What would have happened had the NO been instituted at an earlier time?

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Sarpedon

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Would all the disintergration that followed the institution of the NO still have happened?
 
I think that would depend on *which *earlier time it happened in.

Times change, but there were other times in history similar to the 1960s, and other times which are dissimilar.

People remain the same however, so I’d think that there would have been some negativity in any age.
 
I’ve sometimes wondered what would have happened had the mass been reformed in the 19th Centiry- after the First Vatican Council. I highly doubt the changes would have been as drastic as what we now have, since it was a time in history that greatly admired the piety and aesthetics of the Middle Ages. The vernacular translations likely would have been more on the archaic/poetic side. For us English speakers, the mass would probably look a lot like an Anglo-Catholic service.
 
It often seems that people think the NO itself is partially responsible for the disintegration. I guess the question is whether that view is accurate, or whether the problems were a result of the time at which it was implemented. Personally, I think that there is nothing wrong with the NO and that it would not have caused as many problems had it been issued in a more stable and conservative time.
 
Personally, I think that there is nothing wrong with the NO and that it would not have caused as many problems had it been issued in a more stable and conservative time.
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Well, since 300 AD is what its practices cite, would you consider that time to be more stable and conservative? 🙂
 
It was meant in exaggeration, actually. I think the writer was looking for perhaps an earlier decade or two, to which I can only cite the Council of Pistoia which tried to install something similar to the NO back in 1786. Who knows if it would have caught on better.
 
BobP123 said:
It was meant in exaggeration, actually. I think the writer was looking for perhaps an earlier decade or two, to which I can only cite the Council of Pistoia which tried to install something similar to the NO back in 1786. Who knows if it would have caught on better.
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As I recall, the notion of a vernacular Mass, along with the other 84 propositions of the Council, were categorically condemned by Pope Pius VI. So clearly it wouldn’t have.
 
Sarpedon said:
Would all the disintergration that followed the institution of the NO still have happened?
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That’s only been true in the West. If a reform works in China and Africa and Latin America, but not in the rich countries, can we say that, on balance, it was bad thing? Obviously as a Westerner I’m not too happy about it, but my parochial view isn’t the whole.

Had NO been introduced at Trent it would have been very dangerous. Either it would have healed the Protestant schism or, more likely, it would have been the end of the Church and Christianity would be simply a collection of Protestant sects.

Had it been introduced in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, it might have been a good thing. These were very bad centuries for the Church. The crisis of the Reformation was over, but the Church didn’t move on from there, and became more and more marginalised. I don’t think we can know whether a Vatican II, say, before the French Revolution would have reinvigorated the Church or not . A Vatican II in the C19th might have been as you suggest. A Vatican II in the early part of the C20th it wiould have been dominated by the political crisis of the World Wars. The 60s look like a period of turbulence from our perspective, but in comparison to the rest of history they were quite mild.
 
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