“In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else”
I was there, too. It is not as you say…at all. Masses were most certainly rushed in the days before the liturgical reform and renewal, with which we were blessed.
Missals were assuredly not always available,
Every day of my priesthood, I thank God for the liturgical movement as well as for the gift of the Council
Back in the traditional days, I don’t think most of the faithful followed along with a missal, but they usually did know what was going on and how the mass was progressing. It was very difficult to try and follow word by word as to what the priest was saying in Latin.
Also, although I attended Latin masses for years, I don’t think I ever heard a high mass outside of a funeral. The usual standard was low mass.
I too am thankful for Vatican II and its reforms, both liturgical and otherwise.
It is still the same Church. It is the magisterium that met, to better meet the needs of the modern world. It was fully aware of the devastation of two world wars.
Perhaps there is a difference in how I view things because I have spent much of my life in parts of the world where Christianity is not the dominant religion. The pat memorized answers from the Baltimore Catechism didn’t satisfy classmates who asked me about my Faith.
My family always attended the earliest Mass available. It is true that the low Mass was the normal Mass except for special celebration such as Christmas and Easter. Girls and women were required to cover heads even to enter a church, even if it meant looking for a handkerchief or Kleenex. Sunday Mass may be the only time of the week that I still wear a dress.
We did carry our own missals to Mass, in the same way that non-Catholics today carry their Bibles to services. The Latin was written on one side, and I followed the English on the right. There were few a places for responses such as the Kyrie, which had remained in Greek. It was a challenge to follow both the missal and concentrate on Mass.
I did not belong to any of the parishes that waited to institute Vatican II changes. Those are the ones that experienced the greatest upheaval as statues were removed and communion railings ripped down, etc. I can understand how upsetting that was for people who felt their life was being turned upside down.
I welcomed being able to participate more fully in the Mass, and to be able to see what is happening on the altar.
There are two churches in a nearby city where I live. The mother church, which was my parish church is small with stained glass windows. There is little ornamentation in a church built of rich wood. It is over 100 years old. I am very comfortable within the intimacy of this old church.
A parishioner donated his own money to build the nearby church in 1956 of rich marble. It is ornate with side altars. I like the pieta in the vestibule. It carries trappings from before Vatican II of which so many people are fond. Unfortunately, its very richness can be distracting during Mass.
I was a young child when I lived in France. I no longer have any photos have the cathedrals we visited. Don Ruggero, I enjoyed reading your post about how Europe did not have the same negative response to Vatican II changes as reported in America. I can appreciate the architectural difficulty involved versus those of an American military chapel.
The most active parish to which I belonged is the one I just left in the Middle East.
