it's not hard, you simply follow it on the English side of the Ordinary... and it was more of aesthetic loss to the mass than the downfall of the Church. highmass sung in Latin was wonderful.
I grew up in the Catholic church, and remember as a child in grade school attending Mass every morning,and it was all in Latin. But so what? None of us kids understood Latin, we recited it all. "Et cum spritu tuo". We didn't understand what we were saying and singing.
I just don't believe God is impressed by a bunch of people chanting things they don't even understand. As scripture says, God is not the author of confusion, and confusion is saying things you don't even understand.
There are a lot of evil forces, a.k.a the Prince of This Word, at work against any Christian church regardless of what language they use.
“This World”, not “This Word”, I meant to say. Hate it when I do that.
that’s why there now is more of a choice .....
I agree that there are and have been many more negative forces at work in the Catholic church over the past 40 years, as there have been in every aspect of American society. That being said, I think that ritual and familiarity were important parts of what I experienced in the church. I was also caused to learn the meaning of the Latin which made up the Mass, my part as well as what the priest was saying.
I didn’t expect God to be impressed by what I said, but I felt that I was offering Him my best efforts.
it's not hard, you simply follow it on the English side of the Ordinary... and it was more of aesthetic loss to the mass than the downfall of the Church. highmass sung in Latin was wonderful.
Excellant points.
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.