Should Latin mass be brought back?

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OraLabora said:
The OF in France is being revived by the Communauté St. Martin which is growing so fast they had to move to larger facilities. They promote an reverent OF (Gregorian chant, and they also produced an excellent OF antiphonary to do the day hours of the Liturgy of the Hours in Gregorian chant). They also staff parishes in threes so that priests can have a sense of community and not succumb to the loneliness that leads to lost vocations or inappropriate behaviours.

I wouldn’t count the French OF as dead yet. Not to mention France is where Solesmes is, and Solesmes, an OF house, is where Gregorian chant is formally preserved (by edict of the Vatican), studied, and revived. In fact the Communauté St. Martin have largely inspired themselves from the Benedictines, both in liturgy and in how they approach community life.
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Not only that, but France, in reality, is small. It is the geographical size of Texas and has about as many people as Texas and California combined. Like most of Europe, the population is barely in a stasis and Catholic population is falling in favor of atheism, currently around 40%. This from a nation that was nearly 100% Catholic centuries ago, and was 80% Catholic in the 80’s.

Most countries, America included, did not start out with such numbers and does not have the “cultural call” that people want to return to.

Remeber, with things such as 23&me (DNA testing) there has been a spike in heritage based activities. This is likely just a fad and will probably fade in the next decade or so.
 
Again I wasn’t saying the OF needs to go but speaking from what I’ve seen in my dioceses which is located in Ontario, the priest are lazy. The OF is rushed, they over do the whole Eucharistic minister thing. The Cathedral has stopped doing the liturgy of the hours, adoration, benediction and even the rosary aren’t being held there. The Cathedral! It’s very disheartening especially to a convert like me. I left Protestantism because I knew it was missing too much. The teachings are all very watered down and PC in my regular parish as well. So yes here the EF is held by priest who see the importance of Tradition and wth reverence.

The priest who mumbled and rushed through the TLM should have been spoken to and dealt with. The OF should be reverent in the ways you have mentioned but that isn’t the norm. Ultimately the mass shouldn’t be changed to accommodate lazy priest or laity with hopes that the Church will change her teachings. If priest want to be lazy they should consider doing something else. If they want an anything goes mindset then they can become Protestant.
 
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Again, the problems you cite are not related to the OF, they are related to the attitude(s) of the celebrant(s). The EF will not solve the attitude problem. The reason the EF is, as some claim, better than the OF in that regard is because most celebrants of the EF are, for want of a better word “enthusiasts” of that form.

Make the EF the only form of the Mass and the problems you cite will rapidly infest it as well as the same clergy will remain in place. IMHO, having the EF only exacerbates the problems with the OF as it pulls more reverent resources away from it.

I make no secret of the fact that I worship in a monastery largely because of those problems in my parish. However as someone who visits a different parish each month with our Gregorian schola, I can say with certainty the problem is not universal. I have been to many joyful and reverent OF Masses in the small city in Quebec where we sing. The OF is wrongly singled out as the problem when in reality it’s attitude that’s the issue.

The mumbling and speed-read low-Mass EF priests of yore were not an isolated problem by any means. Then, like now, some were more careful than others.
 
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I can agree to that. I personally think that parishes should just accommodate both forms. Have TLM and OF free to use through out the week. The Cathedral here only offers week day mass on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays. I think that it would be a good idea for evening week day mass to be held in the Latin rite. Maybe have a Sunday morning OF and then have an evening EF to appeal to more Catholics. The biggest problem you are correct to say is most certainly attitude and the poor attitude that has affect the Catechesis in many parishes.
 
Ah, the Ginyu force. Legends in their own minds.
But you know, you forgot those FEMALE artists. . .the Sailor Squad!! Sailor Moon, Sailor Mars, Sailor Mercury, Sailor Venus, Sailor Jupiter. . .They even do costume changes. Think of the metaphoric value!
 
Thank God for the folks you mention. Hopefully France returns to the Church. And, to reference your later post on this thread. What we need is better seminaries. Seminaries that actually teach solid stuff.
 
The OF was the product of nearly 70 years of study and discussion within the Church. It is based on the idea of ressourcement (return to the sources) which aimed to remove the non-essential things that had been adds over the centuries and a purposeful effort at noble simplicy. Many things in the church had become bloated with ornamentation and pageantry … and the Church desired to go back to simpler form that looks more like the early Church’s liturgy. The fact that the OF had similarities with some Protestant services may be true, but that was not the primary motivation.
 
Similarities? It was almost copied with all the "also with you"s and hymns.
 
There is nothing ‘wrong’ with the OF but there is nothing wrong with the EF either. And the idea that the EF was ‘bloated with pageantry’ etc. is based on a Jansenist and neo-Puritan view that anything less than cheap and ‘simple’ is ‘too much’.

The average OF does not lack for pageantry or what you falsely think are 'non-essentials and add-ons" (watch EWTN for an excellent example).
 
I respect your opinion, but believe the history and goal of the liturgical movement of the late 19th century through the mid-20th century are well documented. Ressourcement theology was a real thing and a real movement … Blessed Paul VI said on multiple occasions that one of his aims was to strip away the non-essentials. So while I do respect your opinion, I’ll go with Paul VI on this one.
 
stpurl said:
And the idea that the EF was ‘bloated with pageantry’ etc. is based on a Jansenist and neo-Puritan view that anything less than cheap and ‘simple’ is ‘too much’.
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Jansenist? Neo-Puritan? Noble simplicity is very much in keeping with monastic values. Our abbot gave us an excellent talk many years ago on why the OF was, and is, needed. Much of the Liturgical Movement had its source, in fact, in the Benedictine abbey of Solesmes under dom Prosper Guéranger.

So it’s not surprise that monastic simplicity had an influence on the liturgy.
 
The OP sounds an awful lot like denigrating the Ordinary Form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Tread carefully my friends, lest you find yourselves at odds not only with this forum, but with God and His Holy Church.
 
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Just a quick correction, you implied the OF is not Latin Rite.

Latin Rite is synonymous with Roman Rite or Western Rite - the Ordinary Form and Extraordinary Form are two different usages of the same Roman Rite. There’s also the Anglican Usage of the Roman Rite, the Mozarabic Latin Rite, the Rite of Braga of the Latin Rite, etc. All variations of the Latin Rite, which derive from the Ritual forms present in the Roman Church in the first Christian Millenium.
 
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godisgood77 said:
Blessed Paul VI said on multiple occasions that one of his aims was to strip away the non-essentials. So while I do respect your opinion, I’ll go with Paul VI on this one.
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Then you should have no problem with working to implement Jubilate Deo in every parish.

"In April 1974 Pope Paul VI sent to every bishop in the world a booklet of some of the simplest selections of Gregorian Chant, much of it drawn from the Graduale Romanum. This booklet, called Jubilate Deo, was intended as a “minimum repertoire of Gregorian chant”. It is, in other words, an official Latin “core repertoire” for the Roman Rite. It was prepared, the Pope said, in order “to make it easier for Christians to achieve unity and spiritual harmony with their brothers and with the living tradition of the past. Hence it is that those who are trying to improve the quality of congregational singing cannot refuse Gregorian chant the place which is due to it” (Voluntati Obsequens).

Pope Paul VI gave permission for the selections in Jubilate Deo to be freely reprinted. The booklet was accompanied by a letter in which the Holy Father made this request of the bishops:

“Would you therefore, in collaboration with the competent diocesan and national agencies for the liturgy, sacred music and catechetics, decide on the best ways of teaching the faithful the Latin chants of Jubilate Deo and of having them sing them…. You will thus be performing a new service for the Church in the domain of liturgical renewal” (Voluntati Obsequens).

Jubilate Deo contains simple chant settings in Latin of the parts of the Ordinary of the Mass: Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Memorial Acclamation, Agnus Dei. It also provides musical settings for the dialogues between priest and people, such as before the Preface, and the Ite Missa est, the response to the Prayer of the Faithful, and others.

An, expanded edition of Jubilate Deo was later issued by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 1987."

(From Adoremus bulletin)
 
I believe the Anglican Use has now been replaced by the Anglican Ordinariate.
 
Respectfully, I disagree. And since you seem to be well-informed on the subject, might I ask you to direct me to exactly what in the EF was 'bloated" and full of ‘pageantry’ and exactly where, how, why, and who determined the ‘cuts’ AND whether indeed what was done and accepted and still practiced in the OF today was actually what the Council Fathers etc. had actually voted for? (Hint: Altar rails being taken down and destroyed, and the indult for Communion in the Hand. I certainly believe the former was NEVER called for. The latter came about and received an indult in proper form but again was not something that had been determined as a ‘need’ until some time after the OF had been promulgated.)

There is a lot of information and misinformation out there to sift through, probably a couple of lifetime’s worth of study. I freely admit I’m no expert, and would gladly learn more. I’m always open to knowledge. But I also expect that, where I know I can sometimes be wrong and other people can help me to realize and correct my mistakes, that sometimes I can be RIGHT and sometimes I’m the one who can help others realize and correct their mistakes. And sometimes it takes a long time to determine what is really what.
 
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That’s what I meant.

There is a specific form of the Latin Rite used by the Anglican Ordinariate that is unique to them and has uniquely Anglican features to it.
 
Liturgical music tends to be a hot button for some, but not me. I do like well produced and well executed music during the mass… so no issue for me.
 
The EF is so full of rubrical minutiae, it’s a wonder that there aren’t several liturgical mistakes at each EF Mass. I have a 1935 Ceremonial from France to back that up. Down to precise positioning of the fingers at various places. A lot of it does appear redundant.

Some simplification was most certainly called for. Our abbot gave us examples of liturgical accretions for which the meaning was lost in the mists of time, but alas his talk was several years ago and I can’t recall exactly what.

The business about altar rails, etc., in reality, is totally unrelated to the form of the Mass. Sacrosanctum Concilium set out the broad guidelines for liturgical renewal, and the Missal and Liturgy of the Hours are the products of the reform. The only thing in the Missal is mention of the ability to celebrate facing the people, which incidentally was not invented during or after the Council but did exist in different places, for example abbeys where the main altar was between the choir and the nave, which meant that some in attendance, either the community or the faithful in the nave, saw the celebrant face them, depending on the specifics of each place.
 
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