Were there differences in the Mass from country to country before Vatican II?

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**I have been a Cathoilc for about nineteen years now. The New Order of the Mass is what I am most familiar with, of course. **

Another thread is discussing the differences found in the Mass from country to country…My question is this…Were there differences like these before Vatican II, when the Tridentine Mass was the norm the world over? Just curious.
 
My recollection from a book on the history of the liturgy that I have at home is that pre-Vatican II there were other rites besides the Tridentine used by certain orders. These other rites were abolished with Vatican II. So, in some sense there was more variety in earlier days. (Although I don’t know how commonly used the other rites were.)
 
Mass was pretty much the same from country to country and it was mostly in Latin. Of course the music, hymns and small harmless variants will vary from country to country.

The only places that used a different Missal were in religious communities, Toledo Spain(Mozarabic Use once a year) and Ambrose, Italy( which used the Ambrosian Use). One area that did not use Latin for their Mass is Croatia which they used a non-vernacular liturgical language called Slavonic.

Religious order rites are still in use and have not been abolished. For example and Dominican priest can celebrate the Domincan Use.
 
The Eastern Catholic Churches have their own rites that date back to the Apostles. In the Latin Church prior to Vatican II there were other approved rites usually, as stated above, within specific orders. These had been around since around 1370 (200 years prior to the formalization of the Latin Mass after the Council of Trent). The reason that these were still around is that Pope St. Pius V allowed all approved liturgies that had been in existence for at least 200 years to remain when he instituted the “Tridentine” form. I put that in quotes because the form itself was the result of research going back to the time of the Apostles, so “Tridentine” is really a misnomer.

It was suggested above that the promulgation of the current liturgy in 1972 supressed the additional forms but I don’t think that’s entirely true. For example, the 1972 missal only applied to the Latin Church so the Eastern Churches retained their traditional rites and still do to this day. It was also my understanding that those liturgical forms approved for specific religious orders were not suppressed in the Latin Church but I may be wrong about that. What was specifically suppressed was the traditional form last promulgated in the Missal of 1962.
 
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Iohannes:
Religious order rites are still in use and have not been abolished. For example and Dominican priest can celebrate the Domincan Use.
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Thanks for the information. I was under the impression that that was no longer an option. I guess I was wrong.
 
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theMutant:
It was suggested above that the promulgation of the current liturgy in 1972 supressed the additional forms but I don’t think that’s entirely true. For example, the 1972 missal only applied to the Latin Church so the Eastern Churches retained their traditional rites and still do to this day. It was also my understanding that those liturgical forms approved for specific religious orders were not suppressed in the Latin Church but I may be wrong about that. What was specifically suppressed was the traditional form last promulgated in the Missal of 1962.
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Yeah. I assumed we were just talking about the Roman Church, since the subject was the Tridentine Mass.

I occasionally attend a Maronite liturgy, which provides another beautiful expression of Catholic worship.
 
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Iohannes:
The only places that used a different Missal were in religious communities, Toledo Spain(Mozarabic Use once a year) and Ambrose, Italy( which used the Ambrosian Use). One area that did not use Latin for their Mass is Croatia which they used a non-vernacular liturgical language called Slavonic.
The Ambrosian Rite is used in Archdiocese of Milan, where St. Ambrose served as a Bishop. Other places that used a different Missal include the Braga Rite, for use in the Archdiocese of Braga,Portugal and the Lyon Rite, for use in the Diocese of Lyons (France). The Monastic Orders that had their own Mass where the Franciscans, Dominicans,Benedictines,Servites, and Carmelites, Norbertines, and Carthusians.

Other rites in use in ages past included the Sarum and York Rites which were used in Britan. I once read somewhere, when Catholicism was reintroduced in England, that the Pope authorized the English church to use the Sarum Rite, but they chose to use the Tridentine Mass.
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**OK…So, does all that mean that the Mass was more stable before Vatican II…By that I mean that it was (or was not) more the same from place to place than the Novus Ordo Missae is…? **

It seems that one of the objections to the NO is that it tends to have too many options, and thus is different from time to time and place to place. The Tridentine Mass, they say, is the same no matter where you are. I’m just trying to sort things out in my mind…
 
CD4 said:
**OK…So, does all that mean that the Mass was more stable before Vatican II…By that I mean that it was (or was not) more the same from place to place than the Novus Ordo Missae is…? **

It seems that one of the objections to the NO is that it tends to have too many options, and thus is different from time to time and place to place. The Tridentine Mass, they say, is the same no matter where you are.
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Sounds like something I would say. 😉 Since you qualified “stable” as meaning “consistent,” I would have to say yes.
 
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squirt:
Yeah. I assumed we were just talking about the Roman Church, since the subject was the Tridentine Mass.
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Probably correct. I was focusing on “country to country” and so I included those of the Eastern Rites. 😃
 
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theMutant:
Sounds like something I would say. 😉 Since you qualified “stable” as meaning “consistent,” I would have to say yes.
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**Thanks for the reply.🙂 **
**You were right. I think I did mean “consistent”. However, stable is a good word, too. I am begining to feel a certain instability in the Mass. I don’t want that to come out wrong…I know the Mass is the same, no matter where you are, or how it is said…The Same Jesus is there, as long as the Consecration is done properly. **
**It’s just that it keeps changing…The Missal keeps changing…I bought a beautiful leather Daily Roman Missal several yars ago…It was my favorite book…and had it signed by none other than Mother Angelica:D . Anyway, it is now out of date…I will have to buy another one if I want to have the correct readings every day. My friend, a Cathiolic bookstore owner says…It is five years now…There might be another one coming along…Of course she said this with a smile, but you never know, and that is the problem. **
 
CD4 said:
**Thanks for the reply.🙂 **

**It’s just that it keeps changing…The Missal keeps changing…I bought a beautiful leather Daily Roman Missal several yars ago…It was my favorite book…and had it signed by none other than Mother Angelica:D . Anyway, it is now out of date…I will have to buy another one if I want to have the correct readings every day. My friend, a Cathiolic bookstore owner says…It is five years now…There might be another one coming along…Of course she said this with a smile, but you never know, and that is the problem. **
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Daily readings follow a 2-year cycle and Sunday readings follow a 3-year one. Things get a bit more complicated because of feast days, some of which don’t fall on the same date every year. As a result, any Daily Missal with readings for each day by date is going to become outdated even though the Mass itself doesn’t change.

(And some feast days are celebrated on different dates depending on the country. For example, Sept 26 (Canada) vs Oct 19 (U.S.) for Isaac Jogues, Jean de Brebeuf and their companion martyrs.)
 
But The Mass before Vatican II was uniform before Vatican II. Those local uses had died out by the time of Trent and were rarely used. CD4 where did you get your conclusions from?
 
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CD4:
…My question is this…Were there differences like these before Vatican II, when the Tridentine Mass was the norm the world over? Just curious.
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I am surprised there are no answers to this question from those who used to travel before the 1965 changes in the mass. From one who did, there were essentially no differences in the Roman Catholic mass anywhere in the world. Obviously, the homily was in the local lingo, as were the translated readings, but the mass was essentially invariant. In England, in Germany, in Hong Kong, it was the same.

As a bit of painful nostalgia, a few years ago my family and I were in Vienna. One Sunday evening we went into the St. Stephen cathedral where a supplementary mass was being offered. A few tourists and fewer worshipers were there. Just a few blocks away in the Kapuzinerkirche a “Tridentine” mass was being said. The church was packed, aisles included, and the Holy Sacrifice could immediately be followed by us old timers, identical and unchanged. It was enough to make one weep with gratitude. As I said…nostalgia.
 
Catholic Eagle…I’m not sure which conclusions you are asking about. I’ll be happy to elaborate if you tell me.
 
The conclusion that the Traditional Latin Mass was not uniform in all of the Roman Catholic church?
 
Catholic Eagle:
The conclusion that the Traditional Latin Mass was not uniform in all of the Roman Catholic church?
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**I don’t think that is what I concluded…It was my assumption that the Tridentine Mass was more consistent throughout the world than the Novus Ordo Missae is today. **
 
Catholic Eagle:
But The Mass before Vatican II was uniform before Vatican II. Those local uses had died out by the time of Trent and were rarely used. CD4 where did you get your conclusions from?
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Maybe I’m misreading something, but according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, it seems that there were reforms made to the Dominican rite in 1777 and 1871. So it looks like it hadn’t died out before Trent.

newadvent.org/cathen/13064b.htm
 
I found the passage I was thinking of earlier today.

“With the promulgation of the various standard editions of the rites, Vatican II created a liturgical uniformity never before known to the Roman Catholic Church. Even the Council of Trent had allowed liturgical traditions over 200 years old to continue. Vatican II eliminated all such rites.”

Foley, E. (1991) From Age to Age: How Christians have celebrated the Eucharist Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, pp164-165

(the book is copyright by the Archdiocese of Chicago - I don’t know how accurate it is )
 
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