Posted on 05/14/2011 2:02:50 PM PDT by NYer
How true! This is precisely what I found in the Divine Liturgy celebrated in the Maronite Catholic Church. Words matter ... as they express our heartfelt emotions.
. The liturgy creates a universe brimming with fruitful spiritual life, and allows the soul to wander about in it at will and to develop itself there. .
The liturgy has no purpose, or at least, it cannot be considered from the standpoint of purpose. It is not a means which is adapted to attain a certain end it is an end in itself." Excellent and exactly correct.
. The liturgy creates a universe brimming with fruitful spiritual life, and allows the soul to wander about in it at will and to develop itself there. .
The liturgy has no purpose, or at least, it cannot be considered from the standpoint of purpose. It is not a means which is adapted to attain a certain end it is an end in itself."
Excellent and exactly correct.
Without deliberate exercise of the Spirit, the flesh will eventually overtake.
Agreed. And I’m not so sure there were no bad motives.
For instance, “Et cum spirito tuo” in the ICEL translation is, “And also with you.”
What was wrong with the obvious translation: “And with thy spirit”?
“Thy” is no longer commonly used in English, but everyone knows what it means. Its equivalent is still is in use in most modern European languages other than English, and represents the familiar form of the second person, as opposed to the more polite and distant “you.”
More significant is the omission of the word “spirit.” It would hardly seem accidental that the word “spirit” was omitted EVERYWHERE from the Mass. Could it be that the chief translaters such as Donald Trautman didn’t believe in such a thing as “spirit”? It certainly looks like it.
British Catholics sometimes refer to this as the loss of Smells and Bells.
The end of the latin mass was bad. You could go into any church in the world and say the prayers along with others as there was a common language in the Mass....Now you have to speak in hundreds of languages to follow Mass...
That's a new one to me.
You wrote:
“Latin was blessed of God?”
Its usage in the Church most certainly was. I could be in New York or Japan or Argentina or Rome or Nigeria or Bombay and I would have been able to fully participate with ease in the Mass when it was in Latin.
Sed contra: ...
Sure, we should always give God our best, and the liturgy ought to be an instance of that.
Sure, the words, the setting, the music all matter.
BUT the gift of the Secred Body and Precious blood is beyond all else. And in a pig-sty, with words written by inarticulate clowns or, worse, even by the translators of the NAB it is still the “still point” of the turning world, the focus of the saving act of God.
So, let’s make the setting as excellent as possible. But this diamond would shine in a ring from a Crackerjacks box.
Agreed.
As I mentioned on another thread, I was a Catholic convert in college. But it took practically no time at all to learn all the Latin responses and also learn to be a Mass server.
For those who grew up as Catholics, it was no problem at all.
**But Christ did not give us the liturgy to be a message-delivery system. **
Great statement!
Why were they cslled "The Dark Ages" ?
Here we go with the real purpose of the Liturgy of the Mass!
“You could go into any church in the world and say the prayers along with others as there was a common language in the Mass....Now you have to speak in hundreds of languages to follow Mass...”
I travel abroad a lot and experience the loss of the Latin Mass profoundly. Vat II was hijacked...today we have a separation into groups, not only in the secular world, but also in the Church. I went to a Mass in the Bronx a few weeks ago and it was in Spanish...hence the congregation and Mass was in Spanish...how I wished it was in Latin.
When I was a child, my mother worked for Scandinavian Airlines, which entitled her to discounted travel benefits. (this was pre VCII). On each of our trips to Europe, no matter which city we visited, we could follow the Mass as it was universally in the Latin language. It always struck me odd that as international travel began to grow in popularity, beginning in the late 60s, the Catholic Church should adopt the vernacular language for its celebration. That meant that foreign visitors could no longer follow the Mass in the countries they visited. On the other hand, it also resulted in a greater participation by the local laity.
In so doing, the Eastern Catholic Churches have also adopted the practice of offering the liturgy in the vernacular. This has opened their doors to other catholics who can now understand and participate in their liturgies. Personally speaking, I have been most blessed at the opportunity to grow deeper in my catholic faith while also returning to God a portion of His gifts through parish activities.
Every coin has two faces. As Catholics, our goal should be to use our God given talents to assist the church, rather than critique it, regardless of the liturgy offered.
In 1611 printed material was common and inexpensive, because printed material was inexpensive literacy was high, and because printed material was inexpensive more literate people knew English than knew Latin.
In 1400 manuscripts were scarce and expensive, because manuscripts were scarce and expensive literacy was low, and because manuscripts were scarce and the vast bulk of manuscripts were transcriptions of Latin originals if you were literate in 1400 it meant that you read Latin.
By 1648 Europe was divided into ethnic states that had their own separate languages as instruments of nationalism. In 1400 Europe was a patchwork of multiethnic kingdoms and princedoms and republics that used Latin as the common language of communication among the educated.
Between 1450 and 1550 you had the rise of nationalism, the wide availability of paper (as opposed to expensive animal skins) and the invention of printing - developments that completely altered European notions of education, literacy, language and politics.
oh, my gosh.
You wrote:
“If you knew it ... that was what all the fuss was about prior to KJV.”
1) If I understand you - and that takes effort because you’re apparently collapsing two very different things into one - as recently as 1970 anyone who could read any important modern language (with the help of a hand missal) could easily attend and understand the Latin Mass just about anywhere you found Catholics anywhere in the world. If you did not have a hand missal, you could still understand most of the Latin Mass simply by past experience.
2) The KJV has nothing to do with the Latin Mass nor supposedly making things formerly in Latin more understandable to people who didn’t know Latin. Several English language Bibles were available - including the Catholic Douay Rheims - BEFORE THE KJV EVER CAME INTO EXISTENCE in 1611.
Then you posted: “Why were they cslled “The Dark Ages” ?”
They weren’t. People today refer to times before their own as the Dark Ages. No one living in those supposed Dark Ages really referred to them as Dark Ages, however. The Dark Ages are largely a myth. Ignorant people - usually products of government schools - often claim the Dark Ages were the whole Middle Ages. That is the result of ignorance and bigottry. Scholars are increasingly uneasy about using loaded terms like “Dark Ages” for there is less and less evidence or reason to use such a term. Oddly enough, and of course ignorant people would never know this, during the “Dark Ages” (which no scholar today dates longer than from about 600 to 1000 give or take) there were vernacular translations of scriptures in Anglo-Saxon England. Most likely more of them would have been produced and circulated since Anglo-Saxon England had a particularly strong vernacular culture, but that was radically changed by the events of 1066. Gee, you probably understand all of that, right?
The Carolingian Renaissance, the Scholastic revolution, the Italian Renaissance and the Sicilian School didn't fit into their liberal agenda - so they were ignored.
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