P
Phemie
Guest
In my parish those responses were given by the altar server, not the congregation.
- Status
L
Lormar
Guest
Ed is right.
K
Kielbasi
Guest
I’m sure he was speaking from his own experience, and remembered what he saw.Ed is right.
But not every place had dialogue masses, although they apparently did where Ed attended.
B
babochka
Guest
Qui bene cantat bis ora.atin texts in the mass books…
I never get enough time to pray.
To much singing…
D
Don_Ruggero
Guest
Exactly.
D
Don_Ruggero
Guest
O
otjm
Guest
Perhaps Ed is not old enough to remember when that was a change.Ed is right.
O
otjm
Guest
My mother was born in 1912 in a very small Catholic farm community in Oregon. When I say small, her high school graduating class (Catholic school) was 5 students.
One day, out of curiosity, I asked her which she preferred - Latin or English in the Mass, and I hardly had the words out of my mouth when she exclaimed “Oh, in English! I can understand everything and don’t have to read while the priest is saying something!”
She was the one who bought all of us missals when we were old enough to use one, something that few of my classmates had.
People took to the Ordinary form like ducks to water. There have been statements made about how vast numbers of people left the Church or simply stopped attending Mass (and in particular, in this forum) but there are no valid studies - in fact no studies at all which I can find - which lend any support whatsoever to such claims. In fact, the stuies which exist, show that attendance peaked in the 1950’s at about 70% of baptized people attending regularly, and over the next 65 years +/- attendance dropped off at a rate of about 1% per year until leveling out near 25%.
Yes, this is a traditional forum, and yes, it is going to be populated largely by people who may prefer the EF (which really should be no surprise…). And yes, there are people who would prefer the EF and have nowhere to attend one. It has been almost 10 years (this coming July 7) since Summorum Pontificum was promulgated, The current results are that less than 3% of parishes in the US have an EF Mass, and that includes everything from a parish having the EF both on every Sunday and during the week, to those which have one once a month; last I looked, there was one parish which appeared to have the EF once every 6 months.
The short of it is that those who prefer the EF are in a very small minority of the entire population of people who go to Mass. That is not a value judgement nor is it any commentary on the efficacy of either form of the Mass; it is simply the preferences of both groups, and one group is far larger than the other.
Reverence is as reverence does. Yes, there have been abuses in the OF, for failure to adhere to the rubrics. Having had 16 years of a priest who had problems (at least in part due to alcoholism) when I was a youth, I can attest that there were at times a profound lack of reverence in the EF in that parish. And I have been around long enough to know it was not totally isolated.
One day, out of curiosity, I asked her which she preferred - Latin or English in the Mass, and I hardly had the words out of my mouth when she exclaimed “Oh, in English! I can understand everything and don’t have to read while the priest is saying something!”
She was the one who bought all of us missals when we were old enough to use one, something that few of my classmates had.
People took to the Ordinary form like ducks to water. There have been statements made about how vast numbers of people left the Church or simply stopped attending Mass (and in particular, in this forum) but there are no valid studies - in fact no studies at all which I can find - which lend any support whatsoever to such claims. In fact, the stuies which exist, show that attendance peaked in the 1950’s at about 70% of baptized people attending regularly, and over the next 65 years +/- attendance dropped off at a rate of about 1% per year until leveling out near 25%.
Yes, this is a traditional forum, and yes, it is going to be populated largely by people who may prefer the EF (which really should be no surprise…
). And yes, there are people who would prefer the EF and have nowhere to attend one. It has been almost 10 years (this coming July 7) since Summorum Pontificum was promulgated, The current results are that less than 3% of parishes in the US have an EF Mass, and that includes everything from a parish having the EF both on every Sunday and during the week, to those which have one once a month; last I looked, there was one parish which appeared to have the EF once every 6 months.The short of it is that those who prefer the EF are in a very small minority of the entire population of people who go to Mass. That is not a value judgement nor is it any commentary on the efficacy of either form of the Mass; it is simply the preferences of both groups, and one group is far larger than the other.
Reverence is as reverence does. Yes, there have been abuses in the OF, for failure to adhere to the rubrics. Having had 16 years of a priest who had problems (at least in part due to alcoholism) when I was a youth, I can attest that there were at times a profound lack of reverence in the EF in that parish. And I have been around long enough to know it was not totally isolated.
C
Chatter163
Guest
The Dialogue Mass was a development that was not applied in every diocese of every country. It arrived at various places at various times, and in some places not until the reforms of the 1960s.
The Dialogue Mass movement began in the 1910s in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany. It very gradually spread from there. In 1922 the Holy See sort of recognized the movement , giving it a slow and cautious support, at the discretion of each bishop. In many places either the bishop was not a proponent, or a pastor was not, and/or it was not part of the culture of the people to make responses. Jesuit Father Gerard Eller wrote a book on the movement’s progress in the U.S., in 1942. He found that Dialogue Masses were particularly prominent in Midwestern American dioceses, and practically unknown in certain others. In 1958 St. John XXIII endorsed it and provided instructions for various levels of participation at Dialogue Masses. So the was only around briefly, and even then, in many locales, barely or not yet, when vernacular liturgy reforms began in the mid-1960s.
Analogous to the Dialogue Mass movement–indeed, without it, there probably would be no Dialogue Mass movement–was the “Pray the Mass” movement, which began in the 1920s, at least in English-speaking countries. This arose because more and more publishers had begun to distribute people’s hand missals, and they gradually entered into people’s daily or weekly spirituality. If you’ve ever seen the famous Immemorial Mass video filmed in 1941 in Chicago and narrated by Msgr. Fulton Sheen, the opening narration discusses the Pray the Mass movement and the use of a hand missal. Remember that bilingual missals with side-by-side Latin and vernacular did not begin to be printed until the 1880s. So prior to that there was no opportunity to even conceive of the congregation making the responses. We tend to see everything through the lens that assumes everyone can read, and most used hand missals. In fact, these were not present in large numbers until the latter part of the 19th century.
The Dialogue Mass movement began in the 1910s in Belgium, Holland, France and Germany. It very gradually spread from there. In 1922 the Holy See sort of recognized the movement , giving it a slow and cautious support, at the discretion of each bishop. In many places either the bishop was not a proponent, or a pastor was not, and/or it was not part of the culture of the people to make responses. Jesuit Father Gerard Eller wrote a book on the movement’s progress in the U.S., in 1942. He found that Dialogue Masses were particularly prominent in Midwestern American dioceses, and practically unknown in certain others. In 1958 St. John XXIII endorsed it and provided instructions for various levels of participation at Dialogue Masses. So the was only around briefly, and even then, in many locales, barely or not yet, when vernacular liturgy reforms began in the mid-1960s.
Analogous to the Dialogue Mass movement–indeed, without it, there probably would be no Dialogue Mass movement–was the “Pray the Mass” movement, which began in the 1920s, at least in English-speaking countries. This arose because more and more publishers had begun to distribute people’s hand missals, and they gradually entered into people’s daily or weekly spirituality. If you’ve ever seen the famous Immemorial Mass video filmed in 1941 in Chicago and narrated by Msgr. Fulton Sheen, the opening narration discusses the Pray the Mass movement and the use of a hand missal. Remember that bilingual missals with side-by-side Latin and vernacular did not begin to be printed until the 1880s. So prior to that there was no opportunity to even conceive of the congregation making the responses. We tend to see everything through the lens that assumes everyone can read, and most used hand missals. In fact, these were not present in large numbers until the latter part of the 19th century.
L
Lormar
Guest
I don’t think he was implying that it was “always.”
L
Lormar
Guest
O
otjm
Guest
You are correct that the use of a missal engages one in the EF.
Having been brought up in the EF in the '50’s, in my parish only a minority of people had a missal (and most of my classmates in grade school did not have one). Interestingly, in the '50’s, a priest sociologist was doing surveys of parishes, and his findings were that less than half of people in the various parishes he surveyed had a missal. It helps to remember that in 1949 the minimum wage was forty cents; in 1950 it went up to seventy five cents, and not only were families generally larger than today, but also the majority of families had one wage earner.
E
edwest2
Guest
I had the 1962 Missal. In Catholic School, we were required to go to Mass during school hours. All my classmates had a Missal.
Ed
Ed
V
victrolatim
Guest
In regards to the dialogue mass from what I have heard from people who were around back then in my area there was not really a set standard. An organist friend I spoke to who was playing in the pre-Vatican II days said that one parish could be having a dialogue mass while the parish a block over had a low mass. Also, one parish choir would be following the chants in the Graduale while across town there would be a parish where they would just use the same mass setting all year round. He also told me that it’s foolish to think there weren’t liturgical abuses taking place while the EF was standard. He recalled priests who would take shortcuts, mumble through prayers, etc.
K
Kielbasi
Guest
Your overall point that there have always been liturgical abuses is correct, but “mumbling” isn’t one of them.
In the Latin mass, the priest says different prayers in a high, medium and low voice- its just part of the general instructions.
V
victrolatim
Guest
I’m well aware of that. His point, which I should have clarified, was that prayers meant to be audible and understandable to the congregation were sometimes pronounced in very slurred, unintelligible Latin. I had the experience myself with a now retired priest who used to celebrate the EF. He would rush to get the mass done as quickly as possible (he would be at the consecration and the ushers were still collecting). He would pronounce clearly the first and last word of the prayer and just kind of jumble everything in the middle.
J
James248
Guest
This is exactly how it is in the Eastern Rite Divine Liturgy.
C
Contarini
Guest
I think that trivializes the shock that people felt when their basic patterns of worship were changed. In practice, religion is defined for most people historically by forms of worship. Legem credenti lex statuat orandi (loosely translated–the pattern of worship shapes what people believe).
I think that liturgical change was badly needed. i think Vatican II was a great move of the Spirit. But it was implemented in the same top-down, authoritarian way that the Church had been governed for centuries (particularly for the century between the two Vatican Councils).
I’ll never forget, when in RCIA in the 90s, seeing a priest shake his finger at a Catholic layman and saying, “It’s the New Church now–it’s not what Father says anymore,” with apparently no sense of irony. That for me epitomizes what went wrong. You can’t impose declericalization through clericalism.
Edwin
C
Contarini
Guest
Yes, the big question for me is: how can we make the Western liturgy more like the Eastern in this regard?
Both the “Tridentine” and “post-Vatican-II” models are deeply flawed. We need a “third way,” of which the Eastern Liturgy is a splendid example. But of course we need to implement it in a way that respects the legitimate distinctives of the West. I don’t think these are as many as people think, though. The early Gallican and Mozarabic liturgies were a lot more like the Byzantine liturgy–the Roman liturgy was imperialistically imposed on the Western Church as a whole, with its ethos of restraint and authoritarianism.
Edwin
O
otjm
Guest
Perhaps then you came from a very rich parish. My parish did not provide them in 1962, nor did it provide them while I was in grade school in the 50’s. Most of my classmates never saw the inside of one.
- Status