Misunderstandings and Irregularities in Post-Vatican II Liturgy (from a liturgical leader in the Church)

[Actaeon]

In case it does get closed can I just say that your explanation 2 posts up was just brilliant.

Thanks!

Okay, so maybe I can try to stear this back on course… I finally got around to reading the article, and for the most part I agree with it! There are, however, a few minor points I think it gets incorrect:

• The liturgy often seems to have the quality of a performance with the priest and liturgical ministers cast in the roles of performers and behaving accordingly. Consequently, congregations are often expecting to be ‘entertained’ rather as spectators might be at a theatre.

I don’t think I’ve ever met a single Catholic who goes to mass because it’s an EXCITING FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT! I think this is a charge that people level against others because they don’t like their taste in music used in conjunction with the liturgy, to wit, “the only reason you could POSSIBLY like that dreadful music is because you ONLY GO TO MASS TO BE ENTERTAINED BY MUSIC.”

That’s a way of demonizing someone just because they have different tastes than the person making the claim… and it’s not true. If people wanted to be entertained by music, they could go online and watch youtube videos, they could search for it on spotify, or watch MTV8 (or whatever MTV station still plays music).

The mass is not very entertaining for anyone (that is not to say that it’s boring, but just like Cardinal Ratzinger once said, when compared as entertainment to other offerings out there, the mass does not hold up… because it is not entertainment).

He will go on to say that applause is evidence that people are only attending the mass to be entertained. That is not necessarily true. It is possible that people go to mass for the RIGHT reasons, are pleasantly surprised by the exceptional quality with which the choir offers liturgical song to God, and is not socially educated enough to know that applause is not appropriate in a liturgical forum. The answer is not “change the music to something that people who like music written in the last 100 years will NOT applaud”, the answer is for the priests (perhaps at the direction of their bishops) to ANNOUNCE TO THEIR PARISHES that the choir’s singing is an offering to God and therefore the reward of their service is from God and applause is not appropriate.

• The manner of the distribution and reception of Holy Communion (including the appropriateness of one’s reception of Communion at a particular Mass) has led to a casual disregard for this great Sacrament.

Again, I think this is a cop-out that ignores real social problems in favor of an easily demonized solution. The problem isn’t whether or not people bow, genuflect, or kneel to receive, it is whether or not they are reverent.

While I will agree that reverence for the Eucharist is decreasing, I think that is because of far deeper reasons than simply that people are bowing and receiving in the hand rather than kneeling and receiving on the tongue. To wit, two major problems I see are:

1. the dominance of materialism as a heresy that shapes the way of western thought which reduces things merely to their physical aspect. Promulgated by the reliance one what people falsely think the scientific method says in requiring emperical proof of everything has reduced peoples’ willingness to accept transubstantiation as a doctrine. Combatting this heresy will go a lot farther than making people kneel (using only an external symbol, which is exactly what the Holy Father was complaining about!)
2. the idea that Catholics should receive the Eucharist EVERY WEEK and preferably EVERY DAY… human psychology simply has difficulty maintaining a sense of awe about that which is every day in our lives. St Joan of Ark testified that she did her good catholic duty by ensuring that she took Communion at least once a year… a saint… considering it GOOD in her CHRISTIAN DUTY that she took communion ONCE A YEAR at least. Communion USED to be something special which was NOT generally something everyone engaged in, but the major push to take Communion ALL THE TIME has led to people losing that sense of wonder about it, and therefore feeling pushed to take it even when in sin.

• The appalling banality of much liturgical music and the lack of any true liturgical spirit in the use of music in the liturgy has been a primary generating force in anti-liturgical culture.

Again, I think this is a case where the author completely ignored the message the pope was giving in the premise. I go to a VERY devout, VERY reverent, VERY conservative catholic church that uses “modern” liturgical music, replete with a pipe organ and three violins. I would put the reverence and devotion of our parish against any parish in the world, any.

Again, this goes back to demonizing others simply because they have different taste in what constitutes reverence inspiring music. Gregorian chant… doesn’t do it for me. I don’t personally like it, it’s annoying to me… but despite the fact that I’m annoyed when I go to a gregorian chanting church, I don’t complain that gregorian chant is destroying the liturgy… I just recognize that, for me, it is not one of those external elements which helps me find internal reverence.

•A recovery of the Latin tradition of the Roman Rite that enables us to continue to present elements of our liturgical patrimony from the earliest centuries with understanding. This necessarily requires a far more enthusiastic and widespread commitment to the teaching and learning of Latin in order that the linguistic culture required for interpreting our texts and chants may be more widely experienced and our patrimony enjoy a wider constituency.

Here I disagree entirely. The Roman rite adopted the language of Latin because it was the vernacular of the Roman Empire. If the focus were on what language would promote the fullest understanding according to historical use, then latin would NEVER have been introduced, and the rites, all of them, would be delivered in Hebrew.

The early church fathers never intimated that using the language of latin would somehow preserve the church or was some magical solution to social problems and the spread of heresy… they simply chose latin for the latin rite because it was the vernacular of the nation in which the rite would take its foundation. They made their decision on entirely practical grounds: NOT requiring the gentiles of Rome to learn Hebrew in order to join and participate in the faith.

And yet the argument here is that people SHOULD be forced to learn a very difficult, complex, and dead language just so that they can join the church. That is TOTALLY out of keeping with the motivation for adopting Latin in the first place.

Either we take it back to the language of God’s chosen people and demand that ALL rites use Hebrew, or we recognize that Rites have the distinct characteristic that they are designed around the reverence provoking aspects of the societies for which they were created and allow the vernacular (as was the intention of the founders who established the latin rite).

 

[ProVobis]

Here I disagree entirely. The Roman rite adopted the language of Latin because it was the vernacular of the Roman Empire. If the focus were on what language would promote the fullest understanding according to historical use, then latin would NEVER have been introduced, and the rites, all of them, would be delivered in Hebrew.

The Church Christianized the codified vocabulary and grammar of the great Roman writers, especially Cicero. To claim that Ecclestical Latin was the vernacular of the Roman Empire is really a stretch. The vernacular was the Vulgar Latin, from which the romantic languages Spanish, Italian, French, etc. evolved.

And yet the argument here is that people SHOULD be forced to learn a very difficult, complex, and dead language just so that they can join the church.

One doesn’t have to master nuclear physics to join into an “Et cum spiritu tuo” response.

Either we take it back to the language of God’s chosen people and demand that ALL rites use Hebrew,

“Sabaoth” was used in the Mass since the early centuries. So why didn’t we preserve this this powerful word, which has a deep meaning, which really can’t be translated?

… allow the vernacular (as was the intention of the founders who established the latin rite).

Was it also their intent to translate into different meanings? Take, for example, “Sursum corda” (there is a thread on that on this forum) Different language, different meaning. Same goes for many of the other parts of the mass. It was hard enough to keep the meanings the same between Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. And that caused schisms. So why introduce 500 problems with translations?

And I’m done with this thread.

 

[liturgyluver]

Thanks!

Okay, so maybe I can try to stear this back on course… I finally got around to reading the article, and for the most part I agree with it! There are, however, a few minor points I think it gets incorrect:

• The liturgy often seems to have the quality of a performance with the priest and liturgical ministers cast in the roles of performers and behaving accordingly. Consequently, congregations are often expecting to be ‘entertained’ rather as spectators might be at a theatre.

I don’t think I’ve ever met a single Catholic who goes to mass because it’s an EXCITING FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT! I think this is a charge that people level against others because they don’t like their taste in music used in conjunction with the liturgy, to wit, “the only reason you could POSSIBLY like that dreadful music is because you ONLY GO TO MASS TO BE ENTERTAINED BY MUSIC.”

That’s a way of demonizing someone just because they have different tastes than the person making the claim… and it’s not true. If people wanted to be entertained by music, they could go online and watch youtube videos, they could search for it on spotify, or watch MTV8 (or whatever MTV station still plays music).

The mass is not very entertaining for anyone (that is not to say that it’s boring, but just like Cardinal Ratzinger once said, when compared as entertainment to other offerings out there, the mass does not hold up… because it is not entertainment).

He will go on to say that applause is evidence that people are only attending the mass to be entertained. That is not necessarily true. It is possible that people go to mass for the RIGHT reasons, are pleasantly surprised by the exceptional quality with which the choir offers liturgical song to God, and is not socially educated enough to know that applause is not appropriate in a liturgical forum. The answer is not “change the music to something that people who like music written in the last 100 years will NOT applaud”, the answer is for the priests (perhaps at the direction of their bishops) to ANNOUNCE TO THEIR PARISHES that the choir’s singing is an offering to God and therefore the reward of their service is from God and applause is not appropriate.

• The manner of the distribution and reception of Holy Communion (including the appropriateness of one’s reception of Communion at a particular Mass) has led to a casual disregard for this great Sacrament.

Again, I think this is a cop-out that ignores real social problems in favor of an easily demonized solution. The problem isn’t whether or not people bow, genuflect, or kneel to receive, it is whether or not they are reverent.

While I will agree that reverence for the Eucharist is decreasing, I think that is because of far deeper reasons than simply that people are bowing and receiving in the hand rather than kneeling and receiving on the tongue. To wit, two major problems I see are:

1. the dominance of materialism as a heresy that shapes the way of western thought which reduces things merely to their physical aspect. Promulgated by the reliance one what people falsely think the scientific method says in requiring emperical proof of everything has reduced peoples’ willingness to accept transubstantiation as a doctrine. Combatting this heresy will go a lot farther than making people kneel (using only an external symbol, which is exactly what the Holy Father was complaining about!)
2. the idea that Catholics should receive the Eucharist EVERY WEEK and preferably EVERY DAY… human psychology simply has difficulty maintaining a sense of awe about that which is every day in our lives. St Joan of Ark testified that she did her good catholic duty by ensuring that she took Communion at least once a year… a saint… considering it GOOD in her CHRISTIAN DUTY that she took communion ONCE A YEAR at least. Communion USED to be something special which was NOT generally something everyone engaged in, but the major push to take Communion ALL THE TIME has led to people losing that sense of wonder about it, and therefore feeling pushed to take it even when in sin.

• The appalling banality of much liturgical music and the lack of any true liturgical spirit in the use of music in the liturgy has been a primary generating force in anti-liturgical culture.

Again, I think this is a case where the author completely ignored the message the pope was giving in the premise. I go to a VERY devout, VERY reverent, VERY conservative catholic church that uses “modern” liturgical music, replete with a pipe organ and three violins. I would put the reverence and devotion of our parish against any parish in the world, any.

Again, this goes back to demonizing others simply because they have different taste in what constitutes reverence inspiring music. Gregorian chant… doesn’t do it for me. I don’t personally like it, it’s annoying to me… but despite the fact that I’m annoyed when I go to a gregorian chanting church, I don’t complain that gregorian chant is destroying the liturgy… I just recognize that, for me, it is not one of those external elements which helps me find internal reverence.

•A recovery of the Latin tradition of the Roman Rite that enables us to continue to present elements of our liturgical patrimony from the earliest centuries with understanding. This necessarily requires a far more enthusiastic and widespread commitment to the teaching and learning of Latin in order that the linguistic culture required for interpreting our texts and chants may be more widely experienced and our patrimony enjoy a wider constituency.

Here I disagree entirely. The Roman rite adopted the language of Latin because it was the vernacular of the Roman Empire. If the focus were on what language would promote the fullest understanding according to historical use, then latin would NEVER have been introduced, and the rites, all of them, would be delivered in Hebrew.

The early church fathers never intimated that using the language of latin would somehow preserve the church or was some magical solution to social problems and the spread of heresy… they simply chose latin for the latin rite because it was the vernacular of the nation in which the rite would take its foundation. They made their decision on entirely practical grounds: NOT requiring the gentiles of Rome to learn Hebrew in order to join and participate in the faith.

And yet the argument here is that people SHOULD be forced to learn a very difficult, complex, and dead language just so that they can join the church. That is TOTALLY out of keeping with the motivation for adopting Latin in the first place.

Either we take it back to the language of God’s chosen people and demand that ALL rites use Hebrew, or we recognize that Rites have the distinct characteristic that they are designed around the reverence provoking aspects of the societies for which they were created and allow the vernacular (as was the intention of the founders who established the latin rite).

I agree with you entirely on the first point about entertainment, and the last point about Latin. Although I accept what the Church has said about preserving elements of Latin (and so there should rightly be provision for those who wish to attend a Latin Mass), I think the arguments here are weak.

I have more sympathy with the two other points about reception of the sacrament and liturgical music. On the first, I have been shocked not so much by the way the sacrament is received but by the approach to communion - I never understand the mad rush you often find rather than an orderly pew-by-pew approach. I am sure you are right that more infrequent reception of the sacrament must have added to the sense of aura.

On music, I can only speak for the UK, but liturgical music in the Catholic Church compares very unfavourably with most other Christian denomination. Very few churches have pipe organs, choirs often perform badly, and many congregations take no part in the singing (and this applies as much to a congregational Gregorian setting as to modern song) but that probably is a thread in itself.

Best wishes.

 

[St_Donatus]

I agree with most of the article. I recently returned to the Catholic church and to make a long story short, the main reason I left the church was that something suddenly left the church when many priests started doing their own thing with the mass (and teaching some way out stuff as well).
I have been trying to return for the last six years. Going to a mass once in a while but I would leave feeling like something was very wrong, something was missing. About six months ago I went to an extraordinary form mass and though I didn’t understand everything, I found a strong sense of awe, holiness, and yes, holy spirit washing over me. I hadn’t felt that since I was a child. I have gone to a few Novus Ordo masses since but honestly, I didn’t get anything out of them. Yes they were in English, but I just can’t explain it. It is almost like God is communicating to me during the Extraordinary form mass in a way he doesn’t communicate during a Novus Ordo. Yes, the Latin mass demands a lot more work on my part, but I don’t mind. It is similar to a school. I can sit there and day dream, or I can pay attention, follow the mass in the missal, and get more out of it. Honestly, I still can’t follow all of it because I am so new to it, but like I said, God seems to be speaking a higher langauge and that isn’t hard to follow at all.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt that I would enjoy the Novus Ordo even more than the Latin if it was done with the same reverence and sanctity that the Extraordinary Form is done with. But I haven’t even come close to finding a Novus Ordo with even close to the same reverence.

As far as being entertained, I would agree with some that the mass isn’t about entertainment, but some think that adding a little entertainment to the mix might make it better. The problem is that this entertainment is more of a distraction from the purpose of the mass. I drive 60 miles each way to go to the Latin mass and when I come home, I feel reinvigorated once again.

 

[iloveangels]

Whoever heard of the holy sacrifice of the liturgy? Not me. They went past that, it’s was the “Remembrance of the Lord’s Supper” here.

You’re spot on right. It is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, liturgy being a generic term used to describe any ceremonial event or service.

Yes, exactly right.