Question about "Traditional" Mass

[AuntMartha]

Hi,

Can someone clarify something for me as a recently returned Catholic?

I have been using the word “traditional” to describe a Mass where things are done similarly to the way they were done in the 60’s, after the Mass was begun to be celebrated in English. In other words things like:

Kneeling during the Consecration
(and in order to do so) - Kneelers
Hymns rather than guitars or “bands”
Standing up for the Gospel reading
No hand holding during the Our Father
No women homilies

And things like that. But I’ve been reading posts and I began to wonder if “traditional” actually means the Latin Mass?

Or is it all in the perspective of the individual person? What I’m looking for then is just a *general *definition of what a Traditional Mass is, in case I have the idea wrong.

Oh, and please let’s not turn this into a fight about Latin Mass vs. N. O. Mass. I just want to make sure I’m not way off base in the terminology I have been using.

Thanks,
Aunt Martha

 

[netmilsmom]

AuntMartha:

Hi,

Can someone clarify something for me as a recently returned Catholic?

I have been using the word “traditional” to describe a Mass where things are done similarly to the way they were done in the 60’s, after the Mass was begun to be celebrated in English. In other words things like:

Kneeling during the Consecration
(and in order to do so) - Kneelers
Hymns rather than guitars or “bands”
Standing up for the Gospel reading
No hand holding during the Our Father
No women homilies

And things like that. But I’ve been reading posts and I began to wonder if “traditional” actually means the Latin Mass?

Or is it all in the perspective of the individual person? What I’m looking for then is just a *general *definition of what a Traditional Mass is, in case I have the idea wrong.

I was saying Traditional Mass to describe what you are talking about. I got a big smackdown. The TLM is pre-Vatican II

I say Conservative mass or EWTN mass to describe what you are saying.
That is the Holy Mass we have at our parish.

 

[JimG]

Kneeling during the Consecration, standing for the Gospel, hymns, no women homilies–all these are things that are done in the current Mass as well as the Tridententine Mass.

I’m not even going to mention hand-holding, as it will just start a fight!

 

[rcn]

AuntMartha:

I have been using the word “traditional” to describe … things like:

But I’ve been reading posts and I began to wonder if “traditional” actually means the Latin Mass?

Or is it all in the perspective of the individual person?

You have run into the same snag that I did awhile back. I used to describe myself as “traditional”, for exactly the same reasons that you did. In most discussions with most people, this definition is pretty reasonable.

However, when you get into web sites like this, you do indeed find that “traditional” has a quite different meaning. Some try to make a distinction between small-t and big-T, but I don’t think that helps.

Therefore, I simply avoid using the word and express my opinion on an issue-by-issue basis. (That way, the self-proclaimed Traditionalists often label me as liberal, and the liberals often label me as traditional. Oh well.)

There is no doubt where you stand if you’ll express your actual opinions and don’t hide behind labels.

 

[RSiscoe]

AuntMartha:

Hi,

Can someone clarify something for me as a recently returned Catholic?

I have been using the word “traditional” to describe a Mass where things are done similarly to the way they were done in the 60’s, after the Mass was begun to be celebrated in English. In other words things like:

Kneeling during the Consecration
(and in order to do so) - Kneelers
Hymns rather than guitars or “bands”
Standing up for the Gospel reading
No hand holding during the Our Father
No women homilies

And things like that. But I’ve been reading posts and I began to wonder if “traditional” actually means the Latin Mass?

Or is it all in the perspective of the individual person? What I’m looking for then is just a *general *definition of what a Traditional Mass is, in case I have the idea wrong.

Oh, and please let’s not turn this into a fight about Latin Mass vs. N. O. Mass. I just want to make sure I’m not way off base in the terminology I have been using.

Thanks,
Aunt Martha

When people speak of The Traditional Mass they mean the mass canonized in perpetuity just after the council of Trent. (See this link unavoce.org/quoprim.htm ), This Mass is also called the Tridentine Mass, or the Traditional Latin Mass

However, people may also speak of a Mass being Traditional, and by that mean what you said above.

There are now two Masses in the Western rite of the Church: One is the Traditional Latin Mass which has its roots in the earliest years of the Church; the other is called the Novus Ordo Mass, and was a came out in late 1969.

Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI explains how, unlike the new Mass of the 1960’s the Traditional Latin Mass grew organically from the earliest years of the Church.

*Cardinal Ratzinger - Pope Benedict XVI: "The second great event at the beginning of my years in Regensburg was the publication of the Missal of Paul VI, which was accompanied by the almost total prohibition, after a transitional phase of only half a year, of using the missal we had had until then. *

*I welcomed the fact that now we had a binding liturgical text after a period of experimentation that had often deformed the liturgy. But I was dismayed by the prohibition of the old missal, since nothing of the sort had ever happened in the entire history of the liturgy. The impression was even given that what was happening was quite normal. *

*The previous missal had been created by Pius V in 1570 in connection with the Council of Trent; and so it was quite normal that, after four hundred years and a new council, a new pope would present us with a new missal. But the historical truth of the matter is different. Pius V had simply ordered a reworking of the Missale Romanum then being used, which is the normal thing as history develops over the course of centuries. *

Many of his successors had likewise reworked this missal again, but without ever setting one missal against another. It was a continual process of growth and purification in which continuity was never destroyed. There is no such thing as a “Missal of Pius V”, created by Pius V himself. There is only the reworking done by Pius V as one phase in a long history of growth.