Why did we need a New Mass?

[RomanRiteTeen]

Being that I’m younger and never experienced the errors that I can only assume were the old mass, I was wondering why the Church wanted and needed a new one. I know part of it was to foster an active laity, but that doesn’t sound like a reason to suppress the older tradition in favor of the new.

Anyway, I was just wondering what terrible abuses and problems lead to the formation of the mass we celebrate today.

Thanks,
RomanRiteTeen

 

[MrS]

RomanRiteTeen:

Being that I’m younger and never experienced the errors that I can only assume were the old mass, I was wondering why the Church wanted and needed a new one. I know part of it was to foster an active laity, but that doesn’t sound like a reason to suppress the older tradition in favor of the new.

Anyway, I was just wondering what terrible abuses and problems lead to the formation of the mass we celebrate today.

Thanks,
RomanRiteTeen

The Church never desires to make itself worse. But the people in it are another question. I hope that most would agree that there were many Church members, then and now, who do not have the best interests of the Church in mind when they decide to make changes. If we can’t weed them out, God will.

That said, I am not implying that the NO is worse. It is different. And it is subject to abuse just as any other Church discipline or regulation or whatever might be subject to abuse.

Personally, I feel the NO is more suseptible to abuse. And the results or fruits, of the “reform” are becoming evident and sad in weaking of the members of the Body of Christ.

 

[Church_Militant]

The fact is that the so-called New Mass is really just the Mass in the Vernacular (Language of the People) Prior to Vat 2 the Latin Mass was the norm and had a sort of limited participation by the people.
I have never been to a liturgical abuse that I know of, so a lot of the talk I hear is just that to me. I’ve read about some…
http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/band.gif

 

[Chris_Jacobsen]

One of the goals the Second Vatican Council was to reunite Christendom into one Church. The New Mass was developed to help achieve this goal.

 

[Psalm45_9]

Church Militant:

The fact is that the so-called New Mass is really just the Mass in the Vernacular (Language of the People) Prior to Vat 2 the Latin Mass was the norm and had a sort of limited participation by the people.

Church Militant gave you a good response, I will expand on that more. Vatican II never intended for a new rite to be born, but in essence that is what happend. The Tridentine Mass had more prayers and many of the prayers that remained in the liturgy have been shortened (like the confetitor, “I confess to almighty God” and the Kyrie, “Lord have Mercy”) Bigger is not always better, sometimes it’s just more. In the current mass, the places where you now stand, in the Tridentine Mass you would kneel. From the point where the priest blessed everyone until the epistle reading everyone would kneel, now everyone stands for example. The Latin rite was slow to to reinstate vernecular languages for the liturgical celebration. Originally the mass was celebrated in Greek, but was later celebrated in Latin so the people could understand it, but after a couple centuries, Latin became a dead language. The Eastern Rites, however, began celebrating the Divine Liturgy in the Vernacular languages long before the Latin Rite did. Many things became options in the current mass (kneeling to recieve communion, Masses celebrated in Latin, and sung masses) I am not saying that the Tridentine mass is better then the Missa Normative or vis versa, it’s more of a matter of preference.

 

[MrS]

Church Militant:

The fact is that the so-called New Mass is really just the Mass in the Vernacular (Language of the People) Prior to Vat 2 the Latin Mass was the norm and had a sort of limited participation by the people.
I have never been to a liturgical abuse that I know of, so a lot of the talk I hear is just that to me. I’ve read about some…
http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/band.gif

I strongly suggest you read Problems with the Prayers of the New Mass… from TAN BOOKS. No, I very strongly suggest it.

 

[Vincent]

MrS:

I strongly suggest you read Problems with the Prayers of the New Mass… from TAN BOOKS. No, I very strongly suggest it.

Fr. Anthony Cekada’s book? Elsewhere he wrote,

“We must therefore, as Catholics who affirm that the Church is both indefectible and infallible, reject and repudiate the claims that Paul VI and his successors have been true popes.”

Perhaps a different book ought to be recommended.

 

[pnewton]

Vincent:

Fr. Anthony Cekada’s book? Elsewhere he wrote,

“We must therefore, as Catholics who affirm that the Church is both indefectible and infallible, reject and repudiate the claims that Paul VI and his successors have been true popes.”

Perhaps a different book ought to be recommended.

Good link. I think I will pass on Fr. Cekada in favor of someone more orthodox and faithful. The man definitely sounds like a sedvacanist.

I have always liked Tan Publications, but this connection will make me be more wary.

 

[MrS]

Vincent:

Fr. Anthony Cekada’s book? Elsewhere he wrote,

“We must therefore, as Catholics who affirm that the Church is both indefectible and infallible, reject and repudiate the claims that Paul VI and his successors have been true popes.”

Perhaps a different book ought to be recommended.

The site you linked in not on my reading list, so I passed. Anyone who would say that … well, God will be the judge… As for the book… the prayers are listed side byside and are the object of the concern. I would think that TAN, probably as imperfect as us, would only print the book to make those facts known. (I hope)

 

[Bill_A]

The Novus Ordus Mass was brought about to deal with problems in the New World Order. Some of the problems listed were the growing stockpile of weapons of mass destruction and the growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor. SOme of the different pieces of the changes brought about from Vatican two are not actually written out in Vatican two. They were just arbitraily done. I am pretty sure Vatican II did not set Cannon law for ripping out Communion rails.

 

[Chris_Jacobsen]

The three essential parts of the Mass are the Offertory, Consecration, and Communion (meaning priest’s communion.) These three essential parts of the Mass are found in both the new Mass and the old latin Mass. These three essential parts are even found in the illicit Mass.

And despite the vile rhetoric of the wretched and very disgusting people known as liturgists, when one hears the the three essential parts of the Mass, one has heard Mass. This is because one has participated in the same Sacrifice as the Sacrifice of the Cross.

And if one has heard two of the three essential parts of the Mass, one has fulfilled his Sunday Obligation. This is true no matter how ferociously the liturgist bangs on her guitar.

The liturgist wants people to attend from beginning to end, because the goal of the liturgist is to undermine and attack the Catholic Faith. The liturgist despises and holds in great contempt the very person of Jesus Christ, Himself. If anyone believes I am wrong, they can walk into the so-called Catholic church in the parish in which I live. And they will be in for a very rude awaking.
Welcome to the world of liturgical abuse.

 

[Franciscum]

Church Militant:

The fact is that the so-called New Mass is really just the Mass in the Vernacular (Language of the People) Prior to Vat 2 the Latin Mass was the norm and had a sort of limited participation by the people.
I have never been to a liturgical abuse that I know of, so a lot of the talk I hear is just that to me. I’ve read about some…
http://pages.prodigy.net/rogerlori1/emoticons/band.gif

No.

The Novus Ordo Mass can (and is) be licitly celebrated all in Latin, or partially in Latin, and it’s quite different from the Tridentine Mass.

Just imagine for a moment, the Tridentine Mass in the vernacular…

Next to the Anglican-Use Mass (which is gorgeous), the Novus Ordo Mass as celebrated on EWTN with plenty of Latin is my favorite “style” of the Mass.

 

[Vincent]

From Fr. Benedict Ashely, OP:

Mangled liturgy did not start with Vatican II. As a convert, received into the Church 25 years before Vatican II, I had the good fortune first to attend the Eucharist in a parish where the old liturgy was performed with great care. Soon, however, I discovered that in Chicago this was exceptional. Daily Mass was usually always a requiem “black Mass” and the choir was only the organist, who usually had repeated this same music so many times that it was reduced to a rattle of notes and a jumble of scrambled Latin. The celebrant, too, read everything to himself, often at remarkably high speed. A veteran priest I knew, when asked how he managed to get so quickly through a low Mass (considerably longer then than now), replied, “You have to say the words not only breathing out, but breathing in.”

—“The Eucharist”​

 

[Franciscum]

The three essential parts of the Mass are the Offertory, Consecration, and Communion (meaning priest’s communion.) These three essential parts of the Mass are found in both the new Mass and the old latin Mass. These three essential parts are even found in the illicit Mass.

And despite the vile rhetoric of the wretched and very disgusting people known as liturgists,** when one hears the the three essential parts of the Mass, one has heard Mass.** This is because one has participated in the same Sacrifice as the Sacrifice of the Cross.

And if one has heard two of the three essential parts of the Mass, one has fulfilled his Sunday Obligation. This is true no matter how ferociously the liturgist bangs on her guitar.

The liturgist wants people to attend from beginning to end, because the goal of the liturgist is to undermine and attack the Catholic Faith. The liturgist despises and holds in great contempt the very person of Jesus Christ, Himself. If anyone believes I am wrong, they can walk into the so-called Catholic church in the parish in which I live. And they will be in for a very rude awaking.
Welcome to the world of liturgical abuse.

Is this another attempt at parody?

First, you left out the entire Liturgy of the Word. That is required for it to be a licit and valid Mass, you know.

Your are also flat-out wrong on the three points I emboldened on your posting.

Finally, I think you are confused about liturgists – at least most liturgists…

 

[Vincent]

Another weird example:

I became an altar boy in 1959. We did not say the Mass in Latin in those days. We said it in mumbles, really fast. God help you if you did not mumble quickly enough for father’s liking. If we were lucky, the priest would slow down to say the words of institution clearly but only to himself. (At one Mass I attended as a child, the elderly priest completely forgot the consecration. Only a few sharp people were paying attention and told the pastor. He announced after the service that it had not been valid. Most of us did not notice because we were absorbed in our own devotions.) Most lay people did not know Latin and could not follow what was going on. It was such a breath of fresh air when the vernacular allowed the whole congregation to actually understand and actively participate in the liturgy.

—Art Sippo​

 

[Franciscum]

RomanRiteTeen:

Being that I’m younger and never experienced the errors that I can only assume were the old mass, I was wondering why the Church wanted and needed a new one. I know part of it was to foster an active laity, but that doesn’t sound like a reason to suppress the older tradition in favor of the new.

Anyway, I was just wondering what terrible abuses and problems lead to the formation of the mass we celebrate today.

Thanks,
RomanRiteTeen

Perhaps we should study the words of a priest who was celebrating the Mass well before the reforms of V2:

"The Old Mass

Stop! Take off the rose-colored glasses and face a reality of 20/20 hindsight. I began serving “the old Mass” in 1939. I am now 73 years old, 45 years a priest, having begun my seminary studies in 1950. As a kid knowing the perfect recitation of all the Latin Mass responses, we dealt with mumbled praying of many priests. In the old days there were parishes that were known as “whiz churches”: Sunday Mass, in and out in 20 minutes.

Young priests were told the motto: “Get them out fast”. In college I was too embarrassed to invite my dormitory roommates to Sunday Mass - the blatant lack of piety was a scandal. Rarely do I look back and remember edifying experiences as being the norm. But, yes, there were some.

In my experience today the gains outshine the losses. Yes, I know where craziness exists and horror stories are a fact. But the gains were tremendous. Yes, we are still growing/becoming what we should be. Change begets excesses – the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, yet eventually resting in the middle… The recent writings and promulgations of our Holy Father give us hope, e.g., the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (USCCB Website), Sacrosanctum Concilium, and Ecclesia de Eucharistia.

Don’t despair. If there is craziness in your parish, pray for your bishop, write lovingly to the offending priest and copy it to the diocesan liturgical committee. Don’t you be crazy too – document accurately the observation of misdirection.

Having been a pastor for 27 years, in a variety of multicultural parishes, I have witnessed, in these changing times, the evolution of a profoundly rich contemporary Mass that is celebrated within the rules.

Would I go back to pre-Vatican II days? No way. I reverence the past, but live and work in the richness of the present, championing orthodoxy and “working to beat hell!”

Be patient. Treat all with charity, pray unceasingly and know that truth will conquer. As the Adoremus Bulletin tells us: “The Holy Father asks bishops and liturgists to build on the ‘riches’ of the reform while also pruning ‘serious abuses’ with ‘prudent firmness’”. (“The Foundations of Liturgical Reform”, March 2004)

Father Andre J. Meluskey
Senior Priest, St. Patrick Church
Carlisle, Pennsylvania"

 

[Deacon_Ed]

Dear Teen:

You’ve been given a lot of information, but most of it is opinion. Here’s what the bishops saw when they looked out at the congrations during the Mass prior to Vatican II:

1. Most were praying the rosary or doing some other private devotion
2. A few were involved in the Mass, usually following along in Fr. Steadmans’s “My Sunday Missal” or one of the weekday “Daily Missals” (the most common were the St. Joseph and the St. Andrew missals).
3. Most people were “going through the motions.”

As an altar server during this period, I can say that was my experience.

What the bishops wanted was a Mass in which the people felt more comfortable, more at home, more involved. Most of the private devotions that we have today arose during periods when the people did not understand the Mass and so developed what spoke to them. The bishops did not want to eliminate the devotions, but wanted the Mass to speak to the people.

Among the early experiments were the so-called “dialog Mass” in which the people prayed the responses along with the altar server (the norm was that the altar server “represented” the people and said their prayers for them). While this was of some benefit, the fact that it was still Latin helped to keep it from becoming accepted – the people still had no idea what they were praying.

So, the idea was to replace some of the Latin with English. Yet, the more the consilium looked at the needs the bishops had put forth, the less likely it was they could do so within the constraints of the Mass of Pius V (Tridentine Mass). They did try, and there were two experimental releases of missals with that in mind, but they did not “work.”

Eventually, at the urging of Pope Paul VI, more work was done to fabricate a liturgy that used the vernacular (originally about 50% of the Mass, now 100% of the Mass). A lack of catechesis has plagued this Mass, first leading to the Ottaviani Intervention and, currently, to a Mass for which people still don’t have proper catechesis.

But, this was something new for the Church. Never before had so sweeping a reform been attempted. While it is true that there is nothing new in the Mass of Paul VI, it is also true that bits and pieces were pulled together to form a liturgy.

Deacon Ed

 

[katherine2]

The most profound change and the most positive (as well as the one rarely commented on by the critics of the liturgical renewal) was teh reform of the lectionary. Formerly we only had two readings and both were extremely brief. They Sunday lessons were on a one year cycle and the weekday lessons were taken from the common of saints or repeated from the previous day. Sermons were optional and often were not connected to the readings.

The reformed lectionary is on a three year Sunday cycle, two year for weekdays, has much longer and more detailed readings, includes a third reading on Sundays (usually Old Testament). The Mass now calls for a homily on the readings every Sunday.

The offertory procession has now been restored. As have the Prayers of the Faithful, which allow the community to verbally express some particular concerns ( the sick of the parish, pro-life, a national or local need, etc.)

The Mass now is much longer (as much as twice as long) as before the Council.

 

[cainem]

never having experienced tlm, i still feel the no mass is a beautiful deeply spiritual mass, i have never witnessed any litugical abuses in any of the parishes that i attended (my old job took me all over the uk) the priest was always in control of the masses that i attended, in short nothing has been lost by the mass being said in english, it is time to move on and be one holy catholic and apostolic church

 

[terrcatholic]

I agree totally with Mr. S. Having been to both Masses, not even going into the beauty and reverence of the High Mass as compared to the New Mass, I cant help but feel that with all of the wierd things going on in the 60’s with race riots, VietNam, assassinations, the hippee culture, that the New Mass was a result of that. But just like those times, after the 60’s and the trying times of the 70’s, we had the 80’s which brought the country back to conservatism. I am still waiting for the church to do the same. And having read the legitimacy of introducing the New Mass, as I myself questioned the same thing why was the mass necessary, as I have read a lot of literature by Traditional groups with some very forceful and legitimate reasons on the invalidity of the New Mass. I think that Pope Pius V Papal Bull is quite clear on this matter. I need to do more research. But I think the only way we are going to get some of the reverence back and people back is to bring back some of the mystique that the church had for centuries, and to make our teachings CLEAR ,for Goodness sakes we cant even get two American Bishops to decide on whether to deny communion to a Catholic who is an advocate for murder in John Kerrry, how can they be expected to make a decision on anything anymore, let alone the liturgy? It seems as the Church has become one big beauocracy that is more concerned in being liked by everyone and the other religions and being politically correct, and have seemed to forget why this intitution founded by Our Lord. Not everyone is supposed to like our message, like our Lord who was Crucified for his. We are all looking for the easy way out today, including our Bishops and in some instances, our beloved Pope, and I mean all of us. If asked today, like the martyrs of yesteryear, who on this board would actually be willing to DIE for their faith?

MrS:

I strongly suggest you read Problems with the Prayers of the New Mass… from TAN BOOKS. No, I very strongly suggest it.