Priest Actively Discouraging Me From Attending EF Mass

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Yes, I know my priest well. Me an my girlfriend have both enjoyed dinner with him a few times. We’re actually both undergoing RCIA right now and will be baptized on April 20 2019 during the Easter Vigil. We are both Catechumens right now.

I’ve been in contact with the priest at the Old. St. Patrick’s Oratory and he knows we’re both catechumens at the present, but he’s been very welcoming and encouraging for us to attend an EF Mass there anytime we want to. We just can’t receive Holy Communion yet obviously.

I’ve been going to my Ordinary Form parish since April of this year and I’ve gotten to know a great deal of my fellow parishioners, me and my girlfriend are like family there. I think our priest is just afraid to lose us. But me and my girlfriend have planned to split our time between both EF and OF Mass. After we’re baptized we do intend on being active in parish ministry at our OF parish.

Now that I think about it, my priest might be worried me and my girlfriend will leave our parish entirely and attend EF Mass exclusively (especially since me and her have discussed getting married by our priest at our OF parish), but no, we plan to stay at our OF parish, while attending EF Mass during weekdays and maybe some Sunday’s occasionally. We are blessed that the Oratory offers weekday Mass 5 days a week! After our baptism we have planned to go to at least one weekday Mass to receive Holy Communion, and we thought going to an EF Mass would be great during the week.

But I do not see anything bad with going to both an EF and OF church. I am blessed to be able to live very close to two such churches! Both are about equal distance from me.
 
Scott84 said:
I was quite shocked my priest would ever discourage me from attending Mass in the Extraordinary Form. Both the OF and EF are valid rites within the Church yes?
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Sadly, it wouldn’t shock me. I think there are priests who would discourage people from going to the EF, and there are also priests who would discourage people from going to the OF. I don’t think such attitudes are actually that uncommon. Both forms of the Mass are valid, so go to whatever form you like and don’t feel the need to hide the fact that you attend one or the other form or both. If some priests don’t approve then that’s their issue, not yours. Respectfully disagree with them and leave it at that.
 
phil19034 said:
they don’t realize that [EF] isn’t the same latin mass they remember.
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can I quote you on this? I encounter so many people who think the EF is the “mass of the ages” or that it has been celebrated continuously for 1500 years. I am just grateful that someone recognizes that it is different now from how it was 50 years ago, 500 years ago, 1500 yeas ago.
 
The pastor of the parish where you attend the RCIA is responsible for your spiritual development during this period. He has a right to question whether this would be the best thing for you at this time.

You have only to look at the responses here. The EF/OF divide can be quite toxic. Many of the respondents here promote attitudes of irreverence toward priests like your pastor. You know he is not “deeply misinformed” and that you should not ignore him, but being subjected to this kind of talk does not help develop a good understanding of the Church.

Personally, I do not see anything wrong with going to an EF mass. There are important things you can learn there. But there may be other influences, like a certain passivity or disengagement, that your pastor does not want you to deal with at this point in your faith.

If you have asked him to guide you into the Church, his opinions deserve some respect.
 
Dovekin said:
Many of the respondents here promote attitudes of irreverence toward priests like your pastor.
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Yeah, and just as many priests promote attitudes of irreverence towards the Extraordinary Form too! And everyone who attends the Latin Mass, especially young adults has been perceived as “rigid” by you know who!
 
Something to think about:
When you ask the priest to bless “your missal”, is he thinking about you rather than merely the missal?
The missal is a missal, but you are the one seeking his blessing. His blessing is not bluntly for the object, it must take you, the person, into consideration.
 
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Sadly however, my priest has almost nothing to do with our RCIA program, that is the domain of our pastoral associate who was a former cloistered nun. She has encouraged me to attend an EF Mass and feels every Catholic even if they regularly attend OF Mass should attend at least 1 EF Mass in their life.

Actually, our pastoral associate does just about all of the faith formation work in my parish, our priest is mainly only there for confession, presiding over Mass, and other rites that require a priest to be present.
 
phil19034 said:
Finally, the EF today is said VERY reverently and everyone there is typically very devout, which is why it’s very beautiful. But before Vatican II, you had the priests who were liturgical abusers flying through the mass and average, non-devout Catholics lost in the pews.
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If the Latin Mass were again the Only Mass, you’d have the same situation as you had before V2. Less devout individuals aren’t going to change.
 
Actually, that is not how things work. The pastor is responsible for your pastoral well being, and the associate is there by his judgment. That the two disagree is not unusual, but poses some problems for you. Still, he is the one that will welcome you.

I still say he deserves some respect and should not be dismissed as uninformed or missinformed. He might be, but he has a relationship with you and with his whole parish that allows him to express his opinion. You can choose to ignore his advice, but he is offering it from a legitimate place of concern for you.

And I think that is a lesson you need to learn to be Catholic. All the way up the line, priests, bishops, and popes will offer you advice in different ways. Respect for their auhority means you should pay some attention to what they say even when you think you know it is wrong.
 
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Mark121359 said:
And everyone who attends the Latin Mass, especially young adults has been perceived as “rigid” by you know who!
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If you are referring to Pope Francis, I don’t believe he said “everyone.” Can you provide a source showing that he did?
 
Problem IMO there were too many Low Masses. That’s probably one of the reasons for more participation, organ, Gregorian chant etc. at Vatican 2.
 
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Scott84 said:
I may not be accurate, but I wonder if this is the article in question where the Holy Father says “How come such a rigidity?”
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That’s the quote I remember. Clearly not referring to “everyone who attends the Latin Mass,” so Mark121359 should be able to provide the quote where he does.
 
Were you involved in any kind of church before deciding to become Catholic and becoming catechumens? If not, how did you convert to Christianity?
 
Loud-living-dogma said:
There you have it – he feels like you are rejecting all those wonderful groovy things he helped put in place in the 1970s! I have a pastor about the same age, and he’s not too excited about the EF either. : ) Maybe if you are positive without being pushy, he can see the value of it?
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G K Chesterton in one of his great works wisely points out that choosing one thing is rejecting everything else. This doesn’t mean that for every decision a man makes he must be completely hostile to all other options. But often people are. When you choose something that is different from what someone else chose they can view your choice as a rejection of what they chose. Man is a fickle creature.
Genesis315 said:
I try and have some compassion on priests from this time period who are like this. They are men of their time and often this is what they were taught. In many ways, they are the anachronism, stuck in those optimistic days, in denial about the role they played in the rapid decline that has followed.
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Indeed. We are very much influenced by our environment. And old men don’t tend to change much.
 
Genesis315 said:
they are the anachronism, stuck in those optimistic days, in denial about the role they played in the rapid decline that has followed.
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It’s astounding there are still men who are willing to answer the call to priesthood, when this is the way we talk about those who’ve spent their whole lives serving the Church.
 
I wish it wasn’t so. But what other explanation is there for the scorn they have for the Church’s rich traditions and heritage that nourished so many saints and for those times when seminaries, monasteries, and the pews were full, and churches being built, and instead see as preferable dated 1960s and 70s fads which led to empty seminaries, empty monasteries, and church closures?

At least from my experience, the men answering the call these days seem to have less attachments to the failed experiments of that time period and more respect for the Church’s spiritual, liturgical, and doctrinal riches, which is what actually attracts vocations.
 
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