I too, respect that others may have a preferences for a more traditional liturgy (i.e. EF/TLM or the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom in the Byzantine Catholic Churches) and each of us has a personal reason for preferring one form over another, but please don’t imply that one subscribes to relativism just because they have a preference to the Mass in OF, done in a simple, monastic style.
YoungTradCatholic was replying to a post that stated that her preference for the EF was due to an “entertainment factor”.
Fine, and I am aware that monasticism is not the topic of the thread, but if you have attended Mass in a monastic setting, you see that it’s done in a very simplistic form and the title of this thread is “simple mass”.
Hmm, Masses in the Solesmes Congregation (Benedictine) are far from simplistic; given that they chant the propers and ordinary every day in Gregorian chant, and on Sundays and feasts, use incense. Mind you it is done with subtlety, and the churches themselves tend to be very simple in style. A Mass in our abbey on a weekday is more beautiful than a Sunday Mass in most parishes and is entirely chanted.
I think Gregorian chant has lost much of its snooty, high-class character that it once had.
It doesn’t matter. The OP was trying to make a case for a Mass similar to what the early Christians experienced. Monasticism was a much later addition to the Church and the Masses that developed for religious communities may have been simple but were not anything like what the early Christians experienced.
I’m a he, lol.
And, fine. Be simple in a monastery if you want, due to an order’s specific character. Simplicity in monasteries was preserved even before Vatican II.
However, monastic masses make up a very tiny fraction of all masses. The majority are parish, public masses, which are not tied down by the same rules as monastic masses.
and I should have elaborated more that many “simple” masses have a monastic-type feel to them, if one has been blessed to have attended a Mass in a monastic community.…and because of that simplicity, I would imagine it’s close to the Mass of the Early Church. I’ve encountered quite a few parishes whose Masses have a monastic-feel to them and only a 2 of those parishes had a Benedictine or Franciscan priest; the rest were diocesan priests.
Does it matter if our masses are close to what early masses were like? To paraphrase what someone in another thread said, if early Christians could have had a mass with the grandeur of a Tridentine mass, I’m very sure they would have. But they didn’t have stuff like that, because they were forced underground, as their faith was a crime. So it’s a moot point, really, all this “early Christian” stuff.
The diocesan priests could be Benedictine secular oblates though.
Actually, I don’t find the Early Christians a “moot point” anymore than I would the Church in the Middle Ages, the Church during the Age of Enlightenment, or now. That’s part of the treasure of the Catholic Church. All those centuries of believers that have went before us.
I think they went through a seminary affiliated with a Benedictine Abbey, as most in our diocese have.
But you won’t explain, in logical terms, why.
Why what? Why I like a simple OF instead of a TLM? Is that what you want to know? I wasn’t aware that I had to disclose my reasons for preferring one form over the other on this forum or that I needed to explain why I find the Mass of the Early Church interesting.
i agree, there are absolutes, there is right and wrong.
The NO will never aspire to the dignity of the Mass of ages. Sorry.
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