But then, I must have a warped sense of humor ...Like the author of Rorate Caeli, who today posted this: "Traditional Mass rubrics are nothing...":
...compared to the different versions of the New Mass's "General Instruction of the Roman Missal", and additional documents. It seems there is not only one version per language, or even one per country, but one for each publishing house, and one for each missalette. Perhaps this is what is meant by active participation in the "Ordinary form": things are just so different, from country to country, from diocese to diocese, from parish to parish, between priests in the same parish, or even between masses of the same priest (depending on the "audience"), that one is forced to participate even if only to grasp what local "rite" is actually being celebrated... And this only in English![Hat tip to Rorate Caeli]
They should just leave the name Roman to the "Extraordinary people", and call it the Babel Missal.
I saw this and wanted to post about it... but I dont think I have the gravitas that you or Rorate have.
ReplyDeleteIt is both funny... and a little naughty. I am glad to see people talking about it.
Just remember....schism always happens from the right...dissent more likely from the left....both are mortal sins.
ReplyDeleteLatin is not universal; ask two thirds of the earth...China and India just for starters. Ask Japan, Saudi Arabia etc etc.
Facing east for the priest....let western muslims do that alone. See Christ's words to the Samaritan woman about the physical mountains and how the spiritual are not concerned about such things as critical. You remember Christ's words there right? Jn.4
Jesus said to her, "Believe me, woman, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
22
You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews.
23
But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; 9 and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship him.
A caveat: when I promote Latin or traditional Latin-Rite rubrics, I am assuming a context of the Roman Rite. I'm not assuming that Latin will be spoken in Heaven. Though you never know ...
ReplyDeleteI wonder whether Arius was on the "right" or "left" when he took two-thirds of the Church in the 4th and 5th centuries with him into the Arian heresy. I don't suppose it matters much. The truth prevailed, Deo gratias.
One interpretation of the Samaritan woman's words (though, I trust, not the interpretation that "Anonymous" is here advancing) takes it to relativize all traditional forms of worship, such that only those who somehow "transcend" those traditional forms "worship the Father in Spirit and truth." I think this is sometimes the temptation of some of those among us who are our charismatic friends.
I do not think that is the understanding our Lord is advancing here, but, rather, the view that wherever God is truly worshiped, it is by those whose hearts are turned to Him in Spirit and in truth.
For Catholics, this means that whether our liturgy is Ambrosian, Byzantine, Marionite, or Roman rite, our worship must be "sacramental": incarnating the Spirit of truth.
In the meantime, I reiterate a truth I am fond of repeating -- the words of St. Paul in 2 Thes. 2:15: "Stand firm and hold fast to the traditions that you have been taught, whether by word or our epistle."
Even St. Paul, whose received his apostleship from a direct encounter with the risen Christ, subsequently went up to Jerusalem to have his understanding of the Gospel vetted by St. Peter and the other bishops of the early Church (Gal. 1:18-19; 2:1-2). Mystical experience must be subordinated to Apostolic Tradition. Otherwise, mysticism begins in "mist" and ends in "schism."
Is it correct that Pope Damasus introduced Latin into the Mass when it had in fact become the vernacular of the people so that his goal was not Latin but his goal was having the Mass in the language of the people. St. Paul in your cite of him received no Latin Mass as custom since the earliest Church was the Jews like Paul who would have been revolted at Latin by association with those who killed Christ at Caiphas' behest. I remember the blogs talking about the coming motu proprio for the Latin Mass for months as though it were going to be something akin to Weigel's TOB as a time bomb that would go off in the 21st
ReplyDeletecentury. We are becoming.....the boy who cried pet issue
instead of wolf...the anti-climatic ones.....with an internet
priest who seems to believe that facing east priests would
make all scandals vanish. Didn't the non contracepting too
open to life (7 children...6 as Cardinal, one as Pope) Pope
Alexander VI say the Mass in Latin?
Is facing east and Latin a magical talisman for some....like
Mt.Gerizim for the Samaritans. If so does the issue in its extremist forms among the schismatics amount to a sin of magic...as Chinese Feng Shui can in its insistence on a door facing this way and no other.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteIn the great East-West schism we recognize legimacy of rites. Interestingly enough, The church shows no tendency to deny the legitmacy of the traditional rites of the schismatic side while it is hard pressed to argue that the rites on its side do not really represent a break with tradition.
Dissent may be a mortal sin depending on what is involved but those who persist in such dissent and don't get their way generally have to be kicked out of the church.
The Mass is where God is to be worshiped in Spirit and Truth, which is in essence what this controversy is all about.
"Mystical experience must be subordinated to Apostolic Tradition. Otherwise, mysticism begins in "mist" and ends in "schism.""
ReplyDeleteThat is an excellent comment. I would love to hear you expound on this. Especially in light of recent apparitions that don't appear to mimic Traditional apparitions.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteIt may be true that the Mass was first developed in Latin in the West for the same reason that St. Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin is called the "Vulgate." To wit, because Latin was the "vulgar" or "vernacular" mother tongue of the Roman Empire.
That did not prevent Latin from eventually becoming what Hebrew became to native speakers of Aramaic, or Elizabethan English to native speakers of modern Anglicans: the official language of worship, even if and where it was no longer spoken. As Hebrew continues to be revered in Synagogues and Elizabethan English in Anglican and Episcopal churches, so Latin continues to be revered as the choicest language of worship in Roman Catholic tradition, at least still in the so-called Tridentine tradition.
What's wrong with this? Absolutely nothing. In fact, as the Kwasniewski post suggests, there are plenty of arguments to support it, which don't bear repeating here.
What makes you think that St. Paul, a Roman citizen who appealed to Caesar when his person was threatened, would have shunned Latin? Paul was the protégé of Gamaliel, one of the two leading rabbis in Jerusalem. He was being groomed to eventually take his place. His education surpassed that of any others in Palestine. He knew not only Aramaic and Hebrew, but Greek and Latin -- the lingua franca of the Empire. He was far from being an backwater Palestinian xenophobe.
Furthermore, your "points" referencing Weigel on the TOB and Pope Alexander VI's celebration of the Latin Mass are red herrings as well as ad hominems which strike out. Abusus non tollit usum. Fanatics and scoundrels can be found in abundance promoting the vernacular Mass too. Big woopie.
Who here is attacking the legitimacy of other, non-Latin rites? Read Dan's comment.
George
ReplyDeletePaul if human could know Latin and seasonally dislike it by association even if he had to use it.
Some early saints hated soldiering by association with Rome though the canon and Romans 13:4 ended that...and as birth control implements were hated and associated with Roman prostitutes....and lending at interest was hated by association with Jews which helped distort that issue until 1830.....(not for Calvin who had our answer of moderate interest n 1545 A.D....so we were late...sue us....we managed to say we were waiting for money to change in
its nature.)
Latin is the extraordinary form not the ordinary form. Next you'll be following an unknown Pope standing in baroque vestments outside a Kentucky shack like I once saw on the internet.
Catullus wrote porn in Latin and brutal soldiers used Latin all the time. It's not intrinsically elite like Poulet au Riesling. Europe....that moment in time when barbarians went from eating on the ground to making quiche and brochettes....and then looked down on the remaining barbarians of the earth for eating on the ground.....Europe taught you that the common becomes elite... if you wait long enough. No....that's wine that often does that.
Anonymous,
ReplyDeleteDo you have anything relevant to the post you're trying to say? If so, please just say it, clearly and succinctly and with a modicum of civility. Or, with all due respect, are you merely intent on hurling mud pies at everyone who disagrees with you and making an ass of yourself?
So far I've tried to distill everything you've said so far into twenty-five words or less, and I've managed to get: "Poo-pooh on Latin and all you idiot slobs enamored with it." Sound about right?
No, it's more serious than that. What is the percentage of your group that ends up in schism? Scripture says...."he that contemneth little things will fall little by little.". That could you with the lead post of this thread. Adios.
ReplyDeleteThe future will tell, won't it.
ReplyDeleteWhoever thinks this post represents ANY inclination towards dissent "on the right" needs to get a sense of humor and a life. Jack Nicholson might have said something a bit more colorful.
ReplyDeleteBut the point is that this is FUNNY (really FUNNY, get it?), and those lard bucket souls sentiments so constipated that they cannot see that are simply pitiable.
Somebody in these comment boxes said compared the Novus Ordo to a Ford Pinto, and said (referring to all the media hype over the forthcoming implementation of the changes in the new English translation of the Missal): it may be a shiny new coat of paint for the automobile, but it is still a Ford Pinto.
With all due respect to the Novus Ordo, which has been the principal means of sacramental grace for Catholics over the past four decades, I found that so funny that I could hardly stop laughing all evening when I first read it.
Come on. You've got to have a sense of humor if you don't want to spend all your time weeping.