TLM as sole Worship?

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The most important document in all of the sixteen was the Constitution on the Liturgy, and after 50 years, I’m hopeful that Catholics have read it entirely. I weary of those who cherry-pick this document in order to promote certain aspects that were not the objectives of the Councillors. You are so right, Robwar, that tings were not “hunky dory” prior to V-II’s changes. The Council mentioned this explicity. It bears repeating for those who simply wish to deny this.
  1. This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church.** The Council therefore sees particularly cogent reasons for undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy. **
  2. Lastly, in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way. The Council also desires that, where necessary, **the rites be revised carefully in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigor to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times. **
  3. In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit; and therefore pastors of souls must zealously strive to achieve it, by means of the necessary instruction, in all their pastoral work.
    There are multiple threads that claim “active participation” is interior, and set aside the council statements as if interiority was their intended meaning. Notably, these are posted by traditionalists who enjoy a silent liturgy without external participation. I’m not nitpicking the TLM, and fully support the bolded position of paragraph 4 above concerning the equality of all rites. I eagerly welcome the refinements that even this liturgy has undergone to make its worship more sublime.
But I take offense along with others here who do not understand why there must be a constant effort by some of them to reduce the OF to a lesser rite by these overt efforts to find fault with it and insist on preferential changes, including latin, when the Church has seen fit universally to allow the vernacular. She isn’t going to revert back to latin, no matter how many posts and threads appear insisting that it be done. This is sadly a disunifying controversy that must tear at the heart of Christ Jesus, who prayed that “they all be one!” May God speak to the heart of those who cause this rupture of unity.
Sirach, thanks again for the post. Participation by the laity is one of the issues my husband mentions of why he doesn’t want anything to do with a EF Mass. From what he grew up with, he remembers that he didn’t feel a part of the Mass, that the priest did it all and that he disliked the priest not facing the people. Likewise the barrier of the language.
I have nothing against EF Mass or those that prefer it, but those who want to promote it seem to have a superior attitude in their promotion and wishful thinking that a full return to EF Mass will solve all problems. Living in a large metro area with many Catholic Churches nearby to attend, it would take us nearly an hour just to attend an EF Mass. Despite what those on this an other threads want others to think, there is no mass demand or stampede to the EF Mass. Priests are not jumping all over themselves to learn the rubrics and Latin language well enough to do it, nor are they running out to buy the proper vestments as well. Of all the priests I know, I can only name one that has come forward to do an EF Mass. Priests are too busy and there is too much of a shortage anyhow. If the EF Mass is so much better, one should see a more humble attitude by its promotors, not the nick-picky superior “I am now more enlighten than the rest” persona displayed here and elsewhere, which has been the biggest turn off of all.
 
I never said I wanted it to be the norm. Some others most assuredly do. Yes, I know for a fact that I have seen abuses, lots of them over the years. As to other posters, I can see no valid reason for them to lie about having seen them. I am glad that you and others have never had to live through the abuses as I have and am glad that you have only been to reverent Masses. they should all be that way.

Unfortunately, they are not…
s

But then the people who speak of abuses on CAF are a very small minority of Catholics.
 
Sirach2 & robwar-
a very big old 👍 to you!!

More proof that “great minds” think alike! 😛
 
I have nothing against EF Mass or those that prefer it, but those who want to promote it seem to have a superior attitude in their promotion and wishful thinking that a full return to EF Mass will solve all problems.
We’ve seen this for how many years already, and it continues. When I mentioned that traditionalists “cherry-pick” documents to illustrate their POV, they usually truncate the full meaning so that others will come to agree with them. For instance, our latin scholar just posted this:
*
Sacrosanctum Concilium
*
(hereafter only SC), 36.1
Quote: Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.

… and conveniently left out these paragraphs immediately following:
36. 2. But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended.
3. These norms being observed, it is for the competent territorial ecclesiastical authority mentioned in Art. 22, 2, to decide whether, and to what extent, the vernacular language is to be used; their decrees are to be approved, that is, confirmed, by the Apostolic See.

It gives an inappropriate understanding of the document, and is solely the opinion of the poster who cites out of context. This also paints the Church as being in error, while only traditionalists are capable of proper interpretation.
 
Food for thought from St John of the Cross Ascent of Mt Carmel:
  1. I wish to speak solely of those ceremonies into which enters nothing of a suspicious nature, and of which many people make use nowadays with indiscreet devotion, attributing such efficacy and faith to these ways and manners wherein they desire to perform their devotions and prayers, that they believe that, if they fail to the very slightest extent in them, or go beyond their limits, God will not be served by them nor will He hear them. They place more reliance upon these methods and kinds of ceremony than upon the reality of their prayer, and herein they greatly offend and displease God. I refer, for example, to a Mass at which there must be so many candles, neither more nor fewer; which has to be said by the priest in such or such a way; and must be at such or such an hour, and neither sooner nor later; and must be after a certain day, neither sooner nor later; and the prayers and stations must be made at such and such times, with such or such ceremonies, and neither sooner nor later nor in any other manner; and the person who makes them must have such or such qualities or qualifications. And there are those who think that, if any of these details which they have laid down be wanting, nothing is accomplished.
  2. And, what is worse, and indeed intolerable, is that certain persons desire to feel some effect in themselves, or to have their petitions fulfilled, or to know that the purpose of these ceremonious prayers of theirs will be accomplished. This is nothing less than to tempt God and to anger Him greatly, so much so that He sometimes gives leave to the devil to deceive them, making them feel and understand things that are far removed from the benefit of their soul, which they deserve because of the attachment that they show in their prayers, not desiring God’s will, rather than their own desires, to be done therein; and thus, because they place not their whole confidence in God, nothing goes well with them.681
 
Sirach…I have wondered about this for some time.
Could you elaborate please and tell what abuses you witnessed back in the old days?
I don’t relish depicting problems with ANY liturgy, since it is the sacrificial action of Christ. Pope Innocent III, as well as St. Catherine of Siena, addressed the problem of priests being in sin, and therefore intentionally not consecrating the Eucharist. Hopefully that was not the case in later centuries. Those who do not know latin, and who weren’t able to hear the words of the priest in the older rite, would never know the difference. Remember, there were no sound systems in those days.

While not actually a serious abuse, the prayers of the priest were muffled in a nondistinguishable language, often said irreverently fast, overruning the responses of the servers. Since I attended Catholic school, we had mass daily and I’ll venture that no child paid attention due to the wandering of the mind and lack of participation. Very few went to communion except for First Friday when we were taken to confession. The mass was for a decedent, so the vestments were always black.

My family went to late mass which was too long to fast from midnight, and only a handful received communion. It was also very evident the number of persons praying the rosary rather than following in the missal. Rosaries are not liturgical participation, and I wonder how many really were there only to fulfill the 3rd commandment, thinking it was fine just to occupy a pew and recite the rosary.

I wholeheartedly support the aims of the Council, as expressed in these paragraphs.
In this restoration, both texts and rites should be drawn up so that they express more clearly the holy things which they signify; the Christian people, so far as possible, should be enabled to understand them with ease and to take part in them fully, actively, and as befits a community.

Wherefore the sacred Council establishes the following general norms:

26.** Liturgical services are not private functions, but are celebrations of the Church**, which is the “sacrament of unity,” namely, the holy people united and ordered under their bishops.
  1. It is to be stressed that whenever rites, according to their specific nature, make provision for communal celebration involving the presence and active participation of the faithful,** this way of celebrating them is to be preferred, so far as possible, to a celebration that is individual and quasi-private.**
  2. To promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalmody, antiphons, and songs, as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper times all should observe a reverent silence.
  3. Zeal for the promotion and restoration of the liturgy is rightly held to be a sign of the providential dispositions of God in our time, as a movement of the Holy Spirit in His Church. It is today a distinguishing mark of the Church’s life, indeed of the whole tenor of contemporary religious thought and action.
 
Thank-you for the post and the stats and that is not what those who want all EF Masses all the time and for everyone want to hear. Despite what some on this thread want everyone to believe, there is no big stampede to EF Masses when they are offered and Catholics are not demanding them. It is total fantasy, that everything in the Catholic Church was fine and hunky dory before Vatican II its changes. The problems existed well before that. Catholics were not more orthodox just because the Mass was conducted in Latin. Thanks again for your post which had some facts and not fantasies and wishful thinking.
English Masses aren’t doing too hot either. Compare the numbers of Latin Masses celebrated before 1960 vs the English Masses today. Catholics were starting to leave in droves around 1964 and attendance is down to about 25% today from 70% back then, even with the Saturday option.

No big stampede to the EF Mass but then look at where they are offered. Do your stats reflect that they are generally offered to save or restore parishes? We can’t really tell where we’d be today had Catholics been just as accepting of a Catholic education, had nuns and monks had been so willing to teach, had priests not abandoned their vocations, had Catholics not gone so casual in regards their faith, since the 1960s. And can you call the relaxation of fasting, dress code, meat abstinence, Latin, etc., rules anything other than casual?
 
We can’t really tell where we’d be today had Catholics been just as accepting of a Catholic education, had nuns and monks had been so willing to teach, had priests not abandoned their vocations, had Catholics not gone so casual in regards their faith, since the 1960s. And can you call the relaxation of fasting, dress code, meat abstinence, Latin, etc., rules anything other than casual?
So if fasting, latin and abstinence were restored, are you of the belief that many would return to the faith? Is that all that a faith life consists of – externals? Whereas you mentioned the decline in attendance, many who were attending, as I noted in my last thread, were not really worshipping in spirit and in truth, as Christ desired. It was to fulfill a commandment. Without the reception of communion for strengthening in virtue, it is almost predictable that the faith would decline.

I remember when Catholic schools closed all over the nation, requiring public schooling for most children, and depriving them of the daily classes in religion. To p(name removed by moderator)oint any one reason, rather than the prevailing cultural decadence, is not possible … the causes were multiple. Any student of the years during the Reformation would find the same, if not worse decadence, when people left the faith in droves.

I believe that this is the very reason for the Church naming this the year of new evangelization, for it is sorely needed.
 
So if fasting, latin and abstinence were restored, are you of the belief that many would return to the faith? Is that all that a faith life consists of – externals?
There’s more to it than that, obviously, but some of those things can be reversed. Excuse any implied sexism, but If the shirt and tie have found their way back to the corporate and political image, there is hope for this civilization yet. 🙂
Whereas you mentioned the decline in attendance, many who were attending, as I noted in my last thread, were not really worshipping in spirit and in truth, as Christ desired. It was to fulfill a commandment.
So how many would be attending today if you were to remove the obligation?
I remember when Catholic schools closed all over the nation, requiring public schooling for most children, and depriving them of the daily classes in religion.
I remember when kids of public schools were getting Catholic education at least once a week and knew the Latin Credo and Gloria better than those in Catholic schools. When the multitude of Catholic schools closed, they were affected as well bigtime.
To p(name removed by moderator)oint any one reason, rather than the prevailing cultural decadence, is not possible … the causes were multiple. Any student of the years during the Reformation would find the same, if not worse decadence, when people left the faith in droves.
Except that Trent defined Catholic doctrine and standardized the language and rubrics of the Mass well enough that it became possible for people of different cultures to worship together and learn the same principles of Catholic faith. Compare that to the 20,000 or so leaderless Protestant denominations we have today. But then, who am I to say they’re not as spiritually fulfilling, if not more so, than Catholics today?
 
So how many would be attending today if you were to remove the obligation?
I would hate to put forth a guess. 😊

The novena to Divine Mercy ends today, and the many intentions for each day weighed so ardently on the heart of Jesus. One in particular was for luke warm souls --it is today’s final prayer intention specifically for them.
 
The most important document in all of the sixteen was the Constitution on the Liturgy, and after 50 years, I’m hopeful that Catholics have read it entirely. I weary of those who cherry-pick this document in order to promote certain aspects that were not the objectives of the Councillors. You are so right, Robwar, that tings were not “hunky dory” prior to V-II’s changes. The Council mentioned this explicity. It bears repeating for those who simply wish to deny this.
  1. This sacred Council has several aims in view: it desires to impart an ever increasing vigor to the Christian life of the faithful; to adapt more suitably to the needs of our own times those institutions which are subject to change; to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ; to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the Church.** The Council therefore sees particularly cogent reasons for undertaking the reform and promotion of the liturgy. **
  2. Lastly, in faithful obedience to tradition, the sacred Council declares that holy Mother Church holds all lawfully acknowledged rites to be of equal right and dignity; that she wishes to preserve them in the future and to foster them in every way. The Council also desires that, where necessary, **the rites be revised carefully in the light of sound tradition, and that they be given new vigor to meet the circumstances and needs of modern times. **
  3. In the restoration and promotion of the sacred liturgy, this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else; for it is the primary and indispensable source from which the faithful are to derive the true Christian spirit; and therefore pastors of souls must zealously strive to achieve it, by means of the necessary instruction, in all their pastoral work.
    There are multiple threads that claim “active participation” is interior, and set aside the council statements as if interiority was their intended meaning. Notably, these are posted by traditionalists who enjoy a silent liturgy without external participation. I’m not nitpicking the TLM, and fully support the bolded position of paragraph 4 above concerning the equality of all rites. I eagerly welcome the refinements that even this liturgy has undergone to make its worship more sublime.
But I take offense along with others here who do not understand why there must be a constant effort by some of them to reduce the OF to a lesser rite by these overt efforts to find fault with it and insist on preferential changes, including latin, when the Church has seen fit universally to allow the vernacular. She isn’t going to revert back to latin, no matter how many posts and threads appear insisting that it be done. This is sadly a disunifying controversy that must tear at the heart of Christ Jesus, who prayed that “they all be one!” May God speak to the heart of those who cause this rupture of unity.
As one who lived through all the changes of the Mass, I say:thumbsup:👍
 
English Masses aren’t doing too hot either. Compare the numbers of Latin Masses celebrated before 1960 vs the English Masses today. Catholics were starting to leave in droves around 1964 and attendance is down to about 25% today from 70% back then, even with the Saturday option.

No big stampede to the EF Mass but then look at where they are offered. Do your stats reflect that they are generally offered to save or restore parishes? We can’t really tell where we’d be today had Catholics been just as accepting of a Catholic education, had nuns and monks had been so willing to teach, had priests not abandoned their vocations, had Catholics not gone so casual in regards their faith, since the 1960s. And can you call the relaxation of fasting, dress code, meat abstinence, Latin, etc., rules anything other than casual?
You are right; Catholics attending Mass are far fewer than in the era around 1964. I am not sure what poll you are referring to, but the ones I have seen put that 70% figure as the top, and place it in the 1950’s. Actually, they indicate that it was about 75% in 1958, and within 7 years (1965 it had dropped to 65%.

Attendance has continued to drop, and one study shows it down to 25% by 2000.

That amounts to a 40% loss over 35 years, or about 1.14% per year on an average - and the statistics and polling taken show that it has meandered during that time.
Maybe 1.14% is “droves”. I usually take that to mean large numbers at once, and statistically that has never been shown in any polls.

Interestingly, polls taken of other main-line denominations have shown a parallel drop in attendance equal to or worse than the Catholics. The point being, Vatican 2 and the change of the Mass didn’t cause that drop, allegations to the contrary.

According to published reports, there are 1.2 billion Catholics.

Just for an exercise, let’s assume that worldwide only 25% go to Mass on a regular basis. That is undoubtedly low; Europe is well below the US in attendance, but statistics seem world wide to go up from there.

25%of 1.2 billion is three hundred million.

If one percent of Catholics attending Mass weekly were to go to an EF, that would be three million Catholics world wide attending an EF weekly.

If one tenth of one percent attended an EF weekly, that would be 300,000.

I would dearly love to see that there are 300,000 attending Mass weekly at an EF. Perhaps we do have that many; hopefully someone can come up with some real information of how many actually attend.

But three million doing so every weekend?

Numbers, anyone?
 
So how many would be attending today if you were to remove the obligation?
Well, let’s take a look at the demographics. Those attending Mass in the greatest numbers are generally those born before 1943 (45%); the likelihood is that they will continue to attend, if for no other reason than age and habit; obligation most likely no longer impacts them. They believe and practice.

the next group, 1943 - 1960 was also well catechized; they are at 24% attendance rate. again, the likelihood is that they attend because they choose to be there, rather than because they must.

The third group, 1961 - 198 is at 15%. This group, however, is the ones who were so poorly catechized after Vatican 2, when rules pretty much got throu=wn out the window; it may be questionable if that 155 even knows the rules. Again, most likely they will continue.

The last group, born after 1981, is at 17%, and while catechesis has improved, they have parents often in the previous group so gainl circumstances indicate that they most likely will continue on.

None of that is to say the rule will go away. But hose who wanted to throw that rule out along with all the rest have already filtered out. There is no reason to presume (since I am sure you would admit there is precious little said from the pulpit about mortal sin, and in particular the one of intentionally missing Mass) that hose in the pews now are doing so because the quake in their boots at the thought of not going…
Except that Trent defined Catholic doctrine and standardized the language and rubrics of the Mass well enough that it became possible for people of different cultures to worship together and learn the same principles of Catholic faith. Compare that to the 20,000 or so leaderless Protestant denominations we have today. But then, who am I to say they’re not as spiritually fulfilling, if not more so, than Catholics today?
and Vatican 2 clearly saw value in the vernacular. What Vatican 2 did not see coming was the 83 priests and theologians who, two days after the issuance of Humanae Vitae, would sign a full page ad in a national newspaper stating in so many words that Catholics did not need to follow the Pope on that encyclical.
 
and Vatican 2 clearly saw value in the vernacular. What Vatican 2 did not see coming was the 83 priests and theologians who, two days after the issuance of Humanae Vitae, would sign a full page ad in a national newspaper stating in so many words that Catholics did not need to follow the Pope on that encyclical.
Sidebar…

Have you ever seen the ad? I’ve seen it referenced a lot and wonder if a copy of it still exists somewhere and could be posted. I’ve looked on the internets, but no luck.
 
and Vatican 2 clearly saw value in the vernacular.
For the record Trent didn’t ban the vulgar/vernacular so the fathers there must have seen some limited value of it as well. But neither called for all-vernacular all-the-time liturgy. Catholics don’t need that type of division.
 
Sidebar…

Have you ever seen the ad? I’ve seen it referenced a lot and wonder if a copy of it still exists somewhere and could be posted. I’ve looked on the internets, but no luck.
I saw it when it came out; sorry, I didn’t keep a copy.
 
English Masses aren’t doing too hot either. Compare the numbers of Latin Masses celebrated before 1960 vs the English Masses today. Catholics were starting to leave in droves around 1964 and attendance is down to about 25% today from 70% back then, even with the Saturday option.

No big stampede to the EF Mass but then look at where they are offered. Do your stats reflect that they are generally offered to save or restore parishes? We can’t really tell where we’d be today had Catholics been just as accepting of a Catholic education, had nuns and monks had been so willing to teach, had priests not abandoned their vocations, had Catholics not gone so casual in regards their faith, since the 1960s. And can you call the relaxation of fasting, dress code, meat abstinence, Latin, etc., rules anything other than casual?
Parishes close and merge for a number of reasons, mainly many of them are in more urban areas where the Catholic population that once was there has left. Likewise, Protestant churches suffered and have suffered the same decline as Catholic churches have in the same period and there reason is certainly not do to a lack of a “latin” Mass.
Offering an EF Mass which seems to be your fantacy is not going to save a Catholic church that is going to merge or close. The population isn’t there, the interest isn’t there and the few that would come to an EF Mass at a distance isn’t enough to keep it open.
Besides that, you need a priest that is able and willing to do an EF Mass and that is the another crux of the problem, priests are simple not taking their time to relearn the language and the rubrics and don’t have the money to buy the vestments. In keeping with the subject of the thread, EF as sole worship isn’t going to happen at all with the 1.2 billion Catholics in this world.
 
To begin with, the Latin rite is simply one of the rites of the Church it is the largest, and it has the privilege of having the Pope.
Then you either forget or ignore what I wrote. I specifically referred to “the use of a single unifying language throughout the Latin Rites.” Evidently I do realize that the Latin rite (sic – there is no “Latin Rite”, by the way. There are several rites of the Latin Church, e.g. Roman Rite, Dominican Rite, Mozarabic Rite, Ambrosian Rite, etc) is not the entire Church.
But Latin is not the language of the Church; it is the language of the Latin rite. and God has seen fit for 2000 years to have various languages, Latin being one of them.
And yet, whenever an Ecumenical Council is celebrated, what is used as the official, unifying language? Latin. When the Cardinals and Major Archbishops of East and West gather for a Papal Conclave, what is used as the official, unifying language? Latin. The official, definitive edition of the Codex Canonorum Ecclesiarum Orientalium (Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches) is also the Latin edition, as promulgated by Bl JP2.
Latin was not the official language of the Church at its start; Aramaic was; and shortly thereafter, Greek was; and then the apostles went out, and the Eastern rites had their beginning; the Maronites use Arabic and Aramaic (and in addition, in the US, English); and etc. through the other Eastern rites.
When was Aramaic ever the official language of the Church? Yes, most people in Palestine at the time of Christ spoke Aramaic as their mother tongue, but all of the New Testament writings were originally in Koine Greek, a language also commonly spoken by the people of Palestine on account of its being one of the linguae francae of the Roman Empire at the time.
And while the EF has been the form of the Mass in the Latin rite for centuries,
Well, the Roman Missal, and the Ambrosian Missal, and the Mozarabic Missal, and the Dominican Missal, and the Romano-Seraphic Missal, and the Gallican Sacramentary, and the Sarum Use Sacramentary, etc.
it has not been the form in the Eastern rites, and the Church did not fall apart.
True. Kind of. There was that little matter of the Great East-West Schism, but other than that…
Latin was the vernacular of the Church for a long time; before that Greek was the vernacular; all those in seeming mortal fear of vernacular ignore history.
Sed contra, we wish to preserve the history that others are trying to abandon in exchange for a modern revision.
The bishops of the world were gathered with the Pope (actually, with two Popes) as they produced the documents of Vatican 2. While it is clear that they did not intend to go to an absolutely total vernacular, it is also crystal clear they intended to go to the vernacular
Not according to the actual documents of Vatican II or subsequent to the Council, which I posted before. It is crystal clear that their desire was: “the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites” (SC 36). This is made even more crystal clear by the fact that, in order to read the documents the Council Fathers actually wrote, I need to be reading in – you guessed it – Latin!
 
Sed contra, we wish to preserve the history that others are trying to abandon in exchange for a modern revision.
We? as in you who are attached to the EF? Do you speak for all trads?
Sed contra, those who celebrate the OF will readily disagree with you.
SC 21. In order that the Christian people may more certainly derive an abundance of graces from the sacred liturgy, holy Mother Church desires to undertake with great care a general restoration of the liturgy itself. For the liturgy is made up of immutable elements divinely instituted, and of elements subject to change. These not only may but ought to be changed with the passage of time if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become unsuited to it.
Iesum:
Not according to the actual documents of Vatican II or subsequent to the Council, which I posted before. It is crystal clear that their desire was: “the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites” (SC 36).
Apparently, you did not read the subsequent answers after your truncated post taken out of context. Not “crystal clear” except in your perception. Read the two paragraphs that follow SC 36.1 – i.e., SC 36.2 and SC 36.3 found in post #82.
 
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