This is almost, but not quite, correct. The mass of the Latin Rite was celebrated in Old Church Slavonic in the Balkans, with Rome’s approval, from the time of Sts. Cyril and Methodius until the middle part of this century.
There’s no reason it “must” be celebrated in Latin…it just always has been celebrated in Latin…but the Vatican could issue an official English translation and allow the Tridentine mass to be celebrated in the vernacular.
As Mr. Moto indicates, the idea is to offer the Tridentine Mass as an alternative, so what you’d get, in effect, is some what you call dumbed-down and desacralized masses, and some smartened-up, resacralized masses, appealing (I would think) to a more conservative kind of Catholic. It’s kind of like the buffet approach, which makes a certain amount of sense strategically. On the other hand, I find myself wondering if it doesn’t introduce new divisions into the Church. What do you think?
But has he desolved the Vatican Senate, giving the regional Cardinals more direct control?
I think that claims that the Tridentine Mass is either smarter or more sacred than the Novus Ordo is simply posturing by people who have an emotional attachment to the older form. I have never seen a theological claim for the superiority of the Tridentine Mass that amounted to much more than assertions based on personal preferences or (occasionally) misunderstandings of both liturgical practices.
This is not to say that there are not legitimate criticisms that can be leveled against the Novus Ordo, only that they do not outweigh (overall) the criticisms of the Tridentine.
This is also not to deny that, in some instances, some people have made rather silly ad hoc changes to the Novus Ordo that need to be reined in. (Of course, there were a number of pagan accretions that attached themselves (in some communities at some periods) to the Tridentine Mass, as well. I would hope that a respectful resuscitation of the older form will be done in such a way as to avoid those excesses.)
I have no problem with a respectful reconsideration of both practices. It is entirely possible that this will lead to some divisions, so I am not sure that it will ultimately be a good thing. Of course, I see the divisions arising not from providing two approaches to liturgical worship so much as from the adherents of one form or the other who are willing to make silly dismissals of the form they do not prefer.
Considering that for the last half of the JP2 papacy, Ratzinger was his go-to man for doctrinal matters, I realy did not expect the first year to contain anything earth-shattering – I figured whatever comes out in the first couple of years of his term was likely being worked on already while JP2 still held the post, by most of the same people.
For instance, and it’s interesting y’all bring this up, the other day I caught a fragment of an interview he did for EWTN (the American Catholic cable network) back in '03 in which he was mentioning that the vernacular Mass was an important and necessary reform, but that it would be beneficial to bring back into the liturgy more of a sense that this is a special event, the participants coming before the presence of Christ in the Sacrifice, as opposed to it being just one more group event; and that elements of form such as the language or particular ritual sequences may be illustrative and helpful but the important thing would be “re-catechization” of the community. Of course, as a good (at the time) Prefect of the Congregation he slipped in a “but always in accordance to the teachings of the Church and the guidance of the Holy Father” – IOW the dissenters who want Vat-II to be reversed altogether will not get anywhere close to that.
I did kinda enjoy the sort of head-scratching reaction when his first encyclical was about Christian Love, if only because I can imagine the old professor smiling to himself at all those who were expecting fire and brimstone and something to have a brawl over.
Yes, you’re right of course. It could be celebrated in any language if the Vatican allowed it. But, at the moment, the rubrics of the 1962 missal require the Tridentine mass to be said in Latin.
Well, there have always been liturgical divisions within the church. Go into any parish in a multi-cultural area today and you’ll see a smorgasbord of choices: different languages; different styles (family, traditional, charismatic, “youth” etc). I don’t see that that’s a problem.
I’m not so sure that’s it’s always a case of purely emotional attachment. Many of the young people in their 20s who come to our traditional parish have grown up with the Novus Ordo (as I did) and have never experienced the Tridentine rite. It’s not nostalgia that drives them to seek out the Tridentine mass, it’s simply that they find the Novus Ordo so unfulfilling. I’ve also heard other parishioners saying that they find the Tridentine rite a bit “alien” but they still come because they feel it’s more God-centred than their local Novus Ordo masses.
I do agree that it’s silly to claim that the Tridentine mass is inherently smarter or more sacred than the Novus Ordo. There is room (or should be room) for both of them. They’re both approved rites of the church and clearly neither can be said to be more sacred or smarter than the other if they’re offered correctly according to the rubrics of the missal. This, though, is the big “if”. In my experience the “sacredness” of the Tridentine mass does not depend upon the priest, who is totally circumscribed by the rubrics of the rite. It’s a completely different situation in the Novus Ordo mass where the priest has (or thinks he has) so much scope to ad-lib and therefore his notion of “celebrating the liturgy” becomes so critical. Unfortunately, in too many cases the Novus Ordo mass is subjected to significant liturgical “hijacking” (all of which are rife at my local parish):
- the priest drops this bit;
- re-writes that bit;
- adds another “trendy” prayer;
- offers the first part of the mass sitting in the front pew, since he wouldn’t want to be seen as being any different from anyone else, thereby undermining the whole notion of the sacramental priesthood;
- wanders around the church with a microphone during the sermon like some third-rate game show host;
- has his own version of prefaces;
- uses an “ecological” version of the Creed which blurs the Trinitarian concept;
- reformulates the words of consecration in a way that throws doubt on the doctrine of transubstantiation: “take, eat, this *symbolises * my body”.
I find this sort of thing objectionable on two levels. On a personal level it makes it so much harder for us in the congregation to make the correct responses when we have no idea what’s going on. It also destroys any idea of “ritual” in the “catholic” sense: I can no longer expect the same thing to happen at every mass in my church, or in the church down the road, or in the church in another state. Instead it depends on the priest: Father X is predictable, but with Father Y you never know what’s going to come next. I’m the one who has to adapt each time to the foibles of the priest, when it should be the priest adapting to the rubrics of the missal.
And on a theological level it disturbs me more because I find myself beginning to question the validity of the mass. I shouldn’t have to do this. The Church teaches that if a priest says the words of an approved rite of the mass with the correct intention then the sacrament will be truly confected. But if the priest doesn’t use the words of the approved rite - indeed changes them completely into words that suggest he doesn’t even hold Catholic beliefs like the Real Presence - then I think I’m entitled to have my doubts. It was having to deal with this sort of thing at my local parish that forced me to seek out the Tridentine mass, where one is never in any doubt about what’s going on.
I do still attend Novus Ordo masses when I can be sure that the priest will stick to the book. I waited all through the previous Pope’s reign for some sign that liturgical abuses would be disciplined but nothing much ever happened. I hope and pray that Pope Benedict can achieve something in this area.
But none of these things have anything to do with the Novus Ordo and everything to do with some loon not being reined in by his bishop. Having grown up in the Tridentine traditon, I can assure you that abuses were just about as common (meaning, not really common, but highly visible when they occurred) when the whole church was following that rite. Whether it was priests rotely zipping through the foreign language at blazing speeds so that the servers could not even get their responses out before the priest had moved on two prayers, sermons that had no contact with the readings of the day, but harped on whatever personal (or political or financial) bug the priest had up his butt, additional prayers tacked on to the end of mass interupting the dramatic flow, that had nothing to do with the celebration and everything to do with a veneration of saints that came very close to the idolatry of which Catholics were accused by various Protestant groups, bishops chastising priests because their fingertips appeared to be 40 inches apart during the Canon rather than 32 inches apart, or lessons in catechism class that said that the washing of the priests’ hands at the Offertory was a re-enactment of Pilate washing his hands of Jesus, I can recall many events that interfered with the appropriate worship. I suspect that such things happen more rarely, now, in Tridentine celebrations simply because fewer people are celebrating the Tridentine Mass, to begin with, and those who do are at this time putting more effort into behaving correctly.
The attitude of a priest that he can tinker with the rites will not change simply by imposing a different rite.
This is not actually my experience (and I live just outside of Boston, in what may be considered the Catholic foyer of the U.S.), mainly because of lack of manpower.
I appreciate what you’re saying about the priests freelancing. It introduces a note of confusion that undercuts the basic idea of liturgy itself. I do find myself wondering whether it’s a problem in all parts of the world. In the U.S., I see this approach as something of a reaction to trends within Protestantism towards a more freewheeling style of worship. Whether it’s an appropriate or inappropriate reaction is not for me to say.
To me this raises the question of which part of the Catholic Church Benedict most has his eye to – the American church? European? African? The issues are not the same everywhere.
I have no doubt that what you say is true. I’ve been told similar things by my father and older members of trad congregations: “Don’t think that everything in the past was all liturgical purity, because it wasn’t. You should hear some of the things we used to have to put up with. Remember Father X and how he used to rush through the Canon” etc…
Again I’d say that’s spot on too. I simply look at it this way. I’ve got two choices: the Novus Ordo mass or the Tridentine mass. The Novus Ordo in all of my local parishes here in Sydney is celebrated (with some notable exceptions) at best perfunctorily and at worst in “liturgical anarchy bordering on heresy” mode as I have previously described. The Tridentine mass is celebrated scrupulously and extremely reverently according to the 1962 rubrics by young, newly-ordained priests of the FSSP* order, a new religious order created expressly to minister to the faithful who wish to worship according to the Traditional Roman rite. As one would expect, if only for political reasons, these priests don’t take liberties with the celebration of the mass. Perhaps they will in time. But they don’t now. So for me the choice is pretty clear.
In the long run, yes, I think you’re right here too. Some priests, regardless of the rite, will cut corners. But at this stage of the game the FSSP priests don’t for obvious reasons.
*FSSP = Fraternitas Sacerdotalis Sancti Petri; the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter
I’m a non-Catholic, so I don’t have a dog in this fight, but ISTM that celebrating the Mass in Latin would reduce the Mass, for those participants that don’t understand Latin, to a presumably edifying sequence of sounds, sights, tastes, and smells, mysterious and beautiful, but without any involvement of the mental faculties.
“Without any involvement of the mental faculties”?
You’re seriously suggesting that a worshipper has no mental involvement in the mass unless he understands the language in which it’s celebrated? I was in Iceland last year and attended mass twice in the cathedral in Reykjavik. I don’t speak Icelandic, but of course I knew what was happening. The ritual of the mass follows a set pattern. I could tell precisely what the priest was doing. I could pray, recite the basic congregational responses, acknowledge and worship Christ at the consecration, receive communion etc. I was even able to understand the readings and gospel when one of the parishioners lent me her Icelandic/English missal. The only bit I couldn’t understand was the sermon. Catholics of any nationality can follow the actions of the mass easily. It’s absolutely no different when the mass is in Latin. Just ask any of the congregation who attend the Latin mass regularly. Many of them don’t know much more Latin that the basic responses, but they’d be pretty offended at the suggestion that they couldn’t understand what was going on and had no mental involvement.