Yet another Latin Mass Question (or 2, OK so it’s 3) from a “don’t-know-nothin’-‘bout-T-L-M” person

[brotherhrolf]

To brotherhrolf: Folks our age who long for the Catholicism that we were raised with are not just nostaligic dinasours who refuse to grow with the times. On the contrary, we know what has been lost.

Oh, I know what I said was a bit misleading. I wasn’t striving for techical excellence as much as to put the folks who grew up with NO at ease. After all, as you say, folks our age grew up with the TLM and it was as normal to us as the NO is to the young folks today.

Much has been lost and I don’t think we will ever recapture that which you and I grew up with. In my heart of hearts, I carry that memory. The memory of quietly entering the sacred. The smell of beeswax and incense before Mass. I don’t have the words to properly articulate the palpable presence of God in His Sanctuary.

Much less of my memories of serving as an altar boy. Of my new parish being spun off from the old in '65 and me serving the 6am Low Mass with just Father and me in his suburban ranch house because the church and rectory had not been built. And then the sisters came and Father said Mass in their chapel in a suburban ranch house near where the school would soon be built. Or of having one of those sisters join the cathedral choir in the 90s and remembering me as a teenager…

I am in awe of the knowledge that the young advocates of the TLM have. And their zeal. I am thankful that I found a reverent NO parish in my cathedral and thankful for having been able to sing in the choir for over 20 years.

But it’s not the same. We’ve been steam rollered over the last 40 years. I still feel a sense of being violated by having to sing Simon and Garfunkle at my high school graduation in May of 69.

My conscience was formed before Vatican II. This is something I have not seen discussed. I still have a pre-Vatican II conscience and I suspect you do too. How to explain that?

 

[latinmasslover]

The server’s job is to serve and get in the way as little as possible. The server himself is an extraordinary position (there should ideally be real acolytes and such) and making him the major dialogue-partner is a strange development akin to turning a minor role in a movie into the main supporting actor.

Low Masses are not ideal ever. The ideal foreseen by the rubrics is always Solemn High. This isn’t always possible, but low mass itself is an abbreviation and an exception to the ordinary. Best for the private or individual masses of priests.

The congregation doesn’t “need” to do anything, we know that. The sacraments work ex opere operato.

But it was a much later development, a decadence of the liturgy, that the priest muttered the mass at the front while getting the responses parroted to him by some 8 year old.

There are silent parts and times for silence, but the model you describe is the same one that led to the novus ordo in the first place. A strange nostalgia for the Baroque, the Victorian, and the 1950’s that seems to be just reactionary against the whole Liturgical Movement and true intentions of Vatican II…which, though they went terribly wrong, were truly in some sense trying to restore the Medieval ideals away from the Rennaisance decay that the liturgy suffered.

Cardinal Ratzinger said in his “Spirit of the Liturgy”…if the old rite is to be revivified, it cannot be based on a “refridgerator model”…it cannot be preserved like a lacy state park for a strange breed of endangered animal. The mass is not an opera, not an orchestra concert either. Those models are innappropriate for liturgy too, and can distract from the solemnity, not add to it.

Participation of the laity is not necessary and shouldn’t be encouraged. Padre Pio, as in the SAINT, said that the only person who needs the missal is the priest; everybody else should be uniting their hearts to the heart of the Sorrowful Mother.

Anyone who feels that the way Mass was said, the priest and the server speaking aloud and the laity quiet, may be happier at, say, a Pentacostal community. (just my personal opinion.)

 

[latinmasslover]

I thought that we are not supposed to pray the rosary during Mass.

Pray the Rosary, as long as it’s the Sorrowful Mysteries. Whatever keeps you focused on the Passion of Christ and His Mother. It’s not encouraged, and I myself only pray it at the Novus Ordo to avoid the constant abuses. If one has trouble meditating on the Passion, or has no missal available (or has a difficult time following along devoutly) then pray it. The Mass is the Sacrifice, that’s were our minds and hearts need to be. If praying the Rosary is what it takes to keep focused, what’s the problem?