I had a chat with my mom (born in 1929, parents born 1885 and 1890) last night. I asked her a bit about her memories of the Mass, her childhood (she spent some years in Catholic elementary school but had to attend public schools often as the family moved a lot up and down the East Coast in the 1930s and 40s. Of course that also meant she experienced a lot of different Catholic parishes).
She remarked that in her experience (again, they moved practically every year and both public and Catholic schools had a lot more students per class then than now, so she knew a lot of people over the years) any child who was Catholic had parents or other family who went (and who themselves had been ‘schooled’ by their parents, etc. etc going back generations) to Mass, who followed the Mass, who had no difficulty understanding the Mass. She said the students had Catholic readers and all who had made First Communion had missals (usually Latin/English but often Latin/French, Latin/German, etc., and THOSE often came from the families, handed down) which showed the pictures of what happened at Mass and gave the ‘English’ to the Latin. She said that even though students might not go on to study Latin in high school that they listened and read and learned. She said that nobody was ‘too poor’ to have a missal or a reader; the readers were paid for by the school but often there were extras given out for good marks or good conduct, and the nuns and priests knew the families who might have trouble with anything from having a communion outfit to school supplies to lunch, and made sure that those who needed had just as much as those who could afford them.
Oh, and for the record, she cannot remember ever just ‘mumbling rosaries’ nor seeing anybody else doing so!! Nor does she remember the anecdotal vacant uncomprehending stares, the ‘rushed priests’. . .OR people who, upon the change to ‘vernacular’, turning cartwheels down the aisle saying, “At last I understand, down with Atin-lay orever-fay!” She herself regards the EF with great affection, but it’s not as if a preference of the EF means that we somehow like the OF LESS, because we don’t.
If there’s a choice between a yummy plain cheesecake and a 3 layer chocolate cake with buttercream frosting, both of those deserts are made with the finest ingredients. Both are rich in their own right. Both have a fullness and perfection. One might appeal to those who like a simple, austere, yet very ‘American-made’ association (cheesecake). The other might appeal to those who are chocoholics, like the ‘celebratory’ aspect of a cake, and like the contrast of dense cake and melty frosting (the cake). In a lot of places in America, the cake is most ‘traditional’ and would be associated with nostalgia; the cheesecake would be seen as ‘newer’ and perhaps more ‘exciting’.
Are we really so petty that we would cheerfully accept (if we like cheesecake best) that others prefer chocolate (or vice versa), yet we cannot accept fellow Catholics who prefer one style slightly more when it comes to two equally valid rites?
my tummy hurts. I think I pounded my mea culpa too hard.”
