www.byzcath.org Forums Faith & Christian Life Faith & Theology Traditional Liturgy to be freed?

Alex,

Are you talking about Archbishop +Burke's consecration of St. Mary's Oratory for the Inst. of Christ the King, Sov. Priest?

Was it called "Gate of Heaven"?

Logos Teen

Yes, sir!

Alex

As I have read, there are various exemptions granted to various orders for liturgical use within their communities(Benedictines,Carmelites,Franciscan etc), such as the Monastic or Cathedral practice of the Divine Office and Missal use...which can be confusing...also I have be told that if one attends the current Roman Mass then you are to use the current Liturgy of the Hours, if one attends the Indult Mass(1962)then you can use the older breviary and ...then again, you have that catch all phrase, "can be used for private prayer practices"... :rolleyes:

james

I agree with a good deal of what you said, I personally would not have any issue bringing back the other various Western rites and usages as well. I simply find that creating a new liturgy for the sole purpose of blurring the line between Catholics and protestants is rediculous!

And as I said, if they think more lay involvement is important, then why not let the lay people say the responses of the altar servers? Language again is not a problem, but even the Vatican II council said that Latin is to remain the official language of the Church, I do not think Bl. John XXIII was imagining the "Pauline rite" when he proposed liturgical reform (and infact the 1962 missal was his reform of the liturgy).

Okay, I'm going to jump in here with a response to Vito's original story, because something about it struck me as suspicious, and I've highlighted the paragraph that bothers me.

I find it highly unlikely that the Catholic Church would allow individual priests to decide for themselves which rite or version of the liturgy they will use! Isn't that a decision that is always up to the bishop of each diocese?

What if an individual parish priest decided he wanted to do all his liturgies in a combination of Slavonic and Latin? Not that there's anything wrong with that ... :rolleyes: ... but don't we all agree that, right or wrong, the main role of a bishop is to make just exactly this type of decision for his own diocese/eparchy?

Dear Theist Girl, I'm not answering your question but merely noting that the quote you used was from Catholic News Agency and not mine personally. Ciao, Vito

Theist Gal,

I thought the main liturgical role for the bishop was to see that the liturgy is safeguarded in his diocese, something which many hierarchs have failed to do.

Logos Teen

Hmm, have you seen the liturgical mess in the Western Church? It pretty much resembles what you just said.

True, but safeguarding the liturgy isn't necessarily the same as choosing for yourself which liturgy you want to use.

So how exactly would giving individual priests the right to disobey a direct order from their bishops help improve the situation?

Well if there is permission granted for all priests to celebrate the TLM, they won't be denying any orders from their bishop because he wouldn't be able to rightfully issue any order prohibiting this Mass from being said.

In the late '80s, JPII asked a group of cardinals, of which Cardinal Ratzinger was one, to determine whether the TLM had ever been abrogated. Their united consensus and reply was "no, the Traditional Mass has not been abrogated."

Logos Teen

Hmm, I think you've been reading some SSPX literature, Teen!

No, the older version of the Mass (aka the Traditional Mass) hasn't been abrogated; however, like it or not, it's been revised and the revised version has been prescribed as the normative version of the Mass. The older version is allowed, with varying degrees of restrictions.

And a lot of people (including me!) agree that the restrictions need to be lifted and the permissions widened, but that's very different from saying (a) the restrictions were never there in the first place and (b) priests should be able to say whatever Rite of the Liturgy they want. The Catholic Church just doesn't work that way.

And speaking of + Pope John Paul II +, he's on record as saying:

Again, currently as it is now it is already a Do it yourself liturgy! Little commitees of lay people decide what they want to do to or what they feel like should go on in Mass in parishes accross the country!

There isn't even certainty that the new Mass can be considered a new version of the Roman Rite, the people at the Latin Mass Society seem to agree that the Pauline rite is not the Roman Rite of the Mass, and they aren't even SSPX. There is no other time in the history of the Church that the Roman rite has been replaced by a new rite. It would be like if the Byzantine church decided to abandon its liturgy for the Roman Rite! Or the Maronites and the Coptics decided to switch.
The only other time in the history of the Church where liturgical reform tore down Tradition instead of perserving it was the Protestant reformation!

Well, I'm sorry, but if the people at the Latin Mass Society are related to the Latin Mass Magazine, then they are pretty close to the SSPX if not already members. A lot of traditional-minded Catholics stopped subscribing to that magazine when that became clear, many years ago - including me.

I just don't get the constant drumbeat for the Tridentine Liturgy and its reinstatement.

But let's say that permission were granted tomorrow for its use throughout the Latin Church.

Now what?

There are no churches in my diocese that have the requisite vestments or other ritual articles to celebrate the Tridentine Liturgy.

But let's say these things could be found.

Now the problem is who is going to use these things and actually celebrate with these ritual articles?

The only priests who have had Latin in their seminary training--from what I'm told--are those who are close to retirement or in retirement. And none express any intereest whatsoever in celebrating with the language or the liturgical rite. Of those who who are younger and might have had a passing brush with it, most say they are too "rusty" to seriously make an attempt at using the Tridentine rite. Beyond that, there aren't any seminarians taking Latin who will be able to use these books in the future.

In reality, what these calls come down to is the same thing that has been mentioned elsewhere on this thread--having someone totally unfamiliar with the ritual specifications of a liturgical tradition try to come "cold" to it and make something out of it that looks like worship. It's akin to telling Father Anthony that he ought to give it a try. The seminaries are NOT teaching the Tridentine liturgy to their students and, from what anyone can tell, they have no intention of doing so in the near future. There is enough other material to teach and the current time period has been reduced from the four years it used to take to three.

Part of the problem with the Liturgy and the way in which it is served/celebrated in the Latin Church in the United States is that so many professors are still in the mode of teaching seminarians that they need to "develop their own style": code for "wing it."

I can think of nothing that would scandalize people more than untrained or poorly trained priests attempting to lead a congregation in a liturgical form with which they are minimally familiar.

Beyond all that, the whole is part of a way of life that has passed. Priests honed their Latin in the past by having their Breviary in Latin. They not only spent eight years learning the language, but they also used it daily in their prayer.

The Latin Church has been in a movement of liturgical reform from the time of Pope St Pius X that culminated in the reforms of Vatican II. There was the "dialogue Mass" of the 1950s where the people were encouraged to make the responses with the altar servers. It wasn't universally adopted. Before that, there was the great simplification of the Missal in 1937.

Actually, if it were up to me when I was much younger, the Liturgy of Trent would have been reformed toward a much earlier age, since the Tridentine useage was actually an attempt to codify the abuses that had crept into medieval practice--abuses that stemmed from parochial abbreviations from the much longer liturgy used in earlier centuries. But the Church is not a study in liturgical archeology. She is a living being, ever moving forward and ever reforming her liturgy--whether Eastern of Western.

The function of liturgy is to draw people into a relationship with Christ wherein they may participate in His Saving Mystery. And this happens despite the shortcomings in the liturgical practice of the priest who stands "in persona Christi." The Latin priest who rushes through the current liturgy, the Orthodox priest who cuts parts of the liturgy because he has to travel to another parish an hour way to serve a second time, the UGCC priest who serves the English, spoken liturgy--I could go on, but the point is made. No one of these fails to make the Lord's Saving Mystery present for the people gathered around him.

To come to a close, have any of you calling for this restoration observed people who attended the past rite? I have. :rolleyes: Aside from those who took along a rosary or had their own missal, the bulk of people were staring ahead toward the altar with a "glazed look" on their faces, putting in their time to get over their obligation. While there are still those who in that mode, it's my experience that there are far more people actively involved in trying to deepen their relationship with Christ thatn there formerly were.

In Christ,

BOB