is reasonably accurate re multiple private masses going on simultaneously in the same church, then I understand why the Latin Mass became quiet.
But it seems to have been an adaptation to a situation that doesn’t apply nowadays when there is only one mass being celebrated at a time. The adaptation became a tradition, and then became set in concrete, it seems. The dialog mass seems to be the most sensible, with the congregation responding instead of just the server.
A Franciscan priest told me of his experience as an organist when the Latin Mass was current. While they might start off together at the Offertory, they would part ways for a time, until finally coordinating just before Communion, because they would each be going at a dfferent pace. Very odd.
Anyway, here’s a tidbit of the “Everything old is new again” sort.
On page 1687 of my St. Andrew’s Missal, in the note for Nov. 23, St Clement I, Pope and Martyr (pope, A.D. 92-102), it says the following in reference to the ancient Church of St. Clement in Rome, although no date is given for the origin of the church.
“The title-church of St Clement at Rome is of the greatest religious and archaeological interest; it shows perfectly the ancient arrangement of a Christian church: the atrium, the ambos, the chancel, the altar facing the people, separate places for the clergy, faithful and catechumens.”
So maybe the altar facing the people is not some wacky innovation from the '60s.
In closing, FYI, my preference is the vernacular mass, properly celebrated. I do like to attend a Latin Mass on occasion, esp. if there is a choir.
His latest entry(8-18) is hilarious. And the video (8-13) showing that huge thurible is very interesting.