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To: Vicomte13

That may be the case, but Low Mass came to be the Mass of convenience (time saving) in order to shuffle people in and out of churches every Sunday. A very unfortunate side effect.

Low Mass can be and has been refitted to be more liturgically rich in the form of the Dialogue Mass (DM). Unfortunately, the DM was not given enough time to develop (1958 - 1965). Participation at Mass was making good progress within the context of the Tridentine Mass until the changes abruptly ended this.


185 posted on 07/28/2005 8:57:52 AM PDT by jrny (Oremus pro Pontifice nostro Benedicto Decimo Sexto.)
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To: jrny; Vicomte13; Graves
The Low Mass derived out of the celebration of private Masses, a practice that can be traced back to the Patristic period. Originally extraordinary, private Masses became more popular for two reasons: the increase of the number of priests in monasteries and in response for the need of Votive Masses, especially for the dead, by the laity.

Originally monasteries would only have enough priests to serve the needs of the community, the rest of the monks remaining lay brothers. In time, however, it became popular for any of the monks who were literate to be ordained as a priest. This created a need for private Masses for these extra priests after the celebration of the communal Mass. Remember that in the West concelebration was lost until Vatican II.

The other cause was the increasing desire among the laity for Votive Masses. Because of this it became common for priests to say more than one Mass a day. Until relatively recently, however, only one parochial, or communal, Mass was allowed in any one church. These additional Votive Masses thus had to be celebrated as private Masses by the priests. (This distinction was latter reflected in the common practice before the council to have only one High Mass and the other Masses being Low Masses.)

Without a congregation or choir, and being celebrated in proximity to other private Masses in the same church, it became the practice for the priests to recite what was sung at the communal convential or parochial Mass. Unfortunately the Low Mass became more familiar to the priests and was seen as the norm with the Solemn Mass as something extraordinary and reserved for special occasions. One of the correct things that Vatican II try to do was to reverse this thinking. Unfortunately this effort was not understood and failed. Hopefully with the Reform of the Reform we will see some progress in restoring the sung Mass as the norm.

195 posted on 07/28/2005 10:27:36 AM PDT by Petrosius
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