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To: patent

How about simply junking the Novus Ordo altogether? It has been a bit like the laboratory experiment that got loose.


14 posted on 03/21/2006 12:58:13 AM PST by pravknight (Christos Regnat, Christos Imperat, Christus Vincit)
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To: pravknight

No, I like it, I am drawn closer to the Lord by it. This is the Mass I love.


15 posted on 03/21/2006 1:38:51 AM PST by Talking_Mouse (Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just... Thomas Jefferson)
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To: pravknight; Cicero; NYCCatholic

I just read an excellent book by a Fr. Robinson, an Oratorian priest, who analyzes the failure of the NO and the philosophical problems that led to its creation. However, he doesn't think it would be possible or desirable to restore the Old Mass, as he calls it, because we have a whole generation who have grown up without it and therefore the link with tradition is broken. He feels that its restoration would cause great upset among the people (like the imposition of the NO didn't cause upset????). He's probably right, though, because one of the problems is that our clergy is too theologically ignorant and litugically badly trained to be able to bring it back in the first place or explain it to the people and encourage them in the second.

That said, his suggestions are: More Latin in the NO (the entire Canon in Latin, for example); the priest should face ad orientem during the Canon and any parts of the Mass not actually directed at the people; the cycle of readings should be revised to make the readings not just a three-year trudge through the OT, but memorable and intelligible passages that are repeated on a yearly cycle, as they used to be in the Old Mass; the restoration of Gregorian chant; and the removal of "options" from the rite, whether they are optional readings, Canons, things to be omitted, etc.

I think this would clean it up and might help people to refocus on worship of God as being the purpose of the Mass, rather than "fellowship," feeling good, or any of the other horrible things that have crept in. I'm not sure it's the ultimate solution though, because the NO is about the flattest and least liturgical of all the liturgies found in the liturgical churches (such as the Orthodox Church).


16 posted on 03/21/2006 2:09:05 AM PST by livius
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