The Wasteland of Liturgy

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On this we agree strongly.

We should give God the absolute best we can. No one in love, gives their Love a cinderblock!

I’ve struggled with this topic for some while, and I’ve gotten over it by “praying for the priest and the people”.

So if I find myself coming out of Mass with interior complaint or disgust…I tell myself…“You didn’t pray very well for the priest did you? You didn’t make up for some parishioner doing email during Mass, with your interior recollection, did you? You didn’t offer the time for them, did you? What can you offer in this next hour for them and their indifference or apparent lukewarmness?”

That sort of interior conversation and making of resolutions, with God, has helped me.
 
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Lucky!
I never really understood the whole “Latin mass never made sense, it’s better in English” argument. We speak different languages all the time n’est pas? No big deal. Translations are on the other side of the page for goodness sakes!
 
Each Holy Mass is a source of infinite graces. Each Mass, badly said, or whether done with banjos and ukuleles. Infinite graces.

Whether we accept the graces He is offering us, is up to us. Objective graces vs. applied grace, in other words.

Our Lord at times allows us to suffer…do we suffer alone and turn inward…even at Mass, or do we accept the suffering cheerfully with abandonment is the pivotal question…and choice for us.

This doesn’t mean we are passive…instead it means we have to get even more active and more creative…we have to think of ways of approaching father so and so, or maybe suggest some formation on the structure and purpose of the Mass (slow burn…slowly forming others so that they too pine for the transcendent beauty of the Mass well done).

And maybe it means we have to do a lot more praying…months…a year…maybe we ask for a period of weekly adoration, we invite our friends to pray…and we might pray about the Mass…Lord how can I help you help others discover the beauty they are missing…?

What I mean is…we have to get more inventive and trusting…that Our Lord wants to draw people closer to Him through the Mass…and we become instruments to help Him do this AT HIS PACE.
 
I’m glad you’ve found a way to deal with it. I went to Christmas Midnight Mass, as I do almost every year, and nothing was different. Perhaps, someday, I will be surprised. The cinderblocks will be better hidden, the folk music will seem classically traditional, and I can kneel before the service without fearing to bump into my brother or sister in the pew in front of me.

I’m not going to take onto myself the burden of relieving the unnecessary distractions and tasteless showmanship that I see. “How deserted (are the pews) once so full of people. How like a widow is she who was once great (among the churches)…” I can blame myself for a lot of things (and I do once a year during Lent). Forgive me, Lord, your house is desolate. Only memories, now.
 
I’m just giving you Catholic teaching as WE all should know. It’s not just my opinion.
 
Well, you don’t have to bother anymore…
But, the point of Latin was to maintain universality in language and accuracy in comprehension throughout the universal (catholic) church.
 
The Mass is both Sacrificial AND celebratory. Just not both at the same time. That’s why I wondered where you heard that, or was taught that…

Oh…wait…are you catholic? I assumed so, that’s why I am using “we”…
Apologies if you are not catholic.
 
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If we find nothing different…then we become the difference in our own heart/little space. That’s all we can do! (so we turn this into an act of humility…our littleness!!")

We perhaps take that first reading from Isaiah…and “work it over a bit anew, with a bit more love”

From that Reading of Midnight Mass: "The people who walked in darkness
[in what parts of my life do I walk in the dark, or argue with the light?]
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have seen a great light;
[Lord that I may see this light more sharply tonight and this week]
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upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
[do I often give in to gloom; am I as cheerful as I can be with my wife, my children, my coworkers, Lord?]
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a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
[How is my joy made real at work, at home, here]
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and great rejoicing,
[Do I frequently ask God for more gratitude, do I rejoice even when I suffer a setback?]
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as they rejoice before you as at the harvest…"

And then form one or two resolutions from this “interogative” approach with the readings of the Mass.

Those questions could lead to a month or two’s worth of spiritual work, no?
 
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But you can’t take this example as “proof” that isn’t an escape from the world. When I go to Mass I look forward to the escape. There are things going on during Mass I don’t care for, (not liturgically) but I do my best to ignore it, deal with it, or use it as a lesson in humility for myself. I go to encounter Jesus Christ.
 
Mr_Freeze said:
Translations are on the other side of the page for goodness sakes!
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no, I still prefer the English. I don’t want to be reading a translation when I could more easily be ‘hearing’ the Mass. I’m still not sure what it is that everyone sees as so reverent in the EF Mass that is missing in the OF. Like I said before. We still use incense, bells, sing the antiphons for high Mass. Still have a ‘low’ Mass. Our parish has all the feast days, adoration, confession.

But I believe that the pendulum always swings back. For those who went to extremes after VII, I think you will see things swing back a little. I don’t believe it is necessary to go all the way back to the Latin Mass to be reverent.
 
After a LOT of searching, I also finally found a NO mass like that. So…
That’s fine. There are those who would argue that the Latin Mass is “more reverent” but I’m not one of them.
Both the NO and the EF are very similar if you know what is going on.
 
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  1. It is not Vatican II in its totality, nor is it primarily due to the guidelines laid down by that council, but by the lack of attention paid to the better parts of tradition that allowed the liturgy to slip to its present pitiful state.
  2. To me, tolerating such, or even trying to make a “virtue of necessity” by putting up with it is not an option. Such ideas make it seem more important than it is, or turn us inward (as Father Imbelli would have us do). Comparing it to the sufferings of Martyrs (even Christ Himself) to me is to diminish true suffering. We do not find ourselves in this case in a Nazi prison or ready to Redeem the World.
  3. I do not doubt that a closer inner life with Jesus and Mary would be spiritually beneficial. Father Ambelli found that trivial debates about the wording of the liturgy to be abstruse, but went further than was necessary in asking us to love the liturgy even in all its present ugliness. Like many of the comments in this thread, he offers this “mystagogic” gobbledegook as a way to swallow the bitter pill of disrespectful liturgy.
I have said my peace on this subject. I feel like I threw some fresh meat to the lions; but in this situation, being one of the lions myself, I am surfeited.
 
After reading the article I have to say that it’s convoluted and could have said what it did in far simpler terms.
I attend Mass in different parishes and communities (I am lucky to live in an area which offers daily Mass in different nearby areas). Mass may be the OF, EF, or Ordinariate Use - there’s also an Eastern Catholic community however I’ve yet to experience their liturgy.
In all honesty, I love the Ordinariate Use - ‘Sacral’ English, Eastward position, Last Gospel, Anglican Chant etc. I love it. But I know the Church is bigger and has much more. Liturgy is simply a means - it is meant to bring people closer to God (or rather brings the realisation of God closer to the people - that’s a subject for another thread); there is no form of worship we can offer that will ever be perfect because we’re offering it. That said, I was taught that we offer our best to God. Whenever I am involved with parish ministry - reading, serving, singing, whatever, I am conscious that it should be offered as the best because it is offered to God. As O have said before though I am aware that my offerings are more often a bunch of wilted flowers than a bouquet of exquisite roses, the intention was there though.
The problem we may fall into is complacency (and it may be found in a variety of communities) - and that’s never good for any relationship.
 
There is such a thing as spiritual crisis though. Not everything is about earthly things even though admittedly there are earthly crises.
 
Mr_Freeze said:
I’m not saying it was THE problem, but tell me how it improved the church and advanced it’s mission. It was called to address some apparent need, so tell me how it helped.
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While improving the Church and advancing its mission are always relevant to a purpose of a Council, and Vatican II Council may not be much different, in retrospect, I think it is more saving in nature. This is an aspect of Vatican II, if you see it, that must prompt out hearts to praise God for the work of the Holy Spirit to renew, revitalize and strengthen the Church and her people in an adverse condition.

Certain phenomenon happened in the late fifties and more pronounced in the sixties that revolutionized forever the way we lived that could be detrimental to religious value and religious life.

It probably could be summed up - technological advancement. TV, birth control pills and drugs had becoming widespread in a new social environment of freedom after the world wars. This, in some ways, set about a mentality of rebelliousness and daring to show it.

The Church would have no chance against these development especially after the older generation were gone.

Vatican II, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, able to foresaw all these, which we could not, to renew the Church.

I have travelled extensively to the continents of the earth, a bit less now, and I saw the work of the Spirit to revitalize the Church, and it is ongoing.

While Latin is appreciated in the West, it is useless in the third worlds, in New Guinea or Kenya, for example. The mass has to be said in a language that people understand, for it to have meaning with those folks.

The Church has to bring the Gospel to the corner of the earth literally but it has to be understood as well.

Because of those changes, the people rose up, take it up and are empowered by the Holy Spirit.

The Western world however, where all the technologies came from, were adversely affected nevertheless with the following generations losing their faith. Churches were empty where youth rather go watching football on Sundays instead of going to the mass - extension of their wild liberal lives in colleges.

The West can still be saved and faith will surely be increased but it could have been worse.

Those are fruits of Vatican II that I can think of. God is true to His promises the He will be with us till the end of the ages.

Just my two cents.
 
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Peter_M said:
he calls it “mystagogy” and “mystagogic catechesis”. I’m not quite sure what he means, but it seems that he is referring to a kind of “personal encounter with Jesus” (to use a cliché).
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WE are sadly lacking in mystagogic catechesis. Most parishes do not include this after the Easter Sacraments of initiation.

Although the modern use of the words “personal encounter with Jesus” may seem like a cliche, the concept is anything but modern.

“that I may gain Christ, 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith: 10that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death; 11if by any means I may attain unto the resurrection from the dead.” Phil. 3

If every Catholic had this goal, to know Him in the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of his suffering, and being conformed to Him in His death our liturgies would look much different! We have been contaminated by “entertainment”.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
I wish the Mass was more like pre-Vatican II (note that “pre-Vatican II” is about 60 years ago at this point, and also that there are EF Masses available now in many places for those who wish to have that experience).
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Yes, given that Vatican II ran from 1962 through 1965 (52-55 years ago), there are very few CAF posters who are old enough to have adult memories of pre-Vatican II liturgies, and a large percentage of even those posters are happiest with the vernacular liturgy.

My husband spent his early childhood in post-Vatican II 1970s/early 1980s Poland, and the Polish language liturgies were perfectly reverent, as well as packed out. (Bear in mind that Latin is waaaay more foreign to Slavs than Latin is to English speakers.)

As I once heard a priest say, there were two events in the US that happened around the same time, Vatican II and Woodstock, and a lot of people confuse the two events.
 
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