Question about Latin Mass

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Richie_Nelson

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Hi to all.

I have a question about latin mass.

My mom was catholic, and my dad was baptist, but I never saw him go to church. Mom kinda stopped taking us or going herself when I got to be ten or twelve.

She used to talk about when she went to mass an it was in latin. She was glad when it was changed to english after Vatican II.

From what I have been reading here, it seems like a lot of people like mass in latin. Why? It seems like going to a play or something, if the priest didn’t look at you and you didn’t participate and the altar boys did all the praying.

I go with my wife to a nondenominational church where there is a lot of participation.

Why do people still like latin mass?

thanks, Richie
 
My take on it is people are comfortable with tradition and uncomfortable with change.
 
Yerusalyim said:
My take on it is people are comfortable with tradition and uncomfortable with change.
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Ever care to examine the “why” of that, or do you get all your wisdom from Oprah and the inside of fortune cookies?

And Richie: It’s more beautiful, and when you go a few times, you can understand 90% of the Latin. It’s not too hard to figure out.
 
Several important points…
  1. Even the new form of the Mass has Latin as the normative language. There is wide permission to say the current Mass in vernacular languages, but it is ALWAYS allowed in Latin. The proper terms (recently announced by the pope) are the Ordinary Form of the Mass for the current version, and the Extraordinary Form of the Mass for the older version.
  2. One of the changes made to the Mass was to make the priest face the people. You mentioned in your post that you think that the old version of the Mass was more like a play. Well, some Catholics make the same charge against the new form of the Mass. When the priest faced the same direction as the congregation, it tended (theologically) to emphasize that we were ALL praying together, in humility, toward God (with the crucifix behind the altar on the wall as the focus of attention), and that the priest was just like the rest of us. In the current form, there can tend to be abuses where attention focuses on the priest, and his importance as more of an emcee, rather than as one who leads us in prayer. It doesn’t HAVE to be seen that way, but when the focus is on the priest and not God, it causes problems.
  3. Although there are some issues with using Latin, there are also problems with using the vernacular languages. The Catholic Church consists of over 1 billion people in every part of the world. A tremendous number of languages are spoken. This requires hundreds of committees to create accurate translations, and it hinders worship when people travel. What if I’m Catholic and I go to Italy, and I don’t speak Italian? How will I follow along? Well, the trend currently is to go back and teach people how to follow the Mass in Latin (in either the Ordinary or Extraordinary Form). With just a small amount of memorization, I could go anywhere in the world and be able to follow along perfectly, with the exception of the homily, which would still be in the vernacular. Further, in many of our multi-cultural American parishes, priests are bogged down trying to give Masses in English, Spanish, Polish, Vietnamese, and whatever other languages might be common in their parishes due to immigration. How much easier it would be to simply offer an English Mass and a Latin Mass, so that everyone could participate? Further, it would keep these ethnic groups from being segregated into their own foreign-language communities. EVERYONE could go to the same Mass and follow along and participate as one.
  4. Another problem that the Church faces with vernacular languages is that they can change. Words that hold one meaning today may change their meaning in 50 or 100 years. This requires constant vigilance to make sure that people truly understand what is being said at Mass. Latin, however, is a dead language, and the meaning never changes. When dealing with theology, this can make it very precise.
  5. At it’s very core, the Mass is substantially different than a Protestant service. Protestants focus on the sermon, and while Catholic Masses do have homilies and scripture is very important, it is not the primary focus of Mass. For Catholics, it is the celebration of the Eucharist (Communion) as the ultimate form of worship. It is not meant to be a show. It is meant to make Jesus physically present before us for the purpose of worship. It is, indeed, the ultimate form of participation.
  6. Now, with all that said, let me emphasize that there is NOTHING wrong with attending the Ordinary Form of the Mass. It is perfectly valid, and many people think that the changes are a good thing. This board, however, tends to be highly conservative, and so you’re more likely to see people who prefer the Extraordinary Form than you might in real life. I’ve simply tried to explain why certain people prefer the older form.
 
Richie_Nelson said:
Hi to all.

I have a question about latin mass.

My mom was catholic, and my dad was baptist, but I never saw him go to church. Mom kinda stopped taking us or going herself when I got to be ten or twelve.

She used to talk about when she went to mass an it was in latin. She was glad when it was changed to english after Vatican II.

From what I have been reading here, it seems like a lot of people like mass in latin. Why? It seems like going to a play or something, if the priest didn’t look at you and you didn’t participate and the altar boys did all the praying.

I go with my wife to a nondenominational church where there is a lot of participation.

Why do people still like latin mass?

thanks, Richie
Click to expand...
One of the greatest misconceptions regarding the TLM is that there “was no participation”.

Another misconception is that the TLM is hard to understand and hard to follow.

The Missals have both English and Latin side by side. The better Missals have the rubrics as well as commentary right there on the same pages.

The only thing keeping anyone from understanding the TLM is lack of effort.

Richie, if you are interested in understanding the TLM and why some of us hold it dear, perhaps this site will help…

sanctamissa.org/en/index.html

On the forum here, you will get many opinions of those who have never attended a TLM and are misinformed about it. Yet they will persist in dismissing it for various reasons.

And you will get informed opinions of those who understand it and embrace it.

It’s not a play. It’s a prayer. And there are many ways to participate/assist in it.

Please visit the Sancta Missa site and see if it’s for you.

God Bless You
 
Yerusalyim said:
My take on it is people are comfortable with tradition and uncomfortable with change.
Click to expand...
I grew up with both a spanish and english mass. When I was old enough to make the decision to go to church myself, I decided to sleep in on Sundays and skip them both. In the process, I drifted from The Lord.

I recently discovered the Latin Mass and I can say it is unequivocally the most spiritual mass a Catholic can behold. It brought me back to The Church. I don’t miss a Sunday now and I am looking for a parish with a daily Latin Mass.

To answer your question, I made a list of things I think drew me to TLM and why it was a fit for me:
  1. Gregorian chants are perfect for the purpose of the Mass: a sacrifice to The Lord. I remember my old parish and their guitars made me cringe sometimes with the hokey tunes. The Gregorian music is tailor made for our Mass and facilitates our purpose for being there. We are not there for a concert or to rock out with lighters. Christian music has its place, but it doesn’t belong in the same place where I witness plain bread and wine turn into my savior’s body and blood.
  2. The final Gospel. I can’t believe this was taken out and it was the biggest blunder of the Vatican II. What better way to leave the Mass then to be reminded of why we came. To paraphrase, first there was the Word of God and He was made flesh. We should be reminded of that everyday, especially at Church. What a gift God gave us: his word as flesh to save us and the world. Powerful and profound.
  3. Kneeling/No Hands for Communion. If we are truly receiving the body and blood of The Christ, we should show it the respect it deserves. Kneeling secures our respect for the act. As for accepting Communion from the priest himself, that is obvious in my opinion. Who am I to handle something so precious? What if I drop it? If I am kneeling in place and the priest gives me communion with an alter boy concentrating on protecting The Eucharist, why would I accept It in my hands?
  4. Latin makes it Catholic. It was the original language of The Mass so no hodgepodge Frankenstein language like english should replace it. Reading along in Latin is even more gratifying than just listening to The Mass.
I have many more but these four really stuck out for me. I am not offering these as explanations, but they might be reasons TLM might have had such a profound effect on me.
 
Yerusalyim said:
My take on it is people are comfortable with tradition and uncomfortable with change.
Click to expand...
For me the NO is tradition (I was in my 30s or so before I went to (or was aware of and had the opportunity to go to…) a latin mass (Indult)) and the TLM is change for me. I’m not the only one.

I love mass and prayers in latin. I’m curious what your take is with this.
 
Richie_Nelson said:
From what I have been reading here, it seems like a lot of people like mass in latin. Why? It seems like going to a play or something, if the priest didn’t look at you and you didn’t participate and the altar boys did all the praying.
Click to expand...
I grew up with the Mass in Latin. I was an altar boy as well. We did participate - there were congregational responses in Latin and we did understand them. It wasn’t a play. We entered into the sacred. When you entered into Church you were in God’s house.

But the LORD is in His holy temple. Let all the earth be silent before Him. - Habakuk 2:20. There were placards showiing this at all doors in my church. Church was not a fellowship hall.

Rolltide gives some very excellent reasons which I won’t repeat. I’ll approach it from a more emotional aspect. In the TLM, the focus is on worshiping God. In the NO, the focus is on community. You will not have a “turn around and introduce yourself to your neighbor” experience in the TLM. You will not have people joining hands during the Lord’s Prayer and then doing the “wave” at the “For the Kingdom…” etc. You will not have Father coming down off the altar and shaking hands with everyone during the sign of peace. I go to Mass to worship God and to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. I am not at Mass to fellowship.

I don’t believe that people are nostalgic. I have prayed for almost 40 years that what was lost would be restored. Unfortunately, what was lost was precisely that sense of the sacred. It is not about us, it is about Him.
 
Sorry, I didn’t mean to start a fight between anyone.

Mom never went to communion, and we didn’t either. She said that she couldn’t go because she and my dad eloped. My grandparents on her side were always upset about that.

They got divorced about ten years ago, and Mom died last year.

It always seemed like she was upset about church stuff. By the things she said, I always got the feeling that the Catholic church was kinda hateful. Well, not hateful, but really strict.

Anyway, it’s not anything like where I go to church with my wife. At her church, it’s a loving God who forgives us. I don’t remember the Catholic church being like that at all.

thanks, Richie
 
Duke_of_Mantua said:
Confession much?
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We never did any of that stuff. Mom said we couldn’t because of the elopement thing. Guess the Catholics have really strict rules about that stuff. We didn’t go to CCD either.

About the only thing we did was go to mass. And like I said, she used to talk about how different it is now since it is in english so people can understand it.

Thanks to those who posted information. There are a lot of differences between what I remember about the Catholic church growing up and where we go now.

I was just wondering what the big deal was about latin. But is seems like it’s a real hot button topic here.

thanks, Richie
 
Richie_Nelson said:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to start a fight between anyone.

Mom never went to communion, and we didn’t either. She said that she couldn’t go because she and my dad eloped. My grandparents on her side were always upset about that.

They got divorced about ten years ago, and Mom died last year.

It always seemed like she was upset about church stuff. By the things she said, I always got the feeling that the Catholic church was kinda hateful. Well, not hateful, but really strict.

Anyway, it’s not anything like where I go to church with my wife. At her church, it’s a loving God who forgives us. I don’t remember the Catholic church being like that at all.

thanks, Richie
Click to expand...
Nah! You didn’t start a fight! Your point about the Church in the past is exactly correct. It was strict. My mother was Catholic and my father was protestant. In 1947, they had to get permission from the archbishop to marry. They could not be married inside the church. They had to be married in the sacristy. We had to get permission from our parish priest to go to my grandmother’s protestant funeral service in 1967. All of that has changed.

My sister married her protestant husband on the altar at a Mass. My brother left the Church and married his wife in a protestant service. (No, we didn’t need permission to go). The arguments about the Latin Mass come down to issues…well, I can only speak for myself. I want to enter the sacred not the community.
 
brotherhrolf said:
well, I can only speak for myself. I want to enter the sacred not the community.
Click to expand...
I guess what you said reminds me of the differences in our churches. Where we go now, we feel welcome, the people are friendly, and the pastor gives awesome sermons. When we leave church, people are happy, and they talk, and everyone feels good about church.

It seems like when Mom took us to Catholic church, everyone was grumpy. Nuns were grumpy, priests were grumpy, nobody talked, even after church. It was like there was this dark cloud over us that didn’t go away until we got home. It was even quiet and grumpy in the car going home.

So, were Catholics more grumpy or less grumpy when mass was in latin? Seems like they would have been even more grumpy if they didn’t know what was happening and couldn’t participate.

thanks, Richie
 
Richie_Nelson said:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to start a fight between anyone.
Click to expand...
No problem. The issue you bring up is perfectly valid.
It always seemed like she was upset about church stuff. By the things she said, I always got the feeling that the Catholic church was kinda hateful. Well, not hateful, but really strict.
Click to expand...
Anyway, it’s not anything like where I go to church with my wife. At her church, it’s a loving God who forgives us. I don’t remember the Catholic church being like that at all.
Click to expand...
The Catholic Church is somewhat strict, but I can assure you, we believe in a loving God, and we are a loving church. Further, with a few exceptions, what is a sin for Protestants is exactly the same as what is a sin for Catholics. Catholics believe that the sacrifice of Jesus allows us entry into heaven, and that only grievous, or “mortal” sins can prevent that salvation. In other words, we have to commit an act that maliciously turns us away from God. Smaller, or “venial” sins, can create the necessity for some purification in purgatory before we enter heaven, but purgatory is not hell. It is still guaranteed entry into heaven.

We also believe that if one commits sins (especially mortal sins), we can receive forgiveness through the Sacrament of Confession. In order to receive that forgiveness, one must indeed be sincerely and genuinely remorseful of the sins that they have committed.

God, through the Catholic Church, gives us ample opportunity to receive forgiveness, and entry into heaven is certain if one has not committed an unforgiven mortal sin.
 
Richie_Nelson said:
I guess what you said reminds me of the differences in our churches. Where we go now, we feel welcome, the people are friendly, and the pastor gives awesome sermons. When we leave church, people are happy, and they talk, and everyone feels good about church.

It seems like when Mom took us to Catholic church, everyone was grumpy. Nuns were grumpy, priests were grumpy, nobody talked, even after church. It was like there was this dark cloud over us that didn’t go away until we got home. It was even quiet and grumpy in the car going home.

So, were Catholics more grumpy or less grumpy when mass was in latin? Seems like they would have been even more grumpy if they didn’t know what was happening and couldn’t participate.

thanks, Richie
Click to expand...
Oh, Richie. I had a totally different experience down here in south Louisiana. And as I have patiently explained to you, we did know what was going on and we did participate. To this day we still have coffee and donuts after Mass. Easter egg hunts outside of Church after Mass on Easter. Parish suppers. Church fairs. It was not all Pie Jesu, Domine, dona eis requiem.
 
brotherhrolf said:
…well, I can only speak for myself. I want to enter the sacred not the community.
Click to expand...
I can hardly blame you, but we are saved in community, so we need both.

I guess the point would be the community should project an aura of sanctity, and that should erupt more or less spontaneously out of the proceedings.

We are all sinners but in the liturgy we are in a zone that straddles heaven and earth. Every liturgy is actually the one cosmic liturgy, as I understand it, piercing beyond space and time into eternity.

I sympathise with those who have lost a sense of the sacred and have only the community. I also sympathise with those who have lost a sense of community, after all the two do belong together.

Michael
 
Yes and no, Michael, yes and no. There were 14 houses on my block in New Orleans back in the 50s. Ten of those 14 houses were occuppied by Catholic families. My parents are long gone but I’m still in touch with their peers (eight of whom are still alive and still living in the houses they moved into in 1956). Do you want to argue community from the neighborhood perspective or the fact that they were all Catholic and we all attended the same church and, most often, the same Mass time?

These folks are in their 80s. I can see the women in the congregation on Tuesday nights when I served at the OLPH novena and benediction. I can see the men dressed in suits and in hats on Sunday.

Your point about the “zone that straddles heaven and earth” is precisely what I was trying to convey with “entering into the sacred”. But we have put far too much emphasis on community today and not enough emphasis on the sacred.

Here’s a question that needs to be asked. When I grew up we still had ethnic communities in New Orleans - Irish, French, Italian and Sicilian, Spanish, Germans. We were all Catholic. WWII broke down a lot of barriers. My godfather married my mother’s sister. This red haired (then), freckled face son of Ireland went around for years saying he was Sicilian…even unto this day:D .

Ethnic communities. With pretty much the same beliefs. We all kept our mouths shut upon entering church. We all knew the Latin. It was not about us (as a community); it was about Him in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

The two do belong together. But I daresay - no, I know. You do not have clown Divine Liturgies nor do you have liturgical dancers nor do you have “the wave” or any of the other liturgical abuses we have. Or the "grinnin’ and a’strumin’ liturgies.

The pendulum swung too far towards community. It is now time for the pendulum to swing the other way.
 
Ok, so I guess what you’re saying is that the Catholic church is more reverent than my church? So, reverent=grumpy?

I never saw a priest or nun back then who wasn’t grumpy. Why were they all grumpy while our pastor is invigorating and full of life and always happy? It even seemed like going to church made Mom grumpy.

Sorry, I don’t mean to get off the subject. Some of your answers remind me of what I remember from back then, besides her telling me about mass in latin. Thanks for the memories, I think.

Richie
 
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