Today is the 11th anniversary of the release of the text of the “Emancipation Proclamation”, Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI’s great gift to the whole Church. It went into effect on 14 Sept 2007.
I’ve called this important Motu Proprio a key element of Benedict’s “Marshall Plan“.
It is working. Just today, for example, I read a pastoral letter of a diocese which evinces a measure of underlying anxiety: it smacks of concern that, perhaps, people are being attracted to a more traditional way of receiving Communion, and it pushes lots of standing and sticking out of hands and not preaching about Confession. Interesting.
While Benedict wrote that the two forms of the Roman Rite shouldn’t be mixed, he also clearly indicated that there should be, would be, a “mutual enrichment”. It was his desire to “jump start”, as it were, the organic development of liturgical worship which the post-Conciliar sudden imposition of an artificially created rite had snuffed out. What he called “mutual enrichment” I call “gravitational pull”. As it turns out in the observable world, the greater an object’s mass, the greater its gravitational force. The more profound and denser “mass” of tradition is producing the stronger gravitational pull on the less profound “mass” of post-Conciliar innovation and liturgical antinomianism.
Does that mean that the gravitational pull is not mutual? Hardly! I think that many traditionalists celebrate the older, traditional rites with great devotion now precisely because of our sad experiences since the Council and precisely because they have recovered an accurate application of the important Conciliar message about “active participation” from the wreckage of the intervening decades.
Great strides have been taken in the last 11 years. The number of places where the older, traditional form of the Roman Rite has grown. Importantly, many young priests have learned and are learning their traditional rite. This will have a long-term effect on how they understand themselves as priests. In turn that will change how they say Mass and preach, which will produce beneficial knock-on effects in their congregations.
It’s all about revitalizing our Catholic identity. If we don’t know who we are as Catholics, we can’t be effective as Catholics in our families or the public square.
In the next few years we will see a sharp downturn in the numbers of people going to Mass and in the number of priests and, probably, churches available. We have to start thinking about this. What are we going to do? I know one thing: where tradition is tried, tradition seems to succeed.
We need to think inside the box so that we properly think outside the box. Our sacred liturgical choices matter enormously for our future.
WE ARE OUR RITES!
Say a prayer today for Benedict XVI. Support your priests and bishops in their good initiatives to restore tradition for the benefit of the whole local Church you belong to. Promote traditional worship wherever possible. Work harder!
¡Hagan lío!
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I joined an FSSP parish in December after being lapsed for 30+ years. When I attend the Tridentine Mass, I am immediately struck by the solemnity and reverence of the service and the parishoners. The whole atmosphere says, “This is serious. Take it seriously.”
Circumstances demanded I attend a Novus Ordo Mass at my local parish. I don’t want to question its canonical correctness or the piety of those attending, but it was an embarrassment, sort of a cross between a revival meeting and a variety show. The central meaning, the Sacrifice of our Lord and Savior, seemed lost. Even the Protestant denomination I was a member of had more dignified services.
Tragic mistake. Critical error. Divisive. Most unfortunate.
[*yawn*… Ho hum.]
Summorum is only divisive for those who want it to be….regardless of which form/use of the Roman Rite one happens to prefer.
“There is no contradiction between the two editions of the Roman Missal…..What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful”…..Pope Benedict XVI.
Fr. Jim,
What’s divisive is constantly going into the Comments section on a blog like this and leaving leaving little snippets like that to provoke people.
That being said, from what I have seen, Summorum Pontificum has done a great job at uniting many from the younger generations to the divine worship of the Church when that opportunity otherwise existed to a much lesser degree prior. The Folk Mass had its chance, and needed to be succeeded by a real solution.
Fr jim, are you talking about the American League pinch hitting for the pitchers?
frjim4321
The FSSP, as a Society of Apostolic Life founded personally by St. John Paul II, is at the heart of the life of the Church. In my experience, its parishes are very well run and completely ecclesially minded.
Since Greg Hlatky’s joining an FSSP Parish places him at the heart of the Church’s life, I have to assume that your cryptic slurs must refer to the other parish that he mentions attending. But this would mean that you have more knowledge of that parish than can have come from the original post.
Might it be your own?
Sadly, in our diocese … in a tiny little corner of NW Piemonte, Italy, there is simply no chance of the “Traditional Rite’. There is but one priest that we know who would indeed love to say such a Mass, but the Italians themselves don’t want it! We have asked them why, and these good, Mass attending, God-fearing Catholics answer along the lines of, “But it’s so old fashioned. Latin is divisive; no-one understands it”, and more along similar lines.
We keep praying for their enlightenment by the Holy Spirit!
Isn’t it a bit of a pious fiction that the Novus Ordo has anything to offer the Traditional Mass? [Not really, no.]
I find it’s like the so-called Hermeneutic of Continuity, a last, ingenious attempt to defend what we must all now admit is the indefensible.
Would you have made the same remarks when the New Mass was being imposed upon people who didn’t want it?
LOL….touche’! However, I say let the American League do its thing and let the National League do its thing (but the NL way is preferrable).
Father Hunwicke’s Latin, “Asseritur potius quam probatur”, It is asserted rather than proved.
Or, “Let us now share with one another the sign of Peace”. “Not peace but a sword”
Talk about reaching out to the peripheries: Summorum pontificum is THE reason (aided by the grace of God) that my husband now goes to Mass willingly.
frjim has perfectly exemplified why our church is in virtual schism, and why so many Catholics are leaving or never experiencing the church in the first place. Millions of souls are in peril because for too many on the inside, destroying the treasure we have is so much more interesting than preserving it. Perfectly stated frjim, thank you. You help us understand the nature and source of the problem.
I think the “divisiveness” started with the imposing of a new Mass the results has been the massive fallout of the faithful and religious. Then the non catechizing that followed that, the removal of altars, communion rails, statues, and beauty in many churches. Than the substituting of banal songs for the sacred music and so on.
BUT….in my archdiocese there is an FSSP parish which is thriving tremendously and has three holy priests but it is 2 hours away from me. However, one dear local pastor has a priest from the diocese come to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the TLM at noon on Sundays and I can attend about half the time. Also several wonderful young priests have learned the TLM and it is now being offered here and there in the archdiocese for “special” occasions. One TLM only priest has just been assigned to the Cathedral so we shall see what that will mean. The TLM is our future!
I am overseas in a Southeast Asian country that is only 3.7% Catholic. I went to a traditional Sung Mass, the only one within the Archdiocese (the other being SSPX). 17 inferior ministers all under the age of 30. Of these, 6 were in clerical collars (seminarians perhaps), 1 of which was ICKSP. 2 more were perhaps Discalced Carmelites in formation. Attendance was around 150. Tradition is for the young and tradition fosters vocations.
Apologies if I opened a can of worms. I didn’t intent to disparage anyone. I just get a far greater degree of spiritual fulfillment out of the TLM than out of the Ordinary Rite and I’m happy that it is now more available to those who want to experience it. And I’m happy to see at my church not just old broken-down crocks like me but young families with many children.
Fr. Jim,
While your comment is predictable (since I’ve seen your comments on here for some time now), I hope you’ll take my engagement in it as a sign of real interest, and reply either here or in a private e-mail…
You say “Tragic mistake. Critical error. Divisive. Most unfortunate.”
You must have some reason for believing that Summorum Pontificum was a tragic mistake. I can’t see it either as tragic or as a mistake. Rather than forcing the older form on anyone, His Holiness merely stated that it couldn’t be refused to those whose legitimate aspiration it was to celebrate according to an older form of the rite. He presented the fact (the veracity of which I have both first and second hand knowledge) that the older form doesn’t just appeal to the older people who are nostalgic for something they remember from their youth. In fact, it appeals to many younger people too, once they find it. If it brings more people to a fuller expression of their love for Our Lord, and meets the needs of divers peoples, why is this a mistake? Furthermore, if it restores the credibility of the Church (by asserting that what was once true is STILL true) how can this be a bad thing?
You call it a “Critical error”. I can’t see it that way because I don’t see it as an error. Critical, yes, but not an error. Once His Holiness stated plainly that this form of the rite was in principle always allowed, the game was up: those who had pretended (or claimed, if you prefer) that the older form was abolished, suppressed, or whatever were either misinformed or misinformative.
You call it Divisive. If you mean it is no longer what has been the majority position for the past 50 years, then that much is certainly true, but when some in Henry VIII’s time asserted that all the great minds of Europe in 1530 agreed with Henry, Thomas More and John Fisher replied (if I recall correctly) that if one broadened the field to include all of Christendom for most of 1500 years, the balance would be lopsided in the other direction. For those who wish to NOT divide the present from the past, and who wish not to pick which Catholic doctrine they will accept, but rather to accept all of it, whole and entire, the older form more fully presents that reality: not bound to one time period or another, but simply true for all time, in all places, and for all peoples; in a word, Catholic.
You call it most unfortunate, but here again, I can’t see your conclusion as fair. There is a shortage of priests. One attempt at a solution is to redefine the priesthood to allow/encourage/ require married men, women to be ordained priests, so that what the Church has always held to be true is no longer held to be true. A proper solution is to take what the Church has always held to be true and present it again to the modern world, in all its splendor. While there is a priest shortage among tradition-accepting Catholics, it is different in kind than the crisis among those who accept the current situation as normative. The number who are being drawn to the Traditional forms of the Mass and the Sacraments is outstripping the ability of the Fraternity, the Institute and the Society to prepare priests. That balance, however, is being redressed as more and more clerics finish their seminary training and are ordained. If 20% of all ordinations in France (as reported elsewhere) are NOT in the modern rite, surely the moderns should ask why ? That “balance” is only going to become more pronounced.
I should add that many of the people who attend our monthly Sung Vespers are young people, but that there is a good cross section of the Catholic world there.
Despite what Pope Benedict said “In the history of the liturgy there is growth and progress, but no rupture………….”, sorry but sadly there IS a rupture. It breaks my heart and saddens me to the core that I can go on many “Catholic” sites and there among those discussing the Catholic Faith there is serious division. This situation is truly a serious one. I was so shaken up and upset by this when I first encountered it many months ago (the disagreements and even arguments between Catholics that attend the EF Mass and the OF Mass) that I went to my Priest because I thought by attending OF Mass ALL MY LIFE I was doing something wrong. That’s the kind of “feeling” I got from some who are Traditional Catholics and only attend EF Masses. I honestly felt like I was an outsider and didn’t belong in the Catholic church I was baptized in and raised in all of my 53 plus years of life. SOME were so adamant that all OF Masses were wrong, were circuses, were irreverent, were watered down Catholicism, weren’t even fully Catholic that it had me totally confused and lost for a while. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IS MY CHURCH. I have never attended an EF Mass not because I didn’t want to but because it has never been offered where I live or even suggested. I’ve gotten Baptized during an OF Mass, made my First Holy Communion during an OF Mass, made my Confirmation during an OF Mass and was joined in the Sacrament of Matrimony to my husband of 33 plus years during an OF Mass. I am a reader every month at OF Masses in our Parish. I am a Sacristan setting up for OF Masses in our Parish numerous times each month. I am a Parishioner at a Parish that only has OF Masses. Never known anything different and I can HONESTLY say I can count on 1 hand the times in all those years that something done at Mass may have been wrong or not with the reverence Mass deserves. IN ALL OF THOSE years I have had the privilege of knowing and receiving the Sacraments from VERY devout holy Priests TRUE 100% to the Catholic Church/Faith. The majority of the Priests that have been assigned to the 2 Parishes I’ve belonged to in my life have been MEN OF GOD. Their lives are a service to Our Lord, His Church and us. Their Priestly vocation is one of complete and absolute love of the Catholic Church/Faith. With few exception there has NEVER EVER been a doubt in my mind that the Masses I’ve attended are the closest to Heaven I have gotten while here on Earth. I have NO PROBLEM what so ever with the EF Mass or those who celebrate it or participate in it. It is OUR CATHOLIC MASS. But I would hopefully expect the same courtesy for those of us who only attend the OF Mass. It is OUR CATHOLIC MASS as well not a lesser version, a runner up version or a substitute. PLEASE remember that we are all Roman Catholics and when we are at Mass we are ALL at the foot of the cross of Our Lord Jesus and we are ALL at the Last Supper of Our Lord Jesus. There is no better—best. They are both WONDERFUL, both GREAT, both ALLOWED, both ACCEPTED, both RIGHT and both GIVEN TO US BY OUR LORD. This issue should never be a cause for division, bickering, criticism or absolutely not shame by some Catholics to other Catholics. GOD BLESS Our ONE HOLY CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH today and Always.
EVERYONE… A REMINDER: If you are responding to or addressing a specific person/comment, put their NAME/HANDLE as the first thing in your comment.
In his letter to bishops, Pope Benedict wrote, “Furthermore, I invite you, dear Brothers, to send to the Holy See an account of your experiences, three years after this Motu Proprio has taken effect. If truly serious difficulties come to light, ways to remedy them can be sought.”
I would be interested to see a study done on the implementation of the extraordinary form and has it been a divisive force within the Church? Has it, in fact, contributed to mutual enrichment? That is to say are NO masses celebrated differently in terms of practice (ad orientem, Latin, chants, more silence, etc). Has the extraordinary form been open to harmonizing calendars and readings to make it easier for parishes to adopt the form and truly provide parishoners with two forms of the same rite ?
Has there been an intransigence on the part of traditionalists? Have there been conversations at deanery meeting?
Have there been any requests forthcoming?
These are important questions that the Holy Father wanted answered so we can move forward.
[Universae Ecclesiae]
Joy65 wrote, “… adamant that all OF Masses were wrong, were circuses, were irreverent, were watered down Catholicism, weren’t even fully Catholic”. Joy, what lously things to say to you. What’s the matter with people…?
Yes, you certainly should receive the same courtesy. What you wrote burned me up and I wanted to offer some friendly words.
Joy65, to clarify, the Ordinary form of Baptism was promulgated in May 1969 and was allowed to be used in September 1969. If you were baptized before September 1969, then you would have been baptized with the Tridentine formula. Since you wouldn’t have remembered your baptism, your other points are still valid.
Joy65, I love what you wrote. I’m a convert and the TLM is offered at my parish but I don’t go even though I’d like to because people from there have been so mean, even though they know the new type Mass at our parish is fine, the same priest says it. It’s sad. I’m nice to them though.
Dear Joy65,
May God grant you his Holy peace.
“I have never attended an EF Mass not because I didn’t want to but because it has never been offered where I live or even suggested.” When you haven’t tasted roast beef you may well think that all beef hot dogs are the best meat out there. It doesn’t mean that the Catholics who go to the Mass of Ages and prefer ‘roast beef’ are wrong when they tell you that an ‘all beef hot dog’ is a watered down version of the real thing.
Here is a sample. http://livemass.net/ But I don’t guarantee that you will love it right off the bat. It takes a whole different discipline and silence that you will never get at your general run of the mill Novus ordo Mass with improv. Think of all the people (the whole world over) that had this yanked out from under them, the result was massive apostasy. You can’t really call it division because it was a real purging of faithful Catholics. All these feelings of being shaken up and feeling like an outsider in your own church happened to people on a massive worldwide scale. You are in a singular position of being able to sympathize with these people but you are not being forced to attend the Mass before 1964.
Joy65:
You write:
“I have never attended an EF Mass, not because I didn’t want to, but because it has NEVER BEEN OFFERED where I live or even suggested.”
And further you write:
“They are both (OF and EF) WONDERFUL, both GREAT, both ALLOWED, both ACCEPTED, both RIGHT and both GIVEN TO US BY OUR LORD.”
How did you come to the conclusion that they are both GREAT, ALLOWED, ACCEPTED and WONDERFUL, since you have never attended such a Mass? You never asked yourself why a Mass that is ALLOWED and WONDERFUL has never even been suggested in so many years?
Joy65,
In the first place, God bless you and your Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and for your obvious love for his one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic Church.
In the second place, praise to our Lord Jesus Christ that for 53 years you have been blessed with solid faithful priests doing the best they can to foster your Faith, offer reverent liturgies, and with whom you are comfortable and have available the spiritual direction you described.
In the third place, you are posting on a blog of a priest with a strong liturgical piety so I assume you yourself have a more-than-average formed sense of liturgy for a lay Catholic.
In the fourth place, there are certainly “extremists” or “rigorists” in the traditionally-minded Catholic circles. Please keep in mind that many of these folks have not been as blessed as you with their pastors. Many have spent decades with irreverent folk masses, puppet masses, etc. Many have been spiritually traumatized (I mean the sort of trauma that leaves people doubting their Faith entirely). If you consider the “rigorism” in the setting of trauma, it becomes much more easy to forgive and have compassion toward people you might otherwise consider simply divisive or rude. I have found that beneath the stern, smug, self-assured facade of many “rigorous” people lies a broken heart or spiritual trauma.
In the 5th place, since you state that you have NEVER attended an EF, I would advise tempering your declaration of equality in majesty between the forms of the Roman Rite. The “rigorous” people (who you have been scandalized by as you describe above) HAVE attended both forms. These people are generally very well read on liturgy, liturgical history, and opine the EF is superior to the OF (which is an arguable point).
Like you I was raised and entirely formed in the OF liturgy, although at 32yrs old I am a couple of decades your junior.
I mostly attend the EF when available and for nearly a decade of my adult life have transitioned from the OF to the EF with my young family. I have found that the OF liturgies I attend within a diocese or when traveling are WIDELY disparate in their reverence. It’s totally priest dependent whether it’s a “circus” or reverent. That reverence is so dependent on the priest is a problem of the OF, I believe. I have a half dozen friends who are younger diocesan priests (some I knew before their ordinations) who nearly or exclusively offer reverent OF liturgies, one offers only the EF as private Masses because of his preference for the older liturgy. I am not an insulated EF attending rigorist.
As to your point that “BOTH [EF and OF] ARE GIVEN TO US BY OUR LORD”, I would offer a clarification. Jesus did not hand the earliest sacramentaries and Missals to the early Church Fathers, nor did He hand Paul VI’s Missal to us. The traditional Roman liturgy developed organically over centuries from the earliest apostolic liturgies with the Roman Canon and other parts being codified and becoming unchanging extremely far back into antiquity (unchanged from the earliest Missals we have until 1969 that is…). The OF of Paul VI was literally cobbled together de novo… piecemeal…in the late 1960s by a small group of “experts” which included Protestants. They were trying to make a Mass relevant to young people growing up at that time, namely YOUR generation if you were born in 1965. The subsequent reforms were in many cases imposed on parishes against the wills of laity who preferred the older form because of the liturgical piety THEY had grown up with before the 1960s. Chant disappeared. Sanctuaries were wreckivated. Latin was entirely abandoned. The vernacular translations were completely idealogically driven and inadequate (by people who didnt want to use the phrase “holy” to describe the Church, or who didnt want to use the words “holy and venerable” to describe Jesus…so the translators would just leave these words out of their translations). The liturgical calendars and cycles of readings were changed so old pietical books became instantly obsolete with the liturgy changes. Priests were laicized in large numbers, the seminaries emptied, as did the convents and the male orders also rapidly declined. Mass attendance immediately dropped and has been falling ever since. These are historical facts. These are verifiable statistical facts. These phenomena have a variety of cultural causes, but I would consider it naive to think the sudden and drastic liturgical reform did not contribute to the destabilizing of Faith in those people. I believe that without disparaging you or other individual Catholics with real and holy piety situated in the OF, that Catholics can discuss and debate the prudence of the liturgical reform and discuss the pros and cons of the OF. I think people who have experienced both EF and OF liturgies can have strong reasons to prefer one or another.
Even at reverent parishes there are abuses abounding. An example which you mentioned is the planned and frequent use of lay EMHCs or lectors (you state you “read every month”), the greater proportion of which at most OF parishes I’ve ever attended are female. When Paul VI suppressed the minor orders (subdeacons, acolytes, lectors, etc) he simultaneously recommended the formal installation of lay men as lectors and acolytes at every parish (I’ve read his document recently). This means there should be a small group of lay men who read the readings at every Mass, help train servers and serve, and help as EHMCs when actually needed. There are men with God-given callings to this service as installed lectors/acolytes…but they are never given the chance to be formally installed. That the use of installed lectors and acolytes was never done is an abuse. That good men at parishes have been deprived of a papally recommended installment to a particular liturgical ministry simply so that everyone else can be busy doing things every month is an abuse. Similarly the use of female servers (which again the girl servers now outnumber the boys at the OF parishes in my community) deprives boys of a chance to serve the priest and have this activity impact their consideration of a priestly vocation or a calling to being an installed lector or acolyte. I do NOT mean to diatribe the OF at all here, but to identify 2 ubiquitous abuses which I believe have wide ranging negative effects that are never even considered by most OF attendees. I dont want my 4 young boys having any inconsistency in gender issues at Mass, certainly they get enough gender confusion from the rest of the world right now.
Keep praying, keep reading, keep loving our Lord. And please keep in mind that not all traditionally-minded Catholics or EF attendees are schismatics or people who want to scandalized you. Not all of us just hate the OF. Some of us realize it’s going to take a long time for the Church to straighten out the liturgical problems most OF attendees face every week (whether the OF attendees are even aware of the problem…). That people prefer the EF at all is inherently divisive to a degree because in a hierarchy of value those people (myself included) have internally decided the EF more clearly offers adoration and worship of our Blessed Lord consistent with doctrine and history. If they hadn’t decided this, why would they go out of their way for the EF? Many of us are ourselves trying to integrate all of the good and the bad that has gone on in the Church in the last 5 or 6 decades.
I think the EF community as a whole is innocent of the charge not to have worked hard enough, as possible under the circumstances.
First of all I thank all of you for your kind generous responses and explanations.
“cathgrl says:
8 July 2018 at 5:19 PM
Joy65, to clarify, the Ordinary form of Baptism was promulgated in May 1969 and was allowed to be used in September 1969. If you were baptized before September 1969, then you would have been baptized with the Tridentine formula. Since you wouldn’t have remembered your baptism, your other points are still valid.”
******I will ask my Mom and then will be 100% certain what kind of Mass I was Baptized at. Thank you for calling my attention to the dates. *******
MrsMacD , Andrew & Atra Dicenda, Rubra Agenda in response to me never having attended an EF Mass and “They are both (OF and EF) WONDERFUL, both GREAT, both ALLOWED, both ACCEPTED, both RIGHT and both GIVEN TO US BY OUR LORD.”
*******I may have never attended one but it doesn’t mean I haven’t seen one on TV, on video, in articles, in books and read about the EF Mass. I even have an old HARD to find book about the EF Mass in it’s original form that takes you step by step with pictures and explanations. I wouldn’t make a comment about something without having even a small amount of knowledge about it even if my knowledge is not “in person”. PLUS I TRUST 100% that God would not have allowed the EF or OF Masses if they were not His will. God told us He will be with us until the end of time and that the gates of hell will not prevail against the Catholic Church and I believe that with all my heart, mind and soul. Like I said I’ve seen EF Masses just not in person. *********
Atra Dicenda, Rubra Agenda “As to your point that “BOTH [EF and OF] ARE GIVEN TO US BY OUR LORD””
********When I say both EF & OF are given to us by our Lord I mean directly from Sacred Scripture ( the Last Supper) but also through the men that God gives authority to in the Church. Of course I can 100% SURELY say NONE of us posting today were at the Last Supper. We have Sacred Scripture to inform us about that. But because Our Church also has Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium we as faithful Catholics MUST recognize and accept their decisions. I’m pretty sure ,even though I was not there at the Last Supper, that Jesus did not speak Latin and He did not have organ music and incense. I’m also pretty sure, even though I wasn’t there at the Last Supper, that Jesus went around the table with the bread He had blessed and broken and gave a piece of it to each of His Apostles in their mouths. I also KNOW the Church is correct, I believe all She teaches and I trust those in the Church Ordained by God to do what God wills in everything. I will continue to read and learn about the EF Mass and if the opportunity ever presents itself I will do my best to attend one. But I am saying with 100% certainty that EVERY Mass I’ve ever gone to, participated in or watched via media was and is 100% the true Mass of our Lord. His words were spoken, He came Body Blood Soul Divinity and (when I was there in person) I received Him in Holy Communion. Of these I have no doubt what so ever. God Bless each and every one of you, God Bless Father Z for this amazing blog and God bless Our Catholic Church for the TRUTH He’s given us through Her.******
Atra Dicenda, Rubra Agenda, about what you said about females serving in the roles at Mass as readers and altar servers.
**********I can only speak for my SMALL parish but the males didn’t step up to fill those roles and it’s not because the females were filling them first. There were males FIRST being readers and altar servers but it dwindled and got to the point (before the females were brought in) that they just stopped coming forward. In our particular Church we have 2 adult males assist Father at Mass and 2 adult male readers, that’s it. We have about 3 male altar servers who rotate with 2 female altar servers. It’s not that the males weren’t there first and given every opportunity to take part it’s that they didn’t do so in sufficient numbers.************
CORRECTION: I’m also pretty sure, even though I wasn’t there at the Last Supper, that Jesus DIDN’T GO around the table with the bread He had blessed and broken and gave a piece of it to each of His Apostles in their mouths.
Joy65,
When I was growing up, we attended [reverent OF Church] in [Diocese A]. In middle school, we moved to a rural part of [Diocese B]. In [Diocese B], it was so bad that Dad would basically play “What heresy did we see/hear today?” on the drive back from Mass every week for years. If it wasn’t for our somewhat regular returns to our parish in [Diocese A], I wouldn’t be surprised to have learned that my younger siblings (some of whom weren’t old enough to remember [Diocese A] from when we lived there) didn’t think it was possible to have a non-heretical OF Mass, let alone a reverent one, for a time in their lives. (there weren’t, and probably still aren’t and EF Masses within an hour’s drive of there, and the Priest who said the best OF Masses in that area (45 minute drive) was recalled to his home of Kenya a few years ago.)
With such abuse, I can understand the position that the OF can’t be orthodox and reverent, even though I disagree. Kudos to Atra Dicenda for pointing out just how dependent the OF is on the Priests, but the choir ladies, architecture, and previous Priests (especially if they were there for a long time) can have just as much if not more of an effect than the current Priest. The EF, in the few times I have experienced it (both low and high), doesn’t provide nearly the opportunity for abuse that the OF does, and it dramatically affects one’s understanding of the purpose of the Mass after having even attended the EF the handful of times I have.
@AD,RA….While I hesitate to comment three times on the same post, I wish to address a question which you posed rhetorically: why would someone frequent the usus antiquor except for having concluded that it is superior in terms of worship and adoration? For me, it is not a matter of superiority/inferiority in an abstract and absolute sense. I am nowhere near competent to make any such judgement. Pace HvonBlumenthal (great name BTW), I am, however, on board with “mutual enrichment” and the “hermeneutic of continuity”. But where one or the other usage doesn’t exist (in other words, where old and new don’t meet), where is the “mutual enrichment”? So this is one reason for me to be committed to the “traditional” Mass where I am. Another reason is that my parish has more or less forced my hand by relegating the “traditional” Mass to the fringes of the Sunday schedule. I can’t very well attend (and sing at) both old and new Masses without spending much of the day at the parish….and I do not identify as a church mouse. Still another reason is that my boys have learned to serve at the “traditional” Mass and they have friends who do so as well. So anyway, this is just a long way of saying that my commitment to the “traditional” Mass is grounded in my acknowledgement of its value and not so much in a belief in its superiority vis-a-vis the reformed Roman Rite Mass.
Joy 65; “PLUS I TRUST 100% that God would not have allowed the EF or OF Masses if they were not His will.” God allows everything that happens according to His passive will. He will be with us to the end of time but that doesn’t mean that you will have Mass in your diocese ’till the end of time. As an aside that supports the point; The young priest I met yesterday says five (OF) Masses every Sunday, talk about what looks like a recipe for burnout.
“IN ALL OF THOSE years I have had the privilege of knowing and receiving the Sacraments from VERY devout holy Priests TRUE 100% to the Catholic Church/Faith. The majority of the Priests that have been assigned to the 2 Parishes I’ve belonged to in my life have been MEN OF GOD. Their lives are a service to Our Lord, His Church and us. Their Priestly vocation is one of complete and absolute love of the Catholic Church/Faith. With few exception there has NEVER EVER been a doubt in my mind that the Masses I’ve attended are the closest to Heaven I have gotten while here on Earth.”
“I can only speak for my SMALL parish but the males didn’t step up to fill those roles and it’s not because the females were filling them first. There were males FIRST being readers and altar servers but it dwindled and got to the point (before the females were brought in) that they just stopped coming forward. In our particular Church we have 2 adult males assist Father at Mass and 2 adult male readers, that’s it. We have about 3 male altar servers who rotate with 2 female altar servers. It’s not that the males weren’t there first and given every opportunity to take part it’s that they didn’t do so in sufficient numbers.”
Nuff said, “by their fruits you shall know them.” If there are no young men willing to step up, you need to change your tune.
“The more profound and denser “mass” of tradition is producing the stronger gravitational pull on the less profound “mass” of post-Conciliar innovation and liturgical antinomianism.”
As you said somewhere else recently, Father, analogies have limits. Two bodies have only one gravitational force between them – A doesn’t have a stronger pull on B than B has on A. Perhaps you were thinking of something like Lagrange points?