Posted on 10/10/2006 5:35:42 PM PDT by Petrosius
THE Pope is taking steps to revive the ancient tradition of the Latin Tridentine Mass in Catholic churches worldwide, according to sources in Rome.
Pope Benedict XVI is understood to have signed a universal indult — or permission — for priests to celebrate again the Mass used throughout the Church for nearly 1,500 years. The indult could be published in the next few weeks, sources told The Times.
This led to the introduction of the new Mass in the vernacular to make it more accessible to contemporary audiences. By bringing back Mass in Latin, Pope Benedict is signalling that his sympathies lie with conservatives in the Catholic Church.
One of the most celebrated rebels against its suppression was Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, who broke with Rome in 1988 over this and other reforms. He was excommunicated after he consecrated four bishops, one of them British, without permission from the Pope.
Some Lefebvrists, including those in Brazil, have already been readmitted. An indult permitting the celebration of the Tridentine Mass could help to bring remaining Lefebvrists and many other traditional Catholics back to the fold.
The priests of England and Wales are among those sometimes given permission to celebrate the Old Mass according to the 1962 Missal. Tridentine Masses are said regularly at the Oratory and St James’s Spanish Place in London, but are harder to find outside the capital.
The new indult would permit any priest to introduce the Tridentine Mass to his church, anywhere in the world, unless his bishop has explicitly forbidden it in writing.
Catholic bloggers have been anticipating the indult for months. The Cornell Society blog says that Father Martin Edwards, a London priest, was told by Cardinal Joseph Zen, of Hong Kong, that the indult had been signed. Cardinal Zen is alleged to have had this information from the Pope himself in a private meeting.
“There have been false alarms before, not least because within the Curia there are those genuinely well-disposed to the Latin Mass, those who are against and those who like to move groups within the Church like pieces on a chessboard,” a source told The Times. “But hopes have been raised with the new pope. It would fit with what he has said and done on the subject. He celebrated in the old rite, when Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.”
The 1962 Missal issued by Pope John XXIII was the last of several revisions of the 1570 Missal of Pius V. In a lecture in 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger said that it would be “fatal” for the Missal to be “placed in a deep-freeze, left like a national park, a park protected for the sake of a certain kind of people, for whom one leaves available these relics of the past”.
Daphne McLeod, chairman of Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, a UK umbrella group that campaigns for the restoration of traditional orthodoxy, said: “A lot of young priests are teaching themselves the Tridentine Mass because it is so beautiful and has prayers that go back to the Early Church.”
TRADITIONAL SERVICE
So you are taking a stand against Dom Gueranger and Pope Pius XII?
It remains a parent language -- and a sure 300 point advantage on the SATs, BTW, for precisely that reason.
It remains a universal language for the entire church. I could attend Mass in Mexico, on a Dutch island, a French island, or in Haiti, and hear the same Mass.
Another distinct advantage is that it is of all the languages except Italian the easiest and most beautiful to sing.
Revision: 300 is inaccurate. It's probably more like 100-150 points on the verbal section (I checked).
Yes. The notion that a Pope can bind the church to a specific liturgical device for all history is simply ridiculous. The language of liturgical celebration is NOT a "matter of faith and morals", and can be changed at any time (as it WAS changed MANY times). In the early church ALL masses were "in the vernacular". Why not stick to REAL historic practice instead of the phoney one of "all Latin, all the time"??
The longer historical practice in the Western/Latin Church IS Latin. There were the changes you mentioned, but for most of history, Latin was the language, and the drastic change in the last century was a revolution, not a "restoration."
-- Dorothy Sayers, The National Review
Sorry, but it is NOT. It's just another language.
"It remains a parent language -- and a sure 300 point advantage on the SATs, BTW, for precisely that reason."
Irrelevant.
"It remains a universal language for the entire church. I could attend Mass in Mexico, on a Dutch island, a French island, or in Haiti, and hear the same Mass."
Not today, you can't.
"Another distinct advantage is that it is of all the languages except Italian the easiest and most beautiful to sing."
Now you're being completely ridiculous.
English is difficult to set -- the only composers who have carried that art to a perfection to rival Palestrina and the other Latin composers are the English Renaissance musicians - Byrd, Tallis, Farrant, et al.
Latin chant is easy to sing and easy to learn. We should use more of this great "patrimony of the church."
Latin was used for a long time---so what!! I say again--there is NOTHING SPECIAL about Latin. It's just another (dead) language.
Your utter opposition to Latin is what is ridiculous.
One of the special qualities about Latin IS the fact that it is "dead."
Mass...in Latin? Why in Latin?
I'm not opposed to a Latin mass--AS AN OPTION. If any parish wants to have a Latin mass as well as a Novus Ordo mass, then more power to them.
But there is NOTHING MAGIC, special, or anything else about Latin. It's a historical language, used for a long time, and now dead.
May I add another advantage of Latin, protection against phyletism or religious nationalism that has plagued the Orthodox with their use of the vernacular. The use of Latin is a powerful reminder that we are united in a single universal Church, a union than encompasses both space and time, a union centered on the Church of Rome.
Our parish (in LA!!) is already adding chants in, at the 11 o'clock service. It is so beautiful. As a musician who can carry a tune, I figure my part is to lead my little area of the pews.
It is quite beautiful.
Don't forget 'et cetera' and 'ante meridian' and 'post meridian.' And there's always 'ipso facto,' a useful saying if ever there was one.
Given the REAL past history of the early Church, that makes more sense than trying to regress back to "universal Latin".
"Latin persists because it is pretty close to the languages spoken in (up to recently) 100% Catholic nations. English was only spoken by a little island way up past France."
That was then. Now, English is the most widely spoken language on the planet.
"I frankly thing English changes too quickly to be suitable."
A reasonable argument.
"Way back when, Latin was standardized in written and spoken forms. A written standard for any other language was unheard of until the recent epoch. Latin changed little through the middle ages, probably changed the most during recent times, but remains understandable from 200AD to 2007AD."
And that is a good argument for keeping it as the standard language of the heirarchy---NOT the mass.
"Sure its another language, thats why the Church allows vernacular Mass"
And I've got no problem with having BOTH.
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