The Straight Story (I Hope) on Changes In The Roman Catholic Mass
08/02/08
In the 2007 letter to the U.S. Bishops covering his letter to all the Church, Summorum Pontificum, Pope Benedict XVI noted that there was "no little confusion" about changes in the prayers of Roman Catholic Mass.
There is indeed a fog in which one collides with terms such as "Latin Mass," "Tridentine Rite," and "Novus Ordo." First of all, the original language of all versions of the Roman Mass is Latin. Thus "Latin Mass" is faulty as a descriptor but often used to refer to the "Tridentine Mass," a version that emerged from the 16th-Century Council of Trent (Tridentum). The Catholic News Service recently used the term "Tridentine Mass" but whether there really is a Tridentine Mass is questionable as its 1570 missal was tinkered with by various popes and councils over the centuries.
As Benedict clarifies in his aforementioned letter, there are not two different rites of the Roman Mass but "a twofold use of one and the same rite." One use is the 1962 Missale Romanum of John XXIII (the last alteration of the Tridentine use) and the other is the 1969 Missal of Paul VI, known as the Novus Ordo (New Order). The English translation of this latter is what Roman-Mass-going Catholics in English-speaking countries hear.
This is what will be happening (or not happening):
1) Masses in English are not going to be replaced by Masses in Latin. Most Masses in the world will still be said in the vernacular. Pope Benedict is openly encouraging the saying of Mass in Latin where the desire and priestly competency are sufficient to make such liturgies happen. I suspect that in near decades they will happen mainly in cities.
When Masses in the vernacular were pushed out in the 1960s, some American bishops assumed that Masses in Latin were to be forbidden. That was not the Vatican's intention. Indeed forbidding recitation of the Roman Mass in Latin would be like forbidding the reading of The Torah in Hebrew.
Today there is a growing interest among Catholics, including many younger ones, in hearing Masses in Latin. Why? Yes, there may be a bit of "I understand what sub tectum meum means, and that it's also an accusative with a preposition, and you don't," but my short guess is that, for most, Latin recitation enhances the speciality of God making himself present to us in the bread and wine. The more frequently and sincerely Catholics avail themselves of The Most Blessed Sacrament, the less they do things for snobbish reasons.
By the way, even if all Masses were to be recited in Latin, missals would have the English translation alongside the Latin prayers, as they've long had. It wouldn't kill anybody to learn bits of another language over many, many Sundays and what's happening at Mass is obvious to a practicing Catholic no matter what language it's recited in.
2) There will be changes to the prayers of the Mass in English. Essentially the altered prayers will be more faithful translations of the original Latin, the language that the authors of the Mass prayers thought in. When--and I know the history of this is simplified--they thought and wrote "Credo," they meant "I believe" and not "We believe" which, if I remember my conjugations, would be "Credimus." And speaking of "sub tectum meum," the phrase "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof " etc. is closer to Luke's Gospel text than "Lord I am not worthy to receive you."
Why didn't they translate text more closely the first time? It's a long, complicated story and early English translations were faithful, but they were erased in the confusing, crazy, lawless decade of misconceptions and opportunism following the Second Vatican Council. The coming translations have been in the works since John Paul II's papacy and are part of a larger movement to reorient (a very apropos verb in this case) the focus of the Mass to the Eucharist. The Mass is ultimately about the bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ, not about the people, not about the priest, not about the choir.
Unless you go to Mass in one of those places where priests strut in front of the altars and up and down the aisles like Monty Hall when they give their homilies, you may have noticed that lectors and extraordinary ministers no longer sit in the sacristy near the altar. The Sunday Mass where the priest gets you out in twenty minutes is vanishing. In the '70s one would hear of acrobats on the altar or priests flinging jelly beans to the congregants, but today, the only "deformations" of the Mass (that I've heard about lately) seem to be those inner-city musical extravaganzas that go on for three-hours. You may observe some congregants striking their breasts and bowing during certain prayers. You may even be lucky enough to go to a church where Kyrie Elaison, Sanctus and Agnus Dei are mixed in with the prayers in English to remind you that the Mass is an extraordinary celebration that has been going on for over 1900 years.
And the church-in-the-round, the preferred choice of ecclesiastical architects for the past forty years, may be going the way of the split-foyer entrance.
When will the different translations of the prayers be heard at a church near you? Well, right now there is backing-and-forthing between the U.S. bishops and the responsible Vatican commission. Some church leaders who want the Mass to be closer to a revival meeting in formality don't like at all the translations, or the encouragement of Latin or the larger trend away from the worship of Man. The bureaucrats at the episcopal Washington DC conference have resented and ignored many of Benedict and John Paul's urgings for years. It will be those hostile chairwarmers' responsibility to promulgate new missals and programs educating the clergy and faithful. And where's the money for that coming from?
I'd say give it about ten years.
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