This vide of Bp. Strickland of Tyler is a pretty good analogy about the Novus Ordo and the Vetus Ordo.
I’ve known priests who think that adding elements of the Traditional Latin Mass their celebrations of the Novus Ordo, “enriching” or “enhancing it” that they’ve really accomplished something, that they’ve solved the problem, threaded the needle, navigated the shoals. They haven’t. Sure, they’ve improved the Novus Ordo a bit. However, if you have to add elements of the TLM to the NO to make it better, why not just use the TLM and then, perhaps bring in aspects of the ars celebrandi we have learned from the Novus Ordo over the last few decades?
In my discussions with Card. Ratzinger in the early 90’s I had the sense that his desire for “mutual enrichment” aimed at, principally, bringing the Novus Ordo into line with the Roman Tradition. As the years past, I think his emphasis shifted. Rather than see the Novus Ordo as a foundation of the liturgical renewal, he came to see the TLM as the foundation. The enrichment between the two rites would take place organically but the TLM would have the logical priority. That’s how the renewal of sacred worship would take place. I think that that is also going to be how it comes about. It might not be in my lifetime, but I have an inkling that that is where things are going.
Anyway, here is Bp. Strickland in a video I picked up. UPDATE: I learned that it is from Mass Of Ages
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A very good analogy by Bishop Strickland. I would add that the Tridentine Rite is counterpoint, and the NO only follows one melody at a time.
The mutual enrichment project depends rather much on how the next pontificate goes. The current trajectory is very much bent on eliminating both the notions of hermeneutic of continuity and having a harsh barrier between the NO and the TLM (while seeking to eliminate TLM). It is my contention that, should TLM be eliminated fully, those elements in the NO that derive or harken back to TLM will likewise be eliminated. They are really after what still exists of the sacerdotal and sacrificial nature of Mass in the NO, both in terms of the identity and charism of the priest as well as the Sacrifice itself (ultimately the identity of the personhood of Christ).
I would disagree with one point from the good Archbishop: TLM isn’t more complicated (as if the NO were more simple/humble); it is more full, more complete. TLM, like the Eastern Rites, more conforms the priest to the liturgical action of Christ the High Priest. In the NO, the structure practically forces the priest to display his own personality – it takes incredible strength to resist and reduce the amount of having one’s personality creep in to the minimum. It is this that makes the NO less complex, for no amount of human charisma can compare to Christ, next to whom any human is an utter bore.
As I understand it, the move to a 3 year cycle of readings was designed to increase the amount of scripture one heard. I’ve learnt more about scripture since attending the Vetus Ordo, on my own time, surely fulfilling the aims of VII.
You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
The more appropriate phrase (in teaching circles re. Students) is “you can bring a horse to water, at which point it’ll run in and drown itself.
Whatever happens in the future, the vast majority of devout Catholics will need “accompanying gently” back to tradition. Either that, or they will die off.
“why not just use the TLM and then, perhaps bring in aspects of the ars celebrandi we have learned from the Novus Ordo over the last few decades?” – well, for one, the priest would have to get the permission of the archbishop, which really isn’t as “forthcoming” as we all would like, so there’s that. I know you can go “underground” and all, but that only lasts so long before the wrong people find out and then you have a priest who’s either out of a job or sent on a “sabattical to reflect on what he’s done.” So until that time, this is what we have. . . . the silver lining in that is that at least there are priests who are willing to do this instead of go the other way and have happy clappy Masses. . . .
I am a fan of Bishop Strickland but his comparison gives the new Mass too much credit. It is hard to make any comparison of the TLM to the new Mass since there is no single thing as “the new Mass” – in practice, there are countless versions of it. If however I were to describe the TLM by analogy as a beautiful piece of orchestral music by one of the great 18th or 19th century German composers, I would say that by comparison the new Mass ranges from, at its very best (i.e., ad orientem, in Latin, with chant), a pale imitation by a lesser 20th century composer to, at worst, one of Weird Al Yankovic’s songs.
I must admit, His Excellency’s appraisal seems a little puzzling to me. Throughout my youth, I heard about how the traditional Mass was too ornate, too complex. I heard it had too much human made-up stuff. I heard that Vatican II allowed for the Novus Ordo instead, allowing for “noble simplicity”, everything would be more humanly approachable, less..abstract.
I have to think His Excellency, being a bishop, surely must know of that intent better than I. Odd that he seems as though he only recently discovered this trait.
Give us 10,000 Bishops like Bishop Strickland and we could save the World.
I have often said that I am not a reform of the reform person. I am a redo the reform person. We need to start back again at the foundation, the TLM and maybe bring in lessons and enrichment from what have been learned with the NO. But the continuity of tradition demands that we start again. There can never be such a clear and dramatic break with tradition in the develop of the liturgy as was done with the NO in the 60’s.
This analogy makes me think of the final movement of Beethoven’s Choral Symphony. The strings play a simple folk-like melody, gently wandering up and down the D-major scale. The effect is very pleasant, but if the melody is repeated over and over, as it is in some “pop” arrangements of “The song of Joy”, it soon starts to sound banal, trite and boring.
But Beethoven doesn’t simply repeat the melody over and over. It passes from instrument to instrument, to different voices, to the chorus. There are variations, elaborations, other themes are introduced, there are complex fugues. Beethoven lifts us higher and higher from the realm of the folksy into the realm of the sublime, and we see that true Joy is an element of the Divine. Whereas we would grow tired of the simple melody after a few minutes, we can listen to the entire fourth movement for twenty minutes without a dull moment.
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I want to make a brief comment on BW’s “You can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.”
The issue is that “horses” were not led to water. It doesn’t matter if there was ‘more scripture’ in the NO than TLM, if the priests didn’t believe it and didn’t preach on it. The NO vs TLM can be a distraction from the deeper problem of the poor formation and loss of faith amongst those of the priesthood, the gutting of the seminaries and the supplanting of Catholic intellectual and spiritual formation. TLM cannot save a priest who is not properly formed (remember that the NO was created by priests supposedly formed under TLM), yet a well-formed priest can save the NO from itself (the NO’s tendency towards lowest common denominator choices, its anthropocentrism, tendency to cause focus on the priest’s personality).
Bp Strickland, as usual, is spot-on.
But however accurate his analysis, if we are ever going to ‘re-orient’ a NO-oriented (I know they largely don’t do orientation right, but you know what I mean!) Church, we are going to have to remember where we are starting from… I’m in my early-60s – I JUST remember the TLM pre-VII. In my experience, most NO Catholics in my parish attend the Mass with reverence and with sincerity, as they see it. Any appeal to ‘how it used to be’ is history; we might as well appeal to the Reformation and hope they remember the persecutions. In discussion with a parishioner in my (NO) parish, I explained that the TLM did not have a multiplicity of Eucharistic Prayers. For most practicing Catholics, that’s completely unknown territory. “What, you mean they said the same thing each week?” they said… (Fr does think carefully about which NO prayer to use – EP2 is unusual, not unknown, EP1 whenever there is a Proper Communicantes, and sometimes really thoughtful choices (in a NO way) from the Alternative EPs).
“Not only every Sunday, but every weekday as well, with very minor alterations on Feast Days, and it was EP1 every time”. They looked at me like I had two heads. And this is a faithful Catholic who comes to Mass every Sunday and Feast Day, and other times too.
I think we need to look carefully at what is realistic. Certainly (IMHO), appealing to reduce the Readings count seems like a lost cause – I might even think that the PRINCIPLE of more readings is actually a potentially good idea, given prudent choice and a decent translation.
For faithful NO Catholics, also explaining that proclaiming the Readings in Latin, essentially as a prayer, then reading them in the vernacular (as a sort of administrative detail) is progress, particularly if your NO pastor is one who puts effort into deriving good, orthodox lessons from the readings of the day, is a hard sell… Maybe better to start with the sacrificial role of the priest ‘in persona Christi’ (= sort out the Offertory), then sort out Communion, and maybe also for those who come into contact with the TLM, an explanation of some of its more obvious symbolisms.
I’ve certainly never met a NO parishioner intent on suppressing the TLM – most of them have no idea what it is. Pray for them…
@ReadingLad
Part of the problem are those lay liturgical committees that structure the liturgy according to their designs / having a focus on entertaining people rather than following what the pastor wants and seeking to excel in giving glory to God. The other part is a pastor who want things to be about his own personality, which can be very subtle.
If both can get on the same page in regard to orthodoxy and orthopraxy, the practice of the NO liturgy can get cleaned up in a parish.
I’d argue that more than 50% of what the average petsitter gets catechesis-wise out of the Mass is what is contained in the hymns utilized. Thus it is paramount to switch to appropriate hymnals and then start phasing in the missing antiphons until all antiphons are done, hymn singing is reduced, and the amount of places for silence in the liturgy is greatly expanded.
The Liturgy, because it is Christ’s action, has a gravitational pull it to. So much of how so many NO Masses are done are done in such a way as to thwart this pull. If we would stop doing such things, so much would self-correct organically (including Latin!).
It is not hard to correct the NO — it just takes getting people’s ego out of it.
I’m in my mid80s, I remember being taught in 1949/50 that the Mass was in two parts, the Mass of the Catechumens, and then the Mass of the Faithful, as defined by St Thomas Aquinas. It was only the rubric changes in 1965 that showed the reality of that distinction.
@exseaxe
The distinction between the Mass of the Catechumens and the Mass of the Faithful comes from the ancient Church. They used to remove the unbaptized from the building. The Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom retains more of a vestige of this in the action of the Deacon)
“As long as the Discipline of the Secret was enforced, this was the period at which the Catechumens were dismissed from the assembly, terminating the Mass of the Catechumens – the word mass, “missa,” coming from “dimissio.” All who were not baptized, and all penitents, except those who had been really pardoned, were prohibited from attending the rest of the Sacrifice.” – The Sacraments and Sacramentals, Rev. S B Smith, 1884
“The Discipline of the Secret, which is of Apostolic origin, enacted that the faithful, in general, should conceal the Creed, the Sacraments, and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, from all knowledge of thd uninitiated; and the priesthood were required to convey the substance and formularies of the Liturgy, by word of mouth.” – De Disciplina Arcani, Emmanuel a Schelestre, 1685
That’s why Pliny the younger had to acquire his information about the liturgy by torturing a couple of slaves until they commited apostacy and told him what the deal with the Christians was.