cgz's points are all good.

Catholic families are looking for solidity in their parishes. Pastors lose some parishioners, incl. families, to FSSP parishes, and rethink the liturgical and catechetical state of their own parish. That's part of the gravitational pull works- reform and see your own parish thrive.

Not quite true where I'm at, Noel. Several families that wanted the best for their children left their parishes to join the FSSP parish in my area. I know several of these families. They were active contributors to their former parishes. They just got tired of watching their children grow in parishes with struggling or questionable Catholic identity. They weren't known as complainers.

In fact, of the nine families I can think of off the top of my head, none had been to the EF more than a handful of times... they weren't agitating for that in their former parishes.

I made the switch because I was hired by an FSSP pastor. But the people I know who joined the parish often cite they were drawn in by 'more of everything Catholic' they saw in the parish.

I respect the people who leave parishes because they want more Catholicity. I also respect the people who stay in their parishes and try to improve things.

Some are attached to the EF liturgy, which was the reason for allowing it in the first place - at least that's what JPII indicated. That's fine. I have no attachment to that liturgy and am focused on trying to make the OF all that it can be, and what it was intended to be. Unfortunately, there are crazy people on both sides of this issue, and that's the element that nothing will ever remove.

Noel has a point, in that an old strategy is to keep like-minded trouble makers together, so they can be more easily observed.

I think it is useful to point out that there are different varieties of EF venues. On one side, I see FSSP parishes or otherwise regular parishes that offer the EF. On the other side, there are the small, quasi-roguish chapels that pride themselves on their "independence" from diocesan authority, which comes across as a euphemism for rejection of that authority ("VII was illegitimate and so were all the popes after," etc. etc.). There is probably some middleground, too.

The first type is where we will see real progress toward mutual enrichment, a reclaiming of Catholic identity, and all those positive things that the EF brings our world. The other is just unsavory and bitter.

At Sacred Heart seminary in Detroit the first thing we heard was that there would be no instruction in the E.F. until the Archbishop made the request. This past year the seminarians were told that there would instruction starting sometime in 2012. It hasn't happened yet.

Charles I had no particular attachment to the E. F. but I sure do now. Of course I am deeply involved in the liturgy of this Mass so that probably accounts for some of it. I do love going to E. F. Masses though, even when I am not singing in or directing the choir.

It just seems like if we are going to have a real hermeneutic of continuity when reading the documents of Vatican II, it would take commentaries from a priest from something like the FSSP, (if a full-immersion detox program is out of the question.)

Just an observation...since choir is out for the summer, I've been attending my nearest FSSP parish, which has been doing low Masses (real low Masses, not "Low Mass with hymns"), since THEIR choir is out for the summer. And I think I finally understand and accept the liturgy reforms of Vatican 2. They were massively screwed up in implementation, but I'm seeing why they needed to happen. Is that an example of what you're asking about?

I'm cool with Latin...but we needed the immediacy of English, we needed more responses for the congregation, we needed music to be integrated into the liturgy. The silence can be nice, and the preaching there is better than the usual (main reason I'm there). It's just that I noticed the absence of things I'm used to from the OF or the EF missa cantata.

In order to know how to implement any reform (of the Ordinary Form), one needs to see properly the situation in which that reform was originally ordered. Put it a different way: if one son takes something off his brother's dresser and then says that he needs proper instruction on the use of what he stole, the first part of properly understanding anything is returning the stolen item.

Read the documents of Vatican II in the context of 1958, not 1971.

A good point, EA. I think that the EF is not only better understood today, it's also being sung more often than it ever was, and it seems that every week brings news of new instances of its revival.

The plural of anecdote is not data, however, so my experience is no more 'valid' than anyone else's. I grew up with the EF, and I never knew that something other than a Low Mass even existed until 2008, when I experienced it at the Chant Intensive and the Colloquium. So I had no love for the EF, until I experienced it the way it's supposed to be.

I'm sure there are some "bitter clingers" out there who attend the EF because of old feelings, but I also know that there are a lot of younger people who were born decades after the Council and don't care a fig for the way things were in 1960. All they know is that they much prefer a Missa Cantata than go to the local parish with its associated silliness (again, not always and everywhere, but in many, many places). I will say that our weekly EF attendance is about 100, and the age breakdown is about 30% (0-20 years old), 30% (21-40), 30% (41-60), and 10% (over 60). So the only experience of the EF that 90% of our congregation has ever had is with its current incarnation.

I will also say that I think many, if not most, of my friends who attend that Mass would agree that if you don't have any music at all, an Ordinary Form Mass, properly celebrated, would be prefereable to a Low Mass in the EF. Maybe that's a way forward?

Greg:


Recognizing that the plural of anecdote isn't data, you and I still keep different friend groups. I know few people who would prefer the Ordinary Form if they have had experience with the Extraordinary Form.

Bump. Because Fulhorsts last comment is gold and needs to be seen more often.

For the Ordinary Form, I think there are plenty of places today that celebrate it with a sense of reverence and worship. I think principally of the Benedictine monasteries with which I'm familiar. The monastery I'm associated with as oblate, does a beautiful job with the OF Mass. It's usually packed every Sunday. The Propers and Ordinary follow the Graduale Romanum faithfully in Latin/Greek Gregorian chant. The rest is in solemn French plainchant. All the rubrics are followed, every liturgical "i" dotted and "t" crossed. I've seen the same thing at Benedictine monasteries in Europe. How then could this contribute?

In our oblate community a number of us have, for many years, been chanting in a small schola in Sherbrooke, Quebec made up of laymen including 3 of us oblates. We bring Gregorian chant to a different parish each month. While we get that part OK, there clearly is work to do with the rest of the worship. But we're doing what we can to bring back a sense of tradition to the Ordinary Form.

We can do even better than that. The Tridentine Mass was probably never better celebrated or understood than it is today. We are better off than folks were when preceding the council.

Understood today, yes.

Better celebrated? No. Priests then, as today, strove for excellence. I, and others, were there.

There also was a higher standard of requirements in the seminary, both in accepting applicants and studies.