The interpretation of Vatican II and its connection with the current crisis of the Church
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The saddest thing about Trent was the totalitarian suppression (repression?) of so many Uses and 'Rites' in the west. Liam's word 'amberized' in reference to Roman usage and its universal imposition is quite apt. Equally sad, as a result of things gone awry in Britain, was the loss of the Sarum Use... not to mention that of Hereford, York, and many others on the continent.
Thanked by 1CharlesW -
Rome did little for years while Protestantism took over much of Europe. Finally, Trent did tackle that issue and totally over-reacted. It turned the liturgy into a living fossil. If you look at all the abuses and poorly educated clergy before Trent, doesn't it create a question as to whether anyone was actually running the church before the council?Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
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...poorly educated...
It isn't much realised (or spoken of) that the average priest in a typical mediaeval village likely had only been taught how to speak the Latin words of the mass, how to hear confessions and so forth, and had no more than a vague concept of the import of what he was reading. He was often (though of course not universally) little more educated than his illiterate flock. (There are some in the Church today who prefer to treat their charges as though they were illiterate. I have even read scholarly opinions to the effect that the Church is, essentially, a preliterate society.) -
the average priest in a typical mediaeval village likely had only been taught how to speak the Latin words of the mass,
Looking at the writings of many priests pre-reformation... they seem remarkable well educated. Anglo-Saxon church, seemed to be full of saints that could read and write in Latin... Bede, Dunstan, long list could follow etc.
Europe was full of Monasteries each with a school that would have taught Latin... The chantries in England had Charters that stipulated the education of boys to assist at the services, I am sure I have read that these included education in Latin.
In an other account the pages at say Kenilworth, Warwick etc. had lessons in Latin.
Of course the average peasant would not have learnt to read but that was due to the lack on books which were expensive and rare outside monastic establishments.
Also look at the Analecta Hymnica, we could safely say that we could have lost at least half the medieval manuscripts, so we could easily have twice as many Hymns and sequences many being written between say AD 700 -1200 all in Latin... that takes an organised education system. -
Jackson,
Based on the reports which will (probably) survive our era,
1) most priests, especially in big cities, were pederasts, practicing predatory homosexual activity.
2) most priests (and all the laity) favored the ordination of women, but
3) Even the relatively reform-minded Francis was unable to drag the curia into the 21st century, to bridge the gap between science and belief, and to root out ideological, class-hide-bound interests within the Church.
4) The so-called magisterium of the church differed from the church of ordinary people.Thanked by 1dad29 -
Is there a priest in your region who would start one?
Can't speak for Francis, but in my area the answer would be a resounding no. You even mention using Latin in the Mass and priests start closing you out.Thanked by 1francis -
When we speak of Medieval education, it occurs to me that it was isolated. A monastery might be famed for its learning, but the knowledge stopped at the walls. Learning was not widespread in the culture and even all clergy were not educated and trained to any definable standards. Common in earlier times was that knowledge was restricted to a small class of people, often priests. Even today, look at how fragile our own system is. It wouldn't take much to wipe out the tech knowledge that keeps the electronics and machinery functioning. It rests on a small group of technicians. Most people don't have any significant knowledge of such things. Kill off the tech design and support and everything crashes.
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From an interview with Dr. Alice von Hildebrand:TLM: I cannot end the interview without asking your reaction to a well-worn canard. There are those critics of the ancient Latin Mass who point out that the crisis in the Church developed at a time when the Mass was offered throughout the world. Why should we then think its revival is intrinsic to the solution?
AVH:: The devil hates the ancient Mass. He hates it because it is the most perfect reformulation of all the teachings of the Church. It was my husband who gave me this insight about the Mass. The problem that ushered in the present crisis was not the traditional Mass. The problem was that priests who offered it had already lost the sense of the supernatural and the transcendent. They rushed through the prayers, they mumbled and didn’t enunciate them. That is a sign that they had brought to the Mass their growing secularism. The ancient Mass does not abide irreverence, and that was why so many priests were just as happy to see it go.
The entire text can be found here: http://www.latinmassmagazine.com/articles/articles_2001_su_hildebran.html -
I and many see this assertion as holding no water. As we are all too aware, Bugnini and friends (including his cohort Deiss) admitted to the destruction (not the reform) of the Mass as it was always carried from generation to generation.What I am saying is that too many will not accept the lawfulness of the NO, and view the Tridentine mass as the only "real" liturgy. It isn't. Both are "real" and lawful, as they should be. The Church does have the right to reform its liturgy. Whether or not they did it well is open to question, but they certainly had the right.
Funny you should ask. The recent formal request for an EF in our parish was denied by the bishop. The priest who was going to celebrate the EF was unexpectedly transferred out of our parish as he made the announcement last week somewhat in tears. The vitriol toward the holy and ancient Roman rite is diabolical. It is the proponents of the new rite that foment these divisions and schisms.Is there a priest in your region who would start one?Thanked by 1ClergetKubisz -
Funny you should ask. The recent formal request for an EF in our parish was denied by the bishop. The priest who was going to celebrate the EF was unexpectedly transferred out of our parish as the announcement was made last week. The vitriol toward the holy and ancient Roman rite is diabolical.
This is why willing priests are scared to try.Thanked by 1francis -
The vitriol toward the holy and ancient Roman rite is diabolical. It is the proponents of the new rite that foment these divisions and schisms.
Haven't seen any of that in my area. I don't know whether the bishop is just open to other forms and expressions of worship, or whether he likes having all the trads in one place so he can more easily keep an eye on them. LOL. We have wondered about that. -
As others have pointed out, the canards against the Church have been frequent and pervasive. We are not surprised that they began just after the Protestant Revolution (in which the Episcopalian/Anglican churches were born.) The "ignorant rubes" slur is just one of them. But even granting those may actually have some truth, how, then, did the Church produce saints? Did that happen DESPITE the "amberization"? DESPITE the horrid, ante-Deluvian, Latin? Uhmmnnnhhhh.......well??
It is also a bit ironic that the Easterns (e.g., the Greek Orthodox) have a VERY ossified and ancient liturgy. I've been to a few, and I know....closed gates, GREEK-speak....
Finally: what is this idolization of "change"? We've had--what---about 4 "liturgies" since VatII closed, just here in the USA. Is this "change" or is it "convulsions?" I'm inclined to say the latter.Thanked by 1francis -
>> Based on the reports which will (probably) survive our era, [...] 2) most priests (and all the laity) favored the ordination of women
Not this laity. -
I and many see this assertion as holding no water. As we are all too aware, Bugnini and friends (including his cohort Deiss) admitted to the destruction (not the reform) of the Mass as it was always carried from generation to generation.
I agree that Bugnini was a misguided jerk, and his intentions may have been exactly as you state. I have nothing against the TLM, although agreeing with the council that it needed some reforms and deletions of some accretions it had accumulated over time. What does concern me is the tendency of some to idolize the externals in the TLM. Remove any item no longer of any real use and one would think the faith was being destroyed. -
Amberization? Can you elaborate on what exactly that vague and ambiguous non theological term is referring too? To me, the word is nothing but an expression of disdain for centuries of organically developing tradition cloaking a desire for freedom to be creative and innovative.
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And also please define "real use," without referring to an Eastern Rite.Thanked by 1eft94530
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It is also a bit ironic that the Easterns (e.g., the Greek Orthodox) have a VERY ossified and ancient liturgy. I've been to a few, and I know....closed gates, GREEK-speak....
You know, when you get it right in the beginning, you don't have to tamper with it again. LOL. The Roman rite originally had those closed gates and walls too. See the Gamber book if you doubt. Another factor I think important is that eastern liturgies have not abandoned their cultures. It is that cultural/religious link that has helped those liturgies survive. There is no "Latin" culture in the west and it died out long ago. -
So what you are saying is that your "concern" gives you and any other prelate the right to change and alter the liturgy that was handed down to us and banish its use from the very Church from which it was created." Correct me if I am wrong about this speculation.What does concern me is the tendency of some to idolize the externals in the TLM. Remove any item no longer of any real use and one would think the faith was being destroyed. -
And also please define "real use," without referring to an Eastern Rite.
I think you know what I mean. I remember when maniples were done away with. Their original use ended many centuries before and they had become decoration. One would have thought the sky was falling among some local trads. Also, did the mass need a second confiteor? Were those prayers by Pope Leo at the end even part of the mass before Leo created them? Oh, but we need them since the devil is rampant in our time. Not fake news. The devil has been rampant since the beginning of time. He hasn't changed any. Nothing wrong with those prayers said in devotions, but they were a more recent accretion. I was fine with the council removing accretions and cleaning up the organization and order of the mass. -
Correct me if I am wrong about this speculation.
You are over-speculating. The Latin church has the right and the authority to reform its liturgy. It did so. I would agree it didn't do it well, but not that it didn't have the authority. Again, we are talking about the right of lawful church authority, not your rights or mine. Neither of us have any authority. -
So, by "real use," you meant "secular connection."
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So, by "real use," you meant "secular connection."
No, I mean point and purpose within a liturgical function. It is OK to look at vestments and liturgy from time to time to determine if they still accomplish their original intent. Like most things, put it in the hands of a nut and extremes will result to no one's advantage. -
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This is why willing priests are scared to try.
I knew of one instance, years before Pope Benedict's changes, where a retired priest said periodic Latin masses. He was retired from another diocese, never an employee of the diocese where he lived. He said what were called "private" masses in his home and people he knew attended. That eventually resulted in chancery approved Latin masses, although it did take several years. -
Canon 838, paragraph 2:§2. It is for the Apostolic See to order the sacred liturgy of the universal Church, publish liturgical books and review their translations in vernacular languages, and exercise vigilance that liturgical regulations are observed faithfully everywhere.
Also, I find it ironic that the new Code of Canon Law says this in Canon 846:Can. 846 §1. In celebrating the sacraments the liturgical books approved by competent authority are to be observed faithfully; accordingly, no one is to add, omit, or alter anything in them on one’s own authority.
While they ignored the same directive from Quo Primum. -
Mmeladirectress,
It's amazing what "survives" in the historical record. I have a book here somewhere called Beneath the Cross by a historian called Barbara Diefendorf, who reconstructs from a lack of evidence the state of the Huguenots in the 1570s.
Maybe you've also read that there was a temporary reaction against progress when, with the "election" of Donald Trump, the inevitable transfer of power into the hands of the first generation of women rulers was delayed. People "voted" against their self-interest, but eventually the situation was righted, and the forces of history had their way.
There's another canard that the Old mass is peopled entirely by OLD people who are TOO OLD to change, and who are PINING AWAY IN THEIR NOSTALGIA for a LOST AGE.
You, since you're not in favor of the ordination of women "must be":
1) brainwashed
2) only expressing what your husband insists you express
3) too scared to speak the truth
4) afraid of following the Holy Spirit in the third age of the Church's development
or
a loyal Catholic who accepts what the Church teaches.
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@CGZ, oh yes, I've heard all of those before. It's amazing to what lengths people will go to get their way.
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About those maniples, Charles -
They are worn in the Ordinariate.
When they were set aside after the council we Anglo-Catholics wear horrified and thought it strange that they set aside what, of all the vesture worn by a priest, the maniple which was the one item that was from history's dawn (well, at least from the fifth or sixth century) unique to the priesthood.Thanked by 1francis -
CharlesWYes, but one does not have to return to the pre-Vatican II liturgy to worship God. Follow the rubrics in the NO, take no shortcuts, refuse to put up with silliness, and as I often say, follow the book.
I'm inclined to agree. First of all I'm an oblate of a Benedictine monastery of the Solesmes congregation, and am blessed with living only 35 minutes away. So that's where I worship every Sunday (and on Wednesdays as well as I volunteer in their library one day a week). The propers and ordinary are sung every day in Gregorian chant (a cappella) according to the Graduale Romanum of 1974. The rest, including chanted readings, is in French plainchant. The only thing *not* chanted are the homily and the intercessions during weekdays. Beauty (the herald of the abbey is "pulchitrudine, pace"), reverence, processions, pipe organ preludes, offertories and postludes, incense where appropriate, the whole works. And it is the new rite. Moreover Lauds and Vespers are also in Latin Gregorian chant.
I'm also not so naive to believe that old rite would somehow be inoculated against the popular secular tendencies of today had it remained the only rite of the Church. If those in charge of the liturgy are disobedient and disrespectful today, I suspect they'd remain so if the old rite were still the only rite of the Church and Vatican II never happened. The fact is that the old rite is now almost always in the exclusive hands of people interested in preserving it intact and have the capacity and knowledge to do so.
It's like steam locomotives. If steam locomotives were still around in regular daily use they'd be gritty and sooty and oily and filthy; in the day, there were plenty of rushed, sloppy Masses. The steam engines that are still in operating condition are in the hands of preservationists, and thus are usually in pristine condition, just as the EF is today because the FSSP, ICK, Barroux, Fontgombault, Clear Creek, et al are the "steam locomotive" custodians of the Church.
I myself have no stomach or desire to go back to the old rite, nor does my abbot, who gave us a long talk about *why* the liturgy had to be reformed; I don't recall all the reasons but they were compelling arguments and had to do a lot with not seeing the forest for the trees due to liturgical minutiae whose meaning got lost in the mists of time.
I just want to see the new Mass done correctly and reverently, and Gregorian chant revived and preserved where the skills and resources exist to do so (with simpler vernacular options where they do not). Which is why I chant in a schola and belong to the Gregorian Institute of Canada and one reason (but not the only reason) why I hang around Benedictines so much. In other words, I stopped complaining and did what was in my power to do something about it.
Ora -
I'm also not so naive...
What follows by OraLabora is perceptive and inevitably true. I have argued before that if the pre-conciliar mass were all that we had it would be subjected to the same horrors that are visited upon the NO. Why? Because of the people who are responsible for these horrors. Because of the spiritual sickness of our time, a sickness of epidemic proportions, of which these horrors are but a symptom. They all, from inappropriate music to extra-ritual commentary peppered throughout the mass, the ubiquity and manner of microphonistes, the antics and manner of so-called 'cantors', are there because they are thought by those responsible to be necessary to keep people engaged in a mass which is thought not compelling or interesting on its own; that and the fact that they are either bored with it or are so uncomfortable with its sublime sanctity that they must do something to relieve themselves of their discomfort and ennui. These people, these people who think that they are Vatican II people but aren't, would act out their impiety on whatever mass was available to them - and if the Tridentine mass were all that was at hand, they would treat it to the same calumny that they visit upon the unfortunate Novus Ordo.
There is, in fact, no shortage of evidence of just such impiety in pre-conciliar days. Hurried masses. Sloppy ritual. Impish pride in getting through a mass in as short a time as possible. (The record, I think, was something like twelve minutes.) Others who were there could add to what would be a lengthy list of shameless abuses. -
About those maniples, Charles -
They are worn in the Ordinariate.
I know - along with knee pants and square-toed buckle shoes.
Just kidding, of course. A priest once told me maniples were originally hand towels. -
These people, these people who think that they are Vatican II people but aren't, would act out their impiety on whatever mass was available to them - and if the Tridentine mass were all that was at hand, it would be treated with the same calumny that they visit upon the unfortunate Novus Ordo.
I think you are correct, 100%. For one thing, the religious education is no longer there to teach what the mass is, does, and means. Given all the problems caused by secularism and the other "isms" in the church, singing, "Beyond the Watering Trough" by Palestrina in Latin from square notes isn't going to make any difference. I know missionary activity is frowned upon - not culturally sensitive, you know - but what is first needed is conversion to the faith, or perhaps re-conversion at the very least. It also needs to start at the top. -
It's like steam locomotives. If steam locomotives were still around in regular daily use they'd be gritty and sooty and oily and filthy; in the day, there were plenty of rushed, sloppy Masses.
Oh yeah, and I am old enough to have seen those rushed and sloppy masses celebrated by indifferent priests.Thanked by 1OraLabora -
...were originally...
They were, and were commonly worn by Roman gentry.Thanked by 1CharlesW -
Just kidding, of course. A priest once told me maniples were originally hand towels.
Probably used to clean your hands after riding a train pulled by a steam locomotive... soot everywhere!
Ora -
There is no "Latin" culture in the west and it died out long ago.
I expect a lot better from you than that.
We call it the "Judaeo-Christian" culture; it is based on the OT and NT, utilizing Aristotle (thanks, Charles) AND Roman law through Aquinas. It may have reached its apogee in the late 1800's, and we might agree that it is waning; but it is the "Latin culture" of the Roman Catholic Church.
Not even the Greeks speak Ionic, Charles. -
On priests and bishops who won't allow Gregorian chant, Latin, or act weird at the mention of the EF - I would love to see someone stand straight up, look them square in the eye, and say 'father, you haven't the authority to forbid chant - the Second Vatican Council ordered that it be preserved and cultivated'. It would almost be worth losing one's 'job' for.
The question that all priests and bishops should be asking themselves and their choirmasters is not whether to have chant and some Latin, but 'how do we integrate this into our liturgy?'. They have no authority or right to ask 'whether or not'. The council already decided that.
And, how can a bishop forbid an EF parish or EF masses when a pope specifically ordered that they be made available to them that want them?
More and more presumption of non-existent authority! What a charmed life these tyrants lead who seem exempt from the obedience that they expect from everyone else. And no one has the courage to call them down when they contradict the authority even of popes and councils. -
Not even the Greeks speak Ionic, Charles.
Dad, you should get out of your Latin enclave more often. The "Judeao-Christian" or Latin culture started declining with The Enlightenment and its decline accelerated in more modern times. What "Christian" culture existed in this country was largely Protestant, not Catholic. I don't even want to get into the Masonic Protestant culture. This was never a Catholic country culturally or politically, and gets less so with time, especially since many of the Catholics are questionably Catholic.Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn -
Actually, the Judaeo-Christian culture (pace the AltRight's fevered yappings) is the foundational culture of Europe--all of it--and the Americas--ALL of them. You may wish to carve it into niches, which are really meaningless, and point to the Prots who wrote the Declaration and Constitution, or who settled New England. In fact, they were very, very, close heirs of the culture and continued it rather nicely.
You may ignore Cdl. Newman, Bp. Sheen, Chesterton, and lights such as today's J. Schall, B-16, Rutler, and Cd. Sarah (et. al.) I won't.
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