Tridentine Mass had many abuses also

[Franze]

The Church in all ages had abuses, the protestantism haven´t been born if there weren´t bad instruction and cathequesis, now the difference between former times, it´s the huge lack of faith, but in former times and now there were many sins.
The tridentine mass must be free and developped, the melkite catholic church must be encouraged in arabic countries to convert muslims to catholicism, much work is necessary and the workers are few as Jesus said. Pray for more workers.

 

[brotherhrolf]

I’ve been going to Mass for nearly 40 years and have never seen one. In fact, the only time I’ve even heard of them is on here from, now get this, those who criticize the current Ordinary Form of the Mass.

You are fortunate, Tim. Unfortunately, during my twenty years of singing in the cathedral choir, I have, on more than one occassion, seen diaphonous gowned liturgical dancers wafting bowls of incense up and down the main aisle of the cathedral as well as beribboned ten foot long pole bearers waving the poles to and fro. These were always diocesan Masses.

I also saw the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons depart from the script and give the apostolic blessing in Latin at the 200th anniversary Mass of St. Joseph’s in Latin and the response from the assembled clergy was distinctly underwhelming. There were about five of us in the thirty member choir that could respond.

I don’t know where the poster about infrequent Communion resides, but as an altar boy in New Orleans just prior to Vatican II, reception of Communion by both the young and the old was the norm. We had Friday Mass throughout the year in grade school and the ubiquitous First Friday Mass in high school. Reception of the Blessed Sacrament was the same in volume on either Friday or Sunday or Holy Days of Obligation.

 

[Chatter163]

i see your point, and it is true this isn’t a liturgical abuse. but my posts are abuses by priests or nuns who only knew the tridentine rite, so i thought it worthwhile to show non-liturgical abuses as well. my reasoning is there are some who believe that all Hell has broken into the church due to the liturgical reforms of VII, when in fact, the devil has always been here regardless of which rite was practiced. am i not exactly on topic, sure, but it certainly is related, and IMHO worth posting.

I see. So you think that the priest who was declaring which of the children he thought should be ordained or professed was influenced by the devil?

 

[Timothysis]

Oh, you probably have. You don’t have to be dressed in clown outfits to have a “Clown” or “Circus” Mass as many call them.

No, I really haven’t…I think I would know one if I saw it…sorry if the is hard for you to believe…

 

[mattm09]

You are fortunate, Tim. Unfortunately, during my twenty years of singing in the cathedral choir, I have, on more than one occassion, seen diaphonous gowned liturgical dancers wafting bowls of incense up and down the main aisle of the cathedral as well as beribboned ten foot long pole bearers waving the poles to and fro. These were always diocesan Masses.

I also saw the Cardinal Archbishop of Lyons depart from the script and give the apostolic blessing in Latin at the 200th anniversary Mass of St. Joseph’s in Latin and the response from the assembled clergy was distinctly underwhelming. There were about five of us in the thirty member choir that could respond.

I don’t know where the poster about infrequent Communion resides, but as an altar boy in New Orleans just prior to Vatican II, reception of Communion by both the young and the old was the norm. We had Friday Mass throughout the year in grade school and the ubiquitous First Friday Mass in high school. Reception of the Blessed Sacrament was the same in volume on either Friday or Sunday or Holy Days of Obligation.

I was at the World Youth Day Closing Mass in Sydney, and I was surprised (and somewhat disconcerted) that there was a dance DURING the liturgy. A liturgy presided over by the Holy Father! Aboriginal dancers presented the Book of the Gospels to the deacon dancing… It was weird.

 

[weepixie71]

i am 37yrs old. i have never seen a mass performed before vatican II so i cant speak for what was done before it. maybe what makes the tridentine masses so beautiful is because the priests that are doing it now have such a strong desire praise God in this way.
what i can say is this. i was raised in the novus ordo. i have watched one thing that catholics were recognized for slip through the cracks one after the other to the point that any protestant could walk into a catholic church and would not even know they were in a one. they could participate in a catholic mass and wouldnt know it either.
maybe the tridentine masses had problems to such a terrible degree
and the novus ordo mass DO have problems to such a degree
maybe its not the masses but the people running the show. maybe its time for the lambs of the flock to start telling and mailing our bishops enough is enough.
i have a catholic church less than 10min from my home. but i drive over an hr to go to church because i know he is a good conservative priest. i have 4 children and we have to get up at 5:00am to get to mass on time.

 

[weepixie71]

Aw, shucks, I abused the Latin Mass, too.

I was an altar server before my time, that is, before I really could pronounce all the words. I said something, but I wasn’t saying things correctly.

The pastor made me recite, and gave me a humiliating lesson.

We were taught the responses by reading the Latin, not by studying a phonetic chart. I think that’s where I got lost, in an early forgetting of the pronunciation.

I think another contributing factor even when I learned it, was the speed. The priests were always ‘clipping’ us, by starting their next sentence before we finished ours.

Some of the altar servers got creative with the hand bells. Instead of a firm jingle, they’d wag the bells slowly which notoriously distracted from the liturgical action.

We loved the wooden clappers, by the way. Those substituted for the bells after Holy Thursday, until the Mass of the Resurrection. Those weren’t quiet, to begin with. But, we really hammered away every chance we had, at least I did.

I don’t think I suffered from genetic misbehavior. I think I really had ADD and so I was making up my own script as I went along.

It didn’t help that there was rampant misbehavior with all those boys. What was worse when they were intentionally misbehaving, but trying to cover it up at the same time. It was so funny and hard to keep from laughing.

I was so afraid of the old pastor to begin with. Riding to the cemetery for funeral services was a riot. He used to ask us to look out for traffic coming, any time he went into an intersection. I had that twilight zone experience, what am I doing in this car with that man?

Those were also the days of the really tall candles that had to be lit before Mass. That was a scary experience, just for the vertigo of looking up so high. You could also antogonize the nuns by feigning difficulty to light the candles. The average problem was the occasional flaming wax dripping on the expensive altar linens. The thing is, they never told us about all that when they trained us. And, there was absolutely no training related to fire control, if things had gotten out of hand.

im glad you had a priest that at least tried to correct you when you did your latin wrong… now our priests dresses as a clown while giving our kids homilies and decides thats mass is a good time to announce baseball stats for the boys school team.
im glad that you had a chance to be an alter boy… in a time when girls didnt take your graces from you if you wanted to be a holy priest when you grew up.
im glad you grew up in a time when you had nuns to teach you and to antagonize… my children wont because priests do not talk to children about holy orders anymore.
ive never heard of a church that ever burned down do to candles… strange huh? but i have heard of a church bell getting struck by lightening and burning the roof… hey hears an idea… lets get rid of those too.
im glad that at one time you were also able to kneel before your consecrated host and take him on your tongue… now a priest wont give you communion unless you stand up.

 

[Sword_Brethren]

abuses were noted by Pope Paul VI when he wrote of the abuse of praying the rosary (a private devotion) during the Mass (a communal celebrfation).

What an evil abuse to pray the Holy Rosary at Mass! How many souls went to Hell for that, none I bet. That is nothing compared to the many abuses at the New Order of Mass.

 

[Timothysis]

What an evil abuse to pray the Holy Rosary at Mass! How many souls went to Hell for that, none I bet. That is nothing compared to the many abuses at the New Order of Mass.

How subjective of you, to pass on a totally legitimate abuse in the latin Mass and then denigrate the current Mass because you, apparently, don’t like it. You should be posting on the “Definition of a Traditional Catholic” thread; they’re more holy than the Pope, too.

 

[brotherhrolf]

I was at the World Youth Day Closing Mass in Sydney, and I was surprised (and somewhat disconcerted) that there was a dance DURING the liturgy. A liturgy presided over by the Holy Father! Aboriginal dancers presented the Book of the Gospels to the deacon dancing… It was weird.

I did not have a problem with the Aboriginal dancers (I saw it) or with the Aztec dancers when JP II visited Mexico City. I am an anthropologist by training and I would argue that such activities are a valid part of their culture. Diaphonous gowns, bowls of incense, beribboned banners are part of Cecil B. DeMille epics and not part of European civilization. My ancestors did not dance.

And the business about the rosary during Mass…Did I see it? Of course I did! And who was doing that? Our deeply respected immigrant widows, dressed in black. It was not my Irish grandmother…in 1965, we had been in New Orleans for over 120 years. In 1965, those Italian and Sicilian grandmothers were immigrants! They came with their families in the 1910s as children.

Can we talk about the Vietnamese? I sang at the ordination of a young man - a Vietnamese immigrant. We sang in Vietnamese and there were ceremonial gestures (I wouldn’t quite call it dancing) by the Vietnamese choir during the Offertory.

Many of the “so-called” abuses of the TLM were nothing more than legitimate ethnic customs. Legitimate ethnic customs I know and appreciate. Diaphonous gowns and bowls of charcoal and incense being wafted around is not part of my ethnic experience - or any one else’s of European extraction.

I would ask y’all to consider the Jesuits moving into China in the sixteenth century. The issue of ethnic rites came up and was soundly rejected. Matteo Ricci had the right idea…

Lest we forget, HMC wisely incorporated the rites of our European ancestors. St. Patrick stands out as a beacon of light.

I see my mother’s finger to this day pointing out the Latin and the English words in the Missal after I had made my First Communion in the second grade. I do not believe that my experience was remarkable. I was more than ready to be an altar boy at the end of third grade and I served until I was a senior in high school.

 

[LilyM]

I did not have a problem with the Aboriginal dancers (I saw it) or with the Aztec dancers when JP II visited Mexico City. I am an anthropologist by training and I would argue that such activities are a valid part of their culture. Diaphonous gowns, bowls of incense, beribboned banners are part of Cecil B. DeMille epics and not part of European civilization. My ancestors did not dance.

Thank you for being an oasis of sanity as always, mon frere. I remember those dances caused such a stink on CAF during WYD. I felt very much of an uphill struggle trying to explain my own view.

Similarly to you, I believe that people have a right to legitimately express their OWN culture in ways that DO represent worship in that culture, and that the criticisms of liturgical dance are only addressing that which goes beyond, and leans toward mere theatricality and performance for its own sake.

 

[Sword_Brethren]

then denigrate the current Mass because you, apparently, don’t like it. You should be posting on the “Definition of a Traditional Catholic” thread; they’re more holy than the Pope, too.

I don’t dislike to New Order of Mass. You are one hateful Catholic and full of pride,too.