There have been several of these films celebrating Summorum Pontificum by contrasting clown Masses and other such nonsense with the extraordinary form of the Mass.
While on one level I enjoy the humor of these films there is another level that bothers me. For one I think it is a problem to compare the ordinary and extraordinary forms of the Mass in the Latin rite by taking the worse example and excesses and then to compare them to the Masses celebrated properly in the older form. You don’t see examples of the ordinary form being celebrated properly and reverentially as you would for example see on EWTN or in my own parish. There are "Novus Ordo" Masses being celebrated according the the rubrics and in a way that turly helps you to worship God. I am not all that tearful, but I can certainly testify to having tears form while participating at Mass at my parish. Though I must admit the Mass celebrated at other parishes at times could invoke tears, but not for joy.
I am all for critiquing experimental Masses that depart from the GIRM into a world of someone else’s creation where entertainment becomes the prime purpose. The so called do-it-yourself Mass is of course a problem. I just don’t think we should pit one valid form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass with another valid form of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. We don’t see video’s pitting an Eastern rite Mass against the so-called Tridentine form of the Mass, even though the Eastern rites are really quite beautiful and transcendent and really kick smells and bells up a notch.
There seems to be this idea out there if the 1970 Missal of Paul VI was never promulgated that we would have escaped all the conscience that has occurred. Man with black hat had a good post previously on the People’s Mass Book issued in 1964 where we can see the experimental tendency being used with the 1962 missal. That somehow people who don’t even stick with the reduced rubrics of the 1970 missal would have stuck with the 1962 one. Possibly some of the worst excesses might have been avoided if the missal had not been promulgated during this tumultuous time. I just think the idea that we wouldn’t have had clown masses using the 1962 missal to be naive.
Now I am all for the reform of the reform and I am hopeful that Summorum Pontificum is a movement along this path. New translations coming within the next couple of years are also going to be quite helpful along this path.
People complain about abuses precisely because they are abuses – they depart from the missal. I just think it sets up a false dichotomy to make a comparison between ordinary form of the Mass celebrated improperly and irreverently with the extraordinary form of the mass celebrated correctly. These attitudes against the ordinary form of the Mass are common among schismatics and sedevacanist and I wish they were less common among those who don’t fall into these groups. Lets have both forms of the Mass in the Latin rite celebrated properly and work to those ends.
As I end this post I am watching the start of the Solemn High Mass: Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite on EWTN.
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I’m also watching it through the Internet as I type this post. 🙂
Lets have both forms of the Mass in the Latin rite celebrated properly and work to those ends.
Amen. In saecula saeculorum.
On a side note, I do find the implementation date of September 14 to be quite interesting, since it is also the day wherein the third and the fourth (and final) periods of Vatican II started.
Isn’t that the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing in the background there?
Matbe its selective memory on my part, but I remember some reverent and wonderful masses in the newer form from my childhood in Iowa back in the ’70s. Organs, processions and the priest sang most of the Mass.
I remember great Novus Ordo Masses from childhood, too, back in the 80’s. They gradually faded away. I remember latin, bells, patens, incense, and chant. One by one those beautiful things dissolved out of the local liturgies replaced by hand-holding, re-worded hymns, and “flash-kneeling”. I’d never seen a TLM until EWTN yesterday morning, and all it did was stir up a longing for my “old” Novus Ordo. Why in the world would anyone do away with those beautiful bells? I would prefer a TLM to today’s Masses any Sunday, but I’d be just as overjoyed to reserve the High Mass for special occasions and return the Novus Ordo to it’s original glory.
I agree that it is unfair to compare the worst of one thing with the best of another — much like when liberals advocate married clergy by comparing the worst clergy to the best married couples. It’s not a true comparison at all. However, where I’m from, you would be very hard pressed to find a NO mass celebrated properly. Were I to make a video of this type here in Saskatchewan using local examples, it would not be as extreme but it would show the NO as irreformably banal.
Seeing all those clips of minimalist, modern chapels and churches with their sterile, barren feel makes me hanker for the splendor of the old churches where art truly honored God. Even the bare but rustic and charming chapels of cloistered orders is miles better.
It’s rare for me to attend a NO Mass with the pomp and glory that the Eucharist deserves�though when I do attend one it is so much more uplifting.
I’m not a devote of the Missel of Bl. John XXIII, but I surely understand the hankering.
I bacame a Catholic on Holy thursday 1975. I have lived in several States in the US, The Republic of Panama, the Carribean, Germany, Isreal, and Egypt, as well as visiting several other countries. Other than the Chapel where I was recieved into the Church, reverent Masses according to the Missel of Pope Paul VI have been in very short supply.
Most documents issued by the Vatican concerning the Liturgy are ignored.
In fact, I normally travel outside of my home Archdiocese (Indianapolis) to go to sunday mass. I regularly attend at St. Martin of Tours in Louisville KY, for their high standard of Ars Celebrandi, in the Pauline Missel.
The local churches here reach a highpoint when they reach OCP banality. One parish here makes a point of useing wine glasses for Holy Communion. (Hint, it’s a Franciscan Parish in Jeff.) When you ask why they arn’t following the practices layed out in Redemptionis Sacramentam and other documents, they deny they evenexist, get made and call you names (but oh so politly, to correct your error!)
I’ve seen more masses like the ones in the video than I care to remember–the Pauline Missel has been corrupted by a spirit of foolishness and disrespect to the Eucharist. I think the video is justified.
Here’s a link you should check out
Stunning intro video…. it brought
tears to my eyes
http://www.acmrcia.org/
I don’t know about the claim that the 1962 Missal never would have had any “Clown Masses”. There is a view that before VII, “the rot had already set in”, and to some extent, it is true. In America, particularly, there was a strange low-Church approach to the old Mass, and a kind of Pharasitism common among some Catholics. Modernism had already started to infiltrate, and there were philosophical problems present in many Catholic thinkers (though claims that Catholic thought before the Council was a “wasteland” are horribly false).
We could have fixed it without the major changes that took place. They were problems that needed addressing, but the way they were addressed just opened the doors for all the rottenness to escape into every corner of the Church. The 1970 Missal was a radical break where mild reform would have sufficed, as were many of the “reforms” introduced after VII.
You’re so right. It is unfair to compare the best of one use with the worst of the other. Whenever I see these things, I ask people which they would rather have–an extraordinary use Mass celebrated by a priest so badly trained that he messes up the Latin and has to be prodded into the right position by an altar server, with no music and a congregation that acts completely divorced from what’s happening in the sanctuary, or an ordinary use Mass sung by a well-trained priest with a good schola and a congregation who make their proper responses. Some people will say this comparison is unfair, or protest that it’s obviously not as extreme as High Mass vs. clown Mass.
Still, I’ve seen a lot more badly-celebrated extraordinary use Masses out there than gorgeous High Masses, and I think it’s highly unfair of folks to represent a beautiful High Mass as the norm–if my parents and grandparents are to be believed, it wasn’t what happened in most parishes in 1962, and it isn’t what happens in most places with the 1962 Missal now either, any more than the clown Mass is the norm with the 1970 Missal. I’ve seen pictures of them, but I don’t know a single person who’s ever attended one, nor has one ever been advertised in a parish near me.
A more realistic comparison would be low Mass 1962-style with slightly soppy vernacular hymns vs. low Mass 1970-style with a couple of extemporised prayers and soppy vernacular hymns. The line from point A to point B becomes clearer when you think of it that way.
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