Survey shows Catholic priests don’t like Mass changes

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kag1982 said:
When we worry about something as trivial as Missal translations, we have less time to worry about being good people.
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You do have a point there. They sure spent a lot of time and money putting the Mass in many vernaculars back in the 60’s. Many parishes are still paying royalties for them, by the way.
 
kag1982 said:
The Mass and its translation frankly weren’t a problem. Sexual abuse and the Curia were. And if enough corrective action had been taken, then the huge scandal wouldn’t have happened a year ago and the Cardinals wouldn’t have gone so anti-establishment with their choice for Pope. (And yes Francis strikes me as a pretty solid rebuke of the Curia.). It seems to me that there was a tunnel vision focus on nitpicky liturgy things and everything else went to the wayside.
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I would love to have the proof that somehow any focus on the liturgy caused everything else to go by the wayside.

Should more have been done about the sexual abuse/cover-up? Of course. Does that mean we shouldn’t pay any attention to the liturgy of the Mass where our Lord is made truly present on the altar…not something sooooo trivial by the way? A resounding NO.

I can’t believe that anyone is arguing one or the other. Why not both/all?
 
sw85 said:
You mean the perception of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is just tautological. Beauty itself is an objective fact, being, along with truth and virtue, different expressions of goodness. To deny the objectivity of beauty, really, is to indulge in a species of moral relativism.
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I have still yet to have someone convince me of the objectivity of beauty. If something is objective, that means (by definition) that there is some criteria that need to be met in order to be considered a part of that “group”.

For example, truth is something objective because Realism is right (and anti-Realists can go figuratively jump off a cliff. If they can decide what a cliff is). Aquinas referred to truth as (roughly) “the adequation of the intellect and the thing” (adaequatio intellectus et rei), with basically means that the idea in your mind corresponds to the thing in the world. If I say “the wall is black” and it is actually right, then that is false because I have joined “wall” and “black” in my mind when they are not so in reality. The measure of truth is the way the world is, and that’s why it is objective (and anti-Realism is wrong. Seriously.)

Virtue is something a little more sketchy depending on who’s definition of virtue you are going with (Aristotle vs. St. Paul vs. Seneca), but they all have some criteria to say “this is a virtue if it fits this definition”.

Beauty is not something that you can give a universal criteria for. Some people find Latin beauty, I find it clunky. Some people find Churches that have every square inch filled with paint beautiful, while others find simple Churches beautiful. If beauty is objective, then it can’t be both because objectivity implies that if (option 1) equals beautiful, then not-(option 1) is not beautiful.

The last option to appeal to is Plato’s Forms and say that there is a Form of beauty. Well, Plato was wrong and Forms don’t exist, and Aquinas proved that in Summa Contra Gentiles book 2 (in the last third, I can’t remember the chapter off the top of my head).
 
ProVobis said:
You do have a point there. They sure spent a lot of time and money putting the Mass in many vernaculars back in the 60’s. Many parishes are still paying royalties for them, by the way.
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It was a good idea to put everything into vernacular. It made sense for people to understand an participate in the Mass.
 
Lucky7 said:
I would love to have the proof that somehow any focus on the liturgy caused everything else to go by the wayside.

Should more have been done about the sexual abuse/cover-up? Of course. Does that mean we shouldn’t pay any attention to the liturgy of the Mass where our Lord is made truly present on the altar…not something sooooo trivial by the way? A resounding NO.

I can’t believe that anyone is arguing one or the other. Why not both/all?
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See… I think that some people are solely focused on the liturgy and forget that they spend most of the time outside of Church.
 
kag1982 said:
See… I think that some people are solely focused on the liturgy and forget that they spend most of the time outside of Church.
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So because you “think” this of “some” people you decide to blame the entire Church for focusing too much on it instead of the scandal?
 
kag1982 said:
See… I think that some people are solely focused on the liturgy and forget that they spend most of the time outside of Church.
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kag1982 said:
It was a good idea to put everything into vernacular. It made sense for people to understand an participate in the Mass.
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If you think things are more important outside of Church, why bother spending the time and money to translate and say the Mass into/in hundreds of vernaculars?
 
Lucky7 said:
So because you “think” this of “some” people you decide to blame the entire Church for focusing too much on it instead of the scandal?
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I think that the leadership of the Church was focused on this too much.
 
CatholicGuy22 said:
But you do?
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What’s your point? I tried to explain earlier that the translation of the Missal was under the competence of a completely different congregation than either the abuse (ie priestly discipline) and reform of the curia. The work by the ICEL, does not prohibit anybody else from doing their work. Just like the work by the FDA does not prohibit the government from working on fixing the IRS scandal, or the USDA from doing their work. Then we get into the local dioceses, and they had to implement the translation, but all the hard work was already done. The theological and liturgical questions were already answered, the translation work and publishing already done, they just had to figure out a way to implement it in their areas so that people would accept it. (And it seems to have worked among lay people, +70% approval).
 
A friend described the Missal changes as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Corruption and abuse scandals aside for a moment, there seem to be sizable problems that remain: Catholic school closings and an alarming jump in tuition costs that squeeze out many faithful families, a dwindling number of diocesan priests, etc. Giving up the last Missal (and, as my husband describes it, the feeling of being “at home” in the Mass), failing to allot precious resources to the kinds of issues listed above…all for the sake of what is claimed to be a more faithful translation? Meh.
 
gracepoole said:
A friend described the Missal changes as rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Corruption and abuse scandals aside for a moment, there seem to be sizable problems that remain: Catholic school closings and an alarming jump in tuition costs that squeeze out many faithful families, a dwindling number of diocesan priests, etc. Giving up the last Missal (and, as my husband describes it, the feeling of being “at home” in the Mass), failing to allot precious resources to the kinds of issues listed above…all for the sake of what is claimed to be a more faithful translation? Meh.
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Except it is not just a more faithful translation. If the Mass is what we claim it to be, then a more faithful translation, is a more accurate, full, and truthful expression of our faith. Would you concede that saying the Nicene Creed is better than saying, “God is good, Jesus saves, and the Holy Spirit comes” and that the Creed is more likely to attract and keep faithful adherents than the later statement of belief? So the Mass, our central mode of worship to the almighty and ever living God, where Christ’s sacrifice is made present on the altar, where Heaven and Earth come together and God becomes truly present in our midst, should it not accurately represent our faith and our understanding of God? If it doesn’t, then what are we actually portraying to the world? And more importantly, to God?
 
jilly4ski said:
Except it is not just a more faithful translation. If the Mass is what we claim it to be, then a more faithful translation, is a more accurate, full, and truthful expression of our faith. Would you concede that saying the Nicene Creed is better than saying, “God is good, Jesus saves, and the Holy Spirit comes” and that the Creed is more likely to attract and keep faithful adherents than the later statement of belief? So the Mass, our central mode of worship to the almighty and ever living God, where Christ’s sacrifice is made present on the altar, where Heaven and Earth come together and God becomes truly present in our midst, should it not accurately represent our faith and our understanding of God? If it doesn’t, then what are we actually portraying to the world? And more importantly, to God?
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So the Masses celebrated over the last several decades were less pleasing to God? I guess I understand if one wants to accept that perspective. It seems completely antithetical to my relationship with God, however.
 
Save the liturgy, save the world.
Lex orandi, lex credendi.

There is nothing vain or futile or insignificant about the changes we have made to liturgy in the last 50 years. The celebration of the Eucharist is the “source and summit of Christian life”. It is how we live our faith in a tangible way. It is the thing which Christ commanded us to do. Without the Eucharist, there is no Church. It is the heavenly liturgy on Earth which we participate in through the ministry of Christ. We owe it to ourselves to make it the best we possibly can. We need to embrace these reforms which the Church in her wisdom gives us. We need to embrace them wholeheartedly without reservation or quarrel. These earthly things which you mention are all secondary and actually flow from our first responsibility to have right liturgy.
 
Elizium23 said:
These earthly things which you mention are all secondary and actually flow from our first responsibility to have right liturgy.
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Not to nitpick, but having enough priests to actually celebrate the Mass seems kinda significant.
 
gracepoole said:
So the Masses celebrated over the last several decades were less pleasing to God? I guess I understand if one wants to accept that perspective. It seems completely antithetical to my relationship with God, however.
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Did I say that? As laity we were obedient to our lawful authority. Obedience is a great virtue. How can that be displeasing to God? However, is it more* pleasing to him, that we have the right understanding of worship and his nature? Of course, it is. God wants us to become closer to him, and it is easier to do that with be better/fuller understanding of God and his nature. (ie the Creed rather than “God is good”).

*I use more here to suggest that God becomes more pleased with us when we correct wrongs, come closer to the truth, and understand him more fully. Not that the Mass itself is more pleasing.
 
ProVobis said:
FWIW, I believe the sample size used is actually larger than a common Gallup Poll sans daily tracking during an election period. And the population size is significantly different, giving the survey even more credibility.
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And if there were no sampling bias, then I’d be willing to agree. As it is, though, I’m not certain I’d hang my reputation on the assertion that this is a representative group…
 
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