VirgiltheRoman said:
Global: It's mainly the prayers that got me. I read and saw the depth of the prayers years before I ever actually was able to attend the TLM. It was humility and depth of the Tridentine Mass that made me want to go. It is so much more Catholic; explicitly and in depth than the Novus Ordo. That's why waited years to want to go to one; I wasn't disappointed. I got the same reverence and holiness from the Holy Ghost a Byzantine Mass, the Divine Liturgy of St John Chrysostom as well. Truly an encounter with God and a 'meeting of Heaven and Earth'.
I will say, I actually
like the text of the Tridentine Mass and don't have any issues with it, but I hope that you can understand my perspective on this, too. For a person who didn't know what they were saying, the wording of the prayers, the liturgy, and everything else would seem completely meaningless. In the Middle Ages, for instance, and in many parts of the Catholic world right up to Vatican II, whether most people would have even understood what they were saying is questionable (in the Middle Ages,
highly questionable). The Church doesn't just make decisions for those of us in America, who have the liberty of being able to access a translation of the words of the Mass. Those of us in the U.S. and in other first world nations actually probably make up a minority of the Catholic faithful. The Second Vatican Council was faced with a world where the life of worship of the laity was separated from the liturgy, and they sought to remedy that by making the Mass more available to people in different regions throughout the world.
Maybe, but it also increases your ability to get away with it.
True, although parishes with the highest chance for the more serious instances of liturgical abuse also aren't likely to have the best catechesis. I know that there were problems with the formation of the faith of Catholics prior to the institution of the modern form of the Mass (and I would actually argue that understanding was lower in some ways then than it is now), but areas where the sort of liturgical horror shows that G-com refers to happen are also the type where the priest is most likely to be more liberal theologically. At any rate, yes, you have a point.
To be fair, what I had in mind were different forms of liturgical abuse than what you're probably thinking of. Virgil brought up a few that might have been common prior to the institution of the newer form of the Mass. I was thinking more of intentional alterations to the Mass. The "horror show" types of liturgical abuse that G-Com was talking about usually occur as a result of misunderstanding the nature of the Mass and mixing it with elements from mega-church Protestant worship services.
For Protestants, Sunday worship is centered primarily around the message given by the preacher, and so at some Evangelical mega-churches, it's not uncommon to bring in a certain element of showmanship to help get the message across or draw attention from an audience that might not be tremendously receptive to more traditional forms of preaching. Sometimes this is done more tastefully than at other times, and so it's not always a bad thing in that context. The liturgy, though, is qualitatively different. At the liturgy, the focus should be primarily on the Eucharist and on Christ's presence. As a result, we can't do that and you get events like the "clown Mass" that people bring up when they refer to liturgical abuses.
It's easier for a priest with a malformed understanding of the liturgy to mistake its holy nature now that it's in the vernacular, since the Tridentine Mass was much more clearly separate. That
isn't to suggest that anything is wrong with Mass in the vernacular. I actually support the use of the vernacular in Mass. It is to say, though, that there needs to be a better understanding of the nature of the liturgy in Catholicism in a nation where the services most people go to on Sundays look similar externally but are in reality much different.
You came back to our community! It's clear now that you want to be an active member and that your motives are pure....what with all of your posts having been on the very narrow topic of Mr Vorris.
. As well as friars like Thomas De Torquemada
