Posted on 11/29/2009 2:55:43 PM PST by Steelfish
Latin Mass Appeal
By KENNETH J. WOLFE Published: November 28, 2009
WALKING into church 40 years ago on this first Sunday of Advent, many Roman Catholics might have wondered where they were. The priest not only spoke English rather than Latin, but he faced the congregation instead of the tabernacle; laymen took on duties previously reserved for priests; folk music filled the air. The great changes of Vatican II had hit home.
All this was a radical break from the traditional Latin Mass, codified in the 16th century at the Council of Trent. For centuries, that Mass served as a structured sacrifice with directives, called “rubrics,” that were not optional. This is how it is done, said the book. As recently as 1947, Pope Pius XII had issued an encyclical on liturgy that scoffed at modernization; he said that the idea of changes to the traditional Latin Mass “pained” him “grievously.”
Paradoxically, however, it was Pius himself who was largely responsible for the momentous changes of 1969. It was he who appointed the chief architect of the new Mass, Annibale Bugnini, to the Vatican’s liturgical commission in 1948.
Bugnini was born in 1912 and ordained a Vincentian priest in 1936. Though Bugnini had barely a decade of parish work, Pius XII made him secretary to the Commission for Liturgical Reform. In the 1950s, Bugnini led a major revision of the liturgies of Holy Week. As a result, on Good Friday of 1955, congregations for the first time joined the priest in reciting the Pater Noster, and the priest faced the congregation for some of the liturgy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Roger on the Pius X crowd. What starts out as a desire for a reverent liturgy, ends in the production of, what a Benedictine nun we know called, “practical protestants”.
You must live in Mahoney land?
We are Roaming Catholics. :)
You are right. There is much more to it than just a shift in language. If you look at a Latin/English 1962 version of the mass, and you compare it to what is found in the pews of many Catholic churches today, you will find that many beautiful prayers were removed. The liturgical calendar was shuffled, Gregorian Chant ceased, church art was dumbed down, iconoclasts literally bulldozed sanctuaries.
On the other hand, any one could read the King’s English right next to the latin. How many times does one have to read “et cum spiritu tuo” to figure out it means “and with spirit yours’”? In high school you would have had two years of latin, in which you would have learned all the declentions, conjugations, grammar, and idiosyncracies of the language. More than enough to completely understand what was going on in the liturgy.
This is slightly off -topic, but it is in keeping with the discussion.
I too am a frustrated catholic, again.
I recently moved out of Illinois (thank GOD) to northern Alabama.
Everything is better where we live now- except the Catholic parishes. All of them embrace a bad touchy feely (literally) approach to the mass and the music is brutal. All this hand holding and homilies that test ones patience and tolerance. It’s much worse than anything I experienced in the 70’s and 80’s in Illinois. I don’t think that some of the extracurricular activities that they include as part of the mass are even officially sanctioned.
The parish I left in Illinois was darn near perfect.
So now I’m lost again without a parish. Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Thank you for the link. I am familiar with St. Marys in Huntsville.
I’ve noticed something about churches that are reintroducing the latin mass. Any thoughts as to why the only latin mass some churches schedule are offered in the early aftrenoon? That seems to be my experience.
We are in Dayton, OH, and the only time for us is 8:45am. Which seems okay, but if you need to get there for choir practice, or to bring food for the social later, or to be an altar boy, you need to get there at 8am. We would like a chance at least one day a week to sleep until we wake up, but we can’t complain. It seems most other churches target 1:30pm, not sure why, unless they are being given the least desirable time slot by the diocese.
We are in Dayton, OH, and the only time for us is 8:45am. Which seems okay, but if you need to get there for choir practice, or to bring food for the social later, or to be an altar boy, you need to get there at 8am. We would like a chance at least one day a week to sleep until we wake up, but we can’t complain. It seems most other churches target 1:30pm, not sure why, unless they are being given the least desirable time slot by the diocese.
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