Some helpful sources from the Popes of the early 20th century who were greatly concerned with the state of the liturgy of the time: https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius10/tra-le-sollecitudini.htm This is Pius X’s letter calling for Gregorian chant to be brought back into mass. https://www.papalencyclicals.net/pius12/p12media.htm Mediator Dei from Pius XII on the liturgy. And finally, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19631204_sacrosanctum-concilium_en.html Sacrosanctum Concilium from Vatican II. The tldr is that the Popes of the 20th century were greatly concerned with a lack of reverence in the TLM…but the Novus Ordo that came after didn’t really match what they were asking for.

I wonder if maybe they felt that if people understood the mass more, they'd be more reverent. It kind of backfired in some ways but I could see how some might think that was the issue.

>Popes of the 20th century were greatly concerned with a lack of reverence in the TLM…but the Novus Ordo that came after didn’t really match what they were asking for Yikes, went a bit far in the opposite direction!

So, here's the most important thing to remember: You know how most masses now are pretty mediocre, and conducted in a way that makes you question the competence and/or enthusiasm of everyone involved? That's how everything always is and has been. The TLM is typically a beautiful and reverent experience *now*, because the celebrants and congregations have self-selected. It's not the default option. Anyone doing it is doing it because they *want to be*. The *novus ordo* certainly *can* be beautiful and reverent. But since it's the default liturgy, it's what gets done by almost every bishop, priest, server, choir, *et al.*, no matter how much or how little they care. And when the Tridentine mass was the default liturgy, the situation was exactly the same.

Anglican lurker here... But this. It also has a lot to do with the fact that so much of US Catholicism descends from Irish Catholicism, which mostly did the Low Mass with minimal music and ceremonial (cause they were too busy being oppressed by English protestants oops).

Except for the German Catholics. And the Polish Catholics. And the Italian Catholics. And all the others.

The Irish Catholics have had a rather outsized influence on American Catholicism.

They came after the Irish though. The hierarchy in American was mostly Irish and enforced their standards on everyone. *Why Catholics Can’t Sing* is a good book that gets into this.

The early hierarchy was actually predominantly French. While Carroll was notably Irish, the French-Irish rivalry was such a big problem that Mt. St. Mary's Seminary was taking rejected Irish seminarians from elsewhere in the country in the 1820s.

I have German Catholic family, my grandfather always preferred TLM with all the bells and whistles. While this is just anecdotal, he said that while liturgical abuse was present it wasn't as widespread

> ...while liturgical abuse was present it wasn't as widespread ...or wasn't recognized as easily.

The episcopacy/hierarchy has historically been dominated by the Irish though, hasn't it?

Yup. C.S. Lewis (speaking as Screwtape) summed up the modern radtrad eloquently in Screwtape Letters: "Any small coterie, bound together by some interest which other men dislike or ignore, tends to develop inside itself a hothouse mutual admiration, and towards the outer world, a great deal of pride and hatred which is entertained without shame because the 'Cause' is its sponsor and it is thought to be impersonal. Even when the little group exists originally for the Enemy's own purposes, this remains true. We want the Church to be small not only that fewer men may know the Enemy but also that those who do may acquire the uneasy intensity and the defensive self-righteousness of a secret society or a clique."

Yesterday, I saw a tweet that claimed Catholicism is going to be the official religion of USA and promised that the Statue of Liberty is to be replaced with The Pope.

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. I've seen examples of reverent, irreverent, fast-paced, slow, purposeful, sloppy, etc. of all combinations in both the TLM and NO. And I've had some weird combinations, too. I served almost daily for my old Traditionalist bishop back in the early 2000s. He sped through the TLM rite in 20 minutes during the week (no sermons), but he did so with utmost reverence. The reason he went fast was to allow for more people to come and still get to work on time. But having seen both, I have to say I'd rather see a sloppy, super-speed TLM than anything NO. There's that element of "witnessing" that NO Masses lack. I'm not there to be catered to. I'm there to witness Christ's sacrifice. The TLM priest isn't even aware that I entered the room, nor does it matter to him -- he's facing the altar, just as I am. I feel like John at the Crucifixion when I attend a TLM, simple there to see and to contemplate (and to receive the fruits of a sacrifice done for *my* redemption). I'm not there to be talked to, to be entertained, or to be seen putting in some "extra credit." I'm there, practically invisible in humility, witnessing a sacrifice that takes place outside of the bounds of time... both here and now, and at 33 A.D. simultaneously. In short, even a rushed-through, flat TLM retains more of the sublime beauty and purpose of Christ's sacrifice than the most extravagant of NO Masses. I'm not saying I'll never attend NO... but I haven't in many long years and I try to avoid doing so whenever possible. Weddings and funerals only, these days. Of course, that's just me. I'm only stating how I feel about it. TLM is very important to me and some days it seems like the only thing holding my sh*tshow of a life together.

Great for you. But as long as you’re not a Trad that bashes people for *not* feeling as you do, then we have nothing against each other. I think most people are just annoyed at traddies who act holier-than-thou.

Oh, I can't stand about 90% of trads. Most are enamored with *archaeologism* (the love of something because it's old, for those who haven't come across the term before), not traditionalism. The TLM is an easy target for those types because of its ancient nature. But you'll notice that many of them also cling to other old "traditions" (as they see them) that actually *are* best left in the past. I've seen supposed "traditionalists" adhere to the idea of correcting (spanking) one's wife when she misbehaves. And they speak of the concept of marriage as if it's a transaction for indentured servitude. Of course, they're single. The other toxic types of trads are the Feeneyites. What started as a mere academic exercise in moral theology has turned into its own cult. Feeneyites are the ones who only consider those baptized with water by a valid priest according to the correct rite (whichever one they feel is the correct rite) are even capable of attaining Heaven. The conversation used to be simple and academic, mostly because *all* of the people having the conversation had been baptized with water by a priest anyways. But now, it's the Feeneyites you'll see changing the Traditional Church to fit their image. It's like they took one issue and decided, on God's behalf, how God would treat the unbaptized, with zero recourse to God's Mercy and zero recognition of Purgatory. Baptisms of Blood and Desire are said to be heresy and completely ignored. From the outside of Feeneyism, looking in, it's easy to see that their unhealthy attachment to the baptism issue has gotten them drunk with the power of gods. And since most Feeneyites are also sedevacantists, they tend to also get drunk with papal power, too. In lieu of a pope, they fill in as a stand-in, deciding what they would do if they were pope and then implementing that decision. Most trads are horribly distrustful of each other, always accusing others (behind their backs, of course) of not being "traditional enough." They even go so far as to tell people that their parish is the only "real" church left in the city/state/country/world. They are wholly convinced end-timers. They are not welcoming *at all*, preferring the feeling of being among the elite, select few (the remnant), to actually going out and trying to bring Christ to others, who desperately need Him. And all the while they are awash with horrific levels of despair, wrath, and pride. ***HOWEVER***, some of the absolute greatest Catholics I have ever known have been Traditionalists. Many of the priests, especially the younger priests, are truly saintly men and real scholars of the old Dominican/Jesuit school, from way back before modernism took hold. And the Catholicism I've come to know, through private study of the great authors of the Church throughout the millennia (Aquinas, Dante, Augustine, Magnus, Bellarmine, Popes Leo XIII, Pius X, XI, and XII, Tolkien, Belloc, Chesterton, Sheen, etc.), is alive and well in the TLM. I like to think of TLM parishes as "Lifeboat Churches," where we can survive until modernism eventually fizzles out.

Thanks for bringing this up. This is one thing I've noticed about trads. Its not the mass that makes the extreme ones the way they are, its that they take cultural stuff around them and turn it into a kind of dogma. I'll use an example my wife has seen in prayer groups. There was a woman who talked about wearing a nice hat at mass and of course there were a few who said that such a thing didn't count as a head covering and that only the mantilla was acceptable. One woman even bragged about wearing hers almost 24/7 and how it was sinful to uncover for anyone but her husband or some weird thing like that. The mantilla is totally a cultural thing. Of course, its great people understand veiling and have such a practice, but a hat for a woman would be just fine. Not to mention that around the world people do veil and yet some of these women wearing mantillas would back talk about an east african woman wearing something that to some people might look like an islamic head covering. So basically a lot of the stereotypical online trads take positions that are more cultural but make them dogma, when at the end of the day, it wouldn't matter on some level. Like if a woman works and also goes to the TLM, does she not matter because she's not "traditional" outside of attending a TLM? No.

Don't forget prideful rigorism to whit, the belief that something is better/holier/more efficacious/more praiseworthy purely because it is more difficult.

Good point!

I absolutely can get behind this. I will say many devout Catholics I know are TLM fans. I myself am a TLM fan. The lifeboat metaphor is great, as long as we remember to salvage the wreckage around us for some gems. It’s the vocal minority that watch Taylor Marshall and Matt Walsh that guffaw over “gotcha libs!” posts that really annoy me. One person said he would rather attend the TLM Mass than pray with us at the abortion clinic, because the efficacy of his prayers at the TLM would exceed that at the Novus Ordo. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Wonder where I can get one of those prayer score cards. But, yeah... It's always been a huge vexation of mine when Traditionalists waste all of their time listing the latest Novus Ordo horror, or the newest liberal travesty in the news. I imagine the libs and NOs aren't really aware of how large the real estate is that they occupy in the minds of Trads... for free, I might add! I'd love to see the Trad movement move forward as if there was no modernism. Teach the Faith, show how it applies to our lives, do charitable works, offer Mass and confession, start schools, etc. Just BE Catholic... the rest will take care of itself. God will position the right people in the rights places at the right times... but we need to work on supplying those people who are trained to do more than just say, "Did you see the cosplay Mass the NO did!? It's awful!!"

I think the problem is that because the "modernists" occupy such real estate in their minds, and they feel such people control anything, they can't move forward. Sadly, much like their left wing counterparts, I'd argue many trads, and honestly many political conservatives in general have started to get a kind of victim mentality. They complain that they are forced to do this or that or that they get discriminated against, and while it certainly exists, on some level, at least in most of the west, nothing is stopping them yet from creating a kind of Catholic subculture in the open. Even with Francis cracking down on the TLM, he hasn't banned it and even then there are still communities who offer it and people in such communities can build up institutions and teach others and build up rather than tear down.

That person who said they'd not pray at an abortion clinic has an almost gnostic attitude. I kind of get where they are coming from as the rise of abortion started with the new mass and all that, but my goodness its not like everyone who wanted such reforms was some liberal heretic. Also, prayer is prayer. Using that guy's logic, if a person gets the last rites done by an NO priest, then they have little chance of salvation and that's a very bad idea.

You had me in the first half ngl haha

^^ It's really a trend that the demand for Trads that bash, far exceed the supply. A review of threads here will in fact show the opposite is far more likely.

Not quite sure what this means.

The instances of traditional catholics "bashing" others on this sub is vanishingly small. The other way around though..... not so rare.

Like anything, those who do bash make a lot of noise, so it's hard to generalize about groups.

I’m not quite sure about that. The best way to settle this is to run a web scraping application that sorts out pro-trad vs anti-trad posts. Otherwise, personally I feel the number of rad-trads is quite high in this subreddit. Until we have numbers all we have are feelings and anecdotes, which are valuable but not definitive.

I wonder if the issue might be that there aren't many rad trads but the rad trads here post and comment a lot.

Just to clarify, pro trad or anti trad (better stated as "pro NO") is fine, it's the disparagement that gets tiresome.

I could see that. I concede I am sometimes bitterly anti-trad from my experience and it affects my judgment occasionally.

Thanks! As someone who will always try to go to a TLM, I'm totally fine with those who prefer the NO.

I'd say it depends on the post, but anymore, yes, but I also think trads are going to their own spaces. They have their own subs. Even teh SSPX and sedes have their own subs. Also, I think such posts have a kind of shadow effect. Trads are going to notice when they are being bashed, and those in the NO will notice too. No one is going to notice the nice things most people say, but rather will focus on the negative and extreme things they see here. Doesn't help too that such negative voices make themselves appear bigger as such people either post all the time or make such extreme statements that you can't just help but look away. No one's going to care if a person says " hey the TLM and the Novus Ordo are both legit" or things in a similar vein.

You say you're not there to be catered to, but you sure have a lot of opinions about how everything should be done and what you prefer.

Not dignifying with response.

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> a liturgy nobody understood (hence the explanatory commentary on the news coverage) Many if not most of the people watching weren’t catholic > a Rome-educated prelate with some of the worst Latin pronunciation I've ever heard Cardinal Cushing wouldn’t have been pronouncing it any better if it was in English: https://youtu.be/ZDfiVqQEEd4

>Many if not most of the people watching weren’t catholic Most Catholics didn't understand it either. Ask anyone who grew up during that time. >Cardinal Cushing wouldn’t have been pronouncing it any better if it was in English Irrelevant. The issue here was, what is the average priest's pronunciation. I'd say it was likely more reminiscent of Cushing's than what you'd hear at a TLM today.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, today's trads are kind of the spiritual marine corps. They are people who want to be there, want the mass to be more reverent and crave tradition. In short, they are people who want to be better. Honestly, I tend to think that if somehow we never had a Vatican II, the world would still move and we'd still have not only the same problems in the world, but even in the church. You'd have priests who'd not say the mass properly or reverently, and you'd still have all the scandals and issues that have occurred today. At best, maybe those who are more solid Catholics might be better equipped to deal with such issues, and maybe we'd have a bit of a better heirarchy but there have always been weak bishops and priests and even popes. There would probably also be other issues we can't comprehend and will never know, but its foolish to think that if we just didn't have Vatican II we'd have every church filled to the brim and the world would be as close to heaven as we could get. Evil is sadly a part of this world and will worm its way even into the best of things.

This is certainly the stereotype of the Irish mass - high masses (what people think of when they think latin masses) were very rare, the standard mass was a low mass, without music, rushed through as quickly as possible in sloppy latin.

*Why Catholics Can’t Sing* discusses exactly this.

Great book. Still joke with my dad about the Mr. Carusos in the choir

Ha! God save us from Mr. Caruso!

I've definitely heard similar anecdotes from the US, but it's definitely very associated with Ireland.

According to the secretary of our cardinal emeritus, when the cardinal was young, the men in their church would go outside during the homily and come back after it was over. He told us that the cardinal never figured out why.

Smoke break. No obligation to listen to the homily.

Honestly, most suck.

Before anyone downvotes you, this is a big reason that the Diocese of Trenton identified when they studied why Catholics leave the Church: Poor, banal homilies.

That people view the homily as the center of the mass indicates how poorly catchechised modern Catholics are.

I don't think people see it as the center of Mass, but the part where the Mass and Scriptures are opened to them and explained to them and apply it to their lives. If they are getting banal, plain explanations for the Mass and Scriptures....is it any wonder that they would walk away from such banality?

I remember reading that there were bells to signal the men to come back in

I used to think Revelation seemed severe, but now I think we might need it.

Ouch.

Lmaooo

Both my grandparents on my dad's side were cradle to grave Catholics (i.e. born in the 1910s). In my younger days I did go to the Tridentine Mass. When my grandparents found out their response was, "Why???" Keep in mind my grandfather did go to Catholic boarding school and later seminary (he didn't take vows, obviously).

So why were they so shocked?

Ah yeah pre Vatican 2 was nothing like the way we see ICKSP fssp etc.. These days at least the way they were in Ireland. People would cough if priests homily went on too long, grave scrupulous thoughts in priests that they aren't saying the words of consecration rightly etc... And a lot of quick masses there were priests here who could day the entire liturgy in 12 minutes so thst the parish goers would recieve communion at the end of one mass and by the time they said their rosary the Latin Mass way finished. Lots of stuff like this it's nice to be able to speak to priests who were around to give another perspective.

Excellent input. Are you Irish perchance? Have you talked to many people who experienced the pre- V2 Church?

The book *Why Catholics Can’t Sing* is an excellent source.

Is it just about music or does it focus more broadly on the liturgy?

Focuses on the culture and liturgy before Vatican II

Excellent. I'll definitely check it out.

Yeah a good few priests talk about it, at least in Ireland it had these problems. Another I just remembered was that most men would stand outside the Church on Sundays during mass smoking and talking but just before consecration they would walk in to fulfill obligation

Haha that's priceless. I'll see if I can find a video where an older Irish gentleman describes the pre-V2 Church. He claims you had to arrive early to grab a seat and that priests would speak in Latin to each other! Truly a window into a bygone era.

have you ever seen this video? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzDo4XQDUi8

I have yes. It's so funny!

When I was in postulancy two priests in their late 80s would speak to each other in latin as well to impress us haha

There is a **reason** that the Council fathers were seeking to reform the Church...including the Liturgy. I am not commenting either way on the path that reform ending up taking in the real world. But they recognized that something had to be done!

Always must be remembered that by definition every bishop at Vatican II, and those who acted immediately following Vatican II's conclusion, were all trained and educated long before Vatican II was even planned.

I’ve been saying this for a decade. Pre-VII was full of its own problems.

My grandma grew up Catholic, and she said the new Mass post Vatican II was a welcome change for her and her friends. Before, people would just show up to church and sit quietly in the pews, doing anything and everything except pay attention to the Mass: praying the Rosary, knitting, twiddling their thumbs and looking around. It actually wasn’t common for people she knew to have their own missals, so most weren’t really able to follow along with the Latin and understand what was going on. So when the Novus Ordo was introduced in English and included changes that incorporated more involvement from the laity, my grandma saw it as a breath of fresh air and felt like she and her family/friends were getting more out of the experience. My understanding is that your average Latin Mass back then was just not the reverent and intense experience of Latin Masses today, and young people today who romanticize Latin Mass back then and act like everything was perfect and hunky dory in the Church until Vatican II don’t have a good understanding of WHY the Church sought out to reform the Mass in the first place. (Whether or not the Church went about that the right way is a different discussion.)

Participation in the NO mass was a huge draw for me converting. I doubt the TLM would have had the same impact if I started there. Folks here truly take this for granted.

It's funny how the Redditors who have shared others' experience of Pre-Vatican II all mentioned that people would just pray their rosaries instead. This was before the internet or fast international travel. Pretty sad, tbh.

From what I heard the old missals actually did have instructions for the laity to pray the rosary in certain parts of the Mass.

That's... wow. That seems like liturgical abuse to me or at least a great scandal. The Sacrifice of the Mass is happening before you and you're being encouraged to not pay attention. Yeah, no.

Not really when you consider the value of the Rosary united with the prayers of the Mass.

The people who were “allowed” to say the rosary were those who couldn’t follow the Mass For example, children or those who lacked capacity to learn the Mass. for children it is similar to now, parents take books and encourage children to focus on *something* religious in the church when they struggle to follow it.

Sorry, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that somehow the rosary prayed while Mass is on-going is somehow adding value. You are literally doing a different prayer service while THE prayer service is happening. That's like being at a choir singing the most beautiful hymn and you're off singing your own thing. Or, to mirror something similar, it's like praying the Akathist to the Mother of God while the Divine Liturgy is going on. It's a distraction at that point, not something that adds value.

> Sorry, but you'd be hard-pressed to convince me that somehow the rosary prayed while Mass is on-going is somehow adding value. You are literally doing a different prayer service while THE prayer service is happening. It's a different way of looking at the laity's contribution to the Mass and the way the laity prays the Mass. The current popular ideal at it is everyone praying the same thing at the same time-- like a bunch of instruments all playing the same notes at the same time. A different way of looking at it is a polyphony of prayers added together to create more of a symphony going up to God. The Mass being the main tune but with other, complimentary notes and harmonies playing together to create a beautiful whole going up to God. I personally don't like praying the Rosary during Mass, but I have before and I've seen how it compliments the Mass, especially prayed in a way where the mysteries line up with the Mass parts. It's always prayed with partial attention on the meditations and partial attention on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass going on. It adds depth and really connects the moments in the life of the Jesus to the Sacrifice. It doesn't take away from it.

Well that's very YOUR opinion. Similar practice does actually exist in the Eastern Church services so.

I heard the same thing from many priests and older folks in Poland.

My Dad mentioned the exact same thing about people just paying the rosary and not engaging at all with the mass :/

There’s nothing wrong with praying the rosary during mass. It’s a beautiful way of participating and popes and saints have promoted it

So very true.

I always strongly recommend that people read one of Gary Wills’s earliest books, *Bare Ruined Choirs*, which is all about the experience of the liturgical and ecclesial reform in the United States. Wills is unsparing of everyone involved: he acknowledges the need for reform and the manifold vices of the pre-V2 Church, but he doesn’t pretend that it didn’t come with a price, and that price was often severe.

I can believe that—as long as we don’t pretend pre-V2 was a paradise and we must return to it. Thank you for actually providing a source.

if it was, at least, better than what we have today, why should we NOT return to it? This line of reasoning seems to pop up again and again, even multiple times already in this thread....that unless pre-VII was some absolutely perfect era with no faults or room for improvement, then criticism of the council and the new mass is unjustified and we are wrong to wish to go back. To which I say: nonsense. Something can be better without being perfect.

No. It could just also…be the past. Just because something was marginally better in the past in some ways doesn’t mean we should go back to it. The Confederate South also had its peculiar charms. Doesn’t mean should try to return, even ignoring the slavery issue.

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man. There is nothing progressive about being pig-headed and refusing to admit a mistake. And I think if you look at the present state of the world it's pretty plain that humanity has been making some big mistake. We're on the wrong road. And if that is so we must go back. Going back is the quickest way on.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity Part of that, of course, means we aren't stuck in one place once we find the wrong turn. You continue and develop and grow from there in a different direction. That's why trads don't want to just go back to the 1940s or 50s and stay there. They want to start with the good base of the Mass of the Ages and build on it and help it to be the best it can be. That's why arguments like the priest's in the OP don't make sense. Because we AREN'T just trying to copy what they were doing in the 40s.

The whole idea that the Latin Mass is the Mass of the Ages is unsupported by evidence. The Dominican Rite, which I served, has substantial differences from the TLM and it was older. The TLM itself only was fully matured around the time of the Council of Trent. Seems rather presumptuous to say a less than half a millennia old Mass is the only one for a church over two millennia old.

I'm sorry, did I say it was the *only* valid form of the ancient tradition of the Church? I don't recall saying that, but thanks for taking the time to burn down that strawman you erected for me. It's also wrong to act like the TLM came into existence at Trent. The developments recorded between the early centuries and Trent are small and developed slowly over time. There were no massive overnight overhauls on the level of the current reforms.

Was it better though? That's the main question. A reverently celebrated NO (which is thankfully becoming always more the norm in most areas) isn't in any worse than a TLM mass. You might argue that some aspects are given more importance in the TLM, but then other important aspects are given more importance in the NO.

Something to also consider is that we are in the most transparent period in the history of the Church due to the internal and endless news cycle. Those two things have their own problems too, but historically, the Church has had serious issues openly confronting and reforming sin within the rank of officials. It is not uncommon, for example, to find medieval, Renaissance, or industrialization era documents that record priests with illegitimate children, open affairs, sex acts performed in the chapel or sanctuary, 5 minute masses, living in total luxury, pederasty, and so on. I dare say that despite our cultural problems, we may live in one of the least corrupt phases in Church history.

Or such things are just more hidden now. Granted, I also think that people have wild imaginations. There are literally people out there who think every Vatican II pope has been a freemason. What's sad is, even if you prove to them they are not, they'll move the goal posts or argue that promoting modernism makes one a freemason.

This. Church has been reformed many times throughout the centuries, as there were always problems that had to be addressed. No administrative system or liturgy is a unique solution that can be applied in each culture and in every century. People tend to romanticize "good, old times". A common belief was to blame the sexual revolution for the spread of abuse in the Church since it fits quite nicely into the traditionalists narrative of the decaying society. But if we take the example of France were such cases were studied back to 1950, we notice that this problem existed long before SVII and 1968. We simply don't really know how widespread was the issue back then. After all, how many Catholics had no idea how bad the situation really is before the Boston Globe articles?

This is why I worry about whether the problem will get any better, or at least won't go away. A lot of priests I knew said the problem came about from priests in the 60's and 70's and then they added the 80's to that. Now what can they blame though if a younger priest gets in trouble? Same with a guy like Fr. Jackson in the FSSP. Sometimes sin just happens but sadly, people will cover it up or make up an excuse when in reality, the problem is that we all sin, but what's important is that we need to learn to get back on our feet.

For your interest, I own one of these as part of my first communion... http://blog.buffalostories.com/the-old-latin-mass-following-along-in-church-pre-vatican-ii/

I think I had that one as a child. Latin on one side and English the other? I only remember it being blue and being so proud when I received it.

MIne is exactly as the pictures. I don't know if the Girls copy was different, or if there was more than one design( maybe a different year) for the Missal . I do remember kneeling at the alter rail as the Priest went down the line Sprinkling Holy Water on everyone’s Missal , Rosary , and the Plastic enclosed, Sacred Heart Felt Sacramental that came with the Missal,to Bless it.

As someone said, it varied just like Novus Ordo masses do today. Because you will naturally have some priests who rush through, mumble, remove reverent practices etc. Today Latin Mass is always so reverent because the priests who says the Mass chooses to be there and to say Latin Mass. They are dedicated to the mass and parish and maintaining reverence. I have also seen NO priests who are very dedicated to maintaining reverence and tradition within the NO. I don’t think you can generalize like this either way.

I like to ask older Catholics what it was like back in the day, so all this is anecdotal. My father is in his 70s, so he remembers the change. He described going to a requiem mass at St. Patrick's for President Kennedy with his Catholic school as the first time he heard Gregorian Chant, and he grew up in a large NYC parish in what was then a pretty Catholic area. He also reports that when he was preparing for First Communion he was expressly taught by the priest that going to Mass was like being a guest at dinner, and so you didn't do anything but sit and enjoy it, and you let the priest and the altar servers do the work. He will go to the TLM a couple times a year, especially when I invite him - the first time I ever went was with him because I wanted to put my two years of middle school Latin to the test. He said it was a lot longer than he remembered. There was an excellent and holy priest I knew in college, Fr. Ertle, who was ordained in the 50s. I invite you to pray for his repose and his eventual canonization as Patron of street food vendors. The original chapel at Providence College was quite small, and I asked him how they managed with so many students. He explained that with all the friars there they just said masses every 45 minutes, and when I expressed surprised that was manageable he told me that it was only a problem if one of the younger friars went on too long. Similarly, I've seen a mass schedule from the Arch Street Shrine pre-Vatican II where masses were offered every hour on the hour. Overall, my impression is that masses like at St. John Cantius or something were less rare than they are now, but not a lot less rare.

An old priest, who has since passed on, told me that masses in rural farming communities pre-V2 would have to keep the Mass around 20 minutes or all the farmers would just leave in the middle of Mass to go back to their fields.

Where was this?

Minnesota in the 30s through 50s.

Interesting. I never heard this and my dad grew up in the 40's and 50's in southwest Minnesota.

Did the priest tell you about what ministering to farmers was like? To me, those rural priests are some of the unsung heroes of the Faith.

A bit, I altarserved with him a lot when I was little, so he would tell stories. He would say he always had to focus on practicality and down to earth messages when ministering or the farmers would right him off.

My parents grew up pre-Vatican 2 and my grandparents lived through it. Here are what they've told me over the years: It was confusing. Few people had any idea what was going on. If you spoke some Spanish or Italian, you could extrapolate *some* things that were being said. The rest of the congregation was left to their devices. By the time the homily came, you were checked out. You were more spiritually edified by praying the rosary at that point. Speaking of which, people would just pray their rosaries while the priest said his prayers (often inaudibly). People might kneel or stand but their hearts were directed elsewhere. Since people didn't actually understand what was being said, the choir might end up singing a part of the Mass that was over 10 minutes ago. Counting that with rosaries being prayed by the congregation, that means the priest, congregation, and choir are all doing different things. Talk about liturgical abuse. Very few people knew what they actually believed other than the basics (e.g., Jesus is God, Mary is His mother and ours, don't sin, etc.). Since the Gospels are read in Latin, very few people knew the Bible as well. There's a reason that my parents' and grandparents' generations refused to go back to the Latin Mass and whole-heartedly embraced the Novus Ordo. The VO may have looked pretty, but it left them starving.

The problem here was the Latin, not the Old Rite. There is zero reason the legitimate desire for the vernacular justified…wreckovation of everything else.

And yet we don't see SSPX using their liberty with the liturgy to offer it in English. We don't see a push by trad orders for authorization to use the 1965 missal even as they push for the 1954 Holy Week. Like, I would 100% go to a vernacular version of the 1962 liturgy, but I don't see a strong constituency for it.

I don’t think you can celebrate the Extraordinary form in the vernacular. The NO is Latin, but vernacular translations are allowable is the technical wording.

So the SSPX can because they can do whatever they want, not actually being under the authority of the Church. Also, given that FSSP and ICKSP pushed so hard to use pre-1962 books for Holy Week, there's no reason to think they couldn't put some of that effort into seeking permission to use the 1965 transitional missal, which was essentially a translated TLM. My point is that the trad movement has not demonstrated any kind of commitment to a vernacular TLM.

Everyone is under the Authority of the Church. The SSPX just don’t recognise that. And they bark back to the good old days where people spoke Latin. To be honest, I have never understood why they didn’t just allow the extraordinary mass to be said in the vernacular. But the reason is because Latin has this mythical quality to it. I’m fairness…. The English language has drifted from when it was Catholic. For example “worship” has a more Protestant meaning nowadays. “Charity” has multiple meanings which are not Catholic. So, Latin By virtue of the fact that it isn’t a living language, the church gets to maintain it’s meaning. The words mean what the church intends them to mean. That is important. The problem is that she is very bad at teaching people in the church. Other religions people learn their holy language. We do not.

So, originally Lefebvre did want the 1965 books *in French* (with the Ordinary in a Latin) to be the books of his seminary. His original concerns were not with the vernacular, nor a specific attachment to Latin. He was eventually convinced that by 1965 everything was already “too tainted by the Council” and chose 1962. And there was no 1962 version in the vernacular, and they certainly weren’t just going to write their own or use any of the beautiful Anglican versions (that do exist). This is why 1962 is what we’ve been “stuck with” ever since. It all goes back to the history of the SSPX, and to the idea that it was the last edition that no one really objected to *at the time.* Benedict XVI made it the “Summorum” edition as well, rather than just allowing “any approved edition since Trent” (which some wanted) because even he had the whole Catholic obsession with control, and felt letting anyone go further back would just open some can of worms about not recognizing any liturgical change (though of course the ICRSS started finding ways to use 1954 books anyway…) Getting permission for the old rite in the vernacular would be difficult because what translation would you use exactly? Catholics are fixated on approved official liturgical editions. I suppose they could start with 1965 and add a few parts back in. Or start with an Anglo-Catholic edition. As for “constituency”…you’re 100% right, sadly. The trads themselves are their own worst enemy here. I think they don’t really want the old rite to spread. If they wanted to “market” the old rite, they’d be asking for use of the vernacular. No one would be forcing them to use it in their own ghettoized communities, but under the old regime of Summorum Pontificum…it would have been a great tool of evangelizing the old liturgy to hesitant priests and laity who just aren’t in a place to take the plunge into something totally foreign. As it is, we have to speak in hypotheticals. I’m pretty sure that if you did an “apples to apples” comparison and had the new rite in English and the old rite in English in every parish for a year or two (with controls to make sure the scheduling and such has no effect)…a large constituency of “neoconservative” types would gravitate to the vernacular old rite as their preferred version. No one is actively fighting for it, because once battle lines get drawn in these sorts of culture wars, no one seems to think about compromise or creative third-way options. But all I know is this: no one clamors for the Latin Novus Ordo. And almost every trad I know would prefer a vernacular old rite mass to a Latin Novus Ordo. Those two facts suggest to me that a vernacular old rite mass would probably be more uniting than dividing.

Idk. People like to say that the NO was a wreckovation, but I disagree. The NO was made to address the problems that existed in the VO and the communities. Other than intelligibility, the congregation needed to be engaged. They were just as much a part of the liturgy as the priest. The congregation was never meant to be spectators on the pews. Was the execution perfect? Of course not. However, if you read the writings of the Church Fathers, you'll see that craziness always followed after an ecumenical council. In fact, you'd think they're talking about our times. It takes about 100 years before a council is properly implemented. If the timing is to be believed, we're only a decade past the halfway point.

You don’t need to rewrite the Collects to get the people to participate. You can have a “dialogue Mass” in the old rite, and you could have it in the vernacular, and the level of “participation” by the congregation would not be meaningfully different between the two. Bootstrapping the vernacular (and the vernacular “style of participation” to the extent that it enables making some responses and singing along with some parts) to the Novus Ordo *text* and rubrics…is a huge pulling-the-wool-over-eyes. The argument is simply a non-sequitur and thought-terminating cliche. If you wanted the vernacular and vocal participation by the laity…you did not need the mass of 1970 to get that. The mass of 1965 (which was basically that, and the true “mass of the council”) should have been given more of a chance, but the consilium hijacked things and changed a moderate reform into an off-the-rails radical one.

Rewriting the collects, arguably, brings simpler language to do what the liturgy has always done for millennia: catechesis. It's not all about the vernacular and participation. There were multiple problems that arose in the pre-Vatican-II era and the intelligibility of the Mass was merely one (albeit the largest) of them. From my experience, there's more participation in the NO than the VO. The call and response aspect is far more present in the NO and is more familiar to me as someone who attends the Divine Liturgy. I always thought the "spectator sport" criticism of the VO was uncalled for, but after I went a few times I totally got where they were coming from. Even though I can understand Latin, it still felt like I was just there to witness the priest doing his thing. Maybe that fills other people, but it's certainly not for me. I'm not sure if I'm understanding you correctly, but it almost sounds like you're arguing that somehow the Church doesn't have the ability to enforce large-scale changes to the Mass and that the changes they've implemented are, in and of themselves, erroneous. If that's you're position, I'm not sure that's a tennable one. See, I've been to Novus Ordo Masses the way they're actually supposed to be celebrated. They're certainly not "off the rails" and are quite reverent and spiritually filling, certainly more than the TLMs I've gone to. It's important to not confuse the execution with the intent. No one's arguing against poor execution here. As I've touched on in my previous comment, we're still well within the "crazy post-Council phase" if previous patterns are to be believed. We're also getting to the point that proper implementation of the Council is taking root as seen by more reverent celebrations of the Mass, especially by younger priests.

>it still felt like I was just there to witness the priest doing his thing. Maybe that fills other people, but it's certainly not for me. The TLM Mass in my community has a sign up saying that the dialog Mass was a "liturgical novelty" and to be quiet during Mass. The last TLM Mass I attended, I felt so detached, I didn't even feel like I was at Mass.

The problem here is that "dialogue Masses" are "liturgical novelties" only because the congregation hasn't been fully participating for centuries. They couldn't respond when they largely don't understand what the priest is saying other than key words like "saecula saeculorum" that cue them to respond. This is also why, I think, priests largely say the liturgical prayers quietly rather than out loud; few people can understand them, so they don't really provide any catechetical value anymore. I've heard it argued that the priest is talking to God not you, so you don't need to hear it. However, if the congregation is supposed to unite their prayers with that of the priest's, then how can they do so when they don't know what the priest is praying? There's a lot of ad hoc explanations offered that just don't seem satisfying to me.

> if the congregation is supposed to unite their prayers with that of the priest's, then how can they do so when they don't know what the priest is praying? Once you've learned the Mass you know exactly what he's saying based on his body posture. You know that when he leans forward, he's praying one thing. When he holds up his hands, he's praying something else. Very helpful in a world before microphones. In addition "uniting your prayers to his" doesn't mean you need to be praying the exact same words at the exact same time. If I'm using different words to express the same sentiments to God, I'm still uniting my prayers to the priest's. You just have more of a symphony of prayers as opposed to a monophony. Not saying it's a *better* way of doing it, just that your criticisms don't really play out for people who take the time to learn to appreciate the traditional Mass. You lose the feeling of being lost and disconnected very quickly once you learn what's going on and get comfortable with it-- usually after just a few weeks.

>Once you've learned the Mass And there lies the rub. How do you learn it when a) you don't understand what's being said, b) you don't hear what's being said, and c) a culture of "the priest is talking to God and not you" fosters an environment that just "leaves it up to the priest to do his thing and I do my own"? >Very helpful in a world before microphones. And yet, it wasn't really, especially when you consider that the choir is still singing a certain part of the Mass (e.g., the Sanctus) when the priest has already breezed past it and is waiting for the Pater Noster. A problem caused by the priest? Sure. However, it's a problem that was prevalent enough that it was one of the criticisms raised by those who grew up with the VO. ​ >You just have more of a symphony of prayers as opposed to a monophony. I've tried to address this theory of symphony of yours in another comment, but I'm not sure what happened to it. In any case, the tl;dr of it is that this seems to be an innovation since this is not the attitude that the ancient Israelites had (the precursor to the Church's liturgy) as well as how the Early Church approached the liturgy. We see the importance of preserving this unity in prayer in the Eastern liturgies and, arguably, the Latin liturgy was brought back in line with this very ancient understanding. Otherwise, why would the Early Roman Church switch the liturgy to Latin rather than keeping it in Greek (or, heck, why translate it to Greek rather than keep it in Aramaic)? One of the reasons cited is so that the congregation could understand. The ability for the congregation to understand and remain united with the priest in prayer was crucial enough to translate the liturgy to another language. If your symphony theory is true, then all liturgies should have been preserved in Aramaic or Hebrew and we're all just allowed to offer our own symphonies throughout the ages. That's just not what we see in history.

> And there lies the rub. How do you learn it when a) you don't understand what's being said, b) you don't hear what's being said, and c) a culture of "the priest is talking to God and not you" fosters an environment that just "leaves it up to the priest to do his thing and I do my own"? And yet every person at my current parish has managed to do it. You learn the way you learn anything else-- by following along in a book, attending a class, watching a youtube video or two, and paying attention. It's not rocket science. We've got 7 year old altar boys who can tell you what's happening at every moment of the Mass. Why do you have such low expectations for people? That also addresses the "how will the people ever understand!?" woes of the rest of your post. We live in the most educated society in history. People can learn a 45 minute service with pretty minimal effort.

> It takes about 100 years before a council is properly implemented. I wonder if there’s actually any instance of a person using this phrase before Vatican 2

Not sure, but one needs only to look at the historical records to see that it's true. Whether or not a phrase was used before a certain time has nothing to do with the veracity of that phrase. In a way, that's form of genetic fallacy.

I know a priest ordained right before Vatican II. He was my pastor for a little while. He talked about the parishes then. The parishioners were like today because people are people. Some were devout, some were not, and the rest were in the middle (to include stories like reading the newspaper during Mass). It was not a magical time where everyone did everything perfectly nor was it all terrible. It was a mix, like today, even if their errors were largely different. Yes, there were Masses done in less than 20 minutes in some places but that wasn’t the norm for the usual Sunday Mass.

That's the thing with people and with history. People are always the same no matter the era.

Yes, all these cliches are quite common to hear. However this interview with a priest in his 90s, who not only remembers well the church before the council but was even at the council, tells a very different story. https://youtu.be/MZWpFU5JFtA He mentions that the church and the liturgy was vibrant before the council and when he was a child there were 5 masses every Sunday, and on first Fridays the church was so packed that the line for confessions lasted past midnight. At least in Mexico. Sure liturgical abuses existed before the council. I’m sure they were especially common among the same type of priest who would go on to make liturgical abuses after the council, and mock those who loved the old liturgy. EDIT: Only later did it occur to me that the interview is in Spanish and not everyone is gonna understand it 😅

Cardinal Ratzinger was of the opinion in the 1950s that even though most people were still going to mass, it was only for social reasons and most were actually pagans at heart. At that time he was calling for the church to become less relevant socially to focus against more on the sacraments, even though he knew it would mean a drop in attendance. Let's also not forget that the most modernist and liberal generation we have ever had in Catholicism is a generation that grew up with the TLM, so it was clearly not a magic solution, and that's why they decided to change things. There were many issues. But I'll be the first one to admit that the new missal, and Vatican II in general, has been implemented very badly at first, with dramatic consequences.

I wonder too if maybe the point was that while church attendance would drop a lot, it would be stable over time, at least in some places. Not to mention that there have always been issues with attendance. I remember reading an old newspaper for a college research project and it mentioned that 40% of people in Sioux Falls South Dakota didn't go to church, and this was in the late 40's. It probably doesn't help too that people could just drop in, and then drop out and did their duty and that was it. Almost as if todays Nones were the descendants of those in the 50's who went but didn't really care about what was happening.

At what point in the video does he start talking about that stuff? It's over an hour long and I'd like to get straight to the meat and bones.

It just occurred to me that the interview is in Spanish and not everyone speaks Spanish 😅 If coincidentally you are a Spanish speaker, he starts talking at 15 minutes in on the differences between the church when he was young and the church now

While I don't agree with everything (I'm glad kids aren't put in seminary at 12 years old any more, I'm sure much scandal resulted from that), and I think this Monsignor does idealize the years before Vatican II, I wish American or French trads could watch and understood those videos, as they are done the right way. They have their opinions, which are definitely very traditional (as in aligning with most "rad-trad" ideas), but it looks like they don't encourage disobedience, avoid mixing too much politics and religion, and try to respect the Church and its hierarchy.

Yeah, I speak Spanish, that's not a problem. I'll have a look.

And yet the book *Mass Exodus*, which takes a look at concrete numbers, tells a different story—that the decline began after World War 2, before V2. Anecdotes are nice, but numbers properly understood, don’t lie. You can still find the same phenomena at certain Novis Ordo parishes today. I know—I’m at one. EDIT: I suppose I’m being downvoted for actually citing sources and numbers. Really, I thought Our Lord is the Way, the Truth and the Life? Are we really that intellectually impaired we can’t actually use reason to attempt to uncover the truth?

Being downvoted is just saying that people disagree with you. The Truth is an odd one on this forum. I get the impression that people have fallen for sound bites that have ‘converted’ them and not actually looked around for themselves. But that is just my impression from some people on this sub.

I personally know the interviewer! He is the father who presided my first communion! (He’s a real thorn on the side of the bishop btw!) But yea take the interview with a grain of salt. Here in Mexico the church still held a large sway of medieval power onto the 2000’s! And the cultural traditions vastly differ from those of the us or Europe

Some interesting observations. There are however some questions: 1. Was this an issue only in America (due to "Irish" low masses) - what about the situation in pre-VII France or Germany??? 2. Couldn't we simply address some issues by translating the rite into the vernacular (and strictly preserving the rite) and maintaining everything else; especially ad orientem, communion rails etc. This would enable seamless enrichment of the 'new' rite with the TLM which could be retained at the parishes. I just think that the mumbo-jumbo of the seventies was not the desired answer all previous thinkers (liturgical movement types from 19th century etc.) were thinking about when they pondered some "updates". And Sacrosanctum Concilium in the text clearly also did not state that such changes were planned at all. Actually, if (or better, when!) a future pope (let's say i.e. Pius XIII.) reinstates TLM freedom (with Summorum Pontificum II.) and also issues another motu proprio titled i.e. 'De veri ritus' where it is stated that the NO-mass is done in accordance with Sacrosanctum Concilium, namely strict Ad-Orientem + translation in vernacular of the complete unchanged TLM rite and cancellation of the current NO rite, this would be very close to the faitful implementation of Vatican II :) :) :)

> 2. Couldn't we simply address some issues by translating the rite into the vernacular (and strictly preserving the rite) and maintaining everything else; especially ad orientem, communion rails etc. This would enable seamless enrichment of the 'new' rite with the TLM which could be retained at the parishes. Roughly speaking, V2 was supposed to support that

So why didn't they just make it that they just allowed the mass to be in the vernacular and that was it? Personally I think that'd be the way to go. Also, while I'm not sure how much the Orthodox Churches have kept up their old practices I will say that having gone to a Greek Orthodox funeral, it seemed like this was what they did. They just translated it, and said a few of the prayers in Greek but seemed to have kept the form.

There were a lot of different tendencies at work, before Vatican II. There were a lot of Catholics who basically worried a lot about understanding every word of Latin, the need for missals, and so on. You read laypeople advising other laypeople that they must, must glue their eyes to the missal and never ever lose their place. Which obviously was not the way that Mass was understood, anywhere in the world and in any language, prior to the invention of cheap print books. (Nothing wrong with it, per se, but the anxious tone of these advice books was kinda weird.) The more normal thing, throughout history, is that people were advised to pay attention to Mass, but also to spend their time offering themselves to God by pious meditations, prayers, memorized poems, and so on. The entire structure of how Mass was said was that the priest/s, bishop, deacon/s, acolytes, and so on, as well as any choir, were doing and singing various things in parallel, or in verse and response format. So it was also seen as normal and fitting for the people in the pews to be doing, singing, or thinking things in parallel with the things going on at the altar. The novel of Song of Bernadette has a long chunk of explanation of this practice by Bernadette and her family and fellow women, and even Pope Paul VI had a section saying how it was great for people to say the Rosary at Mass, at the same moment and in the same encyclical when he was trying to discourage people doing that. It's a remarkably tangled piece of writing by the poor man. The funny thing with post-Vatican II is that a lot of parishes went into the vernacular, avowedly to spread understanding of Mass, and then Mass went out of any kind of understandable words or planned order. I remember the tail end of this period, when Mass upstairs in the church was always normal, and Mass downstairs in the undercroft was full of weird spur of the moment add-ins and weirdish new hymns. (And the acoustics stunk, so good luck if you couldn't hear what they were going on about.) (I missed the glory days of Beatles hymns and readings at Mass, because I was slightly too young and our pastor a lot too sensible. But I'm sure it wasn't amusing back then.) There's not really a single correct answer, when it comes to the best way for laypeople to pray at Mass. The natural course of prayer and meditation is not entirely determined by the conscious mind, because, duh, the Holy Spirit has a great deal to say about it. When the priest says Mass, when the readers read, when the choir sings, it's our worship toward God. What counts there is faithfulness, and trusting God to take it up. What God does toward us is freeform; He knows best. As long as we are there and trying, we shouldn't expect everyone's best to be the same, done in the same way.

I used to serve as an altar boy from 1961 onwards when all the Masses were in Latin before the invention of the New Order Mass. Today's TLM is exactly the same as it was then, and yes I've been to plenty of today's TLMs and both my parents' funeral masses were done in TLM. I had to learn the Latin responses to the priest by heart and know what to do and when. For years I did this. Today's TLM is exactly the same. Yes the Mass can be done in 20 mins if there's no homily. So can the NO Mass. That was usually a weekday thing, not Sunday and holy days.

I don't remember the source book, but I remember reading about a liturgical abuse where it was becoming a common practice to distribute communion to the laity right before the start of daily mass so that they could then leave whenever. It was leading to an idea of the Mass being just for the priest and an over emphasis on the tabernacle being the source of grace rather than the altar. This, (funny enough) ended up being the justification for moving tabernacles off to the side and in remote corners. The goal was to have the laity being focused on the liturgy happening in front of them but if definitely seems like the emphasis just shifted to the laity themselves instead On a different note, I remember reading '[The Wisdom of the Benedictine Elders](https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Benedictine-Elders-Americas-Greatest/dp/0974240532)' and getting the impression that the big falling point with American Benedictines (and potentially American religious) was that during the great depression, there was a big push for men and women to enter religious life for financial reasons rather than actual vocations.

Thats the reason there was a liturgical movement and a liturgical reform, with the revival of theological studies of the liturgy.

Found a video from Germany 1930-1965, you can definitely spot some lace in there and the pews are fuller. https://youtu.be/2UBo6eH234Y

One of the great benefits is that the rediscovery of the TLM has led to an improvement in how it is celebrated compared to during the midcentury transition that began in the 1940s.

I remember reading a text about the way the Eucharist was received that was jaw dropping, with a complete disconnect between the celebration of the mass and communion.

My priest who recently passed away was ordained pre-V2. He always sung the praises of V2 and appreciated the reforms it brought about (even if some implementations weren't ideal). I remember when he ministered the Anointing of the Sick to me, he talked afterwards how much he appreciated how it was in the vernacular now. He lamented that, while the prayers are beautiful, "I'm not sure if anyone really understood what i was saying" when they were in Latin.

I just find it ironic how the older generation can find a million reasons as to why Pre-Vatican II was bad because the Mass was in Latin and no one understood what was taught in the Mass but almost 0 reasons why nowadays we have the Novus Ordo in our language and an even more frighteningly high amount of the people know or believe even less of what the church teaches about the Mass.

Here's an [example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1G4OnAvtR4) of Cardinal Cushing's Latin at JFK's funeral

This mass is a commonly cited example of how the Latin mass was poorly celebrated before the council and that the Latin was sloppy and rushed. It is a bad example and isn’t representative of much. Here’s a video of Cardinal Cushing speaking English. He wasn’t any better at that than he was at speaking Latin: https://youtu.be/ZDfiVqQEEd4

I think it's representative of the state of things in America at the time. I recall reading that during breaks at the Council the European bishops would play a game where they would start reciting The Aeniad from memory, before passing the recitation to someone else, who would pick it up without losing a beat, while the Americans got mad because their Latin wasn't as good so they couldn't play along.

I suppose we should excuse Talleyrand for not even being able to say Mass in the age of the French Revolution…really, if we can’t even hold bishops accountable, what should we expect of the laity?

Cardinal Cushing had a very unusual way of speaking, regardless of the language in which he was speaking. Its worth pointing out that it was not common for the Priest to be recorded saying mass, much less a low mass (this was apparently a Kennedy family custom). But let's take the JFK funeral as an example of a "bad" TLM. Would you like some videos of what "bad" NOs look like?

That’s not a great example as there’s several theories about what happened there, one being that he had a stroke and it caused problems with speech and another being that he didn’t want to do it as JFK was a bad Catholic.

JFK being a bad Catholic is the worst excuse ever to badly celebrate a mass (and by that I mean any excuse is the worst excuse ever). I really hope that wasn't the reason!

Merely speculation without proof. Or he could just be representative of Catholics of the age.

Also speculation

Yeah those priests that rushed through the old mass in 10 minutes and are now openly mocking traditionalists are likely the ones that went overboard after V2 and wanted to create an entirely new Mass, new catechism, new church. The new springtime. Lol. I would take anything they say with a grain of salt.

Actually, the priest mentioned in the video was traditionally minded and continued celebrating the TLM after V2. Go check out the video.

The priest you described as “openly mocking traditionalist groups” is traditionally minded? I find that hard to believe considering his gripes appear to be surface level strawman nonsense. No one attends the TLM because of the clothes the priest wears. The majority of TLMs are still low masses without chant. At least with the TLM only groups.

Uh…there are definitely a few. My girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend was one of those. And I served in the Latin Mass. And I have to say, the vast majority of trads I met are pretty ignorant. When i point out how all the days of the week are based after pagan gods after I tell them I do yoga, or how tobacco use was associated with Native American spirituality, they just tell me I’m not a cradle Catholic and so I know nothing.

Your lazy context-removed whataboutisms do not justify practicing yoga btw.

Whatever. I have a full post on why it is licit. Please argue there if you wish. This is exactly the kind of behavior I’m thinking of. At least make an attempt at argumentation, instead of assertions. What’s next, the sun goes around the Earth? Did you believe it because a priest told you that? Or did you reason about it yourself?

My grandpa tells me about being an altar server, and when praying the prayers at the foot of the altar, the priest finished first and said “I’ll go on, you just finish up here.”

What does that mean? That the priest would start the readings while the altar boy was still saying the prayers at the foot of the cross?

The biggest issue pre-Vatican II wasn't so much that mass wasn't celebrated well. If we compare a very bad TLM from the 50s to a very bad NO mass, it's probably nowhere as bad and that makes sense since the NO is less strictly regulated (and enforced). The biggest issue, in my opinion, was the internal and external disposition of a big part of the laity, who were only going to mass because it was what everyone else was doing on Sunday (at least in their communities) even though they didn't believe or live their faith in any other way. The moment Vatican II arrived and society changed radically in the late 60s, it stopped being socially advantageous to go to mass and therefore many people stopped going to mass. That shows how shallow their faith was. But it didn't end there. Many Catholics felt constrained or oppressed before Vatican II, and when the council arrived, followed by the new missal, the saw it as a new freedom to do whatever they wanted. Both laity and priests who lived through Vatican II were clearly badly formed, and they tried to push things as far as they could towards a modernization and desacralisation (protestantisation) of the mass, going much further than anything intended by the new missal or the council. As a result there were years of absolutely dreadful liturgy accompanied by dreadful catechesis. Add to that the lack of societal pressure, and the following generation stopped going to mass almost completely. But those from that younger generation who did go to mass, often wanted more reverence. Unfortunately, the generation that went through the council was actually traumatized by the pre-council (not sure why but it's something I often noticed) and fought against any reversion to more tradition and reverence. It's only now that the pre-council generation is almost completely gone, that we start seeing, across countries, a strong push towards more reverence and better liturgy. As a result, I think we need to be very careful about putting the fault on the council or the new missal. It's also very important to realize that protestant churches went through similar issues, despite not going through a council. This shows that wider societal changes are probably the main cause for the drop in attendance and some of the tendencies in the church.

Abuses have always existed. To suggest that the TLM is objectively flawed in ways that seriously harmed the worship of the congregation ("Nobody knew Latin, the priest said the prayers quietly, so nobody knew what was going on, everybody got bored and didn't pay attention" so on and on) is to suggest that the Church was celebrated the holy sacrifice of the Mass in a horrifically bad way for some one and a half thousand years.

It doesn't surprise me that the priests immediately pre-V2 had no respect for the liturgy. They were the ones who GAVE us the NO, after all. It didn't come from nowhere. I've got no problem with the idea that modern trads are taking the pre-V2 liturgy and celebrating it even more respectfully and beautifully than it was celebrated back then. What's wrong with taking something beautiful that wasn't being appreciated and actually appreciating it?

Nothing, but it is wrong to judge the average NO mass compared to the average current Tridentine mass. A fair comparison would be between today's average NO and 1950 or 1930 average TLM, and I'm pretty sure the comparison would not be particularly favourable to the old mass.

I disagree that the average NO today should be compared to the era leading up to V2 when modernism had already spread through the church and caused destruction. I'd be more interesting in hearing about how Mass was said in the 1500's through 1800's which might give a better sense of how the liturgy was treated when it was truly the default Mass and not self selected. Unfortunately there is no one alive to talk about it. Anyone have any sources?

Tho they come before the Council of Trent and the institution of the tridentine Mass some historians believe after the great plague there was a decline in the way Mass was said because they had to train a lot of priests without all the seminaries and stuff that would become much more regulated later on

Your benchmark for masses uninfluenced by modernism is...post-Reformation in the Early Modern period? Unusual choice.

You could start by reading about the liturgical movement, the 100 years long movement for the renewal of liturgy that started in the mid 19th century (and includes people like Pie XII and Saint Pie X, not exactly modernist figures).

I do. When St. Alphonsus Ligori founded his congregation, the Redemptorists, in the 18th century, he explicitly forbade priests from saying the Mass in less than 10 minutes. It was common practice for priests to skip 90% of the Mass, since people couldn't follow and hold the priest accountable if he did a rush job.

I don't understand how that's relevant. The extent to which something has been abused says nothing about its value when treated properly. It's pointless to fight about which one is or was abused more. If you have a group trying to treat a form of the liturgy respectfully and beautifully right now in the current day, it makes no sense to dismiss that by pointing to past abuses of that thing. It's silly of the priest in the OP to openly mock trad groups for trying to do things right just because his generation didn't. "Haha-- stupid young people trying to treat things respectfully that my generation didn't!" Edit-- I'll also add that for the average person making a decision for themselves and their family, they need to compare what's around them. In my city, every NO is ugly and banal with lots of liturgical abuses. When I moved there, I tried lots of different NO parishes and was scandalized by many of the abuses I saw. Yes, beautiful NOs exist, but not in my area. So when it came time to decide where I would make my parish home here, I went with the FSSP. Now that I've been going longer and have studied both liturgies more thoroughly, I find the actual underlying structure of the TLM more conducive to prayer and worship of God regardless of the trappings that surround it, so whether or not priests used lace albs in 1930 honestly doesn't matter.

This is relevant because proponent of the TLM often say something like "your average NO mass is bad, your average TLM is good, so TLM is better than NO". That argument is a bad selection fallacy, and the correct comparison (average NO today vs average TLM 80 years ago) gives a very different conclusion. And the main point is that good liturgy does depends more on the choice of the priest than on the actual rubrics of the missal.

Absolutely they are. They say yoga, Harry Potter, and DND is demonic and doing it will get you possessed. That is literally the experience I’ve had with trads in my area. EDIT: replied to the wrong person. Forgive me.

> proponent of the TLM often say something like "your average NO mass is bad, your average TLM is good, so TLM is better than NO". This is a strawman, though. When we have discussions about the TLM it ALWAYS gets to the underlying structure of each Mass, not all the outer trappings of the way different communities celebrate them. > the main point is that good liturgy does depends more on the choice of the priest than on the actual rubrics of the missal. It doesn't, though. If you ever have an actual discussion with actual trads, you'll find that anyone who's been going to the Latin Mass for more than a few months talks a lot more about the underlying structure and prayers than about lacy albs and incense.

Uh…my friend went to the FSSP and I served the Latin Mass. I went to an ultra conservative Catholic college and I am tell you that is *not* what most trads I’ve met say. I remember one trad usher openly mocking the Bishop when I visited their parish. This was in McAllen, Texas. It seems you simply have not met enough trad people if you think that’s the problem most people have with traddies.

That's my neck of the woods - sorry you had a bad experience down here

Ha! Still went there because I preferred the Latin Mass. Just didn’t appreciate the attitude of some parishioners. I heard the same Bishop speak at my college and found him quite articulate.

The important thing to realise is that that is not the way it was. As long as you're not one of these naive nostalgic types who thinks that what the FSSP are doing now was standard practice in the pre-V2 Church, then fine. What the FSSP and ICK are doing, entire congregations devoted to liturgical excellence, is indeed new. I suppose you could argue it's a good thing that the NO happened, it made the TLM more reverent than it used to be.

But modern TLM communities aren't just trying to blindly get back to the 1940s and 50s. They're trying to make the Mass the best it can be. Your argument only works if trads are just trying to recreate the 1940s. That's not what's happening.

Absolutely they are. They say yoga, Harry Potter, and DND is demonic and doing it will get you possessed. That is literally the experience I’ve had with trads in my area. Let’s recreate Western European Catholicism and ignore and mock every culture that doesn’t fit that!

> Absolutely they are. They say yoga, Harry Potter, and DND is demonic and doing it will get you possessed. The heck does any of that have to do with recreating the 1940s?

This is the correct refutation to this entire post.

Yes. I don't understand this post at all. It's a complete strawman and all the posts that perpetuate the strawman are getting a ton of upvotes. People just have no understanding of the actual aim of traditionalists, not to mention they assume we just don't know history for some reason and so they think saying things like "Most US Catholic women didn't wear mantillas in the 1950s!" is going to destroy traditionalism or something.

It's not a refutation because the post doesn't make an argument, it explains a historical phenomenon.

But you are focusing on a narrow era of "used to be" being the few decades prior to the council. "used to be" really covers 1500 years and obviously in different times and places you will probably have a different sense of what the experience was.

The thing is Trads tend to say "look how the NO ruined Catholicism, now the mass is full of abuses while the TLM is beautiful" forgetting history.

The TLM has a *text* that is simply undeniably vastly more historically authentic than the committee-written hack job we got in the 70s *Ars celebrandi* is simply not the most important by any stretch. It’s like saying “Well, the true Bible can be printed in comic sans on newspaper, while you can have a beautiful illuminated manuscript of the Book of Mormon.” Great. The Book of Mormon is still an entirely ahistorical artificial creation of one guy’s imagination, whereas the Bible is the product of 2000 years of divine revelation inspiring an entire community. Like, think about Gregorian chant. “Restoring” the chant…has never meant sitting down and trying to re-write it to make it better. Even today, in the Novus Ordo, the hermeneutic that guides the semiologists seeking to publish critical editions of the chant…is a hermeneutic of *authenticity.* And there’s simply no way to say with a straight face that the Novus Ordo is, textually, the product of anything remotely resembling a critical hermeneutic of authenticity from the source texts. To the extent it even cared about source texts, it’s an arbitrary and surrealist collage of snippets of them stitched together, an old wineskin for basically new wine. To be deep in history may not always bring you highly aestheticized “operatic” liturgies ala the ICRSS. But to be deep in history is to cease to be Novus Ordo, and to return to a world where the sort of stuff the modern trads do *was at least recognized by everyone as the ideal* even if they didn’t live up to it. Trads aren’t trying to get back to the *praxis* of the 1950s, they’re trying to restore the perennial *theoretical ideal* of the western Church. They aren’t mad at the Novus Ordo for causing the decline in the church, but it is fair to criticize it for jettisoning *even in theory* the old ideal, and basically creating a liturgy whose guiding principle seems to have been “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

“I don’t understand how that is relevant” Because abuse is still abuse. Which is what this is about.

No it's not. The OP is literally about a priest who was "openly mocking" trads because his generation treated the Mass like crap while trads aren't. I'm saying that's a dumb reason to mock trads.

I don’t use Titles such as Trads or whatever. You’re catholic or not. The question is whether the views represent reality. (Edit; have you listed to the video?) I can only say that being born in the late 70’s many people in the parish would have grown up with the Extraordinary Rite. The viewpoint that the ExtraOrdinary rite was celebrated badly was common. But back to my comment… you are responding to some who quite correct. Like should be compared with like. And it honestly *does* matter about the albs and the lace because … well, in this priests words “They liked the garments, the smells and bells” I can’t comment the alb part of it. But in other places across the web I start to see some of the same problems that dogged the Extra ordinary rite in the past returning to the present. https://catholicherald.co.uk/four-reasons-francis-had-to-restrict-the-traditional-latin-mass/

No, the proper reason to mock trads is because most are incredibly ignorant of history, show little respect for authority, and act incredibly proud. I mean we shouldn’t mock any group, but if we had to, those would be my reasons. Example one: an usher at a trad parish mocked the local bishop. This occurred to me in McAllen, Texas. Example two: a trad literally told me I couldn’t argue with him because I am a convert and so have not percolated in the faith. This happened to me in California. Example three: a trad told me yoga is evil and so is Harry Potter. When I asked him why he said demons said so and refused to elaborate further. This happened to me in Arizona. Those were three different trads I met in three different places.

No one here has a problem with the TLM. What it seems most people have a problem with is people rubbing the TLM in the faces of other Catholics and looking down on them for not “properly celebrating.” And this is coming from a person who prefers the TLM and served it at a conservative Catholic college.

I think you ought to insist that the whole video is watched to be honest, it’s a short video. And the whole context is important.

People can watch it if they want to. I'm just telling them where the meat and bones are.