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CRV
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perhaps a generalisation?
What were the post-Vatican II changes like to live through?
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Scott84
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Given my experience and the statistical studies I have looked at, that is the logical conclusion I drew.
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PetraG
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I appreciate that a priest ought to be able to offer the Mass in a way that works for him, but I have heard stories of new pastors coming in and making wholesale changes without taking any trouble to find out how many in the parish would welcome them or how many wouldn’t. They just come in and make the changes and if you don’t like it, too bad.
Even when there is a parish 5 miles away to go to, I think that is a big mistake. No matter how good a change is, people will resist it if they’re not prepared for it or if they feel a newcomer is coming in and dictating what they want without ever getting to know them first. If that means that people are going to resist what is really a beautiful way of doing things, that’s a shame. Sure, some people who leave as soon as they hear there will be Latin involved would leave no matter what the priest did, but some would have stayed if the approach was less sudden or if the changes were made by someone they had time to grow to trust. If they had stayed, the fabric of parish interrelationships wouldn’t be disrupted so much, either. When people who leave do so gradually, it doesn’t come with the same emotional cost.
Many people really felt they had the rug pulled out from under them when the vernacular Mass was introduced. It was a huge change. We have so much better ways of communicating now, there is no reason to make changes in such a jolting way, IMHO. I think it makes people upset for no reason and I think it actually increases resistance in people who wouldn’t have resisted had the changes been introduced in a more gradual way.
In short, I’m in favor of instituting changes in ways that are likely to take root with the most people, because “style” is something that a good many people are very flexible about, given the time to adjust. Even those who leave are less upset and disrupted if they leave because they gradually come to feel less at peace with things, rather than getting hit in the face with the “someone else’s way” of doing things coming in as if they were conquered by a “foreign power.”
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PetraG
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That’s funny because I like the traditional stuff and my nieces and nephews (who are Gen-You-Name-It) like the vernacular and music that sounds more secular or “folksy” to me. They say it is easier to sing. They like the holding hands duringn the Our Father and all of that. I can tolerate it, but to me a greater formality feels more reverent and more respectful of the people who are a bit more shy or emotionally reserved.
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OraLabora
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Indeed. I’m a baby boomer, pray the Divine Office in Latin chant every day, and have belonged to a Gregorian schola for the past 17 years. And… newsflash… ALL of our schola members that are regular and assiduous, are baby boomers. It’s the younger ones that try it out, fall in love with it, and then fall out of love with it just as quickly. We boomers are the ones showing up at rehearsal after rehearsal, and have trudged through the more difficult pieces to ensure that we contribute to a beautiful liturgy.
Our season is September through June, and I’ve trudged through rain, sleet and snow to get to rehearsals, getting back home at 10:30 pm on a Friday night when having a beer by the wood stove sounds mighty pleasant.
Since we are dealing with faith and individuals, it is perhaps not best to generalize based on statistics, and consider each person as if he or she were Christ Himself (Rule of St. Benedict). We shouldn’t be blaming or shaming. We should be building unity.
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CRV
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Thank you!
God bless you and all those who serve in whatever capacity before, during and after Mass to give glory to God.
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TheMortenBay
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Yeah, that’s what I said.
Nope, wait. I said:
So, what I said was EXACTLY that it wasn’t regularised until 1570, but that the Roman Rite was celebrated in Rome, in what started out as the Roman vernacular, Latin, as early as the year 300.
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edwest211
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The 1970s were the time when Hippie/guitar/pop culture influences really came to the fore. I’m glad to see it being discarded.
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edwest211
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“We have so much better ways of communicating now,” I was there and communications were just fine. Parishioners did not give a show of hands. Pastors had instructions to follow which they did not invent and should not have strayed from. This was not about pleasing the people. The mass and worship were instituted by God.
The use of combative, ‘us versus them’ language should be avoided.
The use of combative, ‘us versus them’ language should be avoided.
That is wonderful. God bless you! Keep coming to the Traditional Latin Mass and tell others about it. We need you there!
Just offering this for the reader’s consideration, if the priest celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass, there is basically just “one way” to offer it. There is High Mass and there is Low Mass, but that’s about it. Some priests do recite the Mass more quickly or slowly than others.
In short, there aren’t endless variations on a theme. You know what you are getting, and it’s the same anywhere you go.
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OraLabora
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There were a myriad of ways to offer the Tridentine Mass actually, all described in my 1935 Ceremonial. High, Missa Cantata, Low, (later) dialogue, with/without deacon/subdeacon, with/without assembly. All with distinct rubrics. But only one possibility for each circumstance.
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Dovekin
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I am a Baby Boomer. We did not care much for all the “1950s” stuff. We yearned for a liturgy closer that fof Jesus and the apostles. Resoucement was a call to return to the style off the Church Fathers, not the Baroque style.
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PetraG
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No, I just mean that, as an example, it was easier to prepare people for the implementation of the new translation of the Mass than it would have been to prepare people back in the 1960s because now it is easy to give explanations to whoever wants explanations and at a low cost.
As another example, the Archdiocese of Portland recently put out a liturgical manual that anyone can download for free. The Archdiocese also printed copies of it for mass distribution, but the online version allows more people to access the information at a much lower cost. More than that, the priest who is going around the Archdiocese giving instructions to the extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion was able to put together a Power Point presentation on his laptop that cost him nothing to produce. In the old days, slide shows like that were more work to prepare and had to be sent off to be photographed and made into slides. It took more time and it was not free or easy to change the slides!
I would venture to say that the internet has made it far easier to interest people in the Traditional Latin Mass and to help them prepare for it. There aren’t just materials available that could be downloaded in print form, but also audio resources to help people who want to be able to pronounce things properly. Even the priests have easy access to videos explaining exactly how things are to be done. Ideally, yes, they would get all the hands-on instruction in seminary that they could ever use, but we all know that some did not get that. Well, they don’t have to have a brother priest nearby to give them that instruction, because priests have made videos and have posted resources online to help them.
Yes, the world muddled along without the internet for thousands of years, but I think that is a great advance, just like giving the priests access to cell phones so they can be notified of an urgent need for the sacraments at any time. When we didn’t have that, we went without, but now that we have that, the value isn’t trivial.
As much as any of us here might like it or not, I don’t think it is realistic to believe we’re going back to exactly one way to offer Mass. I don’t see that happening, in spite of the advantages it offers.
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Dovekin
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In the year 300, they had a vernacular unregularized ritual. Who would identify with that more, adherents of the OF or of the EF?
Mass in the 3rd century is as much like a modern Latin mass as Imperial Latin is like modern Italian. You can recognize similarities but it is hard to communicate.
Mass in the 3rd century is as much like a modern Latin mass as Imperial Latin is like modern Italian. You can recognize similarities but it is hard to communicate.
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TheMortenBay
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You seem determined that we somehow disagree on something fundamental rather than details just because the Mass we go to differs externally. I think both OF and EF adherents would recognise the Mass, but I think there’s a good chance it’d have more in common with the EF, as that at least developed organically over time (from the very same Roman Rite). Regardless, we’ll never know. Certainly not this side of the veil, anyway.
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edwest211
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Your examples ignore a study of the past.
We had religion class. We were taught about Vatican II and what to expect. No mystery. We told our parents. There were many pocket-sized booklets available in the front of the Church about any subject a Catholic might want to know about. If the Pope published an encyclical, copies were there. As Vatican II began, a paperback book was published for the laity that gave a summary of the various topics to be discussed. I have a copy.
Slides were used in presentations but so what?
And pre-cellular phones existed. If it was an urgent matter, no problem
We had religion class. We were taught about Vatican II and what to expect. No mystery. We told our parents. There were many pocket-sized booklets available in the front of the Church about any subject a Catholic might want to know about. If the Pope published an encyclical, copies were there. As Vatican II began, a paperback book was published for the laity that gave a summary of the various topics to be discussed. I have a copy.
Slides were used in presentations but so what?
And pre-cellular phones existed. If it was an urgent matter, no problem
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Erikaspirit16
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I asked once where you lived, but I forget! Wherever it was, it sure wasn’t where I was.
I was taking catechism classes through June 1964. I don’t remember the council being mentioned at all. Nor do I remember any leaflets, booklets, etc. in the church. But of course this was 50+ years ago.
One thing I am absolutely certain of: With one exception (when we switched over from “And also with you” to “And with your spirit” a few years ago) no priest ever addressed any of the changes in a sermon. I think, as I said earlier, individual experiences were exactly that: individual. I think it’s impossible to generalize since everyone was doing something different. In any case, in my own experience, no one bothered to tell me what the changes were and why they were being made, which probably resulted in my relatively negative reaction to them. We were supposed to fall in line like robots. But it was the late 1960s…how well does that strategy work in the context of the times?
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edwest211
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You’re taking a torturous route when you don’t need to. Priests were accessible. If my mother wanted to see a priest, she made an appointment. And she saw him. You make it sound like nobody was there. Not true.
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PetraG
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Yes, I know, I studied from the Baltimore Catechism and had religion class with our parish priest and I know what a mimeograph is and I even know what a party line is.
No, when I was growing up we couldn’t pull up not only any encyclical we wanted, but homilies, speeches, apostolic exhortations, the entire Catechism, the Compendium, the Bible, and more from the Vatican directly to our home. Our Archdiocese couldn’t post video demonstrations. My home parish couldn’t post materials that went beyond the bulletin, which is a far cry from what our parish can (and does) post now.
I don’t know how two people who wouldn’t even be communicating at all except for the internet and who both remember a world when it was Archbishop Sheen one night a week instead of the cable channel and website of EWTN can even debate whether the ability to communicate to the faithful has measurably improved since the 1970s. It is entirely beyond dispute.
No, when I was growing up we couldn’t pull up not only any encyclical we wanted, but homilies, speeches, apostolic exhortations, the entire Catechism, the Compendium, the Bible, and more from the Vatican directly to our home. Our Archdiocese couldn’t post video demonstrations. My home parish couldn’t post materials that went beyond the bulletin, which is a far cry from what our parish can (and does) post now.
I don’t know how two people who wouldn’t even be communicating at all except for the internet and who both remember a world when it was Archbishop Sheen one night a week instead of the cable channel and website of EWTN can even debate whether the ability to communicate to the faithful has measurably improved since the 1970s. It is entirely beyond dispute.
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