Posted on 10/06/2005 4:41:49 PM PDT by NYer
NCR - Platform For Heretics. Got it.
Allen does seem to be putting more than a little bit of spin on comments by two bishops.
At a late Mass on All Saints Day last year, I noticed they are still with us. A new generation of mumbling old ladies has risen up in spite of the vernacular!
Perhaps they serve some purpose in The Body Of Christ that is not clear to the majority. Perhaps they are necessary.
...there are different forms of service but the same Lord;
there are different workings but the same God who produces all of them in everyone.
To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit is given for some benefit.
Yes, Mater Ecclesiae it is.
Of course I never meant to include you in that mono-glot category.
I agree with your point that the vernacular is helpful, and with a good translation, it can be edifying. I would not object, as a matter of principle, to having the TLM celebrated in English. That would be a major improvement over the vernacular Novus Ordo.
But I was more stressing the point that American Society has some ingrained reluctance/abhorrence towards other lanuages. It's one thing that immigrants should be able to speak English, but many will go further and feel offended that said immigrants still speak their native languages in public. This attitude is what I don't like. I encourage biligualism and such. I wish I could speak Italian, but my grandparents did not pass that on to my parents. BTW, this is something I will probably rectify soon enough, but my Italian would be all book knowledge, and not quite the same as having learned it at home with family.
Back to the point though. I think in this day and age with many more people being "educated", that the ability to learn and participate in a dead language is easier than it ever has been. All it requires is a little effort. My wife, who had never been to a TLM before we met 3 years ago, now knows more Latin than the average TLM attendee, but not because I have given her any official instruction, but because she decided to put the little effort in to learn it by immersion at Mass. With the right priest in place, many could be encouraged to learn Latin (or Greek) this same way.
This is no way suggests that everyone should take formal instruction in said languages. The Latin used at Mass is very minimal compared to the entire scope of that language.
But I think more folks can understand the Latin Mass than you would expect. So much of our English is taken from the Latin, so many cognates, it starts to sink in even if you don't speak the language formally.
After all, repetitio mater studiorum . . . or something like that . . .
"But you see, NYer, it wasn't really the Tridentine Mass that was the problem, but rather a centuries long inculcating of the people that they were simply individual, autononmous observers of the Mass. That is not what the Liturgy was ever meant, properly, to be. The Liturgy is just what its name says it is, the work of the people, not as individuals but as a community together. The problem lies in a mindset which took hold of the Western Church centuries ago and which, luckily, never got into Orthodoxy or all of the Eastern Rite Churches in communion with Rome. Your own Maronite Church, however, as your priest will tell you, became almost completely Latinized, something which of late, by the grace of God, that Church has been moving away from."
(Your posts on this thread are very good)
The communal aspects of the Liturgy is, in my view, the major difference between eastern Christianity and western. Speaking broadly....in the western Liturgy, you're a spectator. In the eastern Liturgy, you're a participant.
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