Well it was the Anglican-Use which is similar. It wasn’t just because of that. It added to her frustration, whereas if I had tried to be more compromising in where we attended it may have helped the situation.
Must have been the accoustics (or lack of them) inside that church.
Haha caught thatMust have been the accoustics (or lack of them) inside that church.
Most people didnt used to take very young children to Mass. Before they began first communion prep, young children stayed home with a relative or caregiver. If you read the lives of many saints they talk about when they first began attending Mass regularly at about 5 or even 7 years old.
, I mostly stayed home with a cousin who was living with us until I was about 3 and the cousin moved back home.I spoke to my wife and she felt like both forms of the Mass, OF and EF, are pretty foreign to her Methodist upbringing. She agrees that the OF is more similar, but doesn’t find either to be very similar at all. Of course, different Protestant groups will have different opinions on this (and everything else) but there is one view.
In the 50’s when Mass attendance was still high in the cities and people walked to Church, there would be like 6 or 7 Masses on a given Sunday morning and many family members would attend separately. Nun’s Mass, Early Bird Mass, Children’s Mass, High Mass, Sleep-late Mass, etc. Seems like the cryrooms and bathrooms came later when the number of Masses dropped or the people moved to the suburbs.Most people didnt used to take very young children to Mass. Before they began first communion prep, young children stayed home with a relative or caregiver. If you read the lives of many saints they talk about when they first began attending Mass regularly at about 5 or even 7 years old.
Even when I was a baby, not that long ago
And with the massive drop in vocations to the priesthood.
Part of that is resistance from families to encourage or accept a son answering the call. Smaller families is part of it. The rise in education levels in general and the opening up of more career paths is a large part too. Becoming a priest is no longer a way to “move up” or ensure a good education.
I have to agree with everything above. I have 5 young children. Only 2 of them can be consistently counted on to behave in church. I’ve attended the EF Mass a handful of times, usually with some combination of the children. I must admit, I haven’t been very comfortable there. My entire focus is on the kids: making sure they’re not noisy, trying to orient the older one’s attention to the Mass, taking them out if necessary. If I have to take one, I have to take at least 3, as the others can’t be trusted yet to be unsupervised. I don’t know the Mass and can’t follow along in a missal because my hands and mind are occupied with the kids. My husband is different. He has that enviable male ability to tune out everything around him, not notice the one kid picking his nose or the other kid ever-so-quietly taunting his sister, not notice that the toddler is rifling through somebody’s purse or is precariously positioned to fall. The fall, of course, will be accompanied by a large crashing noise and a scream. He can pray. I cannot. Because it is so unfamiliar, I can’t even pray the mass unconsciously.
Perhaps you can continue to go to your EF parish while your wife goes to her OF parish. You should ask your children if they prefer the EF or the OF. They can choose between going with you or your wife. God bless. 
Hello, may I suggest something?
P.S. I’m also a huge fan of the Extraordinary Form.
No, absolutely not. Family is precious in God’s eyes. If you want to go to the same church, you should ask your children whether they prefer the EF or the OF. That way, neither one of you have to decide. God bless.
Come on. Really?
I get that you like the EF, but are you really recommending that the family split up?
It might also help, given concerns about being able to focus on the Mass with children, if you watched the E.F.Mass at home online when the kids are asleep so she could get to know it without interruptions. And, when you begin assisting at the Mass, it might be a wonderful support for you to commit to taking the children outside as necessary, so that she might have that much greater opportunity to deepen her faith through uninterrupted assistance at Mass.I would think that pushing ANYTHING on your wife would be very inappropriate. I prefer the Novus Ordo, but I have been to EF Masses, and love them, too. But if someone tried to push that on me I’d be very offended as I don’t think anyone has the right to control me. Even God does not try to control us-He gave us free will and respects it. How can we do less?
More people attended Mass then, and prior to the age of contraception, there were a lot of big families with babies crying. I think EF can be uncomfortable now because it can sometimes feel like the older folk Mass and young families can feel uncomfortable if a young child is crying. This of course depends on the particular church in the area.
That’s not my experience at the EF Mass. Where I attend it is mostly younger people and young families with lots of babies - not many old people. There’s always one of them crying. The priests don’t seem to mind. They say it’s the future of the Church, so how could they mind the crying.
For my parents, who took all of us to Mass regardless of age, it may have seemed like centuries.
They took shifts walking a baby who needed walking.That’s the experience I’ve had as well. Most people in the congregation are in their 30’s or 20’s, many with several children in tow. We have a good amount of those who look old enough to remember Mass in 1962 and very few in between. Seeing so many people around my age is another reason I prefer the EF parish.