The Mass in Latin, and Why It Matters
Read the whole thing....
The same riches that profited Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint Francis de Sales are available to Catholics today.
Not a small group of people will read the title of this piece and, jadedly rolling their eyes, exhale, “Another one?”
By this they mean, another pathetic ode to the traditional Latin Mass, that unfailing attractor of curmudgeons and weirdos. It may feel as though accounts of the excellence of that Mass are issued weekly and persuade no one, instead merely reminding normal people of the limits of atavism.
Defenses of the old liturgy, while not nearly that frequent, nonetheless do usually fail to reach even conservative Catholics. It seems that the precondition for liking the Latin Mass is found in a recessive allele, and that as many people who could like the Latin Mass already attend it. For everyone else, it is too strange, too old, too disconcerting.
Yet one recalls, incredulous, that a few decades ago the entire Catholic world was subject to that Tridentine peculiarity. Ditch diggers and policemen loved it well into the 1960s, not to mention the unlettered peasants, many of them saints, who built and attended the great European churches for centuries.
My favorite paragraph:
The hurdles preventing enjoyment of the Latin Mass are numerous, but they can be overcome. The most intimidating is usually the language, which, it is pointed out, people do not speak. That is true, but Cicero himself would not apprehend everything said by the priest because half of it is inaudible in the first place. Latin is the Church’s language, Roman and catholic as the Church is Roman and Catholic. Something is to be gained from the story of the woman who approached a priest after Mass with the complaint “Father, I didn’t understand a single word you said up there today.” “That’s all right, madam,” he responded; “I wasn’t talking to you.”
The same riches that profited Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint Francis de Sales are available to Catholics today.
Not a small group of people will read the title of this piece and, jadedly rolling their eyes, exhale, “Another one?”
By this they mean, another pathetic ode to the traditional Latin Mass, that unfailing attractor of curmudgeons and weirdos. It may feel as though accounts of the excellence of that Mass are issued weekly and persuade no one, instead merely reminding normal people of the limits of atavism.
Defenses of the old liturgy, while not nearly that frequent, nonetheless do usually fail to reach even conservative Catholics. It seems that the precondition for liking the Latin Mass is found in a recessive allele, and that as many people who could like the Latin Mass already attend it. For everyone else, it is too strange, too old, too disconcerting.
Yet one recalls, incredulous, that a few decades ago the entire Catholic world was subject to that Tridentine peculiarity. Ditch diggers and policemen loved it well into the 1960s, not to mention the unlettered peasants, many of them saints, who built and attended the great European churches for centuries.
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| Notre Dame Basilica, Montreal |
My favorite paragraph:
The hurdles preventing enjoyment of the Latin Mass are numerous, but they can be overcome. The most intimidating is usually the language, which, it is pointed out, people do not speak. That is true, but Cicero himself would not apprehend everything said by the priest because half of it is inaudible in the first place. Latin is the Church’s language, Roman and catholic as the Church is Roman and Catholic. Something is to be gained from the story of the woman who approached a priest after Mass with the complaint “Father, I didn’t understand a single word you said up there today.” “That’s all right, madam,” he responded; “I wasn’t talking to you.”
posted by jope @ July 29, 2018
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