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KestrelRose
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Gregorian chants are used when my husband and I lead the singing.
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Sr_Sally
Guest
I attend an Ordinary Form Mass at a very conservative parish in a very conservative diocese. It is also a very large parish. Every priest who is in the rectory (including visiting priests) assists at distributing communion, but we do also use EMHCs. I have been to several Masses recently where there were only priests serving communion. The CCD program only teaches children how to receive communion on the tongue and much more than half the parish receives that way.
We don’t always hear Latin at every Mass, but the priests do often chant their parts. We don’t have a Gregorian choir, but we don’t sing The dreaded Glory and Praise songs either.
I have never witnessed an ad libbed Eucharistic prayer, but only the specific approved prayers. One priest who does use less-commonly used EPs, always tells us which one he will use (ie, EP #2 from the funeral Mass, etc.)
Yes, of course, there are poorly done Masses out there. But there are also many, many ordinary parishes which offer beautiful and reverant Ordinary Form Masses.
We don’t always hear Latin at every Mass, but the priests do often chant their parts. We don’t have a Gregorian choir, but we don’t sing The dreaded Glory and Praise songs either.
I have never witnessed an ad libbed Eucharistic prayer, but only the specific approved prayers. One priest who does use less-commonly used EPs, always tells us which one he will use (ie, EP #2 from the funeral Mass, etc.)
Yes, of course, there are poorly done Masses out there. But there are also many, many ordinary parishes which offer beautiful and reverant Ordinary Form Masses.
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bkovacs
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As for the original question. I do not attend a NO parish anymore. I attend an Antiochian Orthodox Church. No TLM parishes within 10 miles of my home. I already drive over 240 miles a week on work alone. The Orthodox Church I attend has the Divine Liturgy, which is very reverent, no altar girls, no lay people handing out communion, Byzantine Chant ( No guitar or contemporary music), no life teen masses, no communion in the hand, two very conservative priests and deacons, and a very friendly parish. Couldn’t be any more happier!. Smells, Bells, and Chant!!
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bkovacs
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Funny how in the Byzantine rite, and the Orthodox Church, which is the second largest denomination has no need for EMHCs. But Rome does!. Only the clergy and males are allowed behind the Holy Iconostasis. There is never a rush to get the Liturgy done!!
And also funny how Gregorian Chant is suppose to have pride of place, but is hardly ever used in a NO Mass. So much for tradition!. Sad that you have to buy a CD to hear traditional Roman Catholic music.
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pnewton
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I am happy that you have a parish that you are happy with. But there is no need to be critical of others, especially when they were just doing what the OP asked, which is describing their Mass. Really, no one should open themselves to answering the question if they are going to be ambushed for it.
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PapaSquash
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Wow. If that happened I’d almost certainly have to hand it back as I’d no longer be in fit condition to receive.
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bkovacs
Guest
Originally Posted by KathleenElsie View Post
That may be the rule. I had a priest two years ago grab my hand and shove the host into it. I can just say I was so shocked I almost dropped Our Lord. He did this also to my daughter and grandsons.
And to think that was a Valid Mass!!. And a priest who knows the rubrics!. Yeah Right!. Glad I no longer have to deal with that any more. But we shouldn’t be critical!.
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maryjk
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And yet you are, while everyone is simply telling about their parish.
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Deacon_Ed_B
Guest
I totally agree with this. Its like criticizing the way some people worship in a validly approved mass. It really gets to me to see others criticized because of which form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass that they prefer. Its almost like there is a bit of judgmentalism or holier than thou attitude in this. Don’t go there.
Prayers & blessings
Deacon Ed B
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TBolt1000T
Guest
Check out some of the music for my parish’s Novus Ordo Mass.
youtube.com/watch?v=dTVRgKr-mGE&fmt=18
There’s always Gregorian Chant at every single Novus Ordo Mass at my parish. Latin is always used, but more so at the 11:00 Mass, where the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Sanctus, an the Agnus Dei are all chanted in Latin most of the time. I guess that the fact that we also have a TLM keeps the Novus Ordo at my parish in check. I usually avoid going to a Novus Ordo anywhere else in my diocese unless I have to.
youtube.com/watch?v=dTVRgKr-mGE&fmt=18
There’s always Gregorian Chant at every single Novus Ordo Mass at my parish. Latin is always used, but more so at the 11:00 Mass, where the Kyrie, the Gloria, the Sanctus, an the Agnus Dei are all chanted in Latin most of the time. I guess that the fact that we also have a TLM keeps the Novus Ordo at my parish in check. I usually avoid going to a Novus Ordo anywhere else in my diocese unless I have to.
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Realcatholicgk
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**Hi bkovacs,As for the original question. I do not attend a NO parish anymore. I attend an Antiochian Orthodox Church. No TLM parishes within 10 miles of my home. I already drive over 240 miles a week on work alone. The Orthodox Church I attend has the Divine Liturgy, which is very reverent, no altar girls, no lay people handing out communion, Byzantine Chant ( No guitar or contemporary music), no life teen masses, no communion in the hand, two very conservative priests and deacons, and a very friendly parish. Couldn’t be any more happier!. Smells, Bells, and Chant!!
I am glad you are happy! For many people it takes different things to make them content. My parish has three priests and two deacons and 5 Masses on Sunday. (One in Spanish) each Mass is like a different parish. They use EMHCs (I was one for 30 years and stopped!) They have women all over the place~ Bless their hearts. I don’t care about any of those things, nor the bells and smells or type music. To me as long as my Lord and Savior is there to be worshipped and consume I am content! If I cared about anything else I would start my own Protestant cult and “Do It My Way!!”
“The thing that makes me the saddest is watching people receive communion in the hand.” – Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta (As reported by Fr. George Rutler in 1989 when he asked her, “What do you think is the worst problem in the world today?” )
The day I read that I stopped taking it in my hands and withdrew as EMHC. I agreed with her so much I could no longer serve. I am much more devout than I was before. I like that!
God Bless**
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anitatho
Guest
I have heard EPIII before. 
I’m quite sure it’s been used on Sunday in our parish when we have a visiting priest.
I’m 37 years old and was taught in my Catholic school to receive communion in the hand. After feeling rather nagged about it for a while - I began receiving on the tongue a little over a year ago. At the time I was the only person at our church that ever attempted it apparently and I wasn’t sure if it was ‘permitted’. Our priest has allowed it, however… and I’ve noticed of late that there are now about 10 others receiving on the tongue.
I have never heard Gregorian chant anywhere near our Mass. Music consists of piano, guitar - sometimes flute… sometimes drums… Always happy-feel-good hippie droning or maybe “Amazing Grace” and “Go Tell it On The Mountain”. At Christmas Mass we were treated to 'Jingle Bells".
Again the only Latin I’ve heard at Mass has been when our pastor is vacationing and we have a visiting priest.
We also have extraordinary ministers at every Mass - even when there are only a handful of folks in attendance. And altar girls are the norm.
I’m quite sure it’s been used on Sunday in our parish when we have a visiting priest.I’m 37 years old and was taught in my Catholic school to receive communion in the hand. After feeling rather nagged about it for a while - I began receiving on the tongue a little over a year ago. At the time I was the only person at our church that ever attempted it apparently and I wasn’t sure if it was ‘permitted’. Our priest has allowed it, however… and I’ve noticed of late that there are now about 10 others receiving on the tongue.
I have never heard Gregorian chant anywhere near our Mass. Music consists of piano, guitar - sometimes flute… sometimes drums… Always happy-feel-good hippie droning or maybe “Amazing Grace” and “Go Tell it On The Mountain”. At Christmas Mass we were treated to 'Jingle Bells".
Again the only Latin I’ve heard at Mass has been when our pastor is vacationing and we have a visiting priest.
We also have extraordinary ministers at every Mass - even when there are only a handful of folks in attendance. And altar girls are the norm.
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TBolt1000T
Guest
Sounds like you’re making a posative impact on a liberal parish. Keep up the good work!I have heard EPIII before.
I’m 37 years old and was taught in my Catholic school to receive communion in the hand. After feeling rather nagged about it for a while - I began receiving on the tongue a little over a year ago. At the time I was the only person at our church that ever attempted it apparently and I wasn’t sure if it was ‘permitted’. Our priest has allowed it, however… and I’ve noticed of late that there are now about 10 others receiving on the tongue.
I have never heard Gregorian chant anywhere near our Mass. Music consists of piano, guitar - sometimes flute… sometimes drums… Always happy-feel-good hippie droning or maybe “Amazing Grace” and “Go Tell it On The Mountain”. At Christmas Mass we were treated to 'Jingle Bells".
Again the only Latin I’ve heard at Mass has been when our pastor is vacationing and we have a visiting priest.
We also have extraordinary ministers at every Mass - even when there are only a handful of folks in attendance. And altar girls are the norm.
You should say something to the pastor and the music director about “Jingle Bells” being used in the Mass. That’s definitely contrary to what the Popes have said about liturgical music.
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anitatho
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I sure hope so, Josh.
We have finally realized that it’s going to take a lot of work and discomfort within our parish by our family to influence what goes on there. For a while we were guilty of attending and then quietly going home horrified. It’s hard to balance respect, obedience, and civility with trying to bring about such big changes. Patience - lots of prayer - and we are trying harder and harder to be an example to those around us.
The music has improved a little since Christmas – apparently after one of my innocently outspoken altar-boy sons suggested that Jingle Bells didn’t seem like sacred music to him and offered to find a good website with appropriate liturgical music for the music director. (She didn’t accept his offer… But has toned things down for the time being.)
We have finally realized that it’s going to take a lot of work and discomfort within our parish by our family to influence what goes on there. For a while we were guilty of attending and then quietly going home horrified. It’s hard to balance respect, obedience, and civility with trying to bring about such big changes. Patience - lots of prayer - and we are trying harder and harder to be an example to those around us.
The music has improved a little since Christmas – apparently after one of my innocently outspoken altar-boy sons suggested that Jingle Bells didn’t seem like sacred music to him and offered to find a good website with appropriate liturgical music for the music director. (She didn’t accept his offer… But has toned things down for the time being.)
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Trilor
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our Oordinary Form mass has the following:
- EP3 usually but sometimes 2
- Latin in varying amounts, sometimes almost all Latin. Sunday masses are mostly in Latin and weekday masses sometimes in Latin to some extent.
- Only priests no emhc’s
- lots of chant/polyphony
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Sarabande
Guest
Only out of the mouths of babes.The music has improved a little since Christmas – apparently after one of my innocently outspoken altar-boy sons suggested that Jingle Bells didn’t seem like sacred music to him and offered to find a good website with appropriate liturgical music for the music director. (She didn’t accept his offer… But has toned things down for the time being.)
Sometimes older people hate it when younger people innocently “show them up” because it makes them realize that they aren’t doing their jobs and setting a good example to others. But at least it seems that the music director did take some of it to heart and have improved a bit.
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CradleCath
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peregrinus_WA
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Even though I usually attend the EF Mass on Sunday, our OF Mass:
- Celebrated Ad Orientum
- Gloria, Sanctus, and Agnus Dei usually in Latin and Chanted.
- Eucharistic Prayer I or III used based on the priest.
- Communion on the tongue via intinction (GIRM 287) while kneeling at the communion rail.
- No EMHC. Only priest/deacons distribute communion.
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ncjohn
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And that’s the whole point. Disciplines come and disciplines go, at the prerogative of the Popes. That does not make a Mass or any of its elements faithful or not faithful to a Council. You may not like CITH or girls serving at the altar, but those are disciplines which the Pope has the ability to implement and which a Pope did implement, regardless of whether you agree with his reasoning. Perhaps a future Pope, or even the present one, will eliminate those things but as of now they are validly-approved disciplines.
You are certainly entitled to the opinion that the guidelines weren’t enough, or that it should not have been left up to the commission. But the fact of the matter is that it was. Again, you may not like the conclusions they arrived at, and you may not like what Pope Paul ultimately approved, but it is what he approved legitimately within his authority.
The fact that some aspects look somewhat different than the original guidelines and that other disciplinary matters have been approved through the years does not in any way make the current liturgy unfaithful to the Council, which expressly stated that experiments were to be done and that the “competent ecclesiastic authorities” would suggest what it would finally look like–subject of course to approval by the Pope.
Actually it MUST ultimately be laid at the feet of the Popes. The history of how things came to be is interesting–AS history–but it doesn’t change the fact that CITH and girls serving at the altar, among other things, were in fact approved by the Popes. You (and “many”) are welcome to feel that these weren’t the best or most prudent decisions, but they were the decisions of the Popes who approved them and have not been rescinded by subsequent Popes.
The rest of the things you mention are not things approved by the Church or the Popes. They were decisions sometimes wrongly made by others, though the idea that Mass is both the sacrifice AND the communal meal is in fact directly from the Council. That should not take away from the God-focus while reminding us that we are all in this together. Again, those things that are actually abuses have mechanisms in place to deal with them and have nothing to do with being faithful to the Council.
In bringing all this up, I’m not commenting one way or another about whether the items legitimately approved by the Popes are good or bad. They just are what they are and don’t have anything to do with the Mass being faithful to anything. In the end the discussion about whether individuals like or don’t like the prudential decisions made on the matters doesn’t change anything, nor are Masses that comply with their preferences objectively better or worse. I might like to hear more chant, but I’m not any less enthralled at the Savior of the World being present to me in the Mass because it doesn’t have chant or because some choose to receive in the hand or because the reader is a woman.
I like to have things to my preferences as much as anyone, but life just doesn’t work that way no matter how much that disappoints me.
It ends up being well-summed up in the old saying “in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity.”Or to quote another great sage, “you can’t always get what you want; but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”
Peace,
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CradleCath
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And that’s the whole point. Disciplines come and disciplines go, at the prerogative of the Popes. That does not make a Mass or any of its elements faithful or not faithful to a Council.
Your words seem to relegate Church disciplines to the area of the unimportant & frivilous. They aren’t you know. Church disciplines are defined by the author of “Institutiones Juris Publici Ecclesiastici” (Elements of Public Ecclesiastical Law), Felice Cardinal Cavagnis. He described Church Disciplines as **“conduct conforming itself to faith”. **This brilliant & humble man was correct, of course, ecclesiastical discipline is the aggregate of laws and directions given by the Church to the faithful for their conduct both private and public. They may be changed at the discretion of the Pope, but they seldom “come & go” as easily as you seem to think.
That being said, the sacrileges that I mentioned in my post were not Church “Disciplines” that were changed by the council or the Pope. Cott & the allowance of only boys serving in the sanctuary, were in fact, Church disciplines but the rest of the abuses were not. (btw., I gave my opinion on the circumstances surrounding the abrogation of these disciplines…but you didn’t refer to said circumstances in your reply to me???)
Neither the Popes nor the council of Trent, nor Vatican II gave assent to the use of EXTRAordinary Eucharistic Ministers in ordinary situations. I don’t believe that either the council or the Holy Fathers envisioned a Mass where Fr. Billy Bob presides at the “Table” while the Band of Piano, Guitars, and Drums plays “Blowin’ in the Wind”. Yet that has happened more often than you seem to realize.
Neither the Popes nor the council gave assent to the complete abrogation of Latin & Gregorian Chant in our Masses, to the ad orientem/populus position of the “presider”, nor did they give the clergy the right to change the words of the liturgy at will.
I’m no fan of council, but it was a true & valid council that was hijacked by those who “in the spirit of Vatican II” have brought us to a low point in the history of Catholicism… Now, you may prefer the more liberal way, however, the Mass must follow the truth as it was given to us by Vatican II & it doesn’t. It’s.as you said…
“you can’t always get what you want; but if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need.”
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