Posted on 01/29/2015 7:46:27 AM PST by Salvation
Monsignor Pope Ping!
I remember!
"A liturgist is a affliction sent by God so that, in times of no overt persecution, a Catholic need not be denied the privilege of suffering for the Faith."
Thank you. Good article.
I simply have no recollection of there ever being singing at Mass until the 70s when the guitars came out. No singing ever of responses. That came in the 70s, too. We simply spoke the words. And we didn’t have a choir either. In the 70s, they started introducing Protestant songs! Pretty, yes, but wrongheaded.
I remember the 1965 mass, too. It was fine, in my opinion; I missed the Last Gospel, but otherwise, most of the changes weren’t enormous, except that much of it was now in English and one could hear the beautiful prayers. But a lot was kept in Latin, too, although most of that also was audible. Priests had actually been trained in Latin in those days, so many of them could say the prayers nicely and intelligibly in Latin. I thought it was an improvement to be able to hear it and understand it (since the low mass prior to that time was often done in nearly complete silence and you had to figure out where the priest was and read along in your missal).
If they’d kept the 1965 Missal, we would never have had some of the horrors that have been inflicted on us since then.
Sadly it would seem many American priests in the 1960s had their own ideas and filled the mass with thumping guitars, hootenanny hymns and blue jeans instead of vestments. I was pleasantly surprised when I was in France in the early 1970s that the mass was still largely in Latin, the hymns sung in French were dignified and not a guitar was in sight. However at the Abbey of Solesmes, a Benedictine monastery near Sable, France, I experienced the Gregorian chant in all its glory.
So do I.
Actually the new translation is so close to the 1965 Mass when it is translated.
I was attending a workshop on the new translation and a friend had an old 1965 Missal with the English on one side and the Latin on the other. The English was practically identical to the new translations! What a pleasant surprise.
The 1965 missal was VASTLY superior to the 1970.
What constitutes a "Protestant song"?
Lacking in substance, for one thing.
beginning with a false premise - that changes were well under way - when truth is there was ONE change under Pope Pius XII and that was a revision to the liturgy of Holy Week.
then, leaping to another false premise - that it was the 1970 missal that was to blame for all the abuses. By 1970, the traditional Latin form had been outlawed by most bishops.
finally, the inevitable conclusion - that was not the issue to fight on. It is the next one where will stand our ground. Sound familiar?
Andrew Greeley, from an article in America Magazine from 1990: “True liturgical reform will only occur when the last guitar is smashed over the head of the last liturgist.”
Over 30 comments at the site. Many worth reading.
LOL.
What's the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? You can negotiate with a terrorist.
One writen by Martin Luther, or John Calvin. They didn't used to be allowed. They were the only things I missed after I converted in 1958. When we first started having hymns in the Catholic church (Low Mass) they seemed unsingable to my ear. Whole orders of priests, monks, and nuns wrote "new" hymns after 1965. We are still singing them today, and they seem to have relaxed the rule against "Protestant" songs.
However, at Newman Club at the University of CA, Berkeley, the priests used the "Congregational High Mass". It was sung all in Latin and sounded like Gregorian chant to me. I loved that. The space where they said Mass was upstairs. If you were a little bit late and they had started before you cimbed the stairs, the music afting down the stairs was simply heavenly.
I never found another church, after I married, that used that Mass, and I really missed it.
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