Why catholic traditionalist like the latin mass

Athanasias said:

This explains why young Catholic traditionalist like myself like the latin mass.

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How old are you?

Athanasias said:

42

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No offense, but if you are young then I am a baby.

Athanasias said:

You think 42 is old? I don't even have grey hair yet! What are you a teen or something? LOL anyway most of the people I see at my Latin Mass Parish are not older then the mid 40's and most are large families with parents in the 20's 30's.

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I'm 20.

Athanasias said:

LOL ok so your one year shy of being a teen. I do see alot of kids at latin mass from various age groups I would say infant-late teens and many early to mid 20's and 30's(often times with thier own kids).

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Interesting.
It is easy to know I am really young since I have a Taylor Swift's profile.

This is not a criticism, but I confess I do not understand the attraction or continuing use of Latin (or Greek) in services by people who do not speak those languages. I fail to understand how that is meaningful to worshippers? I'm interested in learning what its fans find attractive about it.

seeking.IAM said:

This is not a criticism, but I confess I do not understand the attraction or continuing use of Latin (or Greek) in services by people who do not speak those languages. I fail to understand how that is meaningful to worshippers? I'm interested in learning what its fans find attractive about it.

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For many of us, there is a continuity, beauty, changelessness, a connection to a 2,000 year old past in Liturgy, an ability to express theological ideas in terms which may be more subtle or specific than what the vernacular allows for, etc.

Additionally, if you listen closely, and take time to learn, it's often not hard to begin to understand what you hear, and begin to understand if not speak the language you're hearing.

I think every Apostolic Church has liturgies / masses in a liturgical language as at least an option. Like Aramaic, Coptic, Ge'ez, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Koine Greek, and others. I think initially, even Anglicans used Latin.

Gracia Singh said:

,, I think initially, even Anglicans used Latin.

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Yes, and Latin is still used, in part, in Anglo-Catholic, High Church parishes like mine. Nonetheless, I don't prefer it and don't find it meaningful. Perhaps if I was cradle Anglican rather than a convert after 50 years a Methodist, I might appreciate it more. Again, I don't disparage it, but I don't prefer it.

Some of the other things Athanasias mentions, our mass includes without a total Latin service...sacred music using organ every Sunday, sung mass, chant, kneeling for communion, receiving on the tongue if the communicant prefers, and in my church the priest facing the alter (during Lent only).

In any case, Gracia Singh and Athanasias, thanks for sharing what you value about it.

Athanasias said:

Sure thanks for sharing the conversation with us! Its ok Latin is not for everyone. The Church is a big place.

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I have met very few Catholics who have attended a TLM and not come to love it. As I've mentioned a few times, my old FSSP parish's average age worked out to around 40 or so. And it was only that high because some real old timers were skewing the numbers upward. There were bunches of Millennial families with children in the upper 20's or lower 30's. My generation has great affection for the Latin Mass precisely because of it's utter lack of artificiality. The TLM is the real deal.

Athanasias said:

LOL well maybe some of us fogie's listen to her(not me). I admit your right on that! I would have a icon of Weird Al Yankovic.

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Does this work?

Gracia Singh said:

I think every Apostolic Church has liturgies / masses in a liturgical language as at least an option. Like Aramaic, Coptic, Ge'ez, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Koine Greek, and others. I think initially, even Anglicans used Latin.

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I'd argue that any language in which we worship is a "liturgical language." English is not less "liturgical" for being the language we also use in secular settings.

For me, the important principle is that the people are able to understand the language; so Latin, fine, if the congregation are actually taught it enough to understand it. In some circles Latin might actually be the language in common for people from different cultural backgrounds, for example. Less fine if it's just used as a kind of exotic prop to piety. (Which I'm not suggesting is true of anyone in this thread, but which I have observed, for example, in my parents).

seeking.IAM said:

This is not a criticism, but I confess I do not understand the attraction or continuing use of Latin (or Greek) in services by people who do not speak those languages. I fail to understand how that is meaningful to worshippers? I'm interested in learning what its fans find attractive about it.

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As a Greek chanter, there are some advantages for a mix of vernacular and a liturgical language. If I would go to Greece, I could at least follow the service, even though I cannot speak any other Greek. For a Roman Catholic, they could travel from France to Italy and still follow the Latin Mass. Even though I dont speak Latin, if I would attend a Latin Mass, I would at least know a few phrases such as "In nomine Patris et fillii et Spiritus Sancti" and know to cross myself. The other thing is that some hymns just simply "work" in the liturgical language but not when they are translated as the meter may not match up.

In the case of Coptic, which I will admit is probably the least outwardly 'sensible' to keep (though this is from a linguist's perspective, not a religious argument), seeing as how it is not the parent of any current natively-spoken language today (so it's not really comparable to Latin > modern Romance languages, OCS > modern South Slavic languages, Classical Armenian > modern Armenian, etc.), by now, many centuries after its 'natural' death (see here, e.g., McCoull "The Strange Death of Coptic Culture", in the anthology of her work Coptic Perspectives on Late Antiquity), it has perhaps quite paradoxically regained a level of necessity or at least usefulness that it would not otherwise have had before the modern era, because since the standardization of printing and typing the language has been afforded to us since the 1800s (when the first ever printing press was brought to Egypt on the order of HH Pope Cyril IV, one of the fathers of modern Coptic education), there has been a real push to revitalize the language and bring it back as a spoken language for all Egyptians (not just Christians; "Copt" didn't acquire the meaning of "Egyptian Christian" until after the Arab-Muslim conquest, and it still doesn't have that in the language itself, where of course Copts aren't called "Copts" to begin with). It is not successful in Egypt, primarily due to the lack of state backing/allowing it to be taught in institutions outside of the Church, but in the diaspora it has had some limited success in a few places where it is the passion project of particular priests and others. Without the preservation of the language liturgically and especially in monasteries, the Coptic people would not even have this limited success to build on in their hopes for the future when everyone can speak it again. And it should be said they are not the only ones who want this: another good side effect is now when Egyptian Muslims who are not Arabists, however few they may be, want to learn their original language, they have to go to churches and monasteries to do so, and they do. So in the world are probably a few thousand Muslims (and that might be generous, but I've heard about this a lot, from several different sources) who are in their homes, repeating to themselves "Khen efran Emefyot, nem Epshiri, nem Pnevma Ethowab, o-Nouti en-Oout" (In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, the One God), because now it is impossible to reconnect with their true roots via this language without reconnecting with their previous religion, since they are inextricably linked and only the Church has actually made any effort to preserve the true heritage of the average ethnic Egyptian (not to discount the others present in Egypt since before Islam as well, like the Greeks, Nubians, pre-Islamic Arabs, Berbers, etc., but none of these are as specifically identified with the indigenous Egyptian culture, with the possible exception of the Nubians since Nubia has always been located at least part way in Egypt; but they also remained their own distinctive population, even as they borrowed their writing system and received their first bishops from the Copts during the time of HH St. Athanasius the Apostolic, who sent the first bishops to the Nubian regions in the 340s).

So I think there can be an argument made for the preservation of liturgical languages in a very limited context such as this one. This argument will probably eventually apply to the speakers of the various Neo-Aramaic dialects, too, as all of their modern dialects are highly endangered (some have died already in recent years, such as Mlhaso, which effectively died in 1998 when its last native speaker, Ibrahim Hanna, died in Qamishli, Syria; he had a son who still lived as of 2009 who can speak it to some degree, but it is not his native language), and the amount of materials published in modern Neo-Aramaic is a tiny fraction compared to that published in/on Syriac, so any future revival efforts will probably be greatly aided by keeping the classical language alive liturgically in their churches and monasteries.

According to Pope Benedict XIV, the Ordinary Form (OF) borrows from much of Church history, and that the problem isn't so much the form but the way it is abused by some. He also argues that the OF and the Extraordinary Form (EF) are one and the same rite, and that if practiced correctly, the OF can be an enriching experience. He adds that the EF was brought back because it was never abrogated and that some miss it.

Finally, another source adds that the revised liturgy uses much of the Bible.