Tridentine Mass.

[UnityofTrinity]

I understand the importance of using vernacular in Mass, but why did the Church have to reform the whole setting of Mass? Why not just uses vernacular in a Tridentine setting?

 

[YoungTradCath]

The short answer is, no one exactly knows! I’m not trying to avoid answering you, but that’s the truth. I’m sure all sorts of statements could be made, but until we have Mons. Annibale Bugnini’s diary or something or the Church releases an explanatory document (unlikely), no one will know for sure.

 

[StephenEstes]

It allows for greater unity in prayer, with the priest facing the congregation, most of the prayers being read aloud so all can hear the beauty and greater amount of responses from the congregation allows for greater unity in the sacrificial meal of the Mass that we share. By all scriptural accounts it seems that Christ was sitting around a table with His apostles, facing them, and sharing in the prayers and the breaking of the bread. This is obviously a pastoral application not a deep theological explanation. However, this is not to say something is wrong about the Tridentine Mass, it is certainly beautiful, served the Church for many years as the primary form, and still serves many today that choose to go because it appeals to their spirituality, certainly not me personally, but I do know some who like it better. Both are legitimate forms of the Mass

 

[MarkThompson]

I understand the importance of using vernacular in Mass, but why did the Church have to reform the whole setting of Mass? Why not just uses vernacular in a Tridentine setting?

This was discussed in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. The point was not (only) to allow the use of the vernacular, but to reform the liturgy itself: no longer keeping the congregation “as strangers or silent spectators”; eliminating “useless repetitions”; providing “more reading from holy scripture, [which] is to be more varied and suitable”; making allowances “for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples”; revising the rite and removing obfuscating accretions so “that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them, may be more clearly manifested”; and so on. So the answer as to “Why not just use vernacular in a Tridentine setting?” is that the Church saw many areas in the “Tridentine setting” that called for reform and improvement.

The short answer is, no one exactly knows! I’m not trying to avoid answering you, but that’s the truth. I’m sure all sorts of statements could be made, but until we have Mons. Annibale Bugnini’s diary or something or the Church releases an explanatory document (unlikely), no one will know for sure.

Would you settle for his book The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948-1975 (976 pp.)?

 

[Bob_Aliano]

I understand the importance of using vernacular in Mass, but why did the Church have to reform the whole setting of Mass? Why not just uses vernacular in a Tridentine setting?

Actually there was a period of transition in the mid-late sixties which was closer to the TLM in the vernacular than what we have today.

 

[YoungTradCath]

This was discussed in the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. The point was not (only) to allow the use of the vernacular, but to reform the liturgy itself: no longer keeping the congregation “as strangers or silent spectators”; eliminating “useless repetitions”; providing “more reading from holy scripture, [which] is to be more varied and suitable”; making allowances “for legitimate variations and adaptations to different groups, regions, and peoples”; revising the rite and removing obfuscating accretions so “that the intrinsic nature and purpose of its several parts, as also the connection between them, may be more clearly manifested”; and so on. So the answer as to “Why not just use vernacular in a Tridentine setting?” is that the Church saw many areas in the “Tridentine setting” that called for reform and improvement.

Would you settle for his book The Reform of the Liturgy: 1948-1975 (976 pp.)?

I shall buy that!

 

[Brendan_McCabe]

It allows for greater unity in prayer, with the priest facing the congregation, most of the prayers being read aloud so all can hear the beauty and greater amount of responses from the congregation allows for greater unity in the sacrificial meal of the Mass that we share.

I do not believe that, there is no greater unity of prayer at the vernacular masses compared to Masses I have attended according to the 1962 rite, nor is there greater unity at the masses I have attended in my native tongue compared to masses I have attended in Italian or Spanish which I do not speak.

By all scriptural accounts it seems that Christ was sitting around a table with His apostles, facing them, and sharing in the prayers and the breaking of the bread. This is obviously a pastoral application not a deep theological explanation.

To my knowledge nowhere in the scriptures says that Christ was facing his disciples.

 

[StephenEstes]

I do not believe that, there is no greater unity of prayer at the vernacular masses compared to Masses I have attended according to the 1962 rite, nor is there greater unity at the masses I have attended in my native tongue compared to masses I have attended in Italian or Spanish which I do not speak.

To my knowledge nowhere in the scriptures says that Christ was facing his disciples.

That’s fine if you haven’t felt it, I have and was simply putting into terms what sacrosanctum concilium says about changing the congregation away from being strangers and silent spectators, and Matthew says that He sat at a table with them and proceeded to talk to them about who would betray them and when He consecrated the bread and wine He proceeded to tell them that it was His body and blood etc. It would simply seem to me to be natural thought that He was doing all of this facing them but did not sit at the table backwards and bless the bread and talk to them with His back to them

 

[YoungTradCath]

Matthew says that He sat at a table with them and proceeded to talk to them about who would betray them and when He consecrated the bread and wine He proceeded to tell them that it was His body and blood etc. It would simply seem to me to be natural thought that He was doing all of this facing them but did sit at the table backwards and bless the bread and talk to them with His back to them

No one knows for sure how Jesus did this. I would think that Jesus did, in fact, face them when he did this, rather than facing away from them. But what does that at all have to do with the orientation of mass?

We shouldn’t do things just because “that’s how they did it in the Bible.” We should do things and have things one way over another at mass because they make sound theological sense and seek to effectively destroy the person of the priest when he is confecting the sacrifice so that no one pays attention to him.

In an ideal world, no one would focus on the priest himself no matter if the priest was facing the congregation, suspended upside down, or laying on his face, but we know this isn’t so. We know that the way the priest faces has a direct influence on if we are focusing on him and his person, which we should not be. The orientation which makes most sense to discourage focusing on the priest, in my humble opinion, is facing ad orientem or ad ipsidem (in the case the altar isn’t built on the eastern wall).

It is true that it is an ancient practice of several religious orders to have the priest facing versus populum, way before the 1960s, due to the distinct nature of their charisms. But, I think we can reasonably expect that, due to their very specific and thorough education and formation, they have generally a more acute mind in these matters and can “handle it,” so to speak, without getting sidetracked.

It isn’t about the priest “having his back towards the people.” It is about suppressing the person of the priest, symbolically and literally leading the people in prayer, and facing towards God rather than towards each other. What orientation could possibly express unity better than facing in the same direction?

 

[Brendan_McCabe]

That’s fine if you haven’t felt it, I have and was simply putting into terms what sacrosanctum concilium says about changing the congregation away from being strangers and silent spectators

Sacrosanctum Concilium does not say anything about saying mass in the vernacular with the priest facing the people creating a greater unity, it does however say: “36. 1. Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”

Saying Mass in the many vernaculars of the world if anything has divided the Church into different language groups, such disunity caused by the adoption of the vernacular reaches right down to the local parish level as we see in many places throughout the US were in many parishes we have one Mass in English for English speakers and then another Mass in Spanish for Spanish speakers, or as happens in the UK one Mass for English speakers and another for those who speak Polish.

and Matthew says that He sat at a table with them and proceeded to talk to them about who would betray them and when He consecrated the bread and wine He proceeded to tell them that it was His body and blood etc. It would simply seem to me to be natural thought that He was doing all of this facing them but did not sit at the table backwards and bless the bread and talk to them with His back to them

Like I said the scriptures did not say He faced them, He probably was not sitting either if He was following the normal customs of the time.

 

[Leon_Bloy]

It allows for greater unity in prayer, with the priest facing the congregation, most of the prayers being read aloud so all can hear the beauty and greater amount of responses from the congregation allows for greater unity in the sacrificial meal of the Mass that we share. By all scriptural accounts it seems that Christ was sitting around a table with His apostles, facing them, and sharing in the prayers and the breaking of the bread. This is obviously a pastoral application not a deep theological explanation. However, this is not to say something is wrong about the Tridentine Mass, it is certainly beautiful, served the Church for many years as the primary form, and still serves many today that choose to go because it appeals to their spirituality, certainly not me personally, but I do know some who like it better. Both are legitimate forms of the Mass

Just a couple of observations, here: Prof. Brant Pitre has an interesting book out called The Jewish Roots of the Eucharist in which he proposes that the evidence shows Jesus probably faced in the same direction as the apostles at the Last Supper. I wanted to point out, myself, that the rubrics of the Ordinary Form of the mass (Missal of 1970/Paul VI/“Novus Ordo”) assume that the priest will still be facing toward the altar as the priest does in the more ancient form of the mass (EF). Somehow the priest facing towards the people became basically normative, however, at least in the U.S.

 

[puzzleannie]

I understand the importance of using vernacular in Mass, but why did the Church have to reform the whole setting of Mass? Why not just uses vernacular in a Tridentine setting?

at first they did this, among with many other things that were tried and later abandoned. The Mass we had after 1966, but before the first new edition of the Roman Missal in the mid 70s, was very much closer to the new translation, but there was a lot of variety on altar placement, and orientation of the priest to the people, depending on where you were going to Mass.

My personal guess is that wherever priests were in seminary at that time, their instructors taught their version of what was right and proper, doing their best to interpret documents and changes, that actually happened often and rather quickly in those years. It was not until the late 70s, early 80s that you saw more uniformity (in those years we spent a lot of time in 3 different dioceses, one being Detroit where changes were implemented rather quickly, because our Cardinal Dearden was one of those who worked on the V2 and following liturgical documents, the other two being somewhat slower to change (Cleveland for one, until their elderly bishop died).

So your suggestion was no doubt tried and found wanting for various reasons.

in all, as tumultuous as those years were, the popes were probably wise to allow some things to be tried and discarded as they worked toward a uniform Roman Missal and GIRM, and as always, it can take years for everything to come to where it should be, and hopefully the current edition will serve the Church well for hundreds of years to come.

 

[ProVobis]

Why not just uses vernacular in a Tridentine setting?

There really is no such thing as the Tridentine Mass per se. Trent (or at least Quo Primium) attempted to codify and standardize the then-prevailing Catholic liturgy in its non-vulgar language. In fact it anathematized anyone who even said the rite should be everywhere vulgar.* Vatican II clarified this a bit by stating that Latin be preserved in the Latin Rite.

*I guess it could be argued that Trent allowed some spot exceptions to the Latin.

 

[Bob_Aliano]

A totally unsupported personal opinion might be the fear of introducing any “modernism” in the TLM, at our parish we even retained the second Confeteor just before the “Ecce Agnus Dei…” even though the 1962 Missal dropped it. The old saw about letting the camel get his nose in the tent and before long the whole camel will be in is appropriate in this situation.

 

[FrancisB]

*I guess it could be argued that Trent allowed some spot exceptions to the Latin.

From the beginning of the Catholic Church in the United States, + Carroll insisted that the readings be done in the vernacular so that the people could understand them. The local “Indian Masses” were given an indult for all of the choir’s parts (people’s parts) to be said/sung in the native languages. We were a missionary church, and we have always had use of the vernacular in the liturgy in the United States. That’s not to say that the whole mass was in the vernacular before 1965; obviously it was not. That said, the traditional insistence that everything be in Latin was not as widespread as some would have you believe.

That said, the 1965 usage–from what I’ve read, since I wasn’t alive yet-- seems closer to the description of the mass found in Sacrosanctam Concilium. It’s also remarkably close to the description of the usage of the American “Indian Masses” that endured up to Vatican II. The 1970 missal goes beyond the changes called for in the documents of Vatican II, and relies in places on rather questionable (scholarly-speaking) sources for the pre-Tridentine Roman Rite.

The general idea was that the mass had become to full of non-essential barnacles of personal piety and needed to be stripped down to a more authentic form. The impulse is certainly a laudable one I should think, and based on a documentable concern. That is not to attack the mass promulgated at Trent; it is just to state that the mass had gathered many extra prayers and rubrics by that point that had only developed in the late middle ages and Renaissance periods. Trying to get back to the mass as St. Gregory the Great celebrated it might have been a good idea, but it isn’t what we got.

 

[ProVobis]

We were a missionary church

You hit the nail on the head. Obviously vernacular is required to convert. But is it needed when the rite and text are already understood by other means? Trent specified that the Mass is to be explained to the people. That isn’t always achieved by one-size-fits-all translation. In fact, there is very little evidence the Mass has been understood any better since they started using translations in the Mass.

It’s like this. I’m contemplating attending an Arabic DL. Would I like someone tell me what’s going on? You bet. Would I want them to change all of their liturgies to English for my sake? No way.

 

[FrancisB]

You hit the nail on the head. Obviously vernacular is required to convert. But is it needed when the rite and text are already understood by other means? Trent specified that the Mass is to be explained to the people. That isn’t always achieved by one-size-fits-all translation. In fact, there is very little evidence the Mass has been understood any better since they started using translations in the Mass.

It’s like this. I’m contemplating attending an Arabic DL. Would I like someone tell me what’s going on? You bet. Would I want them to change all of their liturgies to English for my sake? No way.

I don’t understand the rigidity here, Pro Vobis. While you are listening to the Divine Liturgy in Arabic, please remember that the reason you are hearing it in Arabic and not Koine Greek is because the east has mostly maintained the tradition of using the vernacular. Perhaps going and hearing the Divine Liturgy in Slavonic would be a better illustration of your point?

And listen, I’m not opposed to the use of liturgical languages; I just don’t think there is any way to understand the liturgy of the early church without accepting the validity of the use of the vernacular in the liturgy. That’s how we got the Latin mass, remember? Otherwise the mass would have been in a liturgical language: probably Hebrew and/or Aramaic. Latin and Koine were used precisely because they were the vernacular.

 

[YoungTradCath]

Does anyone else think it’s reasonable to expect that over the course of the next several hundred years, things will just continually be added to the OF mass, as they were over several hundred years (both before Trent and after) that produced the EF as we know it today?

Someone mentioned the “scrubbing off,” per se, of the “extras” to make a more “authentic” mass. I question this, as it seems ultimately futile to me, because if this is the Church’s attitude, there will need to be a “scrubbing off” many more times in the future, as it’s basically to be expected that rubrics and prayers and postures will be added to the OF in the future as they were to the EF. It’s rather base to think that the OF will remain in its current form for the next several hundred years.

Just trying to wrap my head around the ideology and thought process of VII.

 

[FrancisB]

Does anyone else think it’s reasonable to expect that over the course of the next several hundred years, things will just continually be added to the OF mass, as they were over several hundred years (both before Trent and after) that produced the EF as we know it today?

Someone mentioned the “scrubbing off,” per se, of the “extras” to make a more “authentic” mass. I question this, as it seems ultimately futile to me, because if this is the Church’s attitude, there will need to be a “scrubbing off” many more times in the future, as it’s basically to be expected that rubrics and prayers and postures will be added to the OF in the future as they were to the EF. It’s rather base to think that the OF will remain in its current form for the next several hundred years.

Just trying to wrap my head around the ideology and thought process of VII.

The ordinary form will of course continue to change. I suspect at some point the distinction between the OF and EF will cease to exist as they are brought together into a more natural form of the Roman Rite. I also suspect this will cause the extreme elements on both fringes of the church to convulse and perhaps even leave the church. Nevertheless, the existence of them side-by-side only points to the failure of the OF, since there is no way that one can see the promulgation of the 1970 Ordo Missae as anything other than an abrogation of the previous missal, as had always been the case. The reason for this is obvious: it was–at least in name–the same mass. There should never have been two missals for the same mass. The entire idea is ludicrous.

What I said earlier was that the missal of St. Pius V is not the missal of St. Gregory the Great. The Second Vatican Council in part called for the restoration of the Roman Rite to a purer form. That isn’t to pretend that the resultant product wouldn’t gradually gather extra trappings again and need to be stripped down again. What I was trying to point out is that the removal of parts of the Tridentine Mass did not necessarily imply that the mass was being compromised for the sake of Protestants, as is often stated. While I feel quite certain that what we got was not what the council wanted, I think it is important for traditional Catholics to understand that the Western liturgical traditions of Western Christianity stretch back to well before Trent. In fact, in some ways Trent compromised or outright destroyed some of the tradition in the name of protecting the church. I will not pretend to tell you that this was not what was necessary at the time; I have no authority to do so, and I trust that the Holy Spirit was acting in the Council as it has throughout every Council. What I will say is that the idea that the mass organically evolved over the first 1600 years, then was frozen in time never to be changed, and all without any damage to the integrity of the service seems untenable in light of history.

If anything, I should hope that the mass continues to evolve with time as it always has. While I think we always need to be on guard for novelty that detracts from the faith, without some novelty we would not have ever had the missal of St. Pius V. The vision that I have, though, is not so close to what we got. I don’t support such strange contrivances as the priest facing liturgical west (“towards the people”) or offering the priest the choice of anaphora (the Roman Canon should stand as it has for centuries, with St. Joseph in it, as Bl. John XXIII allowed). I suppose my point would be that authentic liturgical renewal shouldn’t start at Trent; it should start at least as far back as St. Gregory the Great, if not earlier.

 

[Bob_Aliano]

Nevertheless, the existence of them side-by-side only points to the failure of the OF, since there is no way that one can see the promulgation of the 1970 Ordo Missae as anything other than an abrogation of the previous missal, as had always been the case. The reason for this is obvious: it was–at least in name–the same mass. There should never have been two missals for the same mass. The entire idea is ludicrous.

I think you should read this and read it very carefully lest you continue to believe and propagate false information. ewtn.com/library/papaldoc/b16summorumpontificum.htm