You’re right. I don’t understand the mission of the Latin Mass. I don’t see what the point is in deliberately engaging in a linguistic exercise in a language most participants don’t understand beyond mere rote. I also don’t see the point in insisting everyone recite the exact same phonetics at the cost of individual spiritual understanding by billions. And I also don’t see the point of insisting the living adhere to the language of those long deceased when that language has gone with them.
As for Spanish, fine - make the standard Spanish. Or Mandarin Chinese, which vies for top spot as most commonly spoken. Show me even one person who speaks Latin a majority of their time.
You’re wound up with getting this Latin fixation “right”, when you don’t even use normal bread as Christ and alleged successors did (when WAS the “wafer” invented as such, anyway?), nor do participants lounge on couches at a low table (as described in Scripture). Christ condemned the Pharisees for subverting clear written law & example in favor of “tradition”.
I’ll depart now. I didn’t want to cause a ruckus.
The purpose of Mass isn’t for the people- it’s for the worship of God and following His command.
The Catholic author Flannery O’Connor once pointed out that a God we could understand would be less than ourselves. Whether in this life or the next, sooner or later every Christian encounters the utter transcendence of the divine nature. Even as God’s love for us extends to the joining His nature to our own in the Incarnation, this revealing intimacy opens onto ever-greater mystery that we can never comprehend. So while there’s much we can know through Scripture and the Sacred Tradition originally deposited with the apostles, there’s infinitely more that’s unknown and unknowable. It’s this very quality of infinity that moves us to worship and adoration. It’s this very quality that acts as a mighty leveler of human intellect, reminding us that human understanding, be it puny or profound, is not a destination but only a launching point into fathomless mystery.
In the early centuries of the Christian era, a religious phenomenon called Gnosticism seduced a great many souls with the idea that salvation was a matter of secret knowledge. Gnostic sects taught that the material world was irredeemably corrupt and inferior to the spiritual realm. Proud to possess secrets that they thought would save them, the Gnostics were disdainful of the created order we see around us. It was a view completely incompatible with Christianity, which teaches that God loves the world so much that he has joined himself to it, becoming incarnate as Jesus for the purpose of our redemption – one that will eventually include our very bodies, resurrected and glorified – and even for the salvation of mere things, which will be restored to their intended purpose of glorifying their Creator by their ordered beauty.
Understanding that the world exists to assist us in giving glory to God, Catholics rely upon a great many physical signs and things as a means of grace and a way to give expression to our faith. Above all, we have the sacraments, given to us by Christ the Incarnate Word of God – and among the sacraments, above all we have the Holy Eucharist and the sacrifice of the Mass.
All Catholics need a basic knowledge of what is happening at Mass and why it matters. To be sure, Christianity has mysteries because God is infinite and perfect, but it’s not a “mystery religion”. God is also love, so Christianity is about light and revelation and communion. Communion is not a remote and impersonal affair, but an intimate and loving embrace. But to enter into communion with God is to enter the infinite and the perfect and the eternal. Communion with God transcends our ability to understand. As Catholics, we know we’re called to a mystery of holiness, which we don’t reject because it’s more than we can comprehend. We can be at peace with mystery and aren’t afraid to acknowledge it. The core of Catholicism is faith that God has revealed Himself through his incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, and blesses His Church sacramentally, through outward signs, objects, gestures, and words instituted by Christ or otherwise faithful to His teaching – to convey concepts beyond our powers of expression or comprehension.
Recently a local Catholic politician was heard promoting his Bible study group, arguing that he learns more from it than he ever has at Mass. This shows how the dominant Protestant culture in this country constantly imposes itself on Catholic minds, reducing theology to whatever passes through its evangelical filter. Protestants understand liturgy as an a didactic or evangelical event – in other words, a teaching opportunity and a proclamation of God’s word and edifying preaching, evoking a corresponding expression of faith on the part of the individual believer. These are not bad things, but they place a poor second to Catholic liturgy, which is sacramental – outward signs instituted by Christ, which convey grace by their action. Where the Mass is concerned, the unique sacrifice of Calvary – the Body and Blood of the fully-human, fully-divine Lord, offered to the Father as reparation for all sins – are made present for us, veiled under the outward signs of bread, wine, and water. They are then received by us in an act that both makes us one body in Christ and gives us the grace we need to continue in that life. In a limited sense we can know all this, but we can never reduce it to our understanding. Catholic Christianity is rich in words and signs that invite our response in faith, but includes a great deal more. Nor does the Church restrict the gifts at her disposal to those capable of understanding what she has to say.
Those who obsess about “understanding” in the context of liturgy need to shake off the fundamental error that what’s taking place at the altar can or ought to be comprehensible in the first place. In using signs to convey transcendent truths not reducible to plain speech, the Church is only following the example of our Lord, who, scripture informs us, never taught the people except in parable. We readily concede that we don’t understand the Incarnation or the Atonement or transubstantiation. We don’t really understand God’s perfect simplicity, nor what it means for us to be transformed into that image.
In the traditional form of the Mass, mystery is retained and even honored in a way that almost never happens in the Ordinary Form. The use of Latin as a sacred language reminds us that holy things are rightly veiled from profane scrutiny. The communion rail is present as a barrier, reminding us that holy things set apart for God are to be revered, not treated casually. The near silence of the priest at many points (whose face we rarely have to see) invites us to recollection and preserves us from distractions. The complex rubrics are signs for the eyes of the faithful opened to distant and hidden things.
The Traditional Form of the liturgy therefore reminds us that the Sacrifice of the Mass is about far more than just our instruction. Instruction can’t save us from eternal death. Christianity isn’t a self-improvement program. So while understanding, at least as far as our powers will take us, is a good thing, it isn’t THE thing. Heaven’s full of saints who never understood much if anything and had the humility to be at peace with that fact. Meanwhile, sad to say, hell is stuffed with proud intellects tormented by rage and despair. The Mass has inescapable elements of mystery which we can’t strip out without stripping out what Christ intends for us.
Hey, it’s good that you speak from the heart. Didn’t realize we got you so riled up.
From personal experience, myself and most younger people who go to the Latin Mass, I had to re-learn Latin. It’s not difficult at all, you sort of flow with it. If you are curious, just try learning the “our Father” in Latin. Within a week, you will know it by heart.
Second, I have the feeling that what you actually feel is “fear of the unknown”, in this case, Latin. That could be overcome, have no fear. The Saints are with you.
Third, you are missing the transcendant part of the view in your written words. Those have gone before us are still living individuals, their souls are very much alive and didn’t die. They can hear our prayers and petitions. Pray to your grandparents, they are very much alive.
Fourth, the living Church, thru her collective wisdoms over time, do make liturgical revisions as well as corrections when they go astray. Stay tuned, and God bless.