L
Layman
Guest
Heh, heh, that’s Gregorian Chant binned then.
I thought Mass was primarily offered to the Lord God on our behalf. Not offered to us e.g. like lecture, where understanding every word would be important.
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I thought Mass was primarily offered to the Lord God on our behalf. Not offered to us e.g. like lecture, where understanding every word would be important.
P
ProVobis
Guest
It was like taking Coke completely off the shelves and replacing it with New Coke, only to offer the classic Coke 40 years later as one of its available products. Fortunately for Coca Cola, they didn’t wait 40 years to do it.
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ProVobis
Guest
It should also be precise, per Veterum Sapientia. And nothing beats the precision of Latin in the doctrinal sense.
J
JMJ_coder
Guest
God, the Holy, who rest among the saints, whom the Seraphim praise with the thrice‐holy hymn, whom the Cherubim glorify, whom all the heavenly powers worship; who brought all things into being out of nothingness; who created man in Your own image and likeness and adorned him with all Your favors; who give wisdom and understanding to anyone asking for them; who do not turn away from the sinner but have set up repentance for salvation; who have rendered us, Your lowly and worthless servants, worthy to stand at this time before the glory of Your Holy Altar and to offer You due worship and praise. Receive, Master, from the mouth of us sinners the thrice holy hymn, and visit us in Your kindness. Forgive us every transgression, deliberate and indeliberate, sanctify our souls and bodies, and grant that we may serve You in holiness all the days of our life, through the prayers of the Holy Theotokos and of all the saints who have pleased You since the world began.
This text is beautiful, reverent, and ornate – why has it (and countless others like it) never been a part of the Roman Liturgy? Or why subdue and use less ornateness in the Low Mass than in a Solemn High Mass – should every Mass carry all the pomp and circumstance we can muster (using your logic).
There were substantial increases in the amount of Scripture read from both the Old and the New Testaments.
Maybe not all of them can read? And, besides, faith comes by hearing, not reading.
Note, that in all of this, I don’t mean to imply that Latin should be abandoned. However, as you and some others on this thread have taken the stance of no vernacular, I am in effect giving a defense for the vernacular in the Liturgy, which the Church in her authority has allowed.
Because it sounds like something straight from the “Vatican II is the work of the devil” website.
J
JMJ_coder
Guest
We are called to full and active participation in the Litugy. Participating, even when that is passive listening or silent reflection, is pretty hard when one has no idea what is going on.
J
JMJ_coder
Guest
Another non-apt analogy.
J
JMJ_coder
Guest
There is nothing inherent in the Latin language which makes it more precise than other languages – say Greek or even English. One can be very precise in the English language. The good thing about Latin is that it is more-or-less non-evolving. Texts in English require revising form time to time as the language continues to evolve (which is why it is now Holy Spirit instead of Holy Ghost, since the word ghost in English no longer has as its primary meaning what it did one or two hundred years ago).
If Latin were the only language that could be trusted to convey the proper doctrinal sense, then all the Catechisms (like the Baltimore Catechism) and other doctrinal texts should have only ever been in Latin without any permission for a translation to the vernacular.
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Layman
Guest
Full and active participation in the liturgy does not require that you hear or understand every part of it.
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Layman
Guest
I was asking why beautiful, ornate and pious text was removed from our rite; not why other text was not added to it.
High Mass is the norm, I understand. The term “Low Mass” suggests this also. I wonder if the Pope will liberate the 1924 Missal; I think that’s the last one before modern editing began. We can but hope.
They might be deaf, too, but that’s not a reason for such harsh editing, to the extent of creating a New Mass.
It bothers me that one could make this argument quite easily. If you mentally segue from a Solemn High Mass c. 1923 to a “Band-In-the-Sanctuary-and-EMHCs-too Novus Ordo”, you have to wonder, well, what’s going on here?
Are Jesus and the archangels of the Lords present at Mass? Then why the noise and populism?
J
JMJ_coder
Guest
In the OF of the Mass, not everything is said out loud.
And full and active participation does require a good understanding of what is currently happening in the Liturgy. If one is so lost that they start praying the Rosary, then they are clearly not participating in the Liturgy – which is one aspect of liturgical reform Popes such as Pius X and Pius XII were trying to accomplish.
And the vernacular language does foster understanding more than a foreign language (though a foreign language is not an absolute obstacle).
J
JMJ_coder
Guest
Your argument implied that if a text is beautiful and/or reverent and/or ornate it belongs in the Liturgy.
You didn’t answer the question: why subdue and use less ornateness in the Low Mass than in a Solemn High Mass – shouldn’t every Mass carry all the pomp and circumstance and pageantry we can muster (using your logic)?
So now you think the Missal of 1962 is a blasphemy too?!
Maybe they are blind, deaf, and have an IQ of 5. There’s always someone, isn’t there.
“Band-in-the-Sanctuary” – that is a gross overstatement. A parish having and actual band and then that band being in the Sanctuary may be a reality in perhaps less than 0.1% of all Catholic parishes.
And yes, the Church has – by the authority given her – permitted the use of extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion. There are certain allowances by the Church that I may think imprudent or unedifying – but I give my full assent of obedience to the Church which has the authority (and I do not have that authority) to make such decisions and laws.
With long trumpets, and sound of comet. Make a joyful noise before the Lord our king: (Psalm 97:6 Douay-Rheims translation)
J
JReducation
Guest
I believe that the issue here is simple. We have too many quarter-back popes. If the Church were to go by consensus, nothing would ever happen. You’re talking two billion Catholics who don’t see things the same way. The Tridentine mass may be a high priority to the Catholic of European ancestry and very low priority to the Catholic of African or Middle Eastern ancestry.
I know for a fact that the Tridentine form was reformulated by the Jesuits when they went to China and to Japan. They did several things to it:
I know for a fact that the Tridentine form was reformulated by the Jesuits when they went to China and to Japan. They did several things to it:
*]Used the local language, not Latin.
*]The priest’s cassock was the same color as the robes of Buddhist monks, orange.
*]When the Franciscans arrived, they put aside their habit and dressed as coolies. That’s what they wore under the alb for mass, even though the rubric said that they should wear a habit or cassock. There is a wonderful picture of St. Maximilian Kolbe in Japan dressed as a coolie. There is even a letter where he writes the friars not to bring the Franciscan habit with them, for they will be of no use in Japan. It was not until Vatican II that the religious habit and cassock were introduced into Asian Catholicism
*]The architecture of the churches was the same as the Buddhist temples. To this day, they do not have European churches. Now they use more modern architecture, which I personally do not like. But it’s the local culture and it’s up to the local bishops and religious superiors to make that call not mine.
*]Many of the statues of Jesus and Mary look Asian, not European.
The only ones who adopted European Catholicism were the Vietnamese who inherited it from the French and the Filipinos who inherited it from the Spanish. But these were very different circumstances. The French and the Spanish actually lived in those countries. They did not go there as missionaries. They were conquerors. The Vietnamese and the Filipinos were inheriting Catholicism from their parents who were Eurasian. The other Asian and Southeast Asian countries did not have European ancestors.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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ProVobis
Guest
But does that mean it gets retained in the mind better and longer? Or that it fosters the idea better? Seems as if one is forced to do a little work on trying to translate a foreign tongue to himself, or even read a side-by-side translation, he would remember more of it. There is no work involved listening to someone talk in his native tongue. Yet I still don’t know the Nicene Creed in English, even though I’ve heard it a lot. Credo III presents no problem.
Also Pope John XXIII said that no language is as precise as Latin in his Veterum Sapientia or words to that effect. Therefore one would think if he wanted to learn about his faith a little more, it would behoove him to study a little bit of Latin at least. If nothing else it will expand one’s vocabulary. What’s wrong with that? But as everything else,
De gustibus non est disputandum.
J
JReducation
Guest
I’m kind of lost with one statement. How does learning Latin help one to learn more about one’s faith?
Here’s where I’m coming from. When I entered religious life we had to study four-years of Latin, everyday. I went through grad school at Catholic University of America and received an M.Div. in theology and a Licentiate (STL) in theology. I then went to Rome to get a doctorate in theology (STD).
At Catholic University the classes were in English and the material was either translated into English or French. In Rome the clases were in Italian and the material was translated into French, Spanish and German.
The only time that I have ever had to use Latin is to follow the EF. It is not used at the Pontifical Universities around the world. The Scripture Students do learn ancient languages, but they’re the only branch of religious studies that does. Scripture is not a branch of theology. It’s a separate discipline. Canon Law students also learn Latin, because the law is written in Latin. But Canon law is a branch of religious studies, but it is not a branch of theology. It’s its own discipline. The products of the scriptural research is always written in the native language of the Pontifical University. For example, if you attend the North American Pontifical University in Rome, you will write everything in English. If you attend the Holy Cross University, you will do everything in Spanish. At the Angelicum and Gregorian everything is written in Italian. Your readings are usually in German, French, and Spanish. You never use Latin, becaues German, French and Spanish are the official languages of theology. The ancient writings were translated into these languages first and later to other languages. The reason was the the ancient writings were mostly Mediterranean languages. To consolidate them all into volumes they were translated. Mos the translations were done by French, German and Spanish monks.
I’m not sure how Latin helps us to know the faith, since the writings of our faith are in other languages. The only thing that comes out in Latin are: liturgy, Canon Law, encyclicals, motu proprios and rules of religious orders. Those are not theology per se.
Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy Latin and I do enjoy trying to read a papal encyclical in Latin. Though I must admit that I always end up going to the translation. Four years of Latin without ever using it for actual conversation, reading and writing does not stick with you. I had to learn Spanish when I went to the missions in South American. Today, 10 years later, I have forgotten a lot of it. There was a time that I spoke it fluently. I spoke fluent Italian when in Rome. Today I can get by on either of those languages, but not enough to read the CCC in either language. You alwasy revert to the mother tongue when you do not use a language extensively. I can’t see anyone using Latin except at mass.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
L
Layman
Guest
It did not. There are libraries of sacred texts. They can’t all go in a
Mass. I was asking why existing beautiful, ornate, pious and reverent text was removed from our
rite.
Because a Low Mass is the best that can be done on a weekday or in a private Mass, even in the Brompton Oratory. People work. Kind of nice to think you could have a High Mass every day, 'though. Now that would be luxury.
Again, you are drawing inferences that are not in what I said. Please readSo now you think the Missal of 1962 is a blasphemy too?!
again what I said. If you are trying to goad me, it won’t work.
Exactly! Why should beautiful, ornate, pious and reverent text be edited out of aMaybe they are blind, deaf, and have an IQ of 5. There’s always someone,
isn’t there.
Mass because there’s always someone, or a lot of people, who aren’t able
to, or won’t, read the translation?
That they exist at all is queer. When you see a picture of two pretty
colleens dancing before an altar in Ireland on the front cover of ‘The Irish Catholic’, you
know something is amiss.
EMHCs serve no worthy purpose with an average-sized congregation. Did priests become more tired in the 80s(?), that they needed help distributing communion? I had the peculiar experience of seeing a priest sit down while the EMHCs distributed communion in a small Church.
Ah, poor King David. He gets quoted to excuse liturgical dancing too. Kind of like St. Cyril and CITH in the Roman Rite. I wonder if David’s band was in the sanctuary? Also, this was thousands of years before the TLM. Or even the birth of Jesus. It’s false antiquarianism.
J
JReducation
Guest
You have to take into account a bigger picture here. When these beautiful tracts were written the European languages were limited to Europe. At the time, this was the poetic form of the day. One of the rules of liturgical prayer, whether it’s the mass or the Liturgy of the Hours is that the flow has to poetic, because it must be beautiful. Beauty is a symbol for God.
However, we in the USA, Ireland, Australia, Canada, and probably New Zealand too, have to keep in mind that English is not the only language spoken by Catholics. What may sound very beautiful in English, may sound very clunky when its translated to another language. I’ll givey one simple example. I got my doctorate in Mystical Theology. For many years we read the writings of the great mystics. I attended a Pontifical University in Rome. Everything was taught in Italian. When I studied John of the Cross in Italian and Spanish, he sounded beautiful. When he is translated into English it’s clunky. What translator have had to do to keep the meter and the tempo of the poetry is to paraphrase many of St. John’s original words.
That’s fine when you working with spiritual writings, because the person who is reading St. John of the Cross is probably doing it as spiritual reading. The academic, such as me, would simply learn to read Spanish. But you cannot do that with the mass. You cannot use one phrase in one language, because it’s beautiful and then paraphrase it into another language to make it fit and sound beautiful in that language. Sometimes you have to compromise and just rewrite the entire prayer again in very simple Latin that can be translated into multiple languages without having to paraphrase.
By the way, many of those beutiful writings that are in our Christian treasury of writings are paraphrased. The original are often worded differently. An English speaker may believe that John of the Cross is the most beautiful thing they’ve read. But a Spanish speaker reading it in English would cry to see how horrible it translates. Beauty can be relative to culture, language and time…
We feel that a mass in Latin is beautiful. When I was in the missions in the Amazon, a mass in Latin was the most horrid thing to the indigenous people. Because to their ear Latin sounds very much like Spanish and they refuse to speak Spanish except for business. They speak Quichua which is older than Latin. Which by the way, it’s a very musical language, much like Chinese. Their ritual music is very beautiful.
Something is wrong. This is not allowed in any of the nine Catholic rites nor in any of the 22 Catholic Churches.
We can’t make generalized rules. We have to go with the rules of the Church. The Church allowed for use of the EMHC during mass when there is a need to cut down the time. I’ll give you an simple example. Our brothers run a parish where there are six brothers, but only one of them is a priest. They have seven masses every weekend, two on Saturday and five on Sunday. The church seats about 800 and every mass is full, except for 8:00 am. I call it the seniors mass because most of the people are over 65. There are about 450 people.
The masses are scheduled 90 min apart. And mass usually lasts about an hour and 15 minutes, that’s 75 minutes. Whe you fill up a church with 800 people you’re going to have about 500 cars in the parking lot. These have to get out so that the next 500 can come in. If you cause a traffic problem the county will give the church a citation. You have to speed up communion. This means that you use the EMHC or the non-clerical brothers to distribute communion along with the priest.
Just an FYI, someone mentioned unvested EMHC. EMHC are not supposed to wear any kind of vestment or robe. That is reserved for the clerics, the servers and for male religious only. The secular EMHC should not wear a distinctive garment. Some parishes in the USA do it because of dress code concerns. There is a pastoral reason. When there is no pastoral reason, they should not wear a special garment.
A band does not belong on the sanctuary, nor does the choir. It can be to the side, in the rear or behind the sanctuary. The law does say that the music ministry must have a place of its own that is not the sanctuary. I don’t know if a canon lawyer would call that an abuse, but they would certainly call it illegal.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
L
Layman
Guest
Then don’t translate it. Have it in Latin. We’ve had a de-facto de-sacralisation of our rite via an unthinking pursuit of populism. It may annoy people, but having Latin preserves the meaning of the text and transmits it down the centuries. We now have a Babel in the Church.
Too bad for the indians, but Irish was effectively extinguished and was replaced by English. We’ve largely gotten over it. If we had the Latin Mass we’d have continuity. So would any other nation, in a constantly changing world. The Church used to offer some kind of permanence. When it started chasing after fashions instead of setting a standard it made a mistake.
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Brendan
Guest
How are you defining ‘Asian Catholicsm’. I’ve been to the Phillipines and Korea (Korea multiple times.) The painting and pictures of past clergy have generally been wearing cassocks and surplices. I noted a old photo of the bishop blessing the cornerstone for the Cathedral and all clergy were wearing choir dress w\birettas and stoles. That would have been 1890.
As far as architecture, that too was often Western, even before Vatican II.
Here is the Cathedral in Seoul I mentioned. (1893)
lifeinkorea.com/pictures/Sel2714.jpg
And the Cathdral in Nagaski that was built in 1895 was Italian Romanesque. Here is a picture of it after the atomic bombing
atomicarchive.com/Photos/Nagasaki/images/NG02.jpg
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Layman
Guest
1 mass X 450 people + 4 Masses x 800 people and only one priest? Looks like your problem is vocations, not logistics, I’m sorry to say.
Don’t have them there at all. Problem solved. One more mundane element added; we need to speed up the Mass so Mrs. Goodlady will be handing you Communion today.
The churches I attend have maybe 500(?) people at one or two Masses, more than one priest, plenty of time between Masses but EMHCs are still used.
I also wonder if altar rails and COTT, kneeling, wouldn’t speed things up; everyone in a line with their mouth open on cue.
J
JReducation
Guest
We have lots of vocations. We have at least 15 make solemn vows every year. We simply stopped ordaining, because there is no need. The idea of ordaining Franciscans was to serve the needs of the friars. What we’re doing is that as our older priests die off, we close parishes. And we place our younger priests where they can live as friars, which is what Francis wanted.
For example, we have about 30 ordained Franciscans of the Renewal in NYC in a community of over 120. But those men are not assigned to parishes. They serve the needs of the friars. When they say the morning mass for the friars, they go off to run soup kitchens, serve the poor on the streets, take care of drug addicts, do laundry, cook, fix cars, teach, do retreats, do youth ministry and pro-life work.
We only lend priests to a diocese for five years at a time and then we leave the parish. We usually try to take only parishes in poor communities. If a parish becomes middle class, we move out. The Constitution is very clear.
We expect our brothers to get a college degree. If they graduate with good grades, we send them to theologates to get a four-year Masters of Divinity like any priest. Those who do well are sent for doctorates in theology. We just don’t ordain them. There is a surplus and we’re trying to get that under control around the world. It creates clericalism and turns a religious order into a community of priests. That’s not the goal of religious life, except for the Clerks Regular. They were founded to be communities of priests. Monks and mendicants were founded to be brotherhoods, with enough priests for the house needs.
The Church says that we can use them to get things moving. It’s either use the EMHC or use the lay brothers. Either way, it’s not a priest or a deacon. We have do not allow permanent deacons in our order. It clericalizes the order. A Franciscan who is a permanent deacon is an rare exception, not the rule and it takes a lot of hurdles to cross to make it happen, except when you get an already ordained permanent deacon who wants to be a friar. He enters religious life. Since we don’t have as many priests in parishes as we once had, because most of our priests do not do parish work, then we have to rely on the EMHC. That’s true for those orders that are going back to being brotherhoods or that are simply leaving parishes, because it was not the intention of their founder that they run parishes, such as Jesuits, Society of Our Lady of the Trinity, Dominicans, Reformed Franciscans, Benedictines, Missionaries of Charity and Missionaries of the Poor. We are leaving many parishes vacant in order to fulfill the wishes of our founders. Or they leave one or two men with a lay staff. Usually, you leave men who are older and very attached to parish work. It would be cruel to force them back into the cloister.
Do you have both priests giving out communion? Usually, if your have diocesan priests, they only get paid for the mass that they say. They don’t get paid for the rest. It’s really up to them to volunteer to give out communion at another priest’s mass. Once they have celebrated their mass, they have fulfilled their duties. The pastor is the only priest who has an obligation to make sure that everything is covered. The associates do not have that obligation. Their obligation is to be present for their assigned mass.
The rule is different if the priest is a religious. Then he must be present at any mass that the superior commands. But you are not allowed to make this demands on secular priests. That’s why they are called secular. They do not live a consecrated life of obedience to a superior.
Communion rails would force everone to kneel. That is against canon law. Canon Law is very clear on several issues.
- The faithful have the right to decide whether to kneel or stand.
- If the priest belongs to a religious order, he has the right to follow the customs of his order. Some orders have never knelt for communion. Franciscans have never knelt. We’re 800 years old. Carmelites have never knelt and they are over 1800 years old. They are converts from Judaism. Benedictines have never knelt and they are about 1500 years old. Church law forbids changing the rules of religious orders that have been in place for over 100 years.
Then there is another point in law, the priest may ask people to stand, if he has a legitimate reason for doing so. This is usually more common with priests who are handicapped and cannot bend over or who are elderly. Older people often have bone and joint issues. There is another good reason for using the EMHC.
There are many legitimate reasons why things are done and there are other times where the reasons are not strong enough. But that’s up to the pastor to decide. If there is no pastor, such as in our parish, then it’s up to the parrochial administrator.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, OSF
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