Mad Libs--Extraordinary Form
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,513
    As someone raised and more or less "at home" in the OF, I'm also impressed by the EF, particularly on the level of feeling.

    These are some of the adjectives I would use to describe my experience of the EF:

    Quiet
    Gentle
    Delicate
    Focused
    Beautiful

    and...?
  • Maureen
    Posts: 679
    Inscrutable. (At least, the Low Mass is.)

    I don't want to be a party pooper on this thread, but I know where this could be going... so here's a little monition.

    When I was younger, I had so much easily-accessed emotional involvement with everything, including Jesus, that even the lamest 80's OF Masses at my parish were exactly what people describe great EF Masses to be like. Now that I'm older and a lot less volatile (and seeing how emotional I am now, imagine me as a teen!), all Masses, EF or OF, are pretty distant to me, except on rare occasions when I receive spiritual consolations. I had a fairly rough time making the transition, I can tell you. Nowadays, at the level of thought and will, I'm perfectly satisfied, and there's a spring in my step going and coming on Sunday. But the chances are low I'm going to get all worked up into an ecstasy about anything, and if people are expecting that, they'll just have to be disappointed.

    So when I see the extreme enthusiasm about the feelings that people get about the EF, I can't help thinking to myself, "What are you going to do when you cool down?" I imagine most people will deal with it fine (and of course, some lucky people live like that always -- St. Francis de Sales for one). But just a reminder that focusing on feelings is a short-term thing. Enjoy them, take them as a gift and a learning tool, but don't lean on them. Lean on God.
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Well said.

    I always think it's funny when Traddies complain about the emotionalism and sentimentality of folk-pop liturgical music, and then describe their feelings about the EF in similarly personal and emotional terms.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,513
    Sorry, but I don't remember mentioning ecstasy.
  • Jeffrey CogginsJeffrey Coggins
    Posts: 360
    I always think it's funny when Traddies complain about the emotionalism and sentimentality of folk-pop liturgical music, and then describe their feelings about the EF in similarly personal and emotional terms.


    Wouldn't the difference be that "Traddies" don't lean on them, as Maureen suggests?
  • don roy
    Posts: 306
    my experience is that God rarely shouts. He usually whispers and with the ef this liturgy permits my soul to quiet down just enough to occasionally hear a phrase now and then. the circus that is the average sunday mass in america leaves little room to listen in a similar manner.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,513
    That's the idea, Don Roy. They used to call it "recollection." It's the kind of thing you can usually only get by going in the inner room and closing the door. But the EF--at its best--makes a quiet place where all of us can do that together.
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,220
    Oh, man. There seems to be major-league incomprehension.

    Is somebody having a bad day out there?
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    I think this has a lot to do with:
    a) How the particular Mass is "done"
    b) the predispositions of the individual whose experience/feeling is in question.


    A)
    I think we've all been to gawd-awful and Amazingly wonderful OF celebrations. The (as my grandfather described his parish) "three ring circus with two rings broken" approach in many places nothing to do with the OF rubrics or intentions, and everything to do with people being stupid (or misguided, or whatever). Those same people, left in charge of an EF celebration, would surely find ways to make it awful as well. EF Masses today have the advantage of being mostly organized and celebrated by people who care about rubrics

    B)
    I've heard from more than a few people who find all he pomp and carrying on of an EF mass to be downright distracting. People are different, and need different things. I have never been to an EF Mass. I'm curious, and would be interested in visiting one if it was convenient- but my sense from the vids I've seen is that it wouldn't be my cup of tea.
    Cardinal Arinze talked about that here:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqnjgg1vNgU
    and emphasized the point that the two forms are of equal value.
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Sneaking a response while on family vaca... because this topic is fresh for me. Also an OF kid, now working in an FSSP parish, I am also moved by the EF. I knew I'd like it, but I didn't know I'd love it.

    'More of everything good and explicitly Catholic' is how I describe my response two years into this. No downing a beautiful and reverent OF Mass, it's still licit and wonderful. Just maybe a little less full, IMO. But that being said, I do strongly prefer the liturgical sensibilities of an OF Sung Mass over an EF low Mass.

    What strikes me most in your list is 'focused'. The direction of sacrificial worship swelling from the entire Church (incl. angels and saints) is palpable. And at the same time, yet not in opposition to the overall focus, I sense layers of prayer like waves of chant and incense, even as layers of polyphony imitate individual worshipers moving in accord and awareness of eachother.

    Yes, I like to reflect on this subject. :)
  • Richard R.
    Posts: 776
    "...[t]he pomp and carrying on of an EF mass..."

    ...also known as the sacred rites of Holy Mother Church.

    What I find inscrutable is the fact that, going on four years post-motu proprio, some still feel compelled to apply derogatory labels like "Traddie". Hardly in the spirit of mutual enrichment, if you ask me.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,513
    Adam, somehow I think the most salient contributions to this thread would most likely be offered by folks who have actually been to an EF Mass... :)
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Kathy- I agree.

    Richard- I'm sorry you feel like "traddie" is a derogatory label. Conversational shorthand can sometimes be mistaken (And fall easily into) stereotyping of groups. It's just a lot easier to write "traddie" than to write out "those whose spirituality finds itself at home in the older form of the Roman Rite, and other traditional expressions of Catholic culture."
    At any rate, I certainly intended no disrespect to anyone. I would be a bad liberal (as so many of them are) if I were to suggest that people are not entitled to their preferences with regards to legitimate liturgical expression.
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,985
    I have been to both, and both can be wonderful - or awful. There are those OF masses with the raving nuts with wild eyes carrying on like they are at some pagan celebration in the woods. There are also those EF masses with the flat-earthers, obsessed with externals, and looking furtively around for the latest conspiracy.

    However, one can also find those masses, both EF and OF, celebrated reverently while adhering to the rubrics, and with the best sacred music possible. These are where God is truly worshipped in spirit and in truth.
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,513
    Adam,

    For this and many other reasons, you have got to come to Colloquium. (You're going this year, right?)
  • Adam WoodAdam Wood
    Posts: 6,482
    Kathy
    Once again, AGREE.
    Depends on money, really. But I do so want to.
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    I guess that's the point of the video in my mind, it is totally relaxed and at the Colloq I found myself totally confused as each day the mass was in a different form...and many times this happened to me.

    I had forgotten that the video was not EF in the same way!
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    A couple of my own (positive and negative) descriptors from my experience:

    Long
    Unmistakably Catholic
    Very carefully done
    At times can cause me to become easily distracted
    Latin
    Sometimes detached
    Discouraging
    Baroque - and not in a good way
    Exciting
    Authentic
    Amish *

    I guess my question would be, how many of these "Mad Libs" fit into the OF page just as easily?

    * This is actually from my Lutheran ex-girlfriend, who was certainly no stranger to the precepts of modesty. Her and I attended an EF, a first High Mass for both of us. When asked for her impression, she giggled and said "everyone is dressed like Amish people!"
  • David AndrewDavid Andrew
    Posts: 1,206
    Adjectives are by their nature subjective. This is the rabbit hole that permitted "relevant" music that "uplifts" the people to become a defining element of the Mass.

    How can we, with our feeble understanding of the transcendent qualities of the Mass, especially in the Extraordinary Form, possibly use equally feeble adjectives to describe that understanding without falling into the trap set by the progressives, that is, it's about "the people" and how the Mass makes them "feel."

    It is, quite frankly, how we get "experts" in liturgical music who can beguile those who are less-well schooled in the philosophies and constructs of the Tradition with the use of expressions like "sonic theology" and "sonic spirituality" and who can with aplomb refer to the "inner fabric of the liturgy, ritual actions and prayers" of "the people", and be received with awe and unchallenged credibility.

    Let's not fall into the trap of trying to express the inexpressible. The Extraordinary Form of the Mass is by its very nature transcendent, and mystery that it is, far surpasses any of the visceral reactions some may have, fully legitimate as those reactions may be. (The caveat here is that truly profound expressions regarding the Mass have been set forth by the likes of the Holy Father, in documents of many pages full of dense, rich prose. No simple adjectival descriptors used there!)

    The feelings and reactions of the people don't define the Mass, EF or otherwise.

    This is part of what we've been trying to stress and fight against all along.

    (I would add, as an aside and without any intention of creating a rabbit hole, that I'm a relative newcomer to the EF experience. My parish holds an EF Mass on the third Saturday of every month in place of the OF at 8 AM. Prior to and for a time after my arrival as the new music director, the Masses were "low Mass with vernacular hymns" as provided by the rubrics. I began playing organ for these low Masses and found the insertion of vernacular hymns into the rhythm of the Mass to be jarring and intrusive. When I discovered that both of the priests who were coming in to celebrate these Masses were fully-trained in the Missa cantata, I immediately switched from "low Mass with vernacular hymns" to Missa cantata, chanting the Propers either in their fullness from the Liber or utilizing the psalm tone-based Propers set by Rossini. I have to say that when I leave the church after one of these EF Masses I "feel" as though I've engaged in "Opus plebs Dei". When I leave the church on any given Sunday after a rota of OF Masses, I feel like I have once again successfully produced a pile of bricks without the benefit of straw or mud. Our OF Masses are mercifully free from the ravages of the season of silliness, but still I find it nearly impossible and impractical work to week after week crowbar yet another bunch of hymns into the Mass in place of the Propers.)
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,513
    Amish. Lol.

    Am I alone, then, in almost hearing silence?
  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    Having just sung at the Intensive EF/Benediction yesterday, I would add-
    Humbling
    Fulfilled
    Ennervated
    Obliged
    Awed
    In-dwelt
    Reconstituted (tho' I'm still stout)
    Stouthearted

    Hi's from Wendy and Dr. Mahrt from Denver layover.
    Hoping "Who Dat" bounces back.
  • Maureen
    Posts: 679
    No, you're not alone. It's just that I associate that kind of silence primarily with the OF, at least back in the Seventies when I was a kid. In the back of my head, it's still what I expect to be normal for chunks of any Mass anywhere.

    (Though I gotta say, I don't exactly miss the brand of Seventies Mass without hymns or singing the ordinary or the priest chanting or anything. I didn't and don't mind it, but I can do without it; and we used to get a lot of it whenever we went to the 5:30 Mass on Saturday evening.)

    (And I didn't mean to say that you were getting overemotional or what have you. It's just that certain kinds of discussions of the EF tend to get gushy fast, and I just thought I'd say something pre-emptive, or rather, post-emptive to all the other discussions.) :)

    (Not that there's anything wrong with gushy, but as I said, it can worry me.)
  • Steve CollinsSteve Collins
    Posts: 1,022
    Distracted. Could this be defined as one's brain is engaged more than one's mind?

    Emotional. Could this be defined as one's heart being more engaged than one's soul?
  • GavinGavin
    Posts: 2,799
    For me, it's a matter of watching the same thing (priest, facing altar) for an extended period of time with other potential stimuli around (church architecture, books). Although I'd make the argument that getting "distracted" by sacred art is more a form of immersion into the liturgy than distraction from it.
  • MaryAnn Carr WilsonMaryAnn Carr Wilson
    Posts: 1,738
    Part of something
    - bigger than me, my ethnicity, my language
    - older than me
    - beyond my immediate understanding
    - in my blood, somehow
    - entirely for God
    - and yet clearly for me (and countless others) as part of His Church

    I don't mind being a little gushy/ exploring an emotional response. And I do agree that caution in these waters is good.
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