And hence this is why I think it would be more pastoral to allow the Low Mass on ferias, and at missions. Not every Mass can be a High Mass with all the bells and whistles. But there's no reason that a parish of 1000+ people should have a principle Sunday/Solemnity Mass with no Latin, propers, etc. OF or EF.

More rules just cause more problems. I agree with Richard. Until people realize that the high Mass is how Mass is meant to be, and have a sense of liturgy and the liturgical calendar being a part of their daily lives, and understand how solemn and festal every Sunday is due to the resurrection of Christ... they'll be annoyed at the singing and angry that Mass takes so long and generally complain if anything isn't exactly to their tastes. HOW to revitalize Catholic culture at large is a whole 'nother thing...

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the ban will not be written on stone (or paper, or flash memory), but on hearts.

Gavin, please be assured that the following statement is not directed at you, since you've expressed yourself with due moderation. I have been absolutely flabbergasted by some of the more outrageous statements by musicians in particular about Low Masses. "GASP! It was a LOW Mass," they say, as if it instead had been some kind of pagan ritual. This is nonsense, and only promotes further liturgical whiplash between two extremes which ought to be avoided: 1) the idea that every Sunday Mass should have music, and 2) that music is not necessary and silence is in fact preferable.

A few years ago I played a wedding that was particularly awful. I felt like my head was going to explode from the pressure when it was all over. I needed relief, so I went to a Low Mass. It was just what the doctor ordered. We also have Low Masses in the summer at the church where I work, and I have to say that the recollection of it all helps me to put myself back together after a long year. As a musician, I find the occasional Low Mass to be absolutely necessary for my sanity.

In terms of being pastoral, we have to take into account that some people hate church music---any kind you can think of. The "liturgy wars" of the past 40 years seem only to have served to make this more prevalent. For years my father went to the earliest, quietest Mass that he could find because he was tired of all the games that musicians were playing. Give these people the quiet Mass that they deserve. Some of them have been through more hell than a GenX-er like me is capable of imagining.

Michael, while I'm sympathetic to those complaints, I have to respectfully maintain skepticism that the availability of "Low"/silent Masses is a proper response to the angst of those suffering from liturgical abuse. Why is it only disliked music we apply this to? Should those who are offended by bad architecture have a right to an open-air Mass to relieve their suffering? Should those annoyed by bad preaching have a right to a sermonless Mass? Maybe, but I tend to think that people still have a right to receive the music of the church, a right to hear the preaching of the Gospel, and a right to the artistic treasures of the Western tradition, which they NEED even when they don't WANT it.

I'm not saying I oppose such a viewpoint, but I don't really see the propers as something one can "take a break from". I tend to see them as always a right.

Some qoutes for thought about music v.s. no music at Masses.

"The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils; the motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections dark as Erebus: let no such man be trusted." - Shakespeare

"Day and night they [Seraphs] never stop saying [singing]: 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.'" - Book of Revelation

Also, I recall some of my most heavenly and inspired moments were during a Low Mass. However, with less than a dozen in attendance and a priest filled with so much love in his heart for Christ and the Mass, this priest even at 6am on Sundays would chant portions of the Mass, chant the ordinary, and sing plainsong chant hymns all from memory. Hearing Communion plainsong chant hymns sung solely by this priest was a mystical experience beyond words. This entire Mass was heavenly prayer itself and yet it was serene, quiet and reflective; more solemn than anything I have yet to experience. Yes, he was Officiant and choir rolled into one man, but everyone in attendance soon loved those chants and plainsong hymns and we soon all sang along out of sheer infectious love.To this day I remember every one of them and it ALWAYS bring great comfort, warmth and a smile on my face. I was in the 1st grade when I first attended those masses. There was plenty of silence to be sure, but oh what love when we finally could sing with that priest. Oddly enough, his name was Fr. Seraphim!

BTW, by "Low Mass" we should differentiate between the quiet Low Mass and the Dialogue Mass. The Novus Ordo "Low Mass" you are talking about is necessarily a type of Dialogue Mass. When my nerves need a break from all the music and liturgical activity, and want some time for contemplation, I prefer the quiet Low Mass. For some reason, I don't ever seek out the Dialogue Mass.

People are not required to say the responses. It is recommended, but not required, but it is at the discretion of the priest to allow the "dialogue Mass". Many participate in other ways, for example by praying the Rosary while meditating on the part of the Mass being celebrated. I think many of the silent, prayerful Catholics actually participate more fully in the Mass than some who bark their "Et cum spiritu tuo"'s inattentively and by rote. Having someone scream "Et cum spiritu tuo" in your ear can break your concentration. So can change, of any sort, from the status quo, until it is internally processed and accepted.

I just came back from Traditional low Mass. It is so beautiful. I sense total surruender and humility in the prayers, something I miss in OF; mic, singers in the front, belching out people 's singing and so on, they went too far that those feel almost unnatural. I think the import of Protestanism of M. Luther's idea of 'people -centered,' instead of 'God-centered' and the pride of self went to deep in our Catholic liturgy. As a musician, I have to remember that in order to serve Him, we have to leave our pride and preferences of music , and adopt the Church's prayers and Her music as your own.

Thanks Chrism for your post. It helps greatly.
The priest at the low Mass mentioned before it starts that we can recite the responses with the server quietly, but follow the server's pace.(For me, I just like doing it internally, I can concetrate much better.) It really helped quieting down. I think people got used to everything so loud these days. The louder, the better as if there's no difference in different prayers.

My TLM parish used to sing four hymns at 8:30 am Sunday Low Masses. Early in the Sunday morning, the choir got easily tired and often got blank after Mass. We often felt we were singing just for singing and marginalized from the liturgy. We could not fully concentrate on the Mass. Even in choir practice, we were always busy and stressed with practicing new hymns.

Now we sing Latin chants for offertory and recessional and two organ pieces for introit and communion, which gives the choir more chance to interiorly participate in the Mass. The choir can have balanced sense of singing and silence with reverence. I found this is very beneficial for the spirituality of the choir. And I appreciate Low Mass more than before. Most of all, now we have more time to practice Mass ordinaries and propers for the once a month Missa Cantata.

"..In 1529 that the followers of Luther came to be know as Protestants....from the time that Luther first announced his false doctrine at Wittenberg in 1517 until the Peace of Augusburg in 1555, almost forty years had passed. From the beginning he had a great number of followers and that meant that their children and their grandchildren grown up knowing nothing at all about the true Religion except the wrong ideas about it which they had received from their parents.... They knew nothing about the Mass and thought the sacraments were only external signs and had no power to give grace. They did not believe in the authority of the Pope and denied the necessity of any visible Church...." The Story of the Church by Rev. George Johnson Ph. D
Rev. Jerome D. Hannan, Ph.d jcd, Sister M Dominica OSU, PHD. (my apology about talking about the Prostestants in this forum. It became necessary because all the Protestant style of belching out hymn singing, in addtions to other external signs of people -centered , such as priest facing people, instead of the East, big deal on hand shaking, so many people up on the sanctuary on and on became almost normative in average local parish Mass. I heard many people come to Mass to hear mostly for good preaching, not for Eucharist, worse as some says' I go to that church because the priest can crack a joke.' The way we do Mass with the import of of Protestant styles has changed idea of Mass for many Catholics. Focus on hymn singing and sermon, not so much focusing on Eucharist.
I'm a convert. His teachings based on denial of the Church is of course embedded in his Protestant doctorines and the service. Any woprship denies the True Christ's Church and Her teaching is not God -centered. The sole trust is their intellect and their own understandings and their own images of God. If you find more about his teachings and his way of service, you can let me know. I don't have much desire to inquire about his teachings anymore. I had more than enough experience of Protestant teachings and worships in my life, and I converted to avoid that.

Gavin, I know he was a great musician and had a musical taste. What does that mean to the Church and to the Catholics, when he denies the truth and even go out and teaches against the truth?

"So the corporate prayers are more important at Mass than the personal ones."

When people say prayers internally at Mass they are not necessarily saying 'personal prayers'. They are saying Liturgical prayers together that the Church prepared, united with priest and servers. So in this case I think the 'personal prayers' have a bit different meaning

Jam, the Low Mass can be dated back at least 1400 years. It's an integral part of Western liturgical Tradition which might have its roots in the catacombs. There is the kind of quiet joy that erupts from the heart of a father looking at a newborn. As Catholics, we adore the Eucharist with latria worship because the Eucharist is God, the newborn, crucified and risen Christ, the gift of the Father to redeem us from our sins. We don't have to show off joy with exterior emotions and noisemaking. The angels spoke and there were songs of joy, but the kings prostrated themselves before Him.

That Mass is corporate prayer time does not mean that everyone needs to pray out loud. The most important thing you can do at Mass is pray interiorly. If you pray with your lips, your heart must be united with the words, "mens concordet voci" according to the Rule of St. Benedict. One thing Low Mass can remind us is that just because we say or sing all the parts of the Mass each week, or even every day, doesn't mean that we are actually praying the Mass. We might have fallen into the habit of the babbling pagans, which would avail us nothing but guilt. In any event, for us laypeople, the most important words of the Mass are those we listen to, and that is true in every rite of the Church.

It isn't part of the Mass at a quiet Low Mass (missa privata). The missals I have say P. and S., Priest and Server. But even at a dialogue Mass, screaming is part of the Mass poorly executed. Bad singing can also be distracting.

I also get distracted when the little boy says the priest's parts along with him. I guess I get easily distracted. Should I and those like me be effectively barred from access to grace because we get easily distracted?

Jeff O, Fortescue seems unclear as to which parts developed when, and how widespread the changes were. My understanding from reading him is that the common practice of private Masses developed between the 6th and 10th Centuries, but "isolated cases of private celebration go back to very early times" (The Mass, p. 189).

Mother At Your Feet Is Kneeling, third verse (wedding)

In the EF, a "sung mass" is sung. The rubrics regarding what is sung are there to ensure that the Mass is in fact sung. The music sung at a sung Mass can be sung recto tono if the choir is incapable of beautifully executing more elaborate melodies (a common situation unfortunately).

As a general rule, a single singer should not take the place of the choir. The only solo voices at Mass should be those of the celebrant, deacon and subdeacon.

Beautiful story, Bonnie. It reminds me of the episode in the life of Pope John Paul II when the Communists wouldn't allow the people of Nowa Huta to build a church. Nowa Huta was supposed to be the first city in the Soviet Union without God and churches were banned.

However, the people---most of them young Polish workers from the country----with the help and encouragement of Bishop Karol Wojtyla--- erected a cross in the middle of an empty field and gathered there for Mass even in the snow and rain. They wouldn't leave even when the Soviets arrived with bulldozers and tanks and eventually the Communists gave in.

Banning the Low Mass simply guarantees really poor singing and music at Mass in many, if not most, places..

As I've said before, the expectation that every Sunday Mass have a sung psalm has done the same thing. People who should not be singing are singing.

However, in my experience it has been the oposite, not that some of the beauty of the High Mass entered the Low Mass, but that the High Mass been completely stripped of its beauty. In point of fact, we have almost completely lost the High Mass in favor of a middle of the road, blah, ho-hum, Low Mass with sung Resp. Psalm, Sanctus and Agnus. We actually take the Low Mass as a paradigm and force the High Mass into it, esp. regarding length of music, e.g. the sung Gloria can't be any longer than it takes to recite it, or it will be recited because it "takes too long".

I personally have nothing against the Low Mass - in fact, some weekdays, I wish it still existed in its pre-conciliar entirety. For example, when the propers are hard to find (a new-ish optional memorial when you have to look at the commons and figure out which one of the seven introits would work best), and I know the people at that particular Mass don't sing anything (even though they've been 'singing' Sanctus XVIII for 25+ years), and I have to cantor and play. Then, I'd rather just play the organ at the entrance, offertory, communion and recessional, and let the people recite the ordinary, a la Dialogue Mass

In other words, given the choice between a Read Mass and a "Sung" Mass with "active participation of the faithful", (that is anything sung is sung only by the cantor(s)), I'd go with the Read Mass.

I say, let the High Mass be the High Mass, the Low Mass, the Low; then the people that will want to go to the High Mass with go to the High, those the Low Mass, the Low.

Kinda long and rambly, sorry.

I know an elderly priest who actually did combine the EF Low Mass and High Mass, even though he called it a "High Mass." He would give us different instructions every week, depending, I guess, on how long his sermon was to be that day. The sung Kyrie, Gloria and propers were all optional to his mind, and he'd come up to the choir loft before Mass and tell us which parts of the liturgy he wanted us to omit. (!)

We tried to no avail to present the documents and explain that you can't do that in the Usus Antiquior, but after 40 years of the Novus Ordo, I think he was so used to the ad lib approach that he simply couldn't comprehend the difference. (We decided after a while to quietly move on to a different venue since that was really bizarre, but it does illustrate the confusion that exists out there.)

I think we've reached a static point in liturgical praxis. Static? No, stagnant.

This really resonates with our experience in the northeast. After 25 years of the Latin Mass being allowed in our diocese of 1.4 million Catholics, there are three sparsely attended Low Masses and a sporadic High Mass at one of those locations.

The problem, we've come to believe, is that the people in charge of promoting the Latin Mass here believe the ultimate paradigm for the Latin Mass is what they themselves experienced in the late 50's, which was almost exclusively a silent Low Mass.

In other words, as my husband likes to say, they took what was the lowest point of a liturgical era and imposed it as the "high water mark" of liturgical expression, simply because they did not know (and in many cases did not care to find out) that the pre-conciliar liturgical movement called for a completely different model of the Mass as outlined in De musica sacra.

We have recently been comparing the video celebrating 25 years of the Latin Mass at Saint-Eugene-Saint-Cecile at Paris with the outcome of 25 years of the Latin Mass in our own diocese. This is the inescapable conclusion at least as we see it:

Where the people are taught that participation in the traditional Latin Mass is at the very center of their spiritual lives, traditional Catholicism has a bright future. Conversely, where they are not allowed to participate in the traditional Latin Mass, the future of traditional Catholicism is very dim indeed.

The Windsor Tridentine Latin Mass (http://www.windsorlatinmass.org) is the perfect example of an excellent Tridentine Mass site. They have a weekday Mass that is typically a Low Mass unless the Mass calls for a Gloria or Credo, in which case it becomes a Missa Cantata. The Sunday Mass is always a Missa Cantata or Solemn High Mass fully sung every week. They alternate weeks between Gregorian Masses and polyphonic Masses. The music is very serious and the chanting of propers is absolutely top notch. Incence, an army of altar servers, a truly glorious building, etc. Nobody works there full-time - its run by volunteers, some paid voices, and a Priest with two other full-time jobs (as an associate pastor and a vice principal of a giant high school).

If you're within a few hours of Windsor Ontario (or Detroit) and haven't been, it's time to go.

While the liturgical theologian in me agrees with you...I found myself longing for a Low Mass the last time I went to a Missa Cantata. Propers on Psalm tones, and really, really poor Latin pronunciation.

It's very good. The people sing along with the hymns of course, and they have learned a number of mass settings. When we learn a new mass we sing it for two months at a time to give people a chance to learn it, so if it's new, they don't sing as much of course, but after a few weeks, they're singing along very nicely.

With the Introit and Communion, we always practice them before Mass in the chapel, along with any new hymns or mass settings so the people have a chance to hear them.

So, with the Introit and Communion antiphons and sometimes with the Alleluias, the people will have heard them twice before Mass. We repeat the Introit during Mass so by that time, anyone that would like to sing along is quite able to follow along. If we have a very "singable" Communion antiphon, I always try to make sure we sing a few verses and the antiphon and that works very well, too.