Renaissance triumphalist crowing both in bad taste and divisive

I saw a mordantly amusing comment from Fr. Hunwicke over at his blog HERE.  He mused about the recent 50th anniversary of Paul VI going to a Roman parish to say Mass in Italian.   Perpend.  My emphases and added links:

I was surprised to get back home to my computer to discover that in Rome there is going to be a special Mass to commemorate fifty years since the first Mass entirely in the Italian Language. Surely, this sort of rather Renaissance triumphalist crowing is both in bad taste, and sadly divisive? Will the Mass be a Requiem to pray for the souls of those whose faith was disastrously weakened by those of the post-Conciliar changes which were praeter Concilium seu contra Concilium, and which proliferated during this half-century?

If you are a no-longer-fertile Mexican grandmother possessing shares in the Ignatius Press, whose newly ordained narcissistic grandson possesses a semi-Pelagian biretta and works in the deeply flawed Roman Curia, you must be in sore need of something to cheer you up. This event may not be precisely what you’ve been waiting for.

LOL!

That’s called “turning the tables”.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

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9 Comments

  1. John Grammaticus says:

    I wonder if in Argentinian seminaries they teach how to come back from being insulted by an Erudite Englishman……… we still have a FEW of them left over here (The Right Honourables Jacob Rees-Mog MP & Sir Edward Leigh MP) and most of them are faithful Catholics :) Fr Hunwicke is in VERY good company.

  2. Michael says:

    After this special Mass to commemorate the vernacular, the Holy Father can have a Mass to commemorate whenever it was that a Pope said the first all-Latin Mass since the Council!

    Also, I’m confused: if this is a 50th anniversary, that puts the original date at 1965. But wasn’t the Canon still in Latin, and silent, by that point?

  3. Netmilsmom says:

    WOW! Normally the combox of most articles fills with cheerleaders or eye pokers. This response is brilliant and well thought out. I fully agree with it. Kudos to someone who is paying attention!

  4. “Will the Mass be a Requiem to pray for the souls of those whose faith was disastrously weakened by those of the post-Conciliar changes . . .”

    And celebrated ad orientem in black Roman vestments, surely.

  5. Matimus says:

    Michael, I think the vernacular was used in late in 1964 at least for the first part of the Mass. I was studying in Lyon, France, at the time and I distinctly remember the change to French instead of Lain. I think there was an interim mass in the vernacular ahead of the 1970 missial novus ordo mass.

  6. jaykay says:

    Michael, yes, in 1965 the Canon was certainly still in Latin as were all the “priest’s prayers” (collect, secret, post-communion etc.) and in very many places ad orientem continued. Our parish church didn’t acquire its picnic table… ooops, sorry, people’s altar… until 1966. As far as I recall it was relatively late in 1967 that permission was given for the English canon. By that time practically everything was in English, although it was of course a translation of the EF. The Novus Ordo appeared in late 1969, or very early 1970 in my country.

  7. Yes, the 1965 Order of Mass accommodated the vernacular, and at the time was presented as the fruit of Vatican II. In the 1966 St. Joseph Missal, the Canon was printed in large type English, with tiny Latin alongside. Indeed, the English translation was excellent, in contrast with the subsequent ICEL translation of the Novus Ordo. Google “1965 Order of Mass” to find the 1965 missal online. For instance:

    http://www.coreyzelinski.8m.com/1965_Mass/

    Ordinary of the Mass
    in the English Language

    Missale Romanum 1965

    As published in the
    New…Saint Joseph “Continuous” Sunday Missal and Hymnal
    (with the people’s parts of Holy Mass printed in boldface type and arranged for parish participation)

    “IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE NEW REVISED LITURGY AS DIRECTED BY VATICAN COUNCIL II”
    with the St. Joseph Psalter

    (© 1966 Catholic Book Publishing Co.)

    The official text of the Ordinary is from the Roman Missal with English translations approved by the National Conference of Bishops of the United States, published by authority of the Bishops’ Commission on the Liturgical Apostolate.

    A note there says “This was the official English version of the Order of Mass from the 1965 Roman Missal, published directly after the Second Vatican Council ended in 1965. This was the English Mass used from 1965 until 1969-70, when Paul VI promulgated the New Order of Mass (Novus Ordo Missae), and imposed it on the Latin Rite (the Novus Ordo is the current normative Mass of the Latin Rite). This interim Mass is much closer to the intended fruit of Vatican II’s Sacrosanctum Concilum than the New Mass of 1970. It is essentially the Tridentine Latin Mass in English with minor modifications.”

    Actually, I understand that official permission for the priest to say the Canon in English came only in 1967, though some remember it actually happening in practice a year or two earlier.

  8. Michael says:

    Matimus, thank you for the response. Yes, I do know about the interim Mass, but if I’m not mistaken, permission wasn’t given for the priest to pray the Canon in the vernacular until 1967 (with the document Tres Abhinc Annos). So I was simply wondering whether any sources mentioning this “50th anniversary of an all-Italian Mass” are incorrect—because 50 years ago (1965), the central part of the Mass was still in Latin.

    Did the Pope perhaps say an all-vernacular Mass early, as a way of showing the Church what was on its way?

  9. BobP says:

    The so-called missals of 1965 and 1967 weren’t universal as was the 62 Missal. The vernacular was introduced in stages and it varied from parish to parish, as I recall. The 67 missal removed most of the crosses, bows, genuflections, of the priest, while the 65 missal removed the Prayers at the Foot of the Altar and the Last Gospel.

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