www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall More Ordinariate Disappointment

It is comforting to me, in a weird way I suppose, to see that my Roman brothers suffer from many of the same problems as do we Orthodox - that is, we form our beliefs about 'tradition' from our own subjective memories, opinion is more highly valued than are facts and one always cites the most limited, extreme examples of 'liturgical abuse' as being representative of the norm and as representative of the collapse of traditional church values. Thanks Stuart for the informative posts. I always remind my 'unchanging Church' Orthodox friends that if they were transported to Hagia Sophia in say the ninth century, they would wonder what was happening......

Is there some Romanoid website I can visit to encumber with endless blogs on icons, chotki, fasting regulations, calendar questions and other assorted oriental flotsam and jetsam?

Here is a good video to watch from the FSSP. I just watched it and it's well done. The FSSP is in full communion with Rome unlike the SSPX. He covers allot of stuff.
http://gloria.tv/?media=315800

Second part of video.
http://gloria.tv/?media=315829

For one, I wish the meaning of "tradition" were more widely understood. Tradition is that which has been passed down. it is not merely that which used to happen. If something happened a long time ago but hasn't been done for centuries, it is not traditional. And something which has been done for centuries and is done now is traditional, even though it was not done before it first was.

I am somewhat surprised to read you, Stuart, rail against the translations and practices of the RDL while supporting the NO. The NO as typically celebrated over the last 40 years is a farce, bright spots here and there notwithstanding.

The new translations are an improvement, but we are still stuck under the practice and mindset that says to compose new prayers to fit the audience of the moment is not problematic.

Most of all, I am deeply amused to hear Eastern Christians talk about the barrier to understanding created by Latin ("Nobody understands and nobody can follow along"). This, from people whose priests celebrate the Divine Liturgy behind a wall and have, literally, to come out periodically to tell everyone to stand up and pay attention to the next part.

Almost certainly. Having jettisoned our own tradition so effectively, we thoroughly enjoy talking about yours, however romanticised.

Lest anyone think Stuart is pulling our legs, check out this image.

Mass in the Seminary [2.bp.blogspot.com]

It was for real.

Unless you believe that these share some type of common form of development - they don't - I'm not sure why you'd be surprised.


Either you are being fascietious or you genuinely don't understand the Divine Liturgy. In charity I'll assume the former.

They do. A bunch of chaps got together with the idea that they knew better.


There is a third alternative which is that Stuart doesn't understand the Latin liturgy.

I'll try this link again.

2.bp.blogspot.com/-m1Ei_5THNVo/TZMFMjNiNNI/AAAAAAAAFwE/Rfcv8kpYmWQ/s1600/Mass%2Bin%2Bthe%2Bseminary.jpg

The link's not working.

No it isn't, and I tried again with little luck. In any case, it's a photo taken, I would guess, in the late 50s and shows four vested priests with their servers, offering the Latin Mass on four separate altars fixed against an absolutely barren wall in a completely unadorned room with old classroom type light fixtures above their heads. It is all too real for me and I do not miss it, nor do I miss the strange sacramental theology that lay behind it. It was even worse on All Souls Day! So much for Trent. Perhaps someone can correct the link for me. I'm too old to figure it out.

If that is how you reduce it, then all reform anywhere is equally valid or invalid. It's so silly I am sad that I am typing a reply.


Your comment about the DL being inaccessible behind a wall has nothing to do with what Stuart does or does not understand.

Nothing you're saying makes sense.

The point is not that the DL is inaccessible. The point is that neither is the liturgy in Latin. The point is that either or both are open to the same criticism based on the modern way of thinking that says nothing sacred can ever be made too naked. The point is that Eastern Christians, with their wall, ought to be able to see this.

There is a fundamental difference between the RDL and the Novus Ordo. The former was intended to be a full and accurate translation of a preexisting and normative text, the Ruthenian Slavonic Recension of the Euchologion. It stands or falls on its merits as a full and accurate translation, and being neither full nor accurate, it fails the test.

The Novus Ordo, on the other hand, was compiled as a reform of the Roman rite with the intention of recovering its "pristine state" (whatever that might be)--exactly the same mandate given to the commission that compiled the Tridentine missal. I suppose, in both cases, they were looking back to the Old Roman Rite found in the various sacramentaries from the 7th-9th centuries, before the Old Roman Rite died out in Rome and was replaced by the hybrid Romano-Frankish rite in the 10th century (from which all medieval Roman liturgies descend).

Neither was entirely successful. The Tridentine commission failed because it did not have the necessary historical-critical tools to do the job, and operated under the misapprehension that the Mass as it was celebrated in the 16th century was essentially the way it had always been celebrated (a delusion which not a few Latin traditionalists still hold today), and that, in particular, the Low Mass was the normative form.

The Vatican II liturgical commission had all the historical-critical tools it could want, plus all the work of the liturgical movement of the first half of the 20th century--yet it, too failed because, somewhere along the line, it lost its focus and tried to be too many things at the same time, and tried to please too many people. Nonetheless, it came much closer to fulfilling the objectives of Sacrosanctum concilium than the Tridentine Rite ever would. Aside from the points I mentioned--the variable Eucharistic prayers uncoupled from the liturgical calendar (something not found in either Western or Eastern liturgical tradition), and the overly didactic lectionary, when done properly it is reverent, pious, and promotes the active role of the laity.

The things about which most people complain are clearly abuses or misunderstandings. The English translation in the United States was (and to some extent remains) problematic because ICEL made a very poor translation. That does not impugn the normative Latin text. As Father Serge liked to point out, celebration versus apsidem is normative according to the Latin missal, with versus populum merely being permissible (the Missal assumes the celebrant is facing east). Also, the Novus Ordo was meant to be a sung Mass--blame those who implemented it for preferring to use banal contemporary hymns as decoration, rather than returning to the canon of Gregorian and other Western chant traditions. Nothing in the rubrics says that Latin is to be banished--Latin remains the normative language of the Novus Ordo, and the vernacular is permitted. If Latins weren't so neurotic, instead of insisting of one to the exclusion of the other, they would happily move back and forth between Latin and vernacular in the same way that Eastern parishes shift gears between Greek, Slavonic or Arabic and the vernacular. Finally, don't blame the Novus Ordo for tacky decorations, ugly vestments, bad music, faux inculturation (Polka Masses, Mariachi Masses, etc.) or the occasional abomination like a clown Mass (of which many have heard, but none have actually seen) or liturgical dance (which, unfortunately captured on film zaftig ladies of a certain age prancing in Danskins--though putting these clips on You Tube and identifying the ladies by name might put a stop to the practice overnight). These are errors brought about by the foibles of badly educated priests and bishops, aided and abetted by badly educated laymen.

All in all, the Novus Ordo has the potential to do what it set out to do, with some additional fine tuning. It has recentered the liturgical consciousness and piety of the faithful, fostered their full and active participation, and restored reception of the Eucharist under both species.

And a final word on that: There can be no doubt that reception of the Eucharist under both species, with the faithful receiving the Body of Christ in their hands from the celebrant, and drinking from the Chalice, is indeed the original Tradition of the early Church, and, as Father Taft notes, nothing that comes after that can have a claim to ecumenicity--whether it is receiving a pre-stamped Host on one's tongue, or the Body and Blood commingled on a golden spoon. It's a perfectly legitimate practice which is followed in a number of Oriental Churches to this day, and which the Roman Church had every right to restore if it so wanted. If there are abuses of this manner of reception, if the faithful fail to show proper reverence for the Holy Mysteries, blame poor catechesis, not the liturgy itself.

Most of the problems that face the Latin Church today in fact have nothing to do with the Liturgy, and everything to do with poor catechesis and the collapse of ascetic discipline. Maybe Roman traditionalists should focus more on that, than on the form of the liturgy, because trying to roll back the clock to 1965 will change absolutely nothing. Most of the problems manifest today were already present back then. The "Spirit of Vatican II" merely brought them into highlight.