I like this too. One thing I really hate is the sign of peace - which occurs at a time when we should be focusing on our Lord. Total distraction. Get rid of it.
After the Vatican II Council how a man-centered liturgy “led almost to forgetting of the presence of God.” How true. How sad.
I have never liked this innovation and glad I arent required to do it. In the first place I dont want to shake hands with half the people in my parish anyway.[and sure most of them dont want my hand shake either. I am commanded to love them,but no way I gotta like them.
In Lourdes, the main celebrant of the English morning mass got around this by asking everyone to greet one another before mass began. He then skipped the sign of peace part during mass. Worked great
In the French mass, instead of saying 'peace be with you', which sounds like Hans Solo speaking to Skywalker, they say 'the peace of Christ' (la paix du Christ) when shaking hands. I find that a much better way to stay in the mass, as it makes it clear we are first receiving the peace from Christ in order to give it, and not the peace of this world.
Jarg In my opinion it would be better not to shake hands or do or say anything at that part of the Mass. To me the solemnity and sacredness of the Mass is ruptured when our minds are being artificially distracted with anything that negatively affects the awesomeness of the moment we are then re-living. God Bless
Wrong time to be said. Even though it was thought before last supper there was community and bonding between the apostles. Not sure it should be done at that time.
This is a repeat, but I love this Preface so much, here it goes again! 'Lex orandi, lex credendi' ; in other words, the way we pray is the way we believe... This line is from a post of Padraig's from almost four years ago. It highlights the fact that if one went to daily Mass for the three years of the liturgical cycle, then one would discover the truths of the Catholic Faith so as to convincingly respond to most of her critics. For instance, to those who claim Jesus is re-crucified at every Holy Nass. Not so! The following Preface is said during Easter Time. It is truly right and just, our duty and our salvation, at all times to acclaim you, O Lord, but in this time above all to laud you yet more gloriously, when Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. He never ceases to offer himself for us but defends us and ever pleads our cause before you: he is the sacrificial Victim who dies no more, the Lamb, once slain, who lives for ever. Therefore, overcome with paschal joy, every land, every people exults in your praise and even the heavenly Powers, with the angelic hosts, sing together the unending hymn of your glory, as they acclaim: Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts . . . In Holy Mass, it is the Lord who draws us into the Paschal Mystery so that we become mystically present to His dying and rising! What a gift! Alleluia! Safe in the Barque of Peter!
Same goes for clapping or an ovation. Pope Benedict spoke about it before how it has a negative effect on what we should be focusing on. It happened recently at a mass in Ireland and it received positive media coverage. The details of why it happened are a little off putting, to say the least.
I hate it too. It's a silly innovation that serves only as a distraction from what is happening on the altar. I also agree with Sanctus about the rounds of applause. I often get the impression that priests believe they need to be entertainers. This video of Fulton Sheen explaining the Mass should be compulsory viewing in every seminary, in every Catholic school and before every Mass in every Church until we are all brought back to the narrow path: While we need to get back to basics, I witnessed something recently that struck me as pure hypocrisy. It was at a regular First Friday evening Mass in our parish Church. Having barely arrived as Mass started, I sat near a door which is also close to the altar although with a side view and as close to the tabernacle as you can get in our church. Two people arriving some time later sat in the pew behind me. They were possibly a mother and son. The woman was dressed quite conservatively with some kind of head covering (it was a frumpish looking hat rather than a veil). I reckon the lad was a young teenager, maybe about 13 or 14 years old. When it came to the sign of peace, I turned to shake hands with the next person in my pew who was quite a distance away from me. The "conservative" lady was kneeling, hands joined and head down, ignoring the hand proffered to her by the man beside her. I thought that she might be crying or troubled in some way, said a little prayer that God would comfort her and thought no more about it. Then, at Communion time, the pair made a bee-line to the main aisle of the Church to receive Communion from the priest rather than the EMHC who was serving our aisle. Both of them received on the tongue and kneeling, which can be something of a feat in our Church. Nothing wrong with any of that. It was their demeanour that screamed hypocrisy. No bowed heads now but smirking as though they had pulled off some stunt before making their way not to the pew behind me but to the centre front pew. I know that some of you will be thinking that if I had been about my own business I wouldn't have noticed what they were doing but their display was so obvious it was impossible to ignore them and I got the distinct impression that being noticed was precisely what they aimed to achieve. That's the kind of behaviour which gets traditionalists a bad name. There's a kind of snobbish piety about it. While I know that it's most likely representative of only a tiny minority of traditionalists, it does more harm than good for the goal of restoring reverence at Holy Mass.
Dolours you touched on one of the troubling aspects of trad/conservatives--some of them and certainly not all. Fr Ripperger a priest from the traditional FSSP has commented that the superior attitude of some in this element borders on Gnosticism which is a scary observation to say the least. I myself would attend a Latin Mass if it is available and try always to receive Our Lord with great reverence but I think some humility and charity is never a bad thing when at Mass. above all not drawing attention to oneself. The handshake bothers me but I observe it when at Novus Ordo Mass. what really grinds my gears is the flippant way many receive Communion and no one corrects them. All in all it is mess coming and going and I grieve for it and pray for it and hope I live long enough to see the Restoration.
I have never seen a trad act that way at a Latin Mass. Just remember though that every group has its bad apples. Honestly though I see a lot more of them at the Novus Ordo Mass. Spandex, tank tops, laughing, talking in church, etc. At the Latin Mass here everyone is well behaved, including children. No Cheerios and coloring books. The kids actually pay attention at Mass. Turns out they can actually do that if they are taught to
Yes Praetorian. I agree. Here we see reverence and obvious sincerity. ThankGod we have it available. But sadly there are "out there" some bad apples.
This wasn't an EF Mass. And yes, we do see all of the above at regular Sunday Mass but not usually at weekday Masses. I did make it clear that the woman and boy aren't representative of traditionalists. The trouble is that if they are the only traditionalists seen by people attending the NO Mass, it feeds the prejudice against traditionalism. I know that's not fair but it's a sad reality. I often attend Mass in a nearby parish which is also frequented by some people who I suppose would fall into the traditionalist category because they receive kneeling and on the tongue and the women wear veils. Their demeanour couldn't be more different than the pair at that First Friday Mass. Nothing about them is attention seeking. It would be a bit of an effort for me to attend the Latin Mass because it's in the city centre. I would make the effort to attend that Mass if reverent NO Masses were not easily accessible to me in my local parish and surrounding parishes. When a young person in our parish didn't consume the Eucharist as soon as he received it, the priest did make an announcement about it. Our parish is blessed with good priests. Anyway, what is a "traditionalist"? The label is rather confusing. I like Holy Mass being in a language I understand so I suppose that means I'm not a traditionalist. Then again, if not liking the sign of peace, applause, talking out loud, a succession of lay people on the altar during Mass, the absence of altar rails, and the re-presenting of the Eternal Sacrifice being treated like a picnic in the park, does that make me a traditionalist?
SAd that we are forced to categorize ourselves. I call myself Catholic in the old sense of the word which always meant member of and identifying with the one true Church and committing to be faithful to Christ through her sacraments and magisterium. Political labels are not helpful. We are orthodox or heterodox, devout or lapsed. Not some political marker on the arc of faith. But sadly these are the nomenclatures we are stuck with in this ongoing confusion. I guess to my mind you can't be a little bit Catholic. You are either all in or you are something else masquerading.
In other words, one is either 'hot' or 'cold'. No place in the Catholic faith for those who are 'lukewarm'. Jesus himself said God will spit the lukewarm out.
I probably sounded a little strong there but I think that "cafeteria Catholic" doesn't cut it in God's kingdom. We can't pick and choose. In spite of current controversies over doctrine I think we must adhere to what has been handed on to us by the Church through the apostles. Whenever I hear "we can't know what Jesus meant...". I immediately think of the garden of eden and the serpent saying"did God say..."
Most people don't think of it this way, but another word for Cafeteria Catholic is Heretic. Sadly most people don't realize this. "Cafeteria Catholic" somehow makes it sound cute or socially acceptable to disagree with established Church dogmas. The Church doesn't offer us choices to believe in if we choose. It teaches us Truths we must align ourselves with.
This is an interesting question Dolours, Traditionalist is one of those words that has several meanings and will mean different things to different people. To people outside of the group I think it most likely means "those people who wear veils and like the Latin Mass". To people in the group I would say it means "Those who worship God in the ways He wishes to be worshiped." This would include reverent Masses, the Rosary, and following the rules the Church as laid down in 2,000 years of teaching and not just what has come to be taught since Vatican II. It also is a growing movement in the Church to move back to what the Church has always taught. In the 1970's some people saw that something was going horribly wrong. Reverence was disappearing in the Mass, prayer was disappearing, novenas were disappearing, the Rosary was disappearing, statues were disappearing, Scapulars and medals were disappearing, basically anything that was sacred was being discarded as the Church modernized itself. Thus the Trad movement was born. For the past 50 years they have been resisting the modernization of the Church. In essence that is all Traditionalism is. A reaction to the modernization of the Church begun in the 1960's. It is really just "Catholicism" as it had been practiced in 1962. In some ways it is a Church frozen in time. If you took a Trad and dropped them in a Church in 1955 or 1900 or 1800 etc. they wouldn't stand out at all. It is only because the Church has purposely moved away from it's traditions that they stand out now. In fact, to reverse the idea, if you took a typical Catholic from 1800 or 1900 or 1955 and dropped them into a modern Catholic Church for a Novus Ordo Mass and asked them where they were, they would most likely guess they were attending some sort of Protestant service. I am not trying to put down anyone who is not a Trad. In fact I don't even like the name "Trad" much. I much prefer to just think of the group as Catholics who practice what the Church has always taught. I never attended a Latin Mass until 2 years ago, so I wasn't born into this movement. The reason I started attending was because when I came back to the Church I realized something was horribly wrong and the Saints all tell us that the prescription for this is to return to the Traditions of the Church. In other words the "prescription" for the disease of modernism is tradition. St. Vincent of Lerins wrote the most popular version of this idea: Moreover, in the Catholic Church itself, all possible care must be taken, that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all. (Commonitory ch. II, §6; NPNF Series II Vol. XI p. 132) I would describe what is happening now as this: Currently we are witnessing a massive historical shift inside the Church. It is polarizing. It used to have a small radical "left" and a small traditional "right" with most Catholics finding themselves in the middle. The middle being largely made up of two groups. The first being people who have a very watered down faith and not practicing much in the way of personal prayer, penance, confession, etc. These people mostly go to Church for the social aspect and a loose leftover sense of the faith from their formative years. The other sizeable group is what I would call "St. John Paul II" Catholics. This is a group of fervent Novus Ordo attending Catholics who believe in what the Church teaches. They believe and align themselves with the Church's anti-abortion stance, go to confession, pray the Rosary and generally follow the Church's teachings as best they can. Though very different, these two central groups formed the "hub" of the Church for the past 50 years. With the advent of of recent seismic events inside the Church this central group is fracturing. Those who have weak faith and don't pay much attention to what is happening will most likely just "go along" with whatever happens in the Church as they have always done. The "St. John Paul II" Catholics see this new push towards modernization in the Church and are finding themselves aligned with the Traditional Catholics. No longer can one be lukewarm about their faith. People are realizing they must actually live their faith now. The major result of this shift is that there is no longer a large "center", but 2 large diametrically opposed wings of the Church. One on the right and one on the left. My personal belief is that with the large influx of "St. John Paul II" Catholics to the Traditional position the two groups will mix. Coexisting on the "right" as the 2 central groups did in the center. The difference is that these two groups will realize that they have the faith in common. Trad Catholics will cease to be "Trads" so much anymore and will simply be accepted more as devout Catholics. In the Trad community there is both great hope and fear right now. They are hopeful because they feel the "St. John Paul II" Catholics are waking up to the dangers of modernism and joining them in the fight against it, but they are also fearful because they do not want the truths they have been fighting for to be watered down by an influx of people who don't understand the battle well. Trads have been isolated for so long that they have developed a sub-culture. This was both a natural flow from events and also is problematic. No Catholic should feel isolated and rejected by their Church, but this is exactly what happened to them. Hence the sub-culture developed in part as a defense mechanism. I hope no one takes offense at anything I said. I don't mean to speak for everyone. I know we don't all see the battle the same way, but this is how I see it and this seemed like a good time to share it. Anyway, sorry this answer is so long and preachy. It went in a direction I wasn't intending. I will get off my soap box now
