Should Latin mass be brought back?

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R_H_Benson said:
I think that if you are going to accuse someone of something, especially of something so heinous, you have the responsibility to explain why. But I really don’t want to see this thread closed down so I will let it go.
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Like I said – if you can’t see it – it will make no difference. – You made the OF – as the will of sinful men. Reconcile that – with the Popes – who have retained/affirmed the OF.
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R_H_Benson:
The Holy Spirit will never abandon the Church. We both know this. He is constantly ushering the Church towards holiness. But He allows room for the free will of sinful men. The liturgical situation of the Church today is not ideal. Of course, the Holy Spirit will continue to guide the Church and will do so, as He has done since the beginning, by using the less-than-ideal constructs of men. Ultimately, however, do we believe that the Holy Spirit will leave the Church with a liturgy that is a product of 1960’s pop-psychology and a desire to appease Protestants - a liturgy that, only through the most strained concept of a “hermeneutic of continuity” can be reconciled with the ancient and venerable rite that preceded it? Or is He ushering the Church in His ever subtle manner back towards the Mass of Ages? 2007 changed a lot. Both FSSP seminaries are bursting at the seams. The SSPX is knocking on the door. I am excited to see what the next few decades bring.
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Walking_Home said:
Like I said – if you can’t see it – it will make no difference. – You made the OF – as the will of sinful men. Reconcile that – with the Popes – who have retained the OF.
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With the exceptions of Our Lord and Our Lady, all are sinful…

As I said, the Holy Spirit has, from the beginning, worked within the less than ideal constructs of men to bring us to holiness.
 
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I was raised on the Latin Mass. I remember when it changed to English. I was shocked. How could Mass be anything but Latin? But I soon got used to Mass said in English. Now I am able to go to several parishes in my area that offer Latin Mass. My home parish doesn’t offer it. But two parishes downtown do and one close to town does. I would suggest looking up various parishes in your area and seeing if they offer Latin Mass at any time during the month. If they do, go to those when they’re offered and to your usual Mass the rest of the time. You might also suggest to your priest that he consider adding a Latin Mass once or twice a month, maybe on a trial basis. If they are well received, he may opt to keep them.
 
I’m a bit confused as to the context of the question…how can you ask if something should be brought back that never has left?
 
You are making Christ to be participating in sin – since He becomes present upon the Altars of the OF. The Popes and everyone else who attends the OF.
 
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That is an absurd and offensive conclusion, reached only by an unsound stretch of the transitive property. I don’t even know what to say.
 
Xanthippe_Voorhees said:
Holy Spirit (Ghost is a terrible translation from the Latin Spritus Sanctus)
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No, it isn’t a terrible translation. It is the English word from our Germanic roots. In German it is Heilige Geist. Ghost has taken on a somewhat different meaning over time. But in anything this points out the advantage of Latin which is more fixed in meaning.
 
What can you say after — the OF is by the will of sinful men.
 
exnihilo said:
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Xanthippe_Voorhees:
Holy Spirit (Ghost is a terrible translation from the Latin Spritus Sanctus)
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No, it isn’t a terrible translation. It is the English word from our Germanic roots. In German it is Heilige Geist. Ghost has taken on a somewhat different meaning over time. But in anything this points out the advantage of Latin which is more fixed in meaning.
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We don’t speak German–regardless of English’s roots.

Given that the negative connotations of “ghost” in English can be traced back to the printing press (ie Grimm’s Fairy Tales and the like) I don’t think the modern connotation is any better or worse than it was centuries ago.

Also, no matter what Mass translation, there is always a need for vernacular catechesis…unless you’re arguing that all education of Catholics should be in Latin.
 
Got rid of fasting and abstinence.

Got rid of Holy Days of Obligation.

American Catholicism has become Catholic Light.
 
Spirit could have just as bad a connotation. I know a cradle Catholic who thought the change from ‘and also with you’ to ‘and with your spirit’ was sixties hippy nonsense. Spiritual but not religious is a popular way for people’s describe their beliefs. Again, I’d say that isn’t a great connotation. Either word has problems. Either word is good. I grew up saying Holy Ghost. I have no problem with it.
 
I sure wouldn’t give Luther any consideration one way or the other when forming my thoughts about litergy or the Mass.
 
If people like Latin Mass, thank God that now (unlike for many, many years prior) there are opportunities for people to attend. Personally I hope that more and more dioceses offer them. Of course I also hope that we will have more priests and deacons in many dioceses, and have the opportunity for more Masses. So on Saturday and Sunday at St Anywhere USA we could have a 4 p.m. Folk Mass, a 5:30 p.m. Ethnic Folk Mass; on Sunday a 7 a.m. "quiet Mass vernacular, an 8 a.m. Ethnic quiet Mass, a 9:30 “smells and bells vernacular, an 11 a.m. Latin High Mass, a 12:30 Ethnic smells and bells, and a 4 or 5 p.m. Lifeteen-style, half of the month ‘ethnic’, the other half 'vernacular”. Wouldn’t that be amazing? Back in my old VA parish that is basically what we had, and I’ll just state that the city proper had fewer than 40,000 people and there were TWO OTHER Catholic churches besides this one, in an area of the country that is historically Protestant (IOW, there were a TON of Protestant churches, most of them with comparable worship schedules!) So with enough priests and participation by the laity, I think we would wind up giving just about ANYBODY a Mass he or she would rejoice in participating in, fully and actively.
 
Decades? The Mass of Paul VI which struck the world in 1970 is but one grind of sand through the hourglass of the 2000 year-old life of the Church, and compared to the millennia old Mass of John XXIII which evolved organically from antiquity through the Middle Ages through codification of the Tridentine Rite in 1570 through Missal of 1962 promulgated by Pope John XXIII.

Shameful to exploit the Holy Spirit with the implication that you are fighting against God Himself if you suggest that maybe the status quo in the Church now isn’t really what the Holy Spirit wants.

You are ascribing inertia to the will of the Holy Spirit? If the pope & bishops are NOT doing something, anything, the Holy Spirit is keeping them from doing it?

“The Vatican, Pope, and councils” are made of human beings. They are capable of mistakes, big ones, or need you a history lesson on some of the naughty antics of Popes Gone Wild in the Middle Ages?

A mistake of omission is the easiest sort to make.

Was the Holy Spirit responsible when the Vatican & bishops worldwide for decades failed to protect children from paedophilic sexual predators within the Church, protecting rather than punishing priests abusing children? Was lack of action by the Vatican to crack down on bishops protecting sexual predator priests the will of the Holy Spirit? If the Vatican DID NOT do it, that must have been the will of the Holy Spirit according to your logic?

Never has any pope invoked the Holy Spirit to infallibly declare that the New Mass is superior to the TLM. Nor has any pope invoked the Holy Spirit to declare that- while the TLM used for 1500+ years was so bad it couldn’t even be reformed it had to be replaced by a brand new rite- the New Mass written in 1969 is a perfect liturgy in every possible way, any criticism of it is heresy, it must forever remain the ordinary form of the Roman rite- suggest otherwise you are a heretic.

The Holy Spirit should not be exploited & trivialized in this way, reduced into a magical superstitious figure; God intervenes when He chooses to intervene.

“This is the way it is, so it must be the way the Holy Spirit wants it or else He would have intervened to get the pope to switch rites!” No.

Here lay an argument in favor of using Holy Ghost, the Ghost being a distinct Being, not to be confused with some naturalistic spirit force that pervades the universe & controls fate, as the “spiritual but not religious” crowd believes in.

The pope is not the Holy Spirit, nor a magician. If the pope were to say “Ok let’s settle this simply, I’ll flip a coin, heads we stick with the Mass of Paul VI, tails, we revert to the Mass of John XXIII”, would the Holy Spirit jump in to decide how that coin flips? It’s the pope! Surely the Holy Spirit will determine the fate of his coin flip?

Leave the Holy Spirit out of a dialogue over liturgy in which God has not deigned to intervene with a clear answer to settle the question, neither B16 nor Pope Francis would claim He has.
 
I agree that the “romance” of the Latin Mass just isn’t present in many of us who are older baby boomers. I remember old women saying the Holy Rosary during mass and others reading the literature from the entry area. The elderly priest spoke the Latin in with a low voice and so fast that, even if you had a Missal, you couldn’t keep up. We carried clean Kleenex in our uniform pockets so we always had a “cover” in case Sister Jeanne Marie sprung an extra mass on us. Vatican ll opened up the mass for me and I think that I stayed in the Church because of the English. At 17 or 18, our minds work in mysterious ways!
 
MonteRCMS said:
It’s not a numbers game, but consider how the attendance at Mass has so sharply declined since the “changes”.
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Are you being serious? Do you really think the numbers are down because of the OF Mass? I suspect they would be far further down if the Tridentine Mass were still the OF Mass.

One need only look at Mainline Protestantism (Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian, etc.) to see the HUGE drop throughout Christendom.
 
JesuitWisdom said:
I agree that the “romance” of the Latin Mass just isn’t present in many of us who are older baby boomers. I remember old women saying the Holy Rosary during mass and others reading the literature from the entry area. The elderly priest spoke the Latin in with a low voice and so fast that, even if you had a Missal, you couldn’t keep up. We carried clean Kleenex in our uniform pockets so we always had a “cover” in case Sister Jeanne Marie sprung an extra mass on us. Vatican ll opened up the mass for me and I think that I stayed in the Church because of the English. At 17 or 18, our minds work in mysterious ways!
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I agree. To compare the celebration of the EF Mass today – by typically tiny groups of rubrics obsessed (and I’m not looking down on that), reactionary individuals to the past reality you describe as so many here do is ridiculous.

I just wish the Church had not done such a poor job of implementing the OF Mass. A lot of problems could have been prevented had they done a better job of it.
 
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LaetificetJuventutem said:
Decades? The Mass of Paul VI which struck the world in 1970 is but one grind of sand through the hourglass of the 2000 year-old life of the Church, and compared to the millennia old Mass of John XXIII which evolved organically from antiquity through the Middle Ages through codification of the Tridentine Rite in 1570 through Missal of 1962 promulgated by Pope John XXIII.
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The EF Mass isn’t 1K years old. Not even close. Its development is no more “organic” than the OF Mass.
 
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