I have no idea where this one belongs, so I’ll put it here.
The other day our local newspaper ran a story on a new offering in our community: we can now attend Latin Mass if we like. It isn’t anything super-conservative or anything, just ‘some people like Mass in Latin, so we’re going to have it so we can enjoy it.’ I mentioned this out loud, and my 6yo daughter promptly jumped on it. She wants to go, and I think that sounds very nice, so I want to plan to attend one soon.
The only problem is that I’ve been to about 3 Masses in my life, and I can never seem to keep up with it–you kneel, and stand, you respond to the priest, and I don’t know the pattern. I can only assume my befuddlement will be worse if the service is in Latin.
So please tell me how to get along without making a total fool of myself, and I’ll pass it on to my kid so that she will know that there will be some things to do. Is there singing? Do we sing, or it is a choir only thing? It lasts about 45 minutes, right? Is there symbolic stuff we should know, like what color stole the priest is wearing? Help!
Just follow along with everyone else. You’ll have plenty of time to figure out when to stand, kneel, etc. No one will pay much attention if you just skip the responses you don’t know. I go to mass with my family, but am not Catholic, so I just say some of the responses and the Lord’s prayer. I don’t cross myself or do any of the other gestures. If you want to take your daughter up for a blessing, just cross your arms in front of you and have her do the same. The priest will make a little cross on your forehead or whatever.
On kneeling etc. just follow the crowd. No one ever taught me the patterns–I learned through attending mass. If you don’t know the words just keep quiet, and for the rest just follow the crowd.
Other thought–are you sure you want to take a 6-year-old to mass in any language? I can see her getting very bored by the end of it. Otherwise, I’d just try to impress upon her how important it is to stay quiet and sit still.
I can understand your concern! But she does have a good attention span, and is used to attending our church services–the communion part runs a little over an hour and there isn’t much too look at, not like a Catholic chapel with candles and altar cloths and stuff–ours is very austere and dead boring. (After that she has Sunday School–they don’t run concurrently like I think some churches do.) So she’s used to sitting quietly for a while, and I think she will be interested enough for long enough to make it worthwhile.
So I can just follow along–sort of–but what if we’re practically the only ones there? The services are at 5 pm weekdays. Yeah, I guess I’m a bit nervous.
If she’s used to sitting quietly, she should be fine. It’s actually very good discipline for a child to have to sit quiety for an hour, be it in church, the library or over a family dinner. We’re live in such an information overloaded society that church is an excellent opportunity to just be.
Tell her that she won’t understand the words, but that’s okay because neither do you. Tell her that the Mass is a time for her to think about what she’s done right that past week and what she wishes she’d done better. And then to ask God for help in making her a better person. For instance, if she feels jealous of someone’s new toy, then church is a good time to ask God for help in dealing with that. Or if she knows someone who looks like they need a friend, then church is a good time to think what she personally can do to help that person. The prayers and the rituals will come with time and they’re not what’s important. What is important is establishing a relationship with God and the critical self-examination that church can provide.
If they are adding a mass, they probably think there is a demand for it. You may not be the only ones there, but she may be among the only kids. My experience is that families usually go to a Sunday mass, unless it is one of the obligatory ones.
My first concern is the timing. When is her bedtime? Will you have enough time to feed her, bathe her etc before her normal bedtime without her getting overtired?
I went to a mass in Latin in a Belgian village many years ago, and in the whole church I think there were only two people who actually understood Latin: the priest and myself.
Perhaps you could contact the church beforehand to express your interest and your ignorance - perhaps they have an order of service - with a translation - that is distributed?
How exciting! We just learned there is now a parish in Sacramento where they do the Masses in Latin. Since Charlie (8½) and I are learning Latin together as part of homeschooling we are excited to attend. Of course we are Catholic, so we’ll be able to follow along anyway.
Once thing about the Catholic church (at least ours) is that they are totally not judgemental about participation. We get a lot of visitors and sometimes they ask what to do and sometimes they just sit there and watch. If you get there early, you might mention to an usher or someone you see in the foyer that you are visiting and can they give you a rundown. They will likely be happy to.
Quartz, that’s a good idea; I could call the church. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that. And the Mass would be over by dinnertime, I think. Dinner is more the problem than bedtime; I’ll have to feed her a good snack first.
I guess I should explain this better; I realized how very odd this sounds while I was out at karate. My daughter and I have been studying Latin (ecclesiastical pronunciation), which she really enjoys–I mean, it’s just baby Latin, for fun, but we plan to try to go as far as we can with it. She can recite several prayers and sing a couple of hymns, as well as the vocabulary and grammar she has learned. Obviously she won’t be able to understand the Mass at all, but she will probably recognize a prayer or two, and she’s actually interested in sitting and listening to someone speak Latin for half an hour or so. This really is her idea and somewhat relevant to her life.
Zebra, I’m not sure what you mean by your Dora comment?
(On preview: hi Rhiannon! You’re doing LC too, aren’t you? We started it in January and are having fun, but going very slowly. I think your Latin parish and mine are cooperating somehow.)
My guess is if they are doing the mass in Latin, they will have the choir there to sing in Latin - so no singing, unless you happen to know Ave Maria - and can do justice to their choir - in which case go ahead and sing along.
They will also do the Kyrie and such in Latin - which can be fun to sing along with if you know the words. And most people can manage to sing along to the Allelullia’s appropriately - they should be familiar sounding.
5:00 p.m. on a weekday? You are unlikely to be fighting crowds to get in (and I doubt there will be an actual choir if this is a daily thing).
Enter the nave (church proper) just a little before 5:00 and choose a seat (the first time) a little behind most of the other people. This should let you be more comfortable about following the lead of the other participants.
I would think that they would have hymnals for any music.
In the olden days, Catholics used missals, books with all the prayers of the mass, including all the specific prayers for all the days throughout the year. These usually were printed with English and Latin on facing pages. I would be mildly surprised if the parish has not had some missal-like booklets printed up. (There are liturgical reasons for not using missals any more, but even the most fastidious liturgist generally accepts their use for people who are new to the form of the mass. Just be aware that there will be places where the priest will depart from what appears in the missal so as to pray the proper prayers for the day. Don’t get messed up trying to find out where he is, just wait for him to “come back” to the next prayer on your page in the missal.)
Exactly. It’s not the military or synchronized swimming - you have plenty of room to be out of step, and no one cares if you just sit down. Many people are physically incapable of keeping up with the calisthenics inherent in a catholic mass.
dangermom - Go here for the Mass in English and Latin side by side. It also tells you when we stand, sit and kneel. The modern Mass doesn’t use exactly those words in English, but I’d imagine the Tridentine Mass still will. You could print that out and bring it with you. People won’t be offended if you don’t kneel when everyone else does. If you aren’t Catholic, it’s not proper to receive Holy Communion. You can go up and receive a blessing, but cross your arms over your chest so the Eucharistic Minister or priest understands you aren’t receiving Communion.
I was going to suggest what StGermain suggested. Back in the day, Catholics brought their missal to Mass, which was a book that’s basically a cheat sheet like you can find at the above link, that also includes the readings for each weeks’ Mass. But the missal has other things too, which you might be interested in if you are going to make this a regular affair. Your daughter might be interested in some of the things they have in the missal- like about the priests’ vestments and what the different colors symbolize, etc.
You should be able to buy one at the church’s shop. I assume, anyway. I can’t imagine where else you’d get one.
Oh, this is great! Thanks, St. Germain–that is very useful. I can see 2 prayers we know very well, and one (The Paternoster) that we need to practice, since we don’t actually have a very good hold on that one. She keeps asking me what the Gloria Patri is for anyway, so that will be nice.
I would love to own a missal, and will buy one if I can–if they even have a store. I like to have things like that (I have a Book of Common Prayer and so on). That’s different than a breviary, isn’t it? I think a breviary has all the different Psalms for each day of the year and all sorts of things?
Tomndebb, what would the reason be for not having missals any more? Are you supposed to have it all memorized already?
We won’t be taking communion, and I’ve explained that to my daughter already. She doesn’t quite get the whole concept of denominational differences yet…
dangermom - Parishes generally have “missalettes” in the pews with the readings and the order of the Mass and the responses and everything. Most people don’t buy missals any more, probably because when we switched from the Tridentine Mass (Latin) to the more modern Mass we went from having the same readings for each week of the Liturgical year to rotating three different readings in turn. So you have Year A, Year B and Year C each with different readings. It would make it neccesary to own three different missals or one missal which would be too large to carry around. SO the parishes started buying them.
There are interesting things like why the priest is wearing the color vestments. Green is Ordinary Time, Red is for Lent and the feast days of martyrs, Advent is rose and purple.
You can buy brevaries and missals online, and although most churches don’t have stores attached, almost any decent-sized town will have a Catholic shop with books, art, medals, tacky tchotkes, etc.
I wondered about that- the only church I’ve ever gone to regularly is the local cathedral, and they have a store. After I posted it, I thought “I bet most churches don’t have stores.”
I’m old-fashioned, and I like missals as opposed to missalettes. Says the girl who hasn’t gone to Mass in a good 10 years.
We probably don’t have a store; we don’t actually have a very large Catholic population AFAIK–not like my hometown, which was smaller but supported a sizeable Catholic school system (which I came close to attending). I’ve never seen this particular church, as it’s in a part of town I don’t visit much, but I think it’s the oldest and largest one–the one next to us is small and modern-looking. And we only have a teeny little elementary school.
I’ve actually been to a Catholic store! But it was in San Jose, and I was doing research for a paper in library school (on YA fiction featuring portrayals of religion). It was…a lot like an LDS store, only with scapulars.
Anyway, thanks very much for the help. I’m off to bed.
