*****QUOTE=Derek Ellery]“If anyone says that the rite of the Roman Church, according to which a part of the canon and the words of consecration are pronounced in a low tone, is to be condemned…, let him be anathema” (Council of Trent, Dz 956). *
Ha - Derek, when you hold my excommunication ceremony follow the one in the movie “Becket.” When Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury (Richard Burton) excommunciates King Henry II, he had a whole bunch of monks with huge candles turn over the candles and put out the flames by violently stomping them on the ground. It is really cool. Please make sure you put the ceremony on youtube.
Seriously, my conscience is clear. You basically set up a bunch of “straw men” to knock down or equivocated on what I said. However, since there are young people on this thread, I think it is important to answer each one of your “anathemas” so that the young people are not led astray into thinking the church has departed from its ancient traditions.
First I was complaining about the priest in the Tridentine Mass mumbling. Well he was. I certainly didn’t condemn it but I sure didn’t like it. Two entirely different things. Mumbling made no sense in our public worship but it shouldn’t be condemned, which from my reading would be basically saying that it is bad thing which may invalidate the mass. Basically you equivocated not liking something with condemning it. You know a whole lot of people in the church didn’t like it either that’s why the church changed it.
**** "If anyone says that the Mass should be celebrated in the vernacular only, let him be Anathema . " - Council of Trent (Session XXII, Canon 9)*******
This is setting up a straw man to knock down. I never said mass should only be celebrated in the vernacular. No one that I know says that. Clearly mass can be said in latin. It is the source language for the Roman rite. It is very important in this role. But I, like most people, want to worship God in our own sacred language that we can understand. When the Church allowed the bishop conferences to go back to our ancient tradition and adopt the vernacular for mass, basically all did it without delay. I wonder why.
*******“Hatred for the Latin language is inborn in the hearts of all the enemies of Rome. They recognize it as the bond among Catholics throughout the universe, as the arsenal of orthodoxy against all the subtleties of the sectarian spirit. . . . The faithful Catholic, who assists, leaves his mother tongue at the door. Apart form the sermons, he hears nothing but mysterious words…" Dom Prosper Gueranger *******
You are equivocating here again. Disliking being forced to have mass in a foreign language is not hating the church. Seriously though do you really want to use this quotation? It is really over the top and I think basically proves my point. God gave us a brain and decernment. We pray as total people with our heart, our heads, our emotions, our experiences, our strengths and our weakness. God wants nothing left at the door. He wants all of us as a true lover would. In this vein, Dom Prosper Gueranger was actually one of the early and main founders of the modern liturgical movement which eventually led to Vatican II and the wonderful Novus Ordo mass. It is my understanding that he advocated having the Liturgy of the Word in the vernacular. Also, I always thought that the thing that held us together as Catholics was the Eucharist. If latin was the bond that held us Catholic together, I guess Syrian, Maronite, Byzantine, Coptic, etc. Catholics really aren’t “real” members of the Church.
****]“If anyone says that the holy Catholic Church has not been influenced by just causes and reasons to give communion under the form of bread only to laymen and even to clerics when not consecrating, or that she has erred in this, let him be anathema.” (Council of Trent, Dz 935). ****
I was clear that communion under one species is an ancient Church tradition, especially in taking Communion to the sick. However, there is no denying that for well past the first millenia, the standard manner of receiving communion in the Roman Rite was under both species and that for the other rites of the Church it has always remained the standard way. Actually, this passage is aimed at the Hussites and Utraquist heresies which claimed that communion “must” be given under both species. Basically, they believed that both the Body and Blood received by the people are necessary for a valid sacrament.
What you don’t say and I am sorry but it seems a bit disingenuous not to, is that many of the Fathers of the Council of Trent were clearly in favor of reintroducing communion under both species and in fact authorized the pope to do so, if he chose to. Unfortunately he didn’t and it took another 500 years and another council to do so, but it did finally happen.
*"If anyone says that in the Mass a true and real sacrifice is not offered to God, etc, etc, etc. Let him be anathema. ***
Again you set up a straw man. No one said the mass was not the true reality of Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. In fact I said the opposite. It definitely is. What I said was that having the mass in vernacular and having communion under both kinds allowed, at least to me, a more complete experience of the mass as the communal sacrificial meal in which we are joined together as the Body of Christ and together experience his saving acts. When I heard mass for the first time in the vernacular, I felt very close to the ancient Christians as they gathered around a table for the “Breaking of the Bread.” Do you think that may be the reason why they call it “communion?”
God Bless!!*
