Posted on 05/01/2002 5:12:13 PM PDT by Lady In Blue
I think Latin is beautiful, and I'm trying to learn it.
I'm starting by concentrating on learning hymns in Latin, beginning with those that have the same melody as their counterparts in English. I've been through a number of hymnals, the Liber Usualis (Solemses Gregorian Chant), and the internet trying to find as many as I can.
If the Novus Ordo is left in place, I would, at minimum, want to see a smattering of Latin hymns and Gregorian chant back at Mass.
(I'd much rather see, at minimum, some kind of cross between the Novus Ordo and Tridentine, with the priest facing away from the congregation.)
The manner and language of the Eucharist is not a matter of faith.
I understand how well the vernacular can serve for evangelization purposes, but I would much prefer singing Agnus Dei to a simple Gregorian chant than singing a "Lamb o' God" that sounds like Jimmy Buffet's "Tin Cup Chalice".
BUMPUS MAXIMUS!!!
Gloria in excelsis Deo, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis!
I suspect many parishes will go in this direction over time, but you need sympathetic Bishops. In Latin the Novus Ordo is much more doctrinally sound then in the ICEL translation, and those parishes that do it in Latin tend to use the Latin hymes and the chants. We have one up here we go to from time to time, and we also have an Indult we go to a bit more frequently.
The thing that I like the best is kneeling for the Eucharist.
patent
"One God,one prayer,one tongue,24 hours a day all around the world",turned back and continued driving.
At that age I wasn't quite sure what he meant but I knew it was important.Now I know,it was profound and we lost a lot.
Blessed Be God,I wish the priest would turn around too. I get the most uncomfortable feeling sometimes that the priest is concentrating on how he looks and totally forgets that it doesn't matter. I believe the verticality is retained when he faces as we do and lifts up our prayers to the Lord.This horizontal,just us folks celebrating each other is so kitchy and superficial and contrived. Its funny,as they tell us,we have matured,we are adults they keep lowering the bar so that it might be enjoyable for a child or teenager and I ask myself where is the Mass for the mature adults we have become?
Excuse the rant,but for some reason this thread touched a sore spot in me. Incidentally,I do go to the New Order eucharist because our bishop,listening to his brainwashed,brain dead nun staff told us he had no authority to permit the Tridentine Mass,this was after Ecclesia Dei.Several years later when we had all the documents,we asked again and had petitions and priests who were willing and he had some other reason why it could not be permitted. There are several priests who do offer the Mass reverently and according to the rubrics and I appreciate that but it is rare.
And,I don't care what it means this going to or partaking in,or whatever we are doing at eucharist,it is a word that despite its etiology is for the birds. All I can think of is years of working for government and finding half the staff in somebody's office playing "euchre"(rhymes with lucre). Well,Lady in Blue,you put this up for discussion. I hope your not sorry.(smile)
I am so grateful for Adoration,the rosary,the Catechism,the Bible and the Pope,I only go to Mass on Sunday to receive the Body and Blood and to fulfill my obligation.
I agree. And nobody seems to have foreseen the problems with a vernacular Mass. First (for English anyway), to my ear contemporary English is not an especially good language for public prayer, which I think must have an element of the poetic -- and contemporary English poetry has moved in an intensely private and idiosyncratically personal direction. Contemporary English is well suited for prose in the hands of a master (though even here there's an "individualism" that works against it as public prayer) -- and I believe English is becoming or has become the language of science and of business, neither of which is suited for public prayer but both of which are the forms most of us lapse into. Unfortunately, too, a requirement for translators of the Mass seems to be a tin ear.
Then -- whose vernacular? I saw an article recently about a parish with a large immigrant population, mostly Spanish or Portuguese speaking, a source of controversy, with the Spanish-speaking having the numbers at present to prevail. If Mass were still in Latin, nobody would have an advantage. And we really don't need more sources of controversy.
And then there are the advantages of a "dead" language: it doesn't change. Words don't acquire new connotations. (I still find it hard to accept "Heaven and earth are full of Your glory" because "full of" has so many -- shall we say -- less exalted connotations. Words also don't have local connotations. I worked years ago with a guy who had studied Spanish for a long and time and traveled in South America trying to perfect it. He said that sometimes it was only a matter of a few miles between a word that was perfectly innocent and humdrum and the same word as an obscenity.
I love Gregorian chant, too. The parish I was in when these changes started coming used some of the English set to chant. Some of the arrangements were very pretty, but I think unsustainable over a long passage. Chant grew up around Latin, which because of the structure of its declensions and conjugations has very few monosyllables apart from prepositions; English has many, many nouns, verbs, adjectives that are monosyllables.
I might as well put in here, too, that I hate those stupid little "missalettes." I see no point in them: the responses are few enough to memorize in no time, and -- English being my first language -- I have no need to follow along in reading what I'm listening to. They are an anachronism that has lost its point -- we used Missals with the Latin Mass because we had to, and as I recall it the effect was an aid to concentration. (We also had a place to keep holy cards and prayer cards for the dead.)
Maybe we all just love best what we grew up with.
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