Crusader:
I can empathize with your strong feelings for the most part.
I don’t think the Novus Ordo Mass has anything to do with the drastically reduced belief in the Real Presence though. I think it has far more to do with horrible or non-existant catechesis over the past 2-3 generations.
Dominus Tecum.
Dear
Dominus Tecum:
I disagree with you that the
Novus Ordo has nothing to do with the reduced belief in the Real Presence. I would agree that it alone is not all of the cause, but it plays a major part. I do agree, however, that the laxity and disorganization allowed in the
Novus Ordo is found also in not only the catechesis of the laity, but more importantly in the seminaries, which is now progressed all the way to episcopates and beyond.
It seems that all who wish that the so-called “Tridentine Mass” was still with us are accused from time to time of just being nostalgic. They are wrong for the most part, but I believe it is their lack of experience with both the “Tridentine” and the
Novus Ordo.. The *Novus Ordo * has almost no firm structure, which allows and
promotes deviations, experimentation, and their disasterous results. What made it even worse was the cave-in of the Holy See to the wide-spread disobediance to the requirement to retain the Latin. However, even with the Latin the allowed variations are tantamount to lackl of control. As even Pope Paul VI admitted, the smoke of satan has entered the Church. Then the wide-spread disobedience concerning “Communion in the hand” and the subsequent cave-in of the Holy See started a full-volume death-knell for belief in the Real Presence
The Mass which was revived and codified by Pope Saint Pius V in 1570 was fixed firm and steady. As I reported elsewhere in my postings, I was taught to use the Missal in the early 1940’s by the nuns, who remarked that we could take this English-Latin Missal to any Roman Catholic Church in the world and follow every rubric and every word except for the sermon and local announcements. There was no worry about properly assisting at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Even the rubrics performed by the priest wwere fixed. For every part of the Mass his position, his posture, his facing direction, the use of his hands were fixed world-wide. It’s rare that you can find two Masses in the same parish that are the same. My archbishop brags that we have Masses in 35 languages here. What kind of unity is that; that’s segregation big-time. I pity those who have to travel on business to foreign countries, other than English-speaking. With neither the language nor the rubrics being consistent how do you concentrate on the Sacrifice. You will spend all your time trying to figure out where the priest is in the Mass. I experienced that myself when I was forced to go to an all-Spanish parish for Mass on a Holy Day.
The rules of conduct in Church were conducive to respect and adoration toward the Blessed Sacrament. The nomenclature was familiar and specific. Today we hear so many generics you have to listen a while to determine what is meant. “Literature” was a generic term to cover any and every ceremony and prayer the Church had from a Novena to the Holy Sacrifice. Today we hear, I’m going to “Eucharist.” The Blessed Sacrament was the
Holy Eucharist, the most important of the seven Sacraments.
Mass was the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in its shortened form.
The vestments were fixed and universal, although there were some minor variations in the designs of the chasuable. Churches were designed to accomodate the fixed rituals of that Mass. It is not nostalgia that generates a desire to recover that Mass and that discipline. It is a desire to enter a Catholic Church and to assist at Mass and feel that I am in the House of God and to be allowed through the environment therein to concentrate on the reality of being present through a suspension of time at the foot of the Cross at Calvary.
