The future of the Latin Mass

[ProVobis]

Do you mean real olde english or just english with the “thee’s and thou’s” (Elizabethan or Shakespearean english)?

Because I have a friend who’s read old (or maybe it was middle?) english to us, and it’s nothing like modern english. Old English is basically a different language (it’s pre-vowel shift I believe too).

My step brother, who’s a professional linguist, recites Beowulf to me all the time. Yuk!

Although Old English is a formal identification of a barbaric language around the 11th century, so-called Middle English is not that much more recognizable to today’s Anglophone.

1066andallthat.com/english_old/beowulf_prologue.asp

1066andallthat.com/english_middle/overview_video.asp

And even today’s versions of Shakespeare don’t show the actual text he wrote. Or even the Douay-Rheims which now has the u’s and v’s and vv’s (double v’s) transliterated so that it looks modern and palatable.

What the words Shakespeare used or the Douay-Rheims first created meant are different animals and today’s English scholars as well as Mass translators have a field day with them.

English, unlike Church Latin or Old Church Slavonic, just doesn’t have an ideal period from which to pick on as a baseline, especially for worship.

 

[ProVobis]

If you attend the EF Mass with a missal, you do get the same beautiful "“old English.” You just need to read it.

The English is only a guide and handmissals will differ in translations, especially the propers. I see the English as training wheels and sooner or later, it helps to take them off so they don’t get in your way.

 

[wasserfall]

Or even the Douay-Rheims which now has the u’s and v’s and vv’s (double v’s) transliterated so that it looks modern and palatable.

The original printings of the Douay Rheims used both real ‘w’ and double v ‘vv’ for the 23rd letter of the alphabet, so it was likely more a matter of how many of the various pieces of type were available for the press more than a confusion about how to write the 23rd letter of the alphabet.

 

[ProVobis]

I think this is the 1582 English.

churchlatin.com/library/books/samplepages/BBH01.pdf

 

[KateKimmer]

I attend the OF. My diocese offers a weekly EF on Sunday, within a aboout a 10 minute drive from my house. I have been a few times, both high & low Masses, and while I appreciate it’s beauty, I do not find it spiritually satisfying.

Sadly, the same can be said for most of the OF Masses I attend also.

For me, the new translation has gone a long way in helping to enrich the OF, especially the Collects, and the Prayers after communion, I love the language & imagery.

What I would like see-
-more “say the black, do the red”. I live in a diocese where some priests are
notorious for “adlibbing”, or worse yet, use “inclusive language”

-more “sacred silence”, the noise level in most parishes around here is pretty bad.

-more preaching on how to life a Christian life in this secular world, sin and the importance of the sacrament of reconciliation, and on church teaching in general.

-better training for altar servers & EM’sHC, and the use of the latter much more sparingly. I have seen, more that once sadly, priests & deacons not distribute communion and no, it was not for health reasons!

-music that encompasses all of the rich musical tradition of the Chruch. While I love some of the “happy-clappy” stuff of the 70’s & 80’s, I also love older mroe traditional music, although, I am not a big fan of chant.

excellent points! I agree with you!

 

[BenedictusFidem]

I have been perusing through different commentative books about the current state or the evolution to the ordinary form of the mass. It seems that everywhere I look there is a consensus that there is no unified journey backwards to the extraordinary form, but the extraordinary and the ordinary must inform and enrich each other. So without turning this into “I hate the OF MASS” post, I want to discuss the benefits of it. How do people seeing the OF in the future? While it is obvious there are abuses everywhere, I think the orthodoxy of JP II and B XVI are bring about a renewed vitality of the liturgy on the horizon. Where do people think that the OF can be enriched?

There are no benefits of it. I used to attend the Novus Ordo every Saturday and Sunday, every week. Once I was exposed to tradition, there was no way I was going back. I now attend the Latin Mass exclusively. The Novus Ordo was a radical departure and change in the theology of the Mass compared to the Latin Mass 1., among countless other problems. It was not an organic development. Put simply, it’s a “fabrication”, a “banal, on the spot product” to quote then-Cardinal Ratzinger 2.

Hope this helps.

1. “The Ottaviani Intervention” - Letter from Cardinals Ottaviani and Bacci to His Holiness Pope Paul VI, September 25th, 1969.
2. “Ratzinger’s Faith: The Theology of Pope Benedict XVI” by By Tracey Rowland {pg. 142}.

 

[Jean_Anthony]

P&B (ban circumventer).