THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: Of course why would we want to stop it, at least none of us who truly love the liturgy would want to stop it. Call it egotism if you want. Call it nothing more than shameless self-gratification, but every once in a while I like to stop blogging for a moment and say...
SEE I TOLD YOU SO.
I first announced the changes to the English translation of the mass years ago. I believe it was way back in 2007. Of course I was immediately called into question. Many people said it would never happen. Those who admitted that it could happen, said it would likely be watered down. I told my readers here on this blog how much the U.S. Catholic Bishop's Conference was resisting it, and once again I was proved right when they voted down one of the reform books just before the Vatican approved another one, only to force the U.S. Catholic bishops to turn around and approve the very book they had voted down just prior.
It's been a long haul since I began covering this, but in just a matter of weeks now it will become reality.
SEE I TOLD YOU SO.
But wait, there is more. I haven't led you wrong on the new translation, so there is no reason why you should doubt me on this. The new English translation is just the tip of the iceberg. More changes are coming, much bigger changes, but I do not know when. The pope has a committee working behind closed doors at the Vatican to completely reform the Ordinary Form (Novus Ordo) of the mass. Nothing is official yet. All of this is a work in progress, but some have seen the working drafts. Basically, the reformed Ordinary Form (Novus Ordo) mass is slated to look a lot more like the Extraordinary Form (Tridentine) mass when the time comes. The reforms are set to come in two parts. The first will be the Liturgy of the Word, which will not contain many changes at all. The second will be the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which will be a complete reworking to make it more like the 'Mass of the Faithful' in the Extraordinary Form. So in essence, the new mass is set to look a lot more like the old mass during the second half of the liturgy. Like I said, I don't know when this will come, but I think it's reasonable to assume that this pope finishes what he starts, just like the last pope. Let's not forget, this new English translation we are all about to soon enjoy, was originally commissioned by Pope John Paul II.
Who knows! If I'm still blogging in five to ten years (highly doubt it but who knows), maybe then I'll be able to say again...
SEE I TOLD YOU SO.
16 comments; post here:
Any word on whether there will be any reforms of the LOTH?
If this is the Pope's new plan, it's kind of stupid. Why retrofit the Novus Ordo to be highly similar to the EF when we have perfectly good EF's popping up all over North America? It's like why would I want a sugar substitute when I can consume regular real sugar that is still available.
Furthermore why doesn't Benedict work on re-introducing the EF to ALL parishes and say doing something like a motu proprio that will force every parish to celebrate the EF for one Sunday mass in every parish? But he should be nice and give the whole Church a 5 year limit, with certain parts of the world implementing one EF every year due to learning curves. Oh and the motu proprio MUST include the seminaries teaching the EF and Latin. In summary, force everyone's hand, give the libutards no leeway to revolt or let them leave the Church/priesthood, and just make everyone say the EF. Let the NO be a social experiment that failed in ancient church history.
YCRCM, I think this all rotates around the new lectionaries. The Holy See seems to be particularly proud of the new lectionary and wants to do everything it can to preserve it. The new OF will essentially be an EF, except it will have room for the expanded lectionary. I think that's what this is all about.
There is talk that when the New Missal is introduced, whenever that will be, it will replace both the Missal of Pope Paul VI and the Missal of Saint Pius V (1962 version). The new missal might possibly be a flexible one, which could easily be used to celebrated the mass both ways OF or EF. This is just talk though, and nobody knows yet what will really happen.
YCRCM, I think this all rotates around the new lectionaries. The Holy See seems to be particularly proud of the new lectionary and wants to do everything it can to preserve it. The new OF will essentially be an EF, except it will have room for the expanded lectionary. I think that's what this is all about.
There is talk that when the New Missal is introduced, whenever that will be, it will replace both the Missal of Pope Paul VI and the Missal of Saint Pius V (1962 version). The new missal might possibly be a flexible one, which could easily be used to celebrated the mass both ways OF or EF. This is just talk though, and nobody knows yet what will really happen.
Any news of progress on the Canadian, Australian,or New Zealand Ordinariates?
In the UK things are running but still looking for a church for OLW.
There is a news blackout on them as well as no news of the Popes visit to Germany.
Absolutely nothing. There is a total news blackout on the ordinariates. The Vatican is saying NOTHING.
There were brief murmorings about a month ago in Aus re AB John Hepworth (who, if memory serves me correctly, is supposed to head the AO in Aus) re a case he was launching in South Australia re semenary scandal he was subjected to in his early 20's (when actually a Catholic). Because he left the CC, signed on with the Anglicans, rose to AB with this denomination, and seeks to once more re-enter the CC as head of the AO in my thinking, things are in a shambles. it will take a mighty act of god to raise up the Ordinariate/English rite here in Australia. At any rate, the Sydney diocese during Synod 2010 all but laughed it off; The Sydney Diocese is rabidly evangelical - so 'low church' its not even Anglican - and those two or three parishes that are supposedly High church' miht have old time liturgy, but their theology is more liberal than that of the renogade liberal parishes of the Catholic Church in Sydney - most of whom pay no attention to our wonderful Card. Pell but speak of him contemptably in my thinking.
It will take a universal action of Divine portent to raise up the Anglican Ordinariate/English Rite worldwide.
Don't look for support from the Global South either; they've all signed onto GAFCON - headed by our Sydney Anglican Arch Bishop Peter jensen!! Ridiculous!! They faun over John Piper et al rather than tapping into their faith herritage; their misconceptions/disinformation about Catholic Christianity is also verging on the lovel of the sort of muck peddled by groups such as the Seventh Day Adventists (was one for 21 years so I know what I am speaking about here).
Thank you for permitting me to share, here.
Sarah,
Australia.
Sarah, the two great pillars of Anglo-Catholic ordinariates will be England and the United States for the foreseeable future.
Canada will be a good stronghold as well, but intimately attached to the United States which will be a much larger body. I have no doubt ordinariates will be set up in Australia and New Zealand, but it would appear there is much more work to do there. It coud be a year or two away before they are established -- just my guess -- and even then they will likely be small at first.
@Catholic Knight, Here's an article that confirms your theory of a hybrid mass
www.catholicherald.co.uk/news/2011/05/16/popes-reform-of-the-reform-in-liturgy-to-continue
@Young Canadian, here's a commentary that explains why a hybrid mass would be more succesful than just going back to the EF while eliminating the OF
www.catholicherald.co.uk/commentandblogs/2011/05/20/the-pope%e2%80%99s-ambition-a-powerful-blend-of-the-novus-ordo-and-the-old-rite-could-sweep-the-church
Catholic Knight,
Before we can get to a new Missal, the biggest reform needed and the one that will have the most impact, will be a return to Ad Orienmtem worship, with a reorientation of the altar and priest facing the liturgical east, as is currently done in the TLM.
I don't see how this can be done, or how it will play out, because it will cause a serious backlash and be met with the most serious opposition by the liberals and the laity who have been Prostestantised by the novelties. Most altars are a mess, with the wooden picnic table being the most predominant in most parishes.
I am UK based and have never heard of this conflict between modernists and traditionalists. It seems to be something unique to the USA.It is deplorable to hear someone who purports to be a "real catholic" being so verbally aggressive and contemptuous of his fellow Catholics and also of his protestant brothers and sisters in Christ. This is kind of gung ho warlike macho verbalisation is not of the Spirit
Anonymous, my hope and prayer is thus. As the liturgical reform in the United States gets underway, this kind of head-butting will subside. It needs to.
What many people don't realise is that traditionalists are reactionary people, not proactive. They are usually not the type to initiate conflict, but instead "react" to some mistreatment that usually comes from Modernists who seek to squeeze tradition out to make way for innovation. People hear the Traditionalists rant, and often think they are the trouble-makers. In my experience however, in 90%+ of the cases where a Traditionalist is reacting, you can always find a Modernist who has incited him not far away. That's just my personal experience anyway. I saw the same phenomenon in the Evangelical church I used to help pastor before my conversion to the Catholic Church. It tends to be a human nature thing.
This kind of fighting must stop. The pope has bent over backwards to include all sides and give them all what they say they want - both forms of mass are now permitted - so why all this nastiness and continuing conflict? Could it be that seeking the power of the moral high ground is more attractive than bending over backwards to accommodate your brothers views ?Our pope gives us the ultimate example of tolerance in the liturgical options now available to us all. CK conflict may be what you found in your previous experiences as a pastor in another church but I can assure you that it is not part of the ground roots culture of the Catholic Church. Indulging in debate in one thing but the verbal contempt for fellow Christians in this video is unacceptable to the majority of Catholics. We do not want fighting about the Holy Mass - some of us have spent a lifetime dealing with change without getting involved in this kind of altercation and it is unacceptable. ......if I have not love I am a gong sounding and cymbal clashing....
Anonymous wrote: "CK conflict may be what you found in your previous experiences as a pastor in another church but I can assure you that it is not part of the ground roots culture of the Catholic Church."
While I agree that it shouldn't be, it nevertheless is. I'm afraid I've seen the exact same behaviour in the Catholic Church, as in Evangelical churches, only worse!
The problem with Modernists is they're always looking for a way to dump tradition in favor of some new innovation.
The problem with Traditionalists is they often over react and judge motives rather than actions.
For the last forty years it would seem Modernists in the Church have had almost a free run to do whatever they want. As a result they have been rude, inconsiderate and downright unresponsive to the concerns of Traditionalists. This rudeness has caused the Traditionalists to react in the most extreme ways, even to the point of reverting to the 1962 Missal and calling the new mass invalid. We can fault the Traditionalists all we want, but considering the level of disrespect they've endured for decades, we can't say their reaction is unwarranted or unprovoked.
Modernists should have been more kind. They should have been more thoughtful. They should have listened to the concerns of Traditionalists and taken them to heart. For the most part, however, they did not! They trampled over them instead. They steamrolled virtually every concern the Traditionalists had -- for 40 years!
In my brief time as an Evangelical pastor I had never seen such a level of disrespect. Even in the Evangelical churches, provisions are made for Traditionalists. The old hymnals are dusted off, somebody brings out the organ, a particular service time is set aside for them, etc. During my brief stay as an Episcopalian, the concerns for Traditionalist were accounted for. An entire rite was set aside for them, with traditional music, and a time to worship. Not so in the Catholic Church. For some strange reason I cannot explain, I came into the Catholic Church and witnessed an entire class (sub-culture) of Catholics who were suppressed and told there was something wrong with them because fhey longed for more reverence in worship and preferred the old ways. How could thus be? Every Protestant sect makes room for Traditionalists, but for so long most diocese in the United States made none. It wasn't until Summorum Pontificum in 2007 that we started to see the pendulum shift. Now Traditionalists are starting to come back into the mainstream and ya'll are gettig an earful of how they've been made to feel for the last 40 years. Get used to it! Because there is a whole lot of healing that needs to go on, and that can't happen until all this repressed frustration (40 years worth) is out in the open.
CK by your own admission you have not been in the Catholic Church for the last 40 years – I have - so please give another hearing to the pleadings of an old timer. I celebrate all converts for the fresh perspective and life force they bring. I’m not saying that what you say is not your own truthful experience .What I am saying is that I and many other Catholics don’t recognise this as representative of a church they have known and loved for decades. You might be presenting a snapshot of a moment in time, where my mind has the whole reel of film and years of pictures on it. I remember Love in abundance when I think of our wonderful church – no fighting. - That all I’m saying. I repeat that I have never before come across the words traditionalist and modernist, nor have I ever witnessed two camps of parishioners at loggerheads. The picture of a church at war with itself which you constantly present – is utterly unknown to me. For the last 40 years Catholics have been using the Novo Ordo as a matter of obedience to a higher spiritual authority as represented by the pope – it’s never been a matter of joining a tribe called “modernists” and being rude to other persons called “traditionalists”. It’s been a simple matter of obedience. We now move on to a new page in liturgical history in similar obedience, but as far as I know there is no great resentment or bitterness over it. It’s all very familiar territory to a good few of us. All requirements of the liturgy are now being accommodated and we move on in Faith. Hope and above all Charity. There is no need for emotion or conflict. It is done as the pope has decreed. That is how it works in the Catholic Church I know, and I repeat that all fighting and intemperate language must stop. In no way does fighting and discord over the most holy mass represent the Catholic Church as I have known it all these years. I conclude with an extract from my 1962 Missal (a treat for you all from the old Latin mass) in both English and Latin ........Just substitute “Let us” for “ I will” below.......
After the sign of the cross at the beginning of mass the priest joins his hands before his breast and begins the antiphon which the server continues......
P. I will go up to the altar of God Itroibo ad altare Dei
S. To the God who gives joy to my youth Ad Deum qui laetificat juventute meam
CK and all - The Old Latin mass is beautiful - and we now can all celebrate it together if we wish. It is up to us to be adult about it all........Above all the Dear Lord wants you all to - “Have Joy in your youth”...Don’t fight....A man who loved you very much died so that you could have such joy.......Don’t fight about the mass, don’t belittle others over it . I beg you all ......stop it now............
Indeed, the time for healing has come. Let us hope and pray that it begins now, with the new translation of the Roman Missal.
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