It isn’t immediately clear whether your example adds to whatever’s already in the Mass, or integrates with it.

For instance, the readings, homily, etc will be the same length regardless; incense at the Offertory will rarely stretch beyond a hymn, whereas it often lasts longer than the offertory antiphon (unless you’re doing both…); Holy Communion might take much longer if it’s just the priest distributing, or it may not (this is one reason why the Good Lord gives us deacons, plus altar rails are great for reducing hanging about); the Roman Canon adds a couple of minutes at most; a decent chanted Ordinary won’t be much more than a not-so-decent one. So what adds the time? Perhaps a sung Creed, or always doing a polyphonic Mass setting, or always having communio and a motet and a hymn; or an (injudicious?) insistence on “always doing both”?

Some places insist on entrance hymn+antiphon+psalm+Gloria Patri+antiphon, which is bound to be too long in the Ordinary Form. The Graduale permits just the antiphon, and that’s without getting into simplified propers.

The goal could be: all Graduale all the time; all Graduale plus always everything else; a judicious bit of everything. I don’t think the last of those is always a bad idea…

Parking lot issues is why some parishes schedule their longest Masses for the last Mass of morning/midday on Sunday where there is no slot immediately following. Then again, that time also straddles Sunday in a way that would self-select out people whose schedules don't have room for that.

Homilies that feel long are a problem regardless of context. Perhaps worser if they are sermons instead of homilies.

Keeping in mind that the Mass is the unbloody sacrifice of Calvary, remember that took 3 hours, so no congregants should be complaining.

Kathy,

Eons ago I was hired to (as the pastor put it) "put the parish through detox". He wanted to eliminate the music previously plentifully in evidence -- and bring two things in their place: 1) he wanted reverent music; 2) he refused to waste people's time or talk down to them.

Sure, there were some people who were unhappy, and a conversation with one of them led me to write my first parodies, but there were also others who were relieved, overjoyed, excited and enriched.

The building didn't suddenly become beautiful, and we didn't get a real organ or a choir loft, or anything close, but the parish matured. One of the happiest people, when it came to the change in music, was a 16 yr old young lady.

In a different parish, I was asked to start a children's choir without calling it that because [rant skipped] and the children were exhausted when I tried to teach them as the parish director of early childhood education had told me I must (I was young and stupid then.) Three weeks in, I changed course, and assigned the choirs under my direction to sing for the Triduum, dividing up the load between three groups. The "children" I assigned to Maundy Thursday, and so they learned the Pange Lingua processional chant, AND LOVED IT. One of the people who was most pleased was the daughter of the leaders of the folk group, which had maintained independence from my authority.

So, yes, there will be people who resist reform of silliness, but your job isn't to refuse to reform because of them.

Kathy,

Father's attitude was, roughly, "Waste nobody's time, but cut no corners".

When I was teaching (I've told this anecdote before),early in my career, I was told that since my competition for the children's attention was the video games (of the 1990s) I needed my classroom to be high sugar, high caffeine, instant and frequent reward. I recognized (without trying that) that I couldn't compete with a flashing screen. Accordingly, I made my classroom content rich, engaging, and frequently monitored: kids had to pay attention, and found doing so rewarding.

Don't cater to the average American's attention span.

The lector may be ready to go, but it is well worth the formality of catching the celebrants eye and a nod of acknowledgement, both to give people time to focus attention (some of us are getting old and slow) and to put on display the formal structure of the rite.

Communion rails work wonders for decreasing the time of Mass.

Over here Mass is routinely 55 - 60 minutes. That is with a 10 minute homily. If Mass is expected to go long, Father will reduce the time of his homily (it's hard to find a priest willing to do that!) a bit to keep Mass around an hour anyway.

the homily and announcements (aka homily-recap-time) are the two things which most impact the length of Mass

Someone needs to compose Rossini Propers for homilies. For brevity's sake.

Example, a Mode VIII homily could be:

"Here is where I tell you my amusing a-necdote: *
now go follow the Commandments, and have a nice day."

Likewise for announcements:

"If you want to know what's going on in the pa-rish, † simply take a look in the bul-letin - /
We didn't go to the trouble of printing so many off just because we secretly hate Lau-da-to Si."

If the Mass is not the main focus of your Sunday you are on the wrong path.

That's at the core of the problem, but the following question is: does the current way Mass is celebrated contribute to this problem?

I'm afraid that the answer is not as simple as 'the more Mass is according to what the Church asks us to do, the more it helps people in the good direction'.
Our priest has elimiated virtually all liturical abuses (except, if you count this as one, female altar servers) and we have altar bells, incence, all people in the sanctuary properly vested, propers, etc etc.
Yet we see our attendence drop in spite of attracting quite some people who come especially for the 'traditionality' of our liturgy. All this 'ars celebrandy' fails to implicitly educate too many people - anyone an idea how to explain this phenomenon? (well, I do have some myself...) Rather than asking (critical) questions on what is going on, which they don't understand, they stay away.

What struk me recently: my teenage daughter who was 'liturgically socialised' this way (and still loves being altar server once a month) now prefers to go to our neighbor parish to their 'happy-clappy' Mass... and when she is with us in the pews once in a while and we ask her later what she thought or felt about the Mass, her typical answer is "the homily was twelve minutes forty-five seconds"...

My 2₵:

• Degrees of solemnity can be a help rather than a hindrance when trying to turn a parish around. Our 4:30 mass is basically hymn sandwich with an english communion antiphon. We don't typically chant the responses or Pater Noster. The grey hairs want to get in and get out without many demands on their person participation-wise. Our 7:30am has a bit more solemnity and often adds sung responses and Pater, as well as a chanted canon on solemnities. Our 11am is our "choir mass" and we go all out: [english] propers in addition to hymns, sung responses, sung Credo & Pater, motets, incense, etc. In other words, people have three choices of time and three degrees of liturgical solemnity from which they can choose, to suit their preference. Coincidently, our 11am is our best attended by a wide margin. Part of it is timing, but part of it is the liturgy too. I should also mention that our longest mass rarely tops 1:05 (and that's including postlude).

• Many factors other than music affect attendance. I take mass head counts from the loft every weekend. Two weeks ago our catechesis season ended and—right on cue—our average weekly attendance dropped by about 100. We typically have 7 masses every weekend (3 english, 4 spanish) but we even have to cut out one of our spanish masses during the summer because attendance on that side drops that much. I always print fewer worship aids for the weekends that bookend spring break, and other such things. Attendance always dips.

• While it is true that some people will leave the parish when a new music program is implemented, others will be drawn too. It doesn't always work out in the wash, but sometimes it does. (And, I hate to say it but it's true: the souls who come to you for adding beauty and solemnity to the liturgy will be more precious to you and faithful to the parish than the souls you lost who wanted happy-clappy guitar masses.)

As an aside, it should be noted that some people will leave just because it is change and they aren't the ones in control. It almost doesn't matter what the change is. If it's change, they don't like it, so they balk or walk. People always leave when pastors change too, and often pastors come in to a parish and deliberately refrain from enacting any major changes for the first year, specifically to give the people time to warm up to him. But people also fixate on small things, so small things are perceived as large things, even though they are not, and are commensurately treaded as though they are indeed big issues.

• The kids don't mind the latin and tradition. It's the adults who do. My experience has been that the kids rather tend to like it, ironically enough.

Yeah, I went to a Mass at 7:30 hoping to escape music; I knew that an 8:00 Mass in the parish next door would have it, and it was the Boomer hit list. (I can tolerate only a very small number of these, which I'm never going to get all at once…) Who in their right mind makes people sing at 7:30?

As to the timing: I find it interesting that people have success as late as 11:00. Maybe this works if you know that people in the territory of the parish, or just outside the boundaries, are deeply attached, but my experience is that while there's such a thing as too early (except on special occasions, including Ash Wednesday, where the main, sung Mass needs to start by 7:00 or maybe 8:00) the sweet spot is between 8:30 and 10:00, if a significant portion of the population is traveling to that parish, including for the liturgy itself.

ars celebrandy

Elmar, this sounds like a drink some traditional leaning Carthusians should start selling - "Our Cellar Brandy".

I find it interesting that people have success as late as 11:00.

Not by choice. When you're a bilingual parish with 5 Sunday masses you have to share the "good times", hence 7:30 english, 9a spanish, 11a english, 1 & 3pm spanish.

My ordinary has the unfortunate habit of going on and on in his homilies and then sailing through the Eucharistic Prayer as if he were calling an auction.

The areas in which the mass can be shortened should not be the antiphons or chant but the homilies which can vary significantly in length and content. It has been my experience that quality of content and length of homilies are inversely proportional to each other.

The deacons in our diocese are taught that a homily should be no more than 10 minutes.

When our Lord retired to the Garden of Gesemanie to pray he took Peter, James and John. He wanted them to stay awake while he prayed. But of course they couldn't stay awake. He returned to them and found them a sleep. "So you could not stay awake with me for even an hour?"

Perhaps the minimum time for any Mass in an hour.

I vehemently disagree, for two reasons, one practical, one ecclesiastical. I want my Sunday, and this is all the more true when I am teaching catechism after Mass (or someone is being catechized — when I was in class from 10:45 to 12:00, I felt this acutely), especially since we have adoration or Vespers on Sunday evenings. I'm spending about 4.5 hours on Sunday as it is, and it's a thirty-minute drive without traffic.

Now, ideally, the sung Mass is later, because Prime and Terce would precede it, sung to the Gregorian melodies, which would take about an hour at most. But you can anticipate those hours according to the clock. I'm not alone in my preference for early Masses; some people do always prefer low Mass, and so they'll go early if that Mass has little or no music (i.e. maybe organ, but no propers or anything like that), but many people don't care. They want to go to the early Mass. It could be sung and they still wouldn't be there past 10:00 in all but the most extreme cases.

As to ecclesiastical reasons: the church seems to have decided that the faithful should receive at the main Mass, and certainly at just about all public Masses, regardless of whether the people frequently receive (every Sunday and holy day at a minimum) in individual cases. Having a meaningful eucharistic fast is impossible if the main Mass is pushed off, and I'm not even really talking about the midnight fast or the three-hour fast of Pius XII; the current discipline is meaningless even if you actually care to observe it. But it is almost impossible to consistently observe the midnight fast if Mass is later than, say, 9:00.

I'd also add that "Mass with more things should be later" leads to 1:30 or even 4:00 or 7:00 PM times for the TLM, which ought to be embarrassing. It's not just that it's demoralizing to be at that time.

Our previous pastor celebrated Masses that were about 60 minutes with an excellent homily of 10 to 15 minutes in length. When our new pastor arrived Masses dropped to average 45 minutes and the parishioners commented on how short the Mass seemed. Brief but not overly inspiring homilies were part of the reason. Both priests are reverent but current pastor is very business-like somehow.

Sorry Chris for not responding earlier.
Obviously you do not know my pastor while I do; but while I assume that I somewhat understand what he may intend and may have decided to do (without knowing for sure) I'm not going to engage in assumptions and speculations.

Elmar,
Girl altar boys are a problem.
Your pastor may not intend these to be, and may be working diligently to remove abuses and all the rest -- I don't know him, so I'll assume that he is -- and he may have decided to "go slowly" on some reforms -- again, I've seen excellent priests argue that change must be slow in order to be lasting -- but that doesn't change the fact that no parish, anywhere, should have girl altar boys. [...]

What I do know for sure is, that he
- does "go slowly" on some reforms,
- doesn't explain those to the parish, and
- is also "going slowly" on losing parishioners in the process, including my youngest daughter (almost done but still "girl altar boy") and my wife (50% on the way, intending to stop her assistance to first communion catechesis after completion of the current group).
While teenagers obviously have to find their way, which includes heading in different, sometimes odd directions, the fact that my wife - devout catholic through all her life - is tending to distance herself from our priest and our parish really worries me (I am not going into more detail).

P.S. Thanks Stimson for your comment on my typo, I'll try to include more in the future!

Chris,
that's indeed the core of the problem as I see it: he explains text to nothing to the parish why he is doing which changes and to what ends. (Getting rid of or 'phasing out' female altar servers doesn't seem to be on his agenda at present.)

Without what I have learned in this forum (!!!), a couple of weekend workshops on serving in the EF, and in my ongoing formation in liturgy as part of the diocesan church music course, I wouldn't grasp a iota of what he is doing and why.
As an aside: when I try to explain these things to my wife, it becomes ever more obvious that our pastor doesn't get even her 'on the track'.

As for myself, I am still not convinced that having my daughters and the two other girls stop serving at the altar would be the right thing to do. And that's not for practical reasons: we have six male servers in our parish (including three adults). There has been no 'altar boys are leaving because there are the girls' thing here unlike elswhere - I believe that is a cultural thing to a large extent.

Chris,
I think your reply is beside the point. Christ did teach the people, He was very clear about what you should do to become His disciple!
Then add Matt.11:15 - afterwards.

This conversation makes me think about how vital good [in all respects] preaching is. I was blessed to work for a priest who never went over 4’. In a very reverberant room, that worked out to one page, 14pt Times New Roman. Because he was both smart and wise, each Sunday had all or most of the following: an explanation of the Gospel and one or both of the other readings, something about the other liturgical texts and/or a liturgical practice, something from the church fathers, and a call to action/application in the present day. Because the homilies were very good, people appreciated what he was doing to what used to be a very low-Mass parish. Because the homilies were short, we could do something like Pentecost with 300 people, max incense at beginning and offertory, 2 hymns + sequence, full Gregorian propers, ICEL or Mass VIII ordinary, Creed 1, 2 motets, and EP1. With priest, deacon, and 2 EMHCs distributing the Eucharist, we were done in 58 minutes, excluding prelude/postlude.

Is finishing under an hour a goal?
It is if you start Mass at 11 a.m. and the Angelus bell rings automatically at noon, with no overide. "Sigh"

Gamba,

.... but why must one be in a hurry?
Caveat: If Father/Monsignor/His Grace is rambling on about how one should be nice to others, and then repeats this during the announcements, then clearly one should be in a hurry, but Mass is the worship of God, and should neither be rushed nor slipshod.

.... but why must one be in a hurry?

I personally would be very happy to hear the Bach b minor Mass every Sunday, with all the verses of the offertory, a complete psalm appended to the introit, a sermon the length of Chrysostom’s, 5000 people in attendance with no EMHCs, multiple hymns, etc. But some people (including priests, choir members, servers, etc.) do have work or other responsibilities to attend to on Sundays and my point is that if one is efficient and plans and executes well, there’s no reason an hour-long Mass can’t be beautiful or fully sung.