Why was there hostility to the Latin Mass in 1960?

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Francisco_Fernando

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Why was there hostility to the Latin Mass in 1960? Why was there no hostility to the other rites of the Catholic Church during that time? Why was the Latin Mass seen as problematic? Why was there no liturgical revolution in the other rites of the church?
 
Someone could write a book about it (I’m sure there are many). The fact is, there was not a unified vision (one reason IMO the reform didn’t go so well), but there was a pretty unified opinion at the time that some change was needed. But generally speaking, while things were percolating before even the 20th century, things really picked up with Pius XII’s encyclical Mystici Corporis, on the Church as the Body of Christ. The importance of corporate worship by the whole Church focused on one sacrifice on one altar was given renewed emphasis as a means to animate not just the clergy, but the laity in their role in the world.

The thought was a more directly liturgically engaged laity would translate to a laity who saw their worship as more connected to and more animating of their vocation in the world. For example, even the founder of the SSPX, Archbishop Lefebrve wrote the following in his famous Open Letter:
“I wrote: “We may say without hesitation, that certain liturgical reforms have been needed, and it is to be hoped that the Council will continue in this direction.” I recognized that a renewal was indispensable to bring an end to a certain sclerosis due to a gap which had developed between prayer, confined to places of worship, and the world of action-schools, the professions and public life.”
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As I mentioned before, there were other thoughts too related to ecumenism, the missions, and even simple aesthetics, etc. As for the East, the East has always been more liturgically static or conservative than the West. But the East already had a more engaged laity when it came to the liturgy (in fact, Eastern practices in many ways inspired certain aspects of the Western reform). Likewise, ecumenical concerns in the East favored restoration rather than reform.

Again, this is in no way meant to be a complete answer.
 
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I don;t recall hostility. But once things got rolling there was a desire to renew and celebrate in the vernacular just like the early church.
 
Francisco_Fernando said:
Why was there hostility to the Latin Mass in 1960? Why was there no hostility to the other rites of the Catholic Church during that time? Why was the Latin Mass seen as problematic? Why was there no liturgical revolution in the other rites of the church?
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The Latin Rite of the Church catches almost all of the attention on the news because of its size and visibility, but other churches in the CC do indeed encounter problems in their local areas, it’s just not something you readily hear about. Catholic churches from other rites in the Middle East have endured severe trials of all sorts.

A number of Catholics and non-Catholics were hostile towards Latin because they associated it with a lack of transparency and a clinginess to the past. That was largely unjustified, but such is life.
 
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Francisco_Fernando said:
Why was there hostility to the Latin Mass in 1960? Why was there no hostility to the other rites of the Catholic Church during that time? Why was the Latin Mass seen as problematic? Why was there no liturgical revolution in the other rites of the church?
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There wasn’t “hostility” to the Latin Mass in 1960.

But there was desire among some to reform the mass to make it more similar to the 1st few centuries of the Church. Many thought that such reforms might lead to a reunification with Protestants (which we know didn’t happen because the Protestants then started ordaining women).

The main issues they were trying to combat were issues the Church was seeing predominantly in Europe due to socialism, Marxism, social liberalism, relativism, and the two World Wars.

In my opinion, the change to the Roman Rite helped in Africa and Asia, but it didn’t do what was expected in Europe & the Americas.

Also, in my opinion, in retrospect, they should have simply created what is now known as the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite for Africa and Asia only, while leaving Europe and the Americas with something similar to the 1965 missal.
 
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Francisco_Fernando said:
Why was the east driven to liturgical conservatism then? How are eastern liturgies make more engaged laity?
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In the East, the liturgy tends to be in the vernacular and the laity are more likely to make the responses and sing the various parts. In the West, this was not usually the case–even the Pater Noster was the priest’s prayer.

As to why historically the East was less flexible with their rites, I’m not sure. The Roman Mass has simply seen much more development over time than, say, the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Until Trent, there was also a more diversity of rites. That’s probably another large question. In the separated East especially, for better or worse, the rites are really the only thing that even comes close to holding them all together. As Fortescue notes in his 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia on the separated Eastern Churches, “The second characteristic, a corollary of the first, is the intense conservatism of all these bodies. They cling fanatically to their rites, even to the smallest custom — because it is by these that the millet is held together.”
 
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I have no idea how it is in other countries (or even others parts of the US) but it seems that Eastern parishes are much smaller than Latin parishes, and have a much stronger community about them. It’s hard to build community in a parish like mine, with 2500 families attending 5 different Masses over a weekend. It’s probably much easier in a parish with 100 families (or less) who all attend the same liturgy.
 
Francisco_Fernando said:
Why was there hostility to the Latin Mass in 1960?
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There was no hostility, rather than a desire to have the Mass celebrated in the vernacular to foster congregational participation. This had been building for quite some time before the 1960s. Especially in the 1920s, with the development of the dialogue Mass.

As for the language, by the 1960s, Latin comprehension among priests had deteriorated to the point where most were just reading words that they did not actually understand. A good example is Cardinal Cushing at the funeral of JFK, which you can watch on Youtube. It’s painfully clear that he had no more than a rather rudimentry schoolboy familiarity with the language.

Most of the cardinals and bishops that participated in Vatican II were able to follow the proceedings, which were mainly conducted in Latin, mostly by reading statements translated into Latin by professional latinists. They had to rely on translations into their own languages of the daily proceedings. If they had a response, they wrote it in their own language and had it translated into Latin so that it could be presented before the Council.

As for the Eastern Churches in the US, few use Church Slavonic anymore except for brief passages sprinkled in here and there, usually on Holidays. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church uses either modern Ukrainian or English. Even few of the Eastern Orthodox communities in the US use Slavonic unless, perhaps, they cater to a congregation consisting almost entirely of recent immigrants. I suspect the same is true for both Greek and Syriac.
 
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Francisco_Fernando said:
Why was the east driven to liturgical conservatism then? How are eastern liturgies make more engaged laity?
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I THINK there are few main reasons:
  • Unlike the Eastern Rites, the Roman Rite became world wide, for peoples from all over the world. It lost the ethnic connection to most people.
  • After the Protestant revolt, the Pope ended many western Rites that were not old, forcing most of the West to use the Roman Rite.
  • The ethnic differences in the liturgy continue to exist in the East, while in the West, ethnic differences were basically eliminated.
I think all of these factors (and perhaps other factors too) contributed.
 
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Francisco_Fernando said:
The Tridentine Mass can still be celebrated in the Vernacular. Removing altar rails and having the priest face the people is taking things a bit too far.
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Is this really true? I did not think there was an approved English editio typica for the 1962 Missal. And having been there, I can tell you that people happily welcomed the privilege of observing the Mass rituals instead of the priest’s back.
 
Academics were still writing papers and articles in Latin into the 20th century, but the explosion of interest in the sciences stopped that. It was more important to learn Math than Latin.

This left a basic antipathy toward Latin that carried over to the Latin Mass. “Latin is a dead language, as dead as dead can be…” was the lament of many schoolchildren who could not understand being forced to learn Latin. That lament did not disappear just because they were in Church instead of in school.
 
Francisco_Fernando said:
Why was there hostility to the Latin Mass in 1960? Why was there no hostility to the other rites of the Catholic Church during that time? Why was the Latin Mass seen as problematic? Why was there no liturgical revolution in the other rites of the church?
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It could be that hostility is being interpreted where there was none. Giving the Church a new Mass rite does not equate to hostility for an existing rite.
 
Irishmom2 said:
I actually see more hostility in the other direction.
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Indeed. And it’s the main reason why non-Traditionalists are so reluctant to give Traditionalists even an inch. They have bitten the hand that feeds them.
 
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Francisco_Fernando said:
The Tridentine Mass can still be celebrated in the Vernacular. Removing altar rails and having the priest face the people is taking things a bit too far.
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Removing altar rails and having the priest face the people are two very different things. One is part of a rite, the other is part of how people interpreted sections of Vatican II. There is no point lumping them together.

As Bishop Barron says, how much of other councils does a dissenter accept? 50% of the council of Trent or the council of Chalcedon? 70% of Vatican Council I. To be in dispute about the direct documents and rites of a council is protestantism, says Bishop Barron.
Dovekin said:
Academics were still writing papers and articles in Latin into the 20th century, but the explosion of interest in the sciences stopped that. It was more important to learn Math than Latin.

This left a basic antipathy toward Latin that carried over to the Latin Mass. “Latin is a dead language, as dead as dead can be…” was the lament of many schoolchildren who could not understand being forced to learn Latin. That lament did not disappear just because they were in Church instead of in school.
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Science has a lot of its language in latin. Still to this day. Law has a lot of its language in latin, still to this day, the church has a lot of its language in latin, still to this day.

Latin is not as dead as dead can be. Open an science text book and look at something like classificiation in biology.
 
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umamibella said:
Science has a lot of its language in latin. Still to this day. Law has a lot of its language in latin, still to this day, the church has a lot of its language in latin, still to this day.
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Not really. It uses a few stock terms that have been borrowed into the specialist vernacular language. No understanding of Latin is necessary to use them. Even in medicine, few of my younger colleagues understand when I use the old Latin phrases.
 
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