Tridentine Mass in the vernacular?

[eamonnroma]

Maybe that’s how the Anglican Catholics do it, I don’t know? But if it’s legal, why is it not more common? If the traditional Catholics feel the current mass is too irreverent & disconnected from the tradition of the saints & the other side feels that Latin is a barrier 'cuz they don’t understand it & therefore can’t participate in the common prayer - wouldn’t the best compromise be to offer the ancient mass in the vernacular language? In that way, everyone could participate with intellect & tongue AND be connected with the tradition of how the saints used to celebrate mass

For a more traditional rite in English, try the 1962 Mass.

 

[otjm]

Many people wanted the Mass in Latin and still do. My grandfather & grandmother (requiéscant in pace) and their family of 10 children greatly disliked the Novus Ordo and its use of English, so they sought out Latin Masses and drove for miles to hear one. The children still feel the same way.

There has only been anecdotal evidence of how many people “liked Latin” of the Mass prior to the OF. There have been numerous statements in these forae for years of how many people quit going to Mass because it was now in the vernacular, and not one of them ever had any evidence other than family members, or some other parishioners. The actual evidence - actual statistical sampling - never showed any significant drop off. But that never convinced anyone who was adamantly opposed to the vernacular. And what evidence do we have subsequent to Benedict’s opening up the means to obtain the EF? Out of some 17,000+ parishes, the best I have seen has been about 3% of the parishes, if that, offering the EF.

Why make the point? If you look at Mass attendance by age group, the over 50 group has by far the largest attendance rate, better than double the young adult rate. If any group were to want the EF more than any other, it should be the over 50 group. So how one defines the term “many” is relevant; and I don’t find interest levels to approach 20%, or even 10% of those attending Mass in either form, totaled together.

Anyway, as to why the Mass has no weighty reason to be said in the vernacular, the Mass is not a prayer but an action. The priest *is * praying, but in doing so he is doing an action of sacrifice that is above all prayer. You don’t need to know a single word of the Mass to be able to participate fully.

The bishops of the world saw that differently than you do.

The Mass was said in Latin for centuries and yet I have never heard a saint say the Mass would be more helpful in vernacular so people can participate easier.

That is a non-proof, and not relevant to the last century.

The thought of vernacular at Mass has happened since the Protestant revolt. The Council of Trent said, “Though the Mass contains much instruction for the faithful, it has, nevertheless, not been deemed advisable by the Fathers that it should be celebrated everywhere in the vernacular tongue.” & “If anyone says … that the Mass should be said in vernacular only, let him be anathema” I don’t see why this should change in a few hundred years Despite this, they knew more about the Mass than most people do today (I believe I read this on Catholic Answers). The vernacular doesn’t seem to be helping.

For the same reason that a lot of other things have changed since Trent. For the same reason that Canon law changed since the first edition of it. And the matter of people knowing about the Mass is not about the Mass in Latin, it is about the change in catechesis, which the bishops have finally acknowledged was horrible. The change in catechesis was the "throw the baby out with the bath water change. Lack of knowledge of what the Eucharist is has nothing to do with Latin.

At Mass, I see people praying the rosary or doing their own devotions, these people are participating just as much as someone who is following the missal because they are uniting themselves to the action of the priest’s Sacrifice.

The Church appears to disagree with you on that point, and significantly. Even prior to V2, we had missals and that was encouraged (and granted, at one point it was not). According to your apparent position, there really is no need to have a missal.

This is so common in my area its sickening, and from the looks of CAF, it is everywhere. If irreverence at some Latin Masses proves the futility of Latin at Mass, then it is much more condemning for the vernacular Masses.

Catholic Answers is in no way an indicator of how many parishes may or may not have abuses in the Mass. Because it tends to pick up specific groups, if one of those groups seems to find abuses everywhere (and normally their experience is very limited), then, ergo, it is occurring everywhere. Having been to Mass in parishes in 5 different states, and having found the vast majority of them not exhibiting the abuses which crop up in conversations in these threads, I find the issue of how wide the abuses are to be absolutely pure speculation.

And no one I know, including me, has ever made any comment that abuses in the Latin Mass proved any such thing as futility. It simply refutes the long-standing impression that all was absolutely true, beautiful, and highly reverent before V2, and everything went to hell in a hand basket since then, and is still in that basket.

People are people, and they all have their foibles. There were reverent priests before V2, and there are reverent priest after V2. The silliness that we all endured after V2 had far, far less to do with the Mass eventually being said in the vernacular, and far more to the whole attitude of “change” and “experimentation” that pervaded culture in the 60’s and the 70’s. And the "John Paul 2 priests are making more changes, back to normalcy, and away from experimentation. Just a note, but it was the priests who were ordained prior to Vatican 2 who were so bent on experimentation… interesting. Raised in the Latin Mass, said Mass in Latin, and so readily adopted the vernacular… interesting.

 

[otjm]

In fairness, the vernacular in remote areas of Africa and Asia seems to have helped in evangelizing there, but it has been pointed out that they also do Gregorian chant there as well. There are videos which show this.

We should face it, that other than Latin, Catholics just don’t have a common (or in math terms, the LCD) language, at least in the Western rites. Any attempt to force one’s native language to be the dominating one is just plain arrogance. That’s for the Protestants and their 30,000 denominations.

And from the Baltimore Catechism,

The quote you provided from the Baltimore Catechism is amusing. Having been raised on it, I, along with many others if not most, were taught either directly or indirectly that what was said in there was doctrine. The issue of the language of the Mass was not doctrine but rather discipline. Perhaps that may account for the reaction of some people, after Vatican 2 and after the later introduction of the Mass in English, to go off half-cocked and take the position that everything they were taught was subject to change.

And additionally amusing was John Paul 2’s complaint that so many bishops and Cardinals either could not or would not converse in Latin (the comment appeared to be concerning those in the Curia). “that their rulers maybe perfectly understood …”

 

[ProVobis]

Then according to that, no one should ever use a missal at an EF Mass.

I’ve often stated that one shouldn’t become overly dependent on any English translation of what Rome promulgates in Latin. That’s what this thread is about, or so I thought.

 

[ProVobis]

The issue of the language of the Mass was not doctrine but rather discipline.

Not a matter of whether it’s doctrine or discipline but what St. John XXIII called in his Veterum Sapientia, the “Wisdom of the Ancient World.”

Turns out that Ecclesiastical Latin is not only the wisdom but the genius of the Catholic Church over many, many centuries. Let’s give her some credit for it.

 

[Confiteor_Deo]

The Church appears to disagree with you on that point, and significantly. Even prior to V2, we had missals and that was encouraged (and granted, at one point it was not). According to your apparent position, there really is no need to have a missal.

We should have missals because it is the best way to unite ourselves to the Sacrifice, but I am saying that it is not necessary to participate in that way. Some may find that they would prefer to pray the rosary instead, and that is fine since you don’t need to follow the missal to participate fully. In my prayer books from Fr. Lasance, he put the Ordinary of the Mass but also gave various devotions and a “Eucharistic Rosary” for people to use at Mass if they wished. It is encouraged to follow the priest’s words in a missal, but not necessary.

This is from the book Treasure and Tradition which has an imprimatur and endorsement from Cardinal Burke among others, “The best way to unite ourselves with the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is by following the prayers in the Missal. However, it is not necessary to do so. As long as we assist at Mass with reverence, attention, and devotion, we are free to pray in whatever way is most helpful to us.”

So, the Mass has no need to be said in the vernacular since people can participate without knowing the words of the priest.

 

[ProVobis]

The actual evidence - actual statistical sampling - never showed any significant drop off. But that never convinced anyone who was adamantly opposed to the vernacular.

Whether you call it “significant drop off” or not, there isn’t any evidence that the vernacular brought the masses of people back to the Church either, though I agree that in Africa and Asia the vernacular was to their “advantage.”

 

[otjm]

Not a matter of whether it’s doctrine or discipline but what St. John XXIII called in his Veterum Sapientia, the “Wisdom of the Ancient World.”

Turns out that Ecclesiastical Latin is not only the wisdom but the genius of the Catholic Church over many, many centuries. Let’s give her some credit for it.

having studied Latin in both high school and college, I am not minimizing it or its value; on the other hand, neither will I over-blow its value. I have absolutely no doubt that for any foreseeable future, Latin will be the official language of the Roman rite, and being that it is not only the largest rite but also the See of Peter, it will be used as the official language.

Having said that, I see the reaction to the vernacular, not only in the western world, but also through out the rest of the world. And the rest of the world is and has been rather concerned about the attempts, over the centuries, to “westernize” them. While this is not something which is heard widely, it certainly has been heard, and repeatedly, by the Vatican. There have even been comments reporting that reaction, in this thread.

I am in no way anti -EF; I grew up prior to Vatican 2 on the Latin Mass and entered seminary 5 years before the OF was instituted. There is great beauty in the EF. There is also great beauty in Gregorian chant done properly, and I had the privilege of being part of a schola who recorded a record in it (CD’s simply did not exist commercially for another 16 years).

What I do find more than a bit troubling is the inability of some who support the EF to give any more than a very minimalistic acknowledgement of some of the values of the OF. Preferring one over the other is fine; preferring it strongly is fine. Denigrating the other is not fine, either openly, or with what so often amounts to “damning with faint praise”.

 

[otjm]

Whether you call it “significant drop off” or not, there isn’t any evidence that the vernacular brought the masses of people back to the Church either, though I agree that in Africa and Asia the vernacular was to their “advantage.”

I think there is evidence, certainly, in the growth of the Church in Africa.

And I think it is a fool’s errand to try to argue one way of the other about the introduction of the OF and play a guessing game of whether or not the downward attendance at Mass would have been any different had the OF not been promulgated, or had it been differently done. The loss of people “in the pews” is not an isolated fact of the Catholic Church; it is a fact of all of what have been considered the “mainline” Protestant churches, both in North America and in Europe. And the same can be said of some of the countries, such as Poland, which were dominated by the USSR; since they have come out from under that domination, there has been a gradual reduction in attendance.

Secularization, (driven by atheism, agnosticism, the sexual revolution which is still in full swing, with polyamory being the next round we will be facing) is the single biggest factor affecting society and Christianity in Europe and North America, and is likely to spread elsewhere in spite of significant cultural differences.

Pretending that the problems the Church has have to do with Vatican 2, or the vernacular Mass, or both is to ignore everything else that has been going on for the last century in the western world.

 

[OraLabora]

having studied Latin in both high school and college, I am not minimizing it or its value; on the other hand, neither will I over-blow its value. I have absolutely no doubt that for any foreseeable future, Latin will be the official language of the Roman rite, and being that it is not only the largest rite but also the See of Peter, it will be used as the official language.

Official, yes, but perhaps not surprising, the working language of the Vatican is Italian.

 

[otjm]

Official, yes, but perhaps not surprising, the working language of the Vatican is Italian.

Touché.

 

[Ad_Orientem]

The Mass is there for us to join with the priest in offering the sacrifice of Christ to the Father, and it is far easier to do when you can actually understand it.

And how many Catholics today understand that the Mass is a sacrifice?

Granted, we cannot simply blame the vernacular for incorrect beliefs about the nature of the Mass; but I’m not convinced that its use facilitates participation in the sacrifice as such to the degree you suggest. Were the faithful of the Western Church seriously hampered in their ability to worship for thousands of years, because they didn’t understand all the priest said?

It’s different in the Eastern rites because you have preserved chant, and have other aids like icons (which follow a strictly prescribed pattern). But take away both chant and sacred language, not to mention other things, and it is too easy to view the event on a natural plane.

 

[ProVobis]

What I do find more than a bit troubling is the inability of some who support the EF to give any more than a very minimalistic acknowledgement of some of the values of the OF. Preferring one over the other is fine; preferring it strongly is fine. Denigrating the other is not fine, either openly, or with what so often amounts to “damning with faint praise”.

Was it the intent of the OP to pit the forms against each other? I was hoping it wasn’t.

 

[ProVobis]

Official, yes, but perhaps not surprising, the working language of the Vatican is Italian.

Probably true, considering it took a lady journalist outside the Vatican to first realize Pope Benedict had resigned. (His resignation announcement was made in Latin.)

 

[otjm]

And how many Catholics today understand that the Mass is a sacrifice?

Granted, we cannot simply blame the vernacular for incorrect beliefs about the nature of the Mass; but I’m not convinced that its use facilitates participation in the sacrifice as such to the degree you suggest.

Answer: those who were taught it. Those who were not taught it struggle. Blaming the form of the Mass for what is a failure of catechesis is another example of post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

And I have yet to meet a priest who agrees with your premise concerning the use.

Communities such as the Trappists are somewhat insular, and yet the abbey near me celebrates the OF. I know of no reason that they could not choose the EF, should they decide; but they clearly have not so decided.

And while I do not ascribe the following to you, there have been a number of people who have taken a position that any balancing between sacrifice and sacred meal is automatically a denigration of the sacrificial aspect of the Mass. Rome, it would appear, does not agree.

 

[otjm]

Was it the intent of the OP to pit the forms against each other? I was hoping it wasn’t.

I see no reason to ascribe such an intent to the OP.

 

[Denise1957]

So if there are different forms of the mass; silent & chanted - they should be available in the vernacular tongue so that the people can visit & fully participate in mind & spirit in the prayer & worship of the saints of the Latin rite.

Evidently you believe that one cannot fully participate in mind, spirit, prayer and worship unless they can hear every word said in their own language at Holy Mass. But the saints that you speak of, for the vast majority, were formed in the Latin Mass without the benefit of the vernacular. Yet they still understood what Mass was about. How do you account for that?

 

[Zoltan_Cobalt]

Evidently you believe that one cannot fully participate in mind, spirit, prayer and worship unless they can hear every word said in their own language at Holy Mass. But the saints that you speak of, for the vast majority, were formed in the Latin Mass without the benefit of the vernacular. Yet they still understood what Mass was about. How do you account for that?

I agree, Denise.

It is my contention that any Catholic growing up with the Latin Mass had a pretty good idea of what was going on and what was being said. By the time I was 12 or 13 I had the Mass pretty well memorized. I was not an alter boy, but I paid attention and could look up latin words that were new to me.

I always thought it was really neat that we Catholics had our own “language”. We could go to Mass anywhere in the world and understand it. Sort of like an exclusive club,with a secret code. One of the little things that made us exceptional.

Do miss it? Sort of. The use of the vernacular and the change of rubrics are in most ways personally acceptable. After all…“Ite Missa est.”

( I always wonder how they got “The Mass is ended” from that)

 

[OraLabora]

Evidently you believe that one cannot fully participate in mind, spirit, prayer and worship unless they can hear every word said in their own language at Holy Mass. But the saints that you speak of, for the vast majority, were formed in the Latin Mass without the benefit of the vernacular. Yet they still understood what Mass was about. How do you account for that?

Sacrosanctum Concilium has made it clear what it understands by participation. It’s an official document of the Church:

II. The Promotion of Liturgical Instruction and Active Participation

1. Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. Such participation by the Christian people as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4-5), is their right and duty by reason of their baptism.

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.

(my bold)

This is clearly a priority of the Church. This is not to take away from the saints, or for that matter the Mass prior to Vatican II (the key word her is active). It is instead the way the Church wants to move forward.

 

[ProVobis]

Sacrosanctum Concilium has made it clear what it understands by participation. It’s an official document of the Church:

(my bold)

This is clearly a priority of the Church. This is not to take away from the saints, or for that matter the Mass prior to Vatican II (the key word her is active). It is instead the way the Church wants to move forward.

Depends on how you translate actuosa. (The authoritative version is the Latin one.) Note they didn’t use the word activa. A claim could be made it translates better to “actual” which in Spanish and Polish is closer to meaning “current.”

14. Valde cupit Mater Ecclesia ut fideles universi ad plenam illam, consciam atque actuosam liturgicarum celebrationum participationem ducantur, quae ab ipsius Liturgiae natura postulatur et ad quam populus christianus, “genus electum, regale sacerdotium, gens sancta, populus adquisitionis” (1Petr 2,9; cf. 2,4-5), vi Baptismatis ius habet et officium.

Quae totius populi plena et actuosa participatio, in instauranda et fovenda sacra Liturgia, summopere est attendenda: est enim primus, isque necessarius fons, e quo spiritum vere christianum fideles hauriant; et ideo in tota actione pastorali, per debitam institutionem, ab animarum pastoribus est sedulo adpetenda.

Sed quia, ut hoc evenire possit, nulla spes effulget nisi prius ipsi animarum pastores spiritu et virtute Liturgiae penitus imbuantur in eaque efficiantur magistri, ideo pernecesse est ut institutioni liturgicae cleri apprime consulatur. Quapropter Sacrosanctum Concilium ea quae sequuntur statuere decrevit.