What do you think about the NO Mass?
When I was young we still had the Tridentine Mass (I suppose I had attended between 600 and 700 Latin Masses and ‘mixed’ Masses), I was a teenager by the time all the turmoil of changing the liturgy was finished in my parish, and I can remember it being kind of rough.
However as a young adult I accomodated to it fairly well and raised all of my children in it. I can remember when the SSPX and other small groups were getting started in the Chicago area, and I went for a look-see, mostly curious. It was completely foreign to my children and they reacted with confusion so I didn’t force it on them and I forgot about it.
Later I started to experience a type of spiritual dryness (I didn’t associate that with the form of liturgy), and I realized had a yearning for a deeper spirituality. I became more involved in other devotions, like the LOTH. I was also a big advocate of (and hoper for) Eucharistic Adoration but it wasn’t convenient or popular yet, my parish was not going to do it so it required traveling long distances to remote parishes as the trend was just beginning.
Eventually (much later) I got involved with a local Abbey and the oblate program, which kept me very active with a bunch of laypeople and professed monastics who became friends to me … around the same time I started visiting Eastern Catholic parishes of every type. These were what I called ‘pilgrimages’. The reason I chose the particular Abbey was that it had a reputation for ecumenical involvement (in the past) and had once been a bi-ritual house, a home for a lot of refugee Eastern Catholic monks from communist eastern Europe.
Most of the EC parishes were big disappointments for a variety of reasons, but I really enjoyed speaking to the priests I visited. There was one Bielorussian mission in Chicago I loved, and I made a few friends there (the congregation was less than twenty by that time)Eventually I came across a Ruthenian parish with a great pastor, a vibrant congregation and a well served liturgy, and I was hooked! When people would ask me what it was like all I could say would be “glorious!”.
I joined the choir (we actually had four different thematic choirs at the time and I was in three of them) and did a lot of volunteer work.
I had multiple opportunities to attend Mass in Latin Catholic church parishes (taking my mother to Mass, etc.) as well as at the Abbey. Over time I found it all to be very unsatisfactory. I was not expecting that, I didn’t realize until then how dull it actually was. I guess the liturgy of St John Chrysostom as it was served in the Bielorussian mission and the Ruthenian parish spoiled me.
Do you Orthodox believe these NO Masses with guitars are proof that the RC has lost tradition and truth and the right way?
No. I think it is evidence of poor management.
It is a systemic problem.
If a Catholic is disatisfied with Western liturgies ,is going to an Eastern Catholic church the answer? or would it be better to jump ship comnpletely and get off this guitar Mass ship and come to Orthodoxy?
I never recommend it.
A person should move toward Eastern Christianity based on it’s own merits. Running away from something is not a good idea.
I deleted my post after I realized that lol! I figured that was the case.
