Charles said:

My objection is not to the Latin Church liturgy, but to those who maintain it came forth from Trent in perfect and heavenly form and that the Church is doomed and falling apart because it is no longer the principal liturgy of the western Church.

No one is maintaining this position. Where did we say this?

And I think you need to understand that it is not mainly the form but the theology linked to the form and is the BASIS of the form; mainly the theology of sacrifice. The 'next' version of the NO will be very telling.

Then you are reading INTO what I am saying (because you have a perceived notion that everyone just wants the TLM - Gregorian Chant, etc. etc.), and not grasping what is underneath. This has nothing to do with church music or the vestments. It has to do with the tradition handed down to us, which was CHANGED INTO A NEW RITE. Hence why much of the church is following a novelty.

Are you saying a clown mass in not an error but only those celebrating it? If form is not important (as is what I am trying to promote) then anything goes; clowns, fish kites, puppets and all. And that is where we have arrived.

Ken, I didn't mean to put you on the spot---I just think Cardinal Ratzinger's statement is so compelling coming as it does from someone of his stature, but you also make valuable points about the tremendous negative impact that Catholics' behavior and lack of integrity/kindness has on others, and I imagine emotional dissonance in some individuals can be just as damaging as cognitive dissonance in others.

However, I don't think you can underestimate the fact that the liturgy, the Mass, is the primary vehicle of expression of the Catholic faith. As Pope Pius XII said in Mediator Dei:

The worship she offers to God, all good and great, is a continuous profession of Catholic faith and a continuous exercise of hope and charity, as Augustine puts it tersely. "God is to be worshipped," he says, "by faith, hope and charity."[44] In the sacred liturgy we profess the Catholic faith explicitly and openly, not only by the celebration of the mysteries, and by offering the holy sacrifice and administering the sacraments, but also by saying or singing the credo or Symbol of the faith - it is indeed the sign and badge, as it were, of the Christian - along with other texts, and likewise by the reading of holy scripture, written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The entire liturgy, therefore, has the Catholic faith for its content, inasmuch as it bears public witness to the faith of the Church.

How we worship determines how we believe and vice versa, and is the fact that so many Catholics are ignorant of the most basic tenets of the faith since the post-Conciliar liturgical reforms simply a coincidence? I think not.

[As an aside, I take your points re: making people feel welcome at Mass very much to heart and readily concede that this is a problem at some Latin Mass venues I've visited. Taking our pastor's lead, we've taken great pains to make the people at our EF Missa Cantata feel valued and welcomed. It does indeed make a difference.]

What we are fighting for here is the Classical Roman Rite

No. Maybe you are, but we (the CMAA) aren't.

Julie,
Thanks for your comments. Feel free to put me on the spot. A little thought about the faith is good for the mind and soul. I am a lover of the Latin liturgy, and your reference to Eugenio Pacelli is of particular meaning to me. Pius XII was one of the greatest men to lead the church. He is much maligned and not spoken of nearly as often as he deserves to be. Pius XII was (IMHO) the true spiritual descendant of Leo XIII. Much of the catholic church in the developing world owes its existence to the influence of Pius XII.
AS an aside, Eugenio Pacelli was consecrated a bishop on the very day that a mysterious and beautiful lady appeared to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal.

I was there, Charles. I agree with you that Pius XII was and is a saint. What you forgot to include was the rise of the culture of death. Abortion, divorce, broken families and wasted lives. Penitentiaries filled with young people looking to be led (the traditional job of a father). In many cities such as New York, a new drug came into vogue every ten years. For example: (1960's-heroin; 1970's-PCP; 1980's - crack cocaine; 1990's - meth) Once we as a society forgot about the dignity of each human person, everything else fell away.
Think about it. In NYC, the politicians took the mention of God out of classrooms and put birth control in...and WE let them do it! Is it a surprise that nothing lasting was dreamed of and accomplished in the way of advancing the human family? In a culture that seeks its own gratification at all costs, is it any wonder that so many young people lack a father and mother who love God and their children and demand great things of them?

Julie

On suburban LI, which is where I grew up in the 1960s, the people who were disaffected by the liturgical changes were attracted to Fr de Pauw. But they were relatively few; it was considered quite fringe. The vast bulk of folks who left active practice left because of Humanae Vitae and related matters. I still remembering hearing the discussions among the adults when I was a kid (those were not times where children were shielded as much anymore - the images from the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam we saw every night disabused us from such delicacies). My parents, ardently against contraception (they wanted 8 children but settled on 6 when they had what might be now called a special needs child), explained how confessional practice before HV had been presuming a different result than what ultimately was published in HV; during the preceding years of the 1960s after the advent of the Pill in 1961, confessional lines for the "pastoral" priests were long, those for the less "pastoral" priests were short - and it was mostly women in the lines, as the women took the burden of confessing since they took the Pill, but the men largely engaged in what might be called don't ask don't tell on the topic when it came up with priests, if my memory of my parents' critical explanations is more or less faithful. My parents, very devout, missed certain aspects of the old rite (my father had been an altar boy for years in a German national parish in CT in the 1930s), but largely welcomed the liturgical changes otherwise and I can remember it being generally welcomed, with some aspects being more puzzling than alienating or disaffecting.

Well, once again I thank you all for taking your time and the daring to express your thoughts (Liam, Charles, Julie, kenstb, dad29, Andrew, Salieri, Kathy and all others who contributed to this discussion) for your comments, information, and participation... it is invaluable to me, and certainly all of us in some way to understand the past 50 years of this time of unmatched change and difficulty as musicians who serve in the Roman Rite.

I and my family have suffered an unmeasurable amount of psychological, emotional, spiritual and material trial and loss as a result of the great 'diabolical confusion' that has swept through our church. Your comments and concern and dialogue help to ease in some way the burden.

I thank you.

"Bear ye one another's burdens; and so you shall fulfil the law of Christ." Galatians 6:2

What we are fighting for here is the Classical Roman Rite

No. Maybe you are, but we (the CMAA) aren't.

Gavin, the 'we' I was referring to are those of us who find the post-concilliar Liturgical 'Reform' disturbing, as well as all the rest of the upheaval and loss of Religion after the Council, and are committed to promoting and defending the Classical Latin Rite; not the CMAA. Sorry if I was unclear!

After this long discussion, I finally realized that I was just not 'getting it!' Here is the theology that explains it all:

http://rorate-caeli.blogspot.com/2014/07/two-plus-two-makes-three-after-mass.html

Ah, Catholic math. LOL. Like the article states, we live in a post-logical age. It is also a post-Christian age. What the folks at RC don't get, being isolated on their flat planet for too long, is that the majority of Catholics don't care about them or their favored rite of worship. They are off doing something else and for the most part, are not looking back. Actually, there is not much looking forward either. We live in the world of right now.

Catholic math.

Surely, this is 1+1+1=1, sometimes rendered as 3=1.

2+2=3 is something a musician should have experienced already.

A mathematical logician once gave a lecture that included the fact that, using the rules of formal logic, anything follows by assuming a falsehood.
During the question and answer session that followed, someone in the audience asked the following:

I'm not sure that I understand how anything can follow from a falsehood, so could you explain how it follows from assuming 2=1 that you are the Pope?

The lecturer thought for a moment and replied as follows:

If 2=1, then one and one are two, and hence one and one are one. Surely the Pope is one, and I am one. Therefore, since one and one are one, the Pope and I are one.

melo

lol. hope you enjoyed your stay. i envy all of you for seeing, hearing and taking in beautiful liturgy... say a HM for me.

Thanks so much to Liam, Ken and Charles for putting the liturgical reforms in context. I don't remember much about the '60's, but I can remember the psychedelic '70's and the polyester pant suits and shaded glasses. Egad.

What I don't get is this, and maybe you can shed some light on this. The 60's and 70's were 40 years ago and the "New Mass" and post-Vatican II culture has had almost total hegemony for close to 50 years. I can understand one decade of confusion, but the status and population of the Catholic Church has suffered a rapid downhill slide ever since demographically, morally, spiritually, and liturgically.

Before Vatican II, 3 out of 4 Catholics attended Sunday Mass, now it's less than 1 in 4 in the U.S.; and in the single digits in Europe. At what point will the post-Conciliar reforms kick in and produce believing, faithful, knowledgeable Catholics? It better be soon, or there's going to be nothing left, and I don't mean to be polemical here.

It's just that the news of "dozens" of Catholic churches closing in the Archdiocese of NY which serves 2.5 million Catholics, has me really spooked. What also has me quite "consternated" are the images from the 2014 Pride Parade down 5th Avenue, which I'm assuming passed right in front of St. Patrick's with our Catholic governor leading the way with his live-in girlfriend on his arm---a Catholic whom our Cardinal-Archbishop has conceded is a "Catholic in good standing."

Now I know things can always get worse, but the fact this bacchanalian display on the streets of Manhattan has garnered not one peep of protest from our Catholic leaders has me even more spooked. To tell you the truth, I didn't realize how outrageous the Pride Parades are. I'm surprised no one was arrested for indecent exposure.

What does this have to do with liturgy? Catholics believe and live as they pray. If Catholics really believed their faith (and just believed in the Ten Commandments, for starters) this kind of obscenity and blasphemy would never be tolerated in a city that is 42% Catholic.

JulieColl

Since it's 2014, it might help to consider something that happened 100 years ago this summer that was foundational for the following 100 years.

While the Reformation and then the Thirty Years War and Enlightenment and French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars and various wars of revolution in the first half of the 19th century all played significant roles in undermining established authorities, World War I was a disaster for authority on a different level, in part because industrialized technologies of transportation, communication and globalization (colonization on a intensive global scale supported by combustion engine shipping, railways, telegraphy and then wireless communications, et cet.) vastly intensified damages and their ripple effects. For the US and Japan alone among the major WW1 powers, WW1 was not as devastating an experience for authority as for the rest; our dislocations occurred on a lag. (Japan is a special case I won't treat here.) For the US, that anti-authority tsunami came after the cresting of the post-WW2 boom. And then it hit with a vengeance. The Catholic Church was not immune to it, and retaining the 1962 Missal would not, in my opinion, have had enduring positive effects against that wave.

FWIW, Pride marches (now parades) have been going down Fifth Avenue since the 1970s, IIRC, and were once far more outrageous, if memory serves, than they typically are today, when they've become heavy with corporate-sponsored groups. Catholic cities have long been known by Protestants to be relatively tolerant of outrageous public carnivals for many centuries: Venice, German Carnival cities, and New Orleans & Rio just to name a few (Pride has nothing on Mardi Gras for mass public obscenity - hey, I was in New Orleans for Halloween when it fell on a Saturday in the early '90s and what I saw there was quite outrageous too.)

Alright, Liam, you make an excellent point about how the Enlightenment paved the way for anti-authoritarian attitudes, etc., but I'm still not ready to concede that the Novus Ordo has not contributed significantly to the dissolution of Faith that we see all around us.

Catholic leadership has indeed devolved as a result of popular pressure and attitudes, but is the Novus Ordo merely a neutral development alongside that devolution? I would maintain that far from being neutral, the post-Conciliar liturgical reform was a handy vehicle for promoting the revolution since its (intended?) plasticity and flexibility allows it to become whatever its managers want it to be.

On the contrary, no one could ever take the 1962 Missal and use it to celebrate and bless (in extreme cases, to be sure) the agenda of Marxists, active homosexuals, modernists, and others who have, to their eternal discredit, used the Holy Mass to prop up their own erroneous political/philosophical/ideological aims.

I would maintain that far from being neutral, the post-Conciliar liturgical reform was a handy vehicle for promoting the revolution since its (intended?) plasticity and flexibility allows it to become whatever its managers want it to be.

I am no rabid promoter of the NO and sure, it created some problems. It is the liturgy we have been given and is what most of us have to work within. As for using it to their own ends, those who use the Church more than they serve it is nothing new. I have no difficulty seeing the differences between the old and new Roman Rites, but I have no authority to determine which rite is dominant.

In an interview with Fr. Gabriel Bunge, who wrote the wonderful book, "Earthen Vessels: The Practice of Personal Prayer According to the Patristic Tradition," he explains why he left Catholicism for Orthodoxy. I will put the link below Julie, since you may find it interesting. But Fr. Gabriel mentions something about the new rite which I will post although I am tired of cut-and-paste threads.

—Just as an aside, last spring there was a delegation from Russia present at a celebration in Sicily commemorating the aid given by Russian soldiers to victims of the great Messina earthquake in 1908. The Russian clergy present were invited to serve the Liturgy for the local Orthodox congregation in the Capella Palatina in Palermo. —Ah, beautiful. The Russians continually celebrate solemn Liturgies in the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Bari. I have seen one Liturgy there celebrated by a Russian Metropolitan, about 20 priests, with a large choir. And I thought, “That is the Liturgy required by this beautiful cathedral. But when it was over, the Latin mass started… and you want to cry. You want to ask, “What are you doing here?” In a way, this is something out of the ordinary, but it shows that many Catholics are not sure any more that they are right.

Here is the link to the article

http://www.pravoslavie.ru/english/65138.htm

Alexander's death changed everything for the worse, no question about that. The Russian Church labels Nicholas II a passion-bearer, not a martyr.

The true reason for the devastation which swept through Europe after World War I was that none of the so-called powers of that day listened to to the wisdom of Benedict XV. He called the war the suicide of civilized Europe, and he was right. He also wrote to the bishops in communion with Rome to protest what he saw as a diminution in the quality of priests that the seminaries were producing. He was quite a visionary, as is his namesake.

Julie, as for our so called "catholic" governor in NY, I am horrified that our cardinal archbishop has had nothing to say about the life he seems to hold out to the public. Personally, I don't really care about who he lives with or what he does on his own time, after all, it's his own immortal soul that he is risking and I'm not certain that he believes that he has one. What perturbs me is that he is openly and notoriously espousing positions which fly in the face of what we claim to have believed. The problem is that we go along with the labels that people use and fail to speak out about the substance beneath the surface. The man is not a catholic. His life proclaims that his words are untrue. I am not troubled by this. During the sex abuse crisis, I always took the position that a person can call himself anything. It is his life that speaks to what he is. Thomas Aquinas said, action follows being. He was right. In order for what you and I have seen to happen, there must be a consistent push to deny the existence of sin. (I think that my friend Francis will agree with me here) The long term effect of this denial is what we see now...abortion on demand, a redefinition of the sacrament of marriage, so-called free love, etc... And the result? Young women effectively sterilized by the abortion mills even though science has proved that babies are not part of their mother's bodies. For the adherents of free love...the majority of African American children in NYC live in single parent homes. Why? No one is preaching personal responsibility anymore. Children raising children...and on and on.


With respect to how the liturgy flew so completely out of hand in this country after VII, there are many reasons. To an extent, most of our elders were not interested in fighting at church for the liturgy they deserved. To be quite honest, I understand. I fight with people every day in court, verbally and with the written word. The last thing that I want to do on my own time is argue with a priest who has his own ideas about liturgy, especially when the bishop will not back me up even when I am correct. For some people, it was easier to leave, and they did. It seems to me that the episcopacy was simply interested in keeping any explosions from happening on their watch. Some still are.

What I would like to see (especially since pope emeritus Benedict XVI hinted at it) is for some of the form of the EF to be returned to the OF. For example, the full Confiteor and the triple Kyrie. Simple English Propers are a good start for parishes with no facility in Latin. The work that we do now as liturgical musicians hopefully will help to restore some of the majesty that was so easily discarded in favor of what was new. This is an exciting time and a challenging one. We do struggle against spiritual wickedness in very high places. Nevertheless, "...the gates of hell will not prevail against it."