If you had a hand missal or went to an website like
Sancta Missa , which also has an app, you could have followed the whole thing, since unlike the Novus Ordo Missae, there are no options in the old Tridentine Mass, other than if it is a Solemn High Mass, or a Low Mass, and whether or not there is a bishop, or if it is a marriage, or a mass for the dead, or a votive mass, all of which are pretty obvious, except perhaps votive masses, but I don’t think they can be celebrated on Sundays or Feast Days , perhaps
@chevyontheriver or
@Michie know or know someone who knows. We really need to get a good Roman Catholic liturgist on this forum, right now we have several good Eastern Orthodox and Anglican liturgists, but I don’t think we have any Roman Catholic clergy or deacons or liturgical experts at present. But I can look this point up, in the unlikely event anyone cares .
Right now, and this is not intended as a boast, I am probably the closest thing we have to a Roman Catholic liturgist, which is bad because I’m not Roman Catholic, but I am a scholar of the liturgy with some knowledge of the Roman Catholic liturgical rites, and a strong interest in them. I recently obtained a book on the Dominican RIte liturgy which I am looking forward to sucking down, as that’s a rather thrilling subject - the Dominican Rite was the first attempt I am aware of to create a standard liturgy that could be used everywhere, before the Tridentine Mass that followed the Council of Trent, since before that time, different uses of the Roman Rite flourished throughout Europe, and unfortunately most of these were lost during the Reformation and Counter Reformation, but some have survived, some under unexpected circumstances. Specifically the Roman Rite uses of Lyons, Braga, and Cologne survive, and the four regional uses of England, those of Sarum (Salisbury), which was the most important, York, Hereford and Durham survive, at least the Sarum and York missals survive, and Anglicans have been largely responsible for their preservation, since unlike, for example, the use of Lyons, the use of Sarum is not officially sanctioned by the RCC.
Unfortunately, the Rite of Braga, historically the main liturgy in Portugal, has become critically endangered.
There are several other uses whose texts survive, but which are not actively in use. There are also two versions of the Gallican Rite still being celebrated - the Ambrosian Rite, which survives in one parish in its ancient form, and throughout the rest of Milan in its modified post-Conciliar form, and the Mozarabic Rite, which in the late 19th century was still being celebrated in five parishes in Toledo, but which now is only being celebrated in a dedicated chapel in the Cathedral of Toledo, and in a nearby monastery. However, it is preserved as a living tradition, and Pope St. John Paul II celebrated it at St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican in the 1990s, which is thrilling.
Several of the uses of the Roman Rite compiled by religious orders survive however, including some which I thought were extinct, but which are actually alive and kicking. In addition to the aforementioned Dominican Rite, there is the textually very similar Carthusian Rite, which is used by the Carthusian monks, and which differs from the Dominican RIte mainly in terms of rubrics and the quality of the hymns - Carthusians sing Gregorian Chant in a very mournful way, whereas the Dominican form of Gregorian Chant is particularly bright and cheerful. Then there is the Norbertine Use, and there is a Norbertine monastery of St. Michael located in Southern California I hope to visit, and the Carmelite Use, there being a Carmelite monastery in Wyoming which I also hope to visit, as a well as a mainly Vietnamese parish in upstate New York whose priest is a Carmelite and frequently celebrates the Carmelite mass. And there are a few others if I recall.
At any rate, with the Tridentine Mass, the beauty of it is that no matter where you went in the world, you can always follow the it, since the liturgy is basically invariant, aside from the propers, and so as long as you have a hand missal or remember the text, you are covered. And this is also the case with the Dominican, Carmelite and other uses of the religious orders, and so some people who might have a close relative in one of the orders or a particular attachment to it would have a Dominican hand missal rather than a Tridentine. At any rate, the actual content of the mass doesn’t vary that much, since they were all very similar, and a non-Tridentine mass was easy to avoid, and these days, most places celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass make hand missals available to those in attendance. The parish near me has beautiful missals that I mentioned before, the Missal of St. Edmund Campion, which I highly recommend and would like to have a copy of in my library, as it is such a beautiful book, being large, in full color, with photographs, and the English translation being in traditional English.
With the Novus Ordo Missae, there are four different Eucharistic prayers in routine use, plus at least two others for specialized use, and numerous options avaiable to the celebrant, which makes it much more complex. Orthodox liturgies are that complex, so I don’t mind the increased complexity, but the Orthodox also tend to make use of the vernacular in such a way as to teach other languages to the people, as mentioned previously, and also many parishes do things in a very standardized way - for example, even though there are 86 anaphoras, or Eucharistic prayers, in the Syriac Orthodox liturgy, most parishes use only one of them, and likewise the Copts will typically only use one of their three anaphoras except on Pascha and a few other occasions, when they use the Anaphora of St. Gregory the Theologian instead of that of St. Basil, with the Anaphora of St. Cyril usually only being used midweek during Lent, if ever. The Coptic priest, unlike his Syriac Orthodox counterpart, has a choice of fraction prayers, but many will just use one (amusingly, the Syrian Fraction, which is basically the same one used in the Syriac Orthodox liturgy, is the most popular). However, the Copts and Syriacs have made their liturgies more accessible than even most Eastern Orthodox, by employing LCD screens on which the liturgy is translated in English, Arabic, and Syriac or Coptic as appropriate. And the Coptic and Syriac tends to be phonetically Romanized, so those wishing to sing along in Coptic and Syriac can do so without knowing Greek or Estrangelo script, respectively.
In the Eastern Orthodox church, the celebrant does not have very many choices - the Typikon of his jurisdiction, parish or monastery specifies pretty much everything, such as what hymns will be sung, what divine liturgy will be used, et cetera.
So I guess my point is that while we can handle the increased complexity, the argument of those Roman Catholics who love the traditional mass, many of whom grew up with it and had to endure painfully the transition to the Novus Ordo Missae, that the old mass has the advantage of universal accessibility, is a pretty compelling one. Since the hymns were standardized like in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, once one knows what “Gloria in excelsis Deo” or “Agnus Dei” mean in English, following the Tridentine mass is a piece of cake in any country. For example, the Gospel read at the end of the mass - that’s always John 1:1-14, the Last Gospel, which is always read at the end of a Solemn High Mass or a Missa Cantata (which is a mass that has a choir and is sung, but lacks a deacon or subdeacon, and which is the most frequently encountered form of Traditional Latin Mass). The Armenians also picked up that custom, as did the Maronites, and it also spread to the Ambrosian Rite.
Although interestingly, it was historically not a part of the Dominican Mass - it was not universal in the 14th century, when the Dominican liturgy was compiled as a standard for use by Dominican friars throughout Europe, so they would not have to learn the local uses, and for many years they resisted its inclusion, and even after being forced to include the Last Gospel, many Dominican priests would show their disapproval by, for instance, extinguishing the candles while it was being read, which I find amusingly passive/aggressive. I feel that the Dominicans should have been allowed to govern their own liturgy. In Eastern Orthodoxy, most monasteries have fairly wide latitude to control their typikon, so for example, in my church, the OCA, the New Skete monastery, which used to be Byzantine Rite Catholic but joined us several decades ago, has an experimental liturgy that was intended to revive aspects of the old Cathedral Use of the Hagia Sophia, and also feature various simplifications, so as to suit the monks very active lifestyle, which is centered around breeding German Shepherd dogs. I have one of their Euchologions, with the Divine Liturgies of St. James, St. Basil and St. John Chrysostom, and they are following a very different order of worship than what one will find in any of our parishes.
Likewise, the rubrics followed in our Albanian or Romanian parishes are very different from those followed in our Russian, American or Native Alaskan parishes.
However, the Divine Liturgy is such that once you know it, it is very easy to follow no matter where you go, much like the old Roman mass or the traditional Anglican BCP.
CS Lewis wrote a very good article about the importance of not capriciously changing the liturgy, due to the problems it causes the laity, which I strongly agree with:
C. S. Lewis on the Theology and Practice of Worship
