The Latin Mass - Should It Be the Universal Catholic Mass Again?

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sw85 said:
I’d be interested in seeing some detailed reports on the differential demographics of the regular parishioners for the two forms. My impression is that exclusive adherents to the EF tend to be younger, higher fertility, and (outside the more radical elements of, for instance, the SSPX) less inclined to apostasy or schism than those of the OF. If that impression corresponds to reality, we may end up in a few generations with a Church where the EF is the more celebrated form, anyway.
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Geez…
Maybe if the people who disagree with you would just die off, the world would be a much better place???
We have to be careful we don’t project our limited viewpoints onto the whole darn world. I’ve seen some statistics somewhere else on the site that so called traditional Catholics are a tiny minority of Catholics. But we are not talking about numbers here are we? Is that what the faith reduces to? Isn’t it about human beings in realtionship with Jesus?

I respect your love for the EF Mass and Latin etc, and hopefully share your social activism in regard for the unborn and poor etc, all the traditional aspects of the Catholic Church. Do we really need to label ourselves and separate ourselves from the body of Christ? The labels don’t really matter, doesn’t matter how many like the EF or Latin or OF. Where I come from, these issues are non-issues, they never come up in discussion, and I mean never. Apostasy and Schism and infertile families^^^??? Get a grip please. Come to our parish and volunteer in our schools and see all the “schismatics” raising their Catholic children.
 
sw85 said:
I’d be interested in seeing some detailed reports on the differential demographics of the regular parishioners for the two forms. My impression is that exclusive adherents to the EF tend to be younger, higher fertility, and (outside the more radical elements of, for instance, the SSPX) less inclined to apostasy or schism than those of the OF. If that impression corresponds to reality, we may end up in a few generations with a Church where the EF is the more celebrated form, anyway.
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Well of course it is, but that’s just your basic sociology of groups.

When you speak about the people who go exclusively to the EF, you have a very small group of people who are making that conscience decision. The OF, quite literally speaking, has everyone else.

An apt analogy would be comparing the “cultural tastes” of the people at the country club to those who to a community recreation centre. Of course you’re going to find more “cultural” people there because it’s a small sub-set of the entire society.

The EF is a specific sub-sub-set of Catholicism, of the universal Church.

If I were to take another group, say Yankees fans, you’d find the same type of phenomenon. You’d have a small group (sub-set) of passionate fans who follow them throughout the country the whole year, and then you’ll have a lot of “meh” fans who occasionally enjoy a game on tv. That small group can just as easily say “us passionate fans are the real fans of the Yankees because we know all the stats and all the players and follow them 24/7, and those others aren’t very good fans”. Well of course you could say that, because you’re comparing your small group to everyone else in the group.
TrueLight said:
If it was good for the Catholics of old, it is good enough for me.
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Ah yes, the good old Catholics, who we love to idolize.
EcceAgnusDei said:
This is very true. I think it is one of the positives of having an OF/EF split. It allows the EF to remain virtually abuse free.
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That’s very insightful actually. It’s not just the Mass though, you can really see this with the spread of any social phenomenon. It’s easy to keep something “pure” and unaltered when it is done fairly exclusively, but when something becomes wider spread it starts to morph and change, that’s just what happens when people don’t have a good grasp on what it is or means.

What people here don’t seem to understand sometimes is that we no longer live in a world where humble obedience is the norm (it’s practically a heroic virtue these days). If you try and force things down people’s throats they are going to gag and object; that method has become obsolete, it no longer works. People want the “why’s” now, and something better then “remember the good old days?”; the good old days are gone and in some cases they never existed (except when you look through your rose-coloured glasses).

We have to live in 2012. Yes, we can look back into the past and take some things from it, but we can’t wholesale import an entire culture from 1950. Culture is affected and influenced by what’s going on in the world, and we can’t exactly replicate the past.
 
Cat said:
No.

We need to do everything possible to promote better understanding of our Catholic faith, and IMO, conducting the Main Event of the Church in a foreign language is not conducive to better understanding.
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As history has shown, the propagation of the Catholic faith has always been done in the language of the people. The*** Mass*** was always in Latin and the people’s understanding of every word and gesture was not important to them. In fact, Catholics 1000 years ago would have looked very confused if you wanted a complete translation of the Mass, but that’s another thread.
We need to look no further than Protestantism to see the results or using languages “understood by the people” Luther’s Bible and the Anglican Book of Common Prayer Cramner used are both in archaic English. Languages change over time, the meanings of words change. Which is one of the major factors in the thousands of Protestant denominations.
 
JustaServant said:
Allow me to quote Bishop J.C. Hedley in his book The Holy Eucharist:

www23.us.archive.org/stream/holyeucharist00hedl/holyeucharist00hedl_djvu.txt

Emphasis mine.
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Indeed. I agree with everything he says. Ecclesiastical Latin has been designed by the Church for its liturgy in the West and document preservation. Why do people think that their vulgar tongue worship is superior to the Church’s? There’s a reason why they call it (or used to call it) the vulgar tongue.
 
JustaServant said:
As history has shown, the propagation of the Catholic faith has always been done in the language of the people. The*** Mass*** was always in Latin and the people’s understanding of every word and gesture was not important to them.
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The Mass probably started in Aramaic or Greek (and the Last Supper, the first Mass, was in all likelihood in Aramaic).

The Mass was translated into the Latin because it was the vulgar (the common tongue or at least a common tongue) at the time (because French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish didn’t exist yet).
 
curlycool89 said:
The Mass probably started in Aramaic or Greek (and the Last Supper, the first Mass, was in all likelihood in Aramaic).

The Mass was translated into the Latin because it was the vulgar (the common tongue or at least a common tongue) at the time (because French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish didn’t exist yet).
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In the first centuries of the Church Latin, Hebrew and Greek were employed exclusively in liturgical service. There is no evidence that I have ever seen of it being in Aramaic. Even the ancient Jews of Jesus day understood what liturgical language was as opposed to the vulgar tongue of the people. Hebrew was a dead tongue after the captivity, yet it continued to be used in the Temple and synagogues in Christ’s time. Jesus Himself had to have known Hebrew to take part in synagogue worship.
 
ProVobis said:
Indeed. I agree with everything he says. Ecclesiastical Latin has been designed by the Church for its liturgy in the West and document preservation. Why do people think that their vulgar tongue worship is superior to the Church’s? There’s a reason why they call it (or used to call it) the vulgar tongue.
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The word vulgar does not have the etymology many think it does. It refers to the common or ordinary use, there is no aspect of repulsiveness or inferiority until roughly the 1600’s.

So here we are, debating now on the inferiority or superiority of human language in the worship of Jesus Christ, because one’s God given tongue is “vulgar”, using a misunderstood definition of vulgar. Surely you can quote us from Vatican 2 a passage on the vulgarity or inferiority of native tongues?? Surely the Catholic Church has a teaching on the comparative value of languages?
 
curlycool89 said:
If you try and force things down people’s throats they are going to gag and object; that method has become obsolete, it no longer works. People want the “why’s” now, and something better then “remember the good old days?”; the good old days are gone and in some cases they never existed (except when you look through your rose-coloured glasses).
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I agree. The “whys” are so very important. That is why catechism for the laity and proper formation for priests and religious is SO essential.

As for the “whys” of the EF and traditional practices, I think many of us here would love to explain why they are better, but the current forum rules do not allow us to do much of that.
We have to live in 2012. Yes, we can look back into the past and take some things from it, but we can’t wholesale import an entire culture from 1950. Culture is affected and influenced by what’s going on in the world, and we can’t exactly replicate the past.
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It is a misrepresentation of the traditional Catholic position to say that we want to return to the 1950s or somehow exactly replicate the past.
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EcceAgnusDei said:
It is a misrepresentation of the traditional Catholic position to say that we want to return to the 1950s or somehow exactly replicate the past.
  • PAX
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I’d rather return to the 1150s myself but hey, I’m a weird dude.
😃
 
curlycool89 said:
The Mass probably started in Aramaic or Greek (and the Last Supper, the first Mass, was in all likelihood in Aramaic).

The Mass was translated into the Latin because it was the vulgar (the common tongue or at least a common tongue) at the time (because French, German, English, Italian, and Spanish didn’t exist yet).
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Yes, Vulgar Latin was spoken at the time and the liturgy could have very well have been said in Vulgar Latin and/or Greek when or after Saul (Paul after he became a Roman citizen) arrived in Rome and found significant number of Christians already there. It wasn’t until Pope Victor I when the language became Ecclesiastical Latin, the Christianized version of Classical Latin, whose vocabulary and grammar had been earlier codified by Cicero and other Roman writers. Vulgar Latin really didn’t have any strict grammatical rules and evolved into the Romance languages. German and English were the languages of the barbarians.
 
I’ve often wondered about that. What do you think it meant around the time of Trent? (I believe the Latin word used then was “vulgaris.”)
 
TheDoctor said:
Let’s see…ask the Traditional Forum if the EF should be the OF and the OF should be stopped. Hey - do you also conduct polls for the Obama administration? 😃
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With a user name like “Trickster”, he might! :rolleyes:
 
Good Idea Fairy- Military term; An evil mythical creature that whispers advice and ideas into the ears of military leadership, causing hundreds unnecessary changes and countless wasted man-hours every year. The Good Idea Fairy should be shot on sight if he is seen in your area.



Apparently not just a military phenomenon.
 
TimothyH said:
There was an excellent post about about wanting to return to a more authentic Christianity that here.

-Tim-
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Was my humor about the 13th century not clear? Especially since the joke started with my posting this:
EcceAgnusDei said:
It is a misrepresentation of the traditional Catholic position to say that we want to return to the 1950s or somehow exactly replicate the past.
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Laugh with us and then let it go, brother 😉
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EcceAgnusDei said:
As for the “whys” of the EF and traditional practices, I think many of us here would love to explain why they are better, but the current forum rules do not allow us to do much of that.
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Well, since we’ve already gone over why the Mass is the Mass is the Mass, it would be a fairly short conversation, wouldn’t it?

As for practices, what exactly do you mean? Devotions? Just “how we did things back in the day”?

I know I reference him a lot, but Br. JR has pointed out in the Religious spiritualities/traditions thread, we can’t go back to all old practices. We’re not going to see religious orders go back to what they did pre-VII because they weren’t following their own traditions and charisms properly. How many times do we see people complain on these forums about monks/sisters/nuns not doing things “like they used to”, even when that conflicted with their own religious traditions?

We can’t go back to that because that would infringe of the rights of Religious, so you basically have to ax that entire idea from any future system. Maybe you don’t think that makes a big difference, but I’m sure it would.
 
curlycool89 said:
Well, since we’ve already gone over why the Mass is the Mass is the Mass, it would be a fairly short conversation, wouldn’t it?
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Only for people who already agree with you. If you think silence means that we agree, you are wrong. But we’re not allowed to discuss that here, so please don’t bait us into it.
As for practices, what exactly do you mean? Devotions? Just “how we did things back in the day”?
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By practice, I mean the way Catholicism was practiced, which includes liturgy, devotions, traditions, understanding, worldview, identity, and so forth.
I know I reference him a lot
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Indeed.
but Br. JR has pointed out in the Religious spiritualities/traditions thread, we can’t go back to all old practices. We’re not going to see religious orders go back to what they did pre-VII because they weren’t following their own traditions and charisms properly. How many times do we see people complain on these forums about monks/sisters/nuns not doing things “like they used to”, even when that conflicted with their own religious traditions?
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We can’t go back to that because that would infringe of the rights of Religious, so you basically have to ax that entire idea from any future system. Maybe you don’t think that makes a big difference, but I’m sure it would.
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Brother JR understandably talks about this a lot because Brother JR is a religious. However, it would be good to realize that 99% of the time on this forum, when we discuss spiritual practices, liturgy, etc, etc, we are talking about what the laity experience, we are talking about secular priests, we are talking about diocesan parishes; we are not talking about the life of the religious.
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