What happened to High Mass in the NO?

  • Thread starter Thread starter lucybeebee
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
L

lucybeebee

Guest
Why is there no distinction between High Mass and Low Mass in the Novus Ordo? Or is there? In my experience, there does not seem to be any, although the experiences of others could be different.
 
I haven’t seen any High Mass in the NO, but I’ve read (can’t remember where) that it’s possible.:confused: I hope pastors/bishops didn’t decide it wasn’t wanted:rolleyes:
 
I assume by High Mass you are referring to a Mass with lots of servers, incense, bells, lots of solemnity and chanting and precise, coreographed movements. This does exist in the Pauline order (Novus Ordo, as it has come to be called), but not as a specific set of rubrics. Neither is the “low” Mass for the Pauline order. Let me explain.

In the Tridentine rite, there existed specific rubrics for different sorts of Masses. You had Low Mass, High Mass, and Solemn High Mass. Each referred to a specific set of rules about how the Mass was to be said. Basically, the biggest thing was how many deacons and subdeacons you had. Also, I believe that the incensing was prescribed and how much singing was included, Low Mass involving no singing, for instance.

We still have this in the Pauline Order, it’s just not prescribed as three different sets of rubrics. There is more freedom as to how given Masses are handled. This does not, by the way, mean there is more freedom to change the Mass in all crazy ways or to abuse the Liturgy. By no means! It simply means that if a priest wants to have a Mass with several deacons but no singing, this would (unless there is some rubric I am not aware of ) be permissible whereas it wouldn’t have been (I believe, I’m just trying to come up with an example on the fly) in the Tridentine order.

Basically, “Low Mass” is what you have at most daily Masses. You’ve got one priest, one server, no deacons, no music or incense, etc.

“High Mass” is your typical Sunday or Holy Day Mass - a few servers, at least one deacon (dependant on availability, of course), and singing.

“Solemn High Mass” is what you have at the Easter Vigil, Midnight Mass on Christmas, and any other time the parish really wants to put on a good Mass, where they have several many servers, as many deacons as the parish has available frequently, some concelebrating priests if there are any, lots of music, almost all the parts of the Mass sun or chanted, incense, bells, and all the other whistles you can imagine.
 
Grace and Peace,

Yes, I encounter a similar experience that Lazerlike42 is describing at our Pauline (i.e. NO) Parish. But it doesn’t take a lot of ‘smells and bells’ to open up my senses to the ‘real presence’. I was weeping softly in my error this evening unable to share in communion due to unconfessed sin. :o
 
Nice post, Lazerlike42.

In my parish, we have 4 ordinary form masses on Sunday. The first is closest to a low mass, the second and last are kind of like high masses (the second being also a children’s mass, not my cup of tea), and the third is the principal mass with deacon, definitely the closest thing to solemn high mass.

I think it would be great if parishes would be able to ‘advertise’ their masses as such so people can know what to expect.

In Christ,
mp
 
mart(name removed by moderator)orres said:
I think it would be great if parishes would be able to ‘advertise’ their masses as such so people can know what to expect.
Click to expand...
I think it would be nice if we could know what to expect (like when an EF parish advertises low Mass at 8:00 and sung Mass at 10:30), but I think the problem lies in the very fact pointed out above that while those sorts of terms might *suggest *certain elements to us now there are absolutely no rules about what must happen in order for something to qualify. Whereas before there was a fairly specific separation of the levels of solemnity (eg. at low Mass the priest wasn’t allowed to sing his parts), a priest can now pick and choose the various details he wants to incorporate. So I might show up to something advertised as a solemn Mass with the reasonable expectation that a deacon will be assisting (a deacon was required for solemn Mass before) but the priest doing the advertising might simply mean “a Mass with what I think are lots of fancier options.” Another priest might simply think “well, Mass is always supposed to be solemn, so I just throw that adjective in whenever I mention the Mass, like talking about the Most Holy Eucharist.” Since the terms no longer reflect juridical reality, they very easily lose the distinctions they were meant to convey.
 
Our 10 AM Mass would equate to a Solemn High Mass. There are six candles. Priest, deacon, servers, choir, incense etc. I would suggest that to make it a true Solemn High Mass that Eucharistic Prayer 1 would be used since that is the Roman canon. It is seldom used here - even in a cathedral parish.
 
lucybeebee said:
Why is there no distinction between High Mass and Low Mass in the Novus Ordo? Or is there? In my experience, there does not seem to be any, although the experiences of others could be different.
Click to expand...
When the Mass of Paul VI was created the liturgical experts working on it used the Low Mass as the typical example of a Mass that most people would have seen. Thus, the Mass of Paul VI corresponds to the normal experience of people in the 50s and early 60s – a low Mass. There is no high Mass (or, for that matter, Missa Cantata or Sung Mass) in the current normal liturgical praxis of the Latin Church.

Deacon Ed
 
Not in the strict sense you are mentioning. Deacon. But I can’t say that the 8 am Mass at my cathedral parish (two candles, no choir, no incense) is the equivalent of the 10 am Mass (six candles, choir, incense). That rather differentiates between the 6 and 8 am Masses I knew as a child which were “low” Masses and the 10 am Solemn High Mass with six candles, choir and incense - and a whole lot more altar boys. And if our bishop is presiding, the stops are pulled out even further.

I would submit to you that Solemn High Mass does have it equivalent in the NO. It’s just not known by the same nomenclature. 8 am Mass is over in less than 40 minutes. 10 am Mass lasts for an hour or more. How is this different from a low Mass or a Solemn High Mass? Nomenclature?
 
brotherhrolf said:
I would submit to you that Solemn High Mass does have it equivalent in the NO. It’s just not known by the same nomenclature. 8 am Mass is over in less than 40 minutes. 10 am Mass lasts for an hour or more. How is this different from a low Mass or a Solemn High Mass? Nomenclature?
Click to expand...
I don’t think anyone would argue that we can’t see any *rough *equivalents of the old distinctions. Where I would differ from you, though, is that I do think we have to recognize that it’s more than just nomenclature - there is no juridical differentiation among Masses, so these categories, in that sense, do not exist. That doesn’t preclude our trying to realize the old categories in how we plan the liturgies of the year, but it does mean that we will not be able to make distinctions we used to be capable of making.

(For instance, what now distinguishes a “high Mass”/sung Mass from a solemn Mass? - would we really want to say in today’s situation that a bishop celebrating from the throne with oodles of altar boys, incense, an orchestral Mass setting, etc. could not be called a solemn Mass simply because he didn’t have a deacon assisting?)

(As another remark, toward delineating levels of solemnity: The legal categories before not only allowed us to make the distinctions but also prevented, in some sense, the different forms from being too alike.)
 
Andreas_Hofer said:
I don’t think anyone would argue that we can’t see any *rough *equivalents of the old distinctions. Where I would differ from you, though, is that I do think we have to recognize that it’s more than just nomenclature - there is no juridical differentiation among Masses, so these categories, in that sense, do not exist. That doesn’t preclude our trying to realize the old categories in how we plan the liturgies of the year, but it does mean that we will not be able to make distinctions we used to be capable of making.

(For instance, what now distinguishes a “high Mass”/sung Mass from a solemn Mass? - would we really want to say in today’s situation that a bishop celebrating from the throne with oodles of altar boys, incense, an orchestral Mass setting, etc. could not be called a solemn Mass simply because he didn’t have a deacon assisting?)

(As another remark, toward delineating levels of solemnity: The legal categories before not only allowed us to make the distinctions but also prevented, in some sense, the different forms from being too alike.)
Click to expand...
What you say is certainly true, but we have a deacon at all of our Sunday Masses. And, since we are a cathedral parish, the bishop celebrates Mass with just our rector and deacon w/o a host of altar boys - just the usual number. There is certainly a lot of incense and though I would dearly love to sing an orchestral Mass, the best we have been able to do is brass and tympani. But as far as solemnity goes, it is certainly more than a normal Mass and light-years beyond what one finds in most suburban parishes.
 
Sometimes where I live, we call Masses on Solemnities Pontifical High Masses when celebrated by the Bishop, or Solemn High Masses when by a priest (with all the bells and whistles). Of course, these are not “official” but it seems to be a carryover from the older terminology.

However, we just tend to call our weekday Masses, weekday Masses.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top