Wanting to be a Traditional Catholic(m)

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I find it very hard to take seriously one who in all sincerity says that it doesn’t matter if we fully understand the Mass.
Is fully understanding a negative? :confused:

We kneel in the OP. Really. We pray together.
We receive Eucharist.
We give praise and thanksgiving.

Honestly, why do you suppose we bother to educate children?
I spend much of my time explaining the great beauty and content of the Mass.

My goodness.
I guess everyone in this Archdiocese has been doing it wrong all along. 😦
 
pianistclare said:
I find it very hard to take seriously one who in all sincerity says that it doesn’t matter if we fully understand the Mass.
Is fully understanding a negative? :confused:

We kneel in the OP. Really. We pray together.
We receive Eucharist.
We give praise and thanksgiving.

Honestly, why do you suppose we bother to educate children?
I spend much of my time explaining the great beauty and content of the Mass.

My goodness.
I guess everyone in this Archdiocese has been doing it wrong all along. 😦
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I don’t advocate for ignorance in regard to the Mass. I just believe that, if one doesn’t understand the language the Mass is said in or fully understand everything about the Mass, he can still participate in it fully. I simply disagree that we need to make the Mass be said in a vernacular for people to be able to participate. I greatly encourage people to learn about the Mass as it is quite helpful and facilitates participation, although it is not necessary for participation. 🙂
 
pianistclare said:
I find it very hard to take seriously one who in all sincerity says that it doesn’t matter if we fully understand the Mass.
Is fully understanding a negative? :confused:

We kneel in the OP. Really. We pray together.
We receive Eucharist.
We give praise and thanksgiving.

Honestly, why do you suppose we bother to educate children?
I spend much of my time explaining the great beauty and content of the Mass.

My goodness.
I guess everyone in this Archdiocese has been doing it wrong all along. 😦
Click to expand...
By all means, educate the children and explain to them the beauty of the Mass.

The purpose of my post (I’m not sure if that is what you are referring to, but even if not, it can’t hurt to clarify) was to emphasis that the efficacy of the Mass is not dependent upon whether or not we understand it (for no one can fully comprehend the Mystery). Nor is the efficacy of the Mass dependent upon how well or loud we sing. Today, it is implied that such actions are what entail “active participation”. There is a subconsciously held idea that the person who sang at Mass, or who shook more hands at the Sign of Peace, “got more” out of that particular liturgy than the woman kneeling silently in the back. I was offering the traditional understanding that “active participation” need not be physical and vocal action so much as an interior disposition and direction of intention.
 
Confiteor_Deo said:
If the Mass was said solely in Latin, a language that was not understood by the majority of the faithful for the whole life of the Church (as far as I know), for as many centuries as it was, they must have not found a good reason to put the Mass in the vernaculars.

**Presumably, in Southern Europe, the liturgy started out as a vernacular but eventually wasn’t anymore, as the common language branched out and developed into the modern Romance languages. (Hence the term “Vulgate”–Latin was the language of the vulgar, common people–educated people wouldn’t need the Latin translation because educated people knew Greek.)

You see something similar in Eastern Orthodoxy, where the liturgy was originally vernacular, but eventually became, with the passing of time, less and less accessible to the faithful.
**

After all, you don’t need to understand the prayers of the Mass as these are mere externals of what is truly going on: the reoffering of the Sacrifice of Calvary. As long as one knows this and unites himself with the priest in this Sacrifice, he need not know what is being said. That is true participation at Mass which knowledge of the prayers may facilitate, but it is not required. In fact, the benefits of Mass in Latin outweigh the benefits of vernacular, that’s the way the Church saw it for centuries.
**
???**

The first people to say their “masses” in the vernacular after the Latin in the Mass was already very established were the followers of the archheretics like Martin Luther. Catholics then wondered if their Mass should not be said in Latin, but the Council of Trent shot them down and said no.
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So, as you can see, the non-vernacular liturgy made Catholics vulnerable to heresy preached in their own language…
 
Xantippe said:
So, as you can see, the non-vernacular liturgy made Catholics vulnerable to heresy preached in their own language…
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Catechesis is not the primary function of the Mass. It never was, and never will be. Therefore to blame a Latin Liturgy for making the population susceptible to heresy places an undue burden on the role of the Liturgy. Obviously, better catechesis was needed. But the Mass is not the forum for it.
 
R_H_Benson said:
Catechesis is not the primary function of the Mass. It never was, and never will be. Therefore to blame a Latin Liturgy for making the population susceptible to heresy places an undue burden on the role of the Liturgy. Obviously, better catechesis was needed. But the Mass is not the forum for it.
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The Mass is the only catechesis that the average adult church-going Catholic gets.
 
Xantippe said:
The Mass is the only catechesis that the average adult church-going Catholic gets.
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Unfortunately true. In today’s developed, literate world there is no excuse for that to be the case. It isn’t hard to pick up a good book.
 
R_H_Benson said:
By all means, educate the children and explain to them the beauty of the Mass.

The purpose of my post (I’m not sure if that is what you are referring to, but even if not, it can’t hurt to clarify) was to emphasis that the efficacy of the Mass is not dependent upon whether or not we understand it (for no one can fully comprehend the Mystery). Nor is the efficacy of the Mass dependent upon how well or loud we sing. Today, it is implied that such actions are what entail “active participation”. There is a subconsciously held idea that the person who sang at Mass, or who shook more hands at the Sign of Peace, “got more” out of that particular liturgy than the woman kneeling silently in the back. I was offering the traditional understanding that “active participation” need not be physical and vocal action so much as an interior disposition and direction of intention.
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I object to your “assumptions” about the OF.
Just because we participate in a way that can be seen does not mean that this participation is not pleasing to God or appropriate even.
Again, I do not believe that the English language is somehow less worthy for prayer or the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The Church does not hold to that opinion either.
 
R_H_Benson said:
Unfortunately true. In today’s developed, literate world there is no excuse for that to be the case. It isn’t hard to pick up a good book.
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Indeed. The Baltimore Catechism comes to mind. It should be read and reread it several times.
 
pianistclare said:
I object to your “assumptions” about the OF.
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My statements are not directed at the Ordinary Form of Mass. They are directed at a mentality which has arisen among some who prefer the Ordinary Form regarding the interpretation of “active participation”.
Just because we participate in a way that can be seen does not mean that this participation is not pleasing to God or appropriate even.
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Nor did I ever say that it was not. I simply said that it is not necessary because it does not add to the efficacy of the Mass. The layman assists at the liturgy not by his physical actions, but by uniting himself to the Sacrifice being offered at the hands of the priest. But if physical actions help the layman to order his mind to do so, then by all means he should do so if prudence, local custom, and Church law permit.
 
eamonnroma said:
Does anyone ever attend the Novus Ordo in Latin?
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I have done so, and it is done. Our abbey uses a mix, Latin Propers and Ordinary, French plainchant for the rest, but the Benedictine women just outside of Montreal do the Latin OF daily. I’ve been to Latin OF’s in Italy, at the Abbey of Monte Cassino, and at the World Oblate’s Congress in Rome in 2013 where for convenience Mass was said in Latin every day. Bit of an anecdote here, I was on the organizing committee for this Congresses. At the 2009 Congress, the Mass was in a different major language every day (if I recall, English, Italian, French, German, Spanish and Latin). On the survey forms about half the people complained that they couldn’t understand the Mass in other languages, and why didn’t we have it in Latin? So that’s what we did for 2013. Guess what, about half the participants responded on the survey form that they couldn’t understand the Mass in Latin, and we should rotate languages every day 🤷

I also have a friend who is a fellow chant enthusiast (from another schola than my own). When his mother passed, he asked to have the OF funeral celebrated in Latin, and he found a monk willing to do so. His fellow choristers provided the music.

I’ve also been to Latin OF Masses in monasteries in France and England. It’s far more common in religious communities and at the Vatican than in parishes, but it is done.
 
R_H_Benson said:
Unfortunately true. In today’s developed, literate world there is no excuse for that to be the case. It isn’t hard to pick up a good book.
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Well, you’d need to know:
  1. That there’s stuff you don’t know.
  2. That it’s worth knowing
  3. What books to read to make up the deficits.
  4. What books or other sources are not actually helpful. (For instance, what if our hypothetical layman winds up just reading literature about dubious apparitions and locutions or stuff about how various 20th century popes were actually Masons?)
Those four things are already expecting a lot of the layman. Also, he would need to have the time and energy to devote to the project, as well as confidence that he will be able to understand the books and get something out of them once he gets them. Also, do the books exist in his native language? And is he actually up to understanding them? (Lots of people, for instance, aren’t nearly smart enough to tackle the Bible on their own.)

It’s difficult to gain an intellectual foothold in any new area of study. How many of us are smart in our own specialties, but not very eager to pick up a book on computer programming languages, the tax code, or music theory? The more you know, the easier it is to learn more. The less you know, the harder it is to learn anything at all.
 
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