The division in the Catholic Church (Churches)

chevyontheriver said:

Could we just have the TLM carefully and accurately translated into English then?

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I suppose

fhansen said:

I suppose

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It would be consistent with Vatican II, except they wanted to keep some Latin. It would satisfy almost all traditionalists. Lefevbre actually approved if the 1965 'first draft' liturgies in vernacular languages. And it would improve the novus ordo. All while diffusing the whole whatever that scares pope Francis so much.

chevyontheriver said:

The 'Infiltration' hypothesis is likely quite true. Bella Dodd said so. Taylor Marshall documented it. Fr Murr concurs. Catholicism is a pedigreed system. But some mutations were introduced. Some careful breeding of priests, bishops, and cardinals will be needed to bring us back to the pedigree again.

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I cannot comment too much on Marshall or Murr's works (though I do know there have been some criticisms), but I should note that there is some question about whether Bella Dodd made the statements ascribed to her. This article offers a fairly in depth analysis:

According to this, all known sources of her saying anything about knowing of or participating in any attempted Communist infiltration of the Catholic Church come not from any of her own writings or recorded statements, but rather secondhand sources from decades after her death. Now, there are multiple secondhand sources, which would seem to grant it credence... but in a statement of hers that we do have confirmed, in a talk in 1961, she was asked "Have you ever met Communists among the Catholic clergy and if so, were these people ever exposed?" and said she had never met a member of the Catholic clergy she knew was Communist, and that the long years of preparation required for the Catholic clergy might deter attempts to putting people in.

Her statement that she never met any Communist who was in the Catholic clergy seems to fly in the face of the claims of her talking about how there was Communist infiltration that she participated in. Now, there are some possibilities the article discusses for how to possibly reconcile this with the secondhand reports about her talking about infiltration. So this doesn't necessarily mean she never made those other statements. But given all reports of them are secondhand and decades after her death, and we have a firsthand quote that at least appears in tension with the secondhand claims, I think some caution is warranted in citing her in regards to this.

chevyontheriver said:

Could we just have the TLM carefully and accurately translated into English then?

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I don't know that this is feasible at this point in the game, but it would be interesting if the TLM community achieved this in high English. Many prefer the Anglican ordinariate because the English texts are so much more poetic and beautiful than the Novus Ordo, and perhaps the TLM could replicate this. On the other hand, to deviate from the linguistic style of the Novus Ordo might lead to the same supposed problems.

zippy2006 said:

I don't know that this is feasible at this point in the game, but it would be interesting if the TLM community achieved this in high English. Many prefer the Anglican ordinariate because the English texts are so much more poetic and beautiful than the Novus Ordo, and perhaps the TLM could replicate this. On the other hand, to deviate from the linguistic style of the Novus Ordo might lead to the same supposed problems.

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I suspect that the anti-backwardists would not like a literate but exact translation of the TLM. But I sure would.

chevyontheriver said:

It would be consistent with Vatican II, except they wanted to keep some Latin. It would satisfy almost all traditionalists. Lefevbre actually approved if the 1965 'first draft' liturgies in vernacular languages. And it would improve the novus ordo. All while diffusing the whole whatever that scares pope Francis so much.

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Sounds good. I'm not the Church of course, tho, Either way, I have great confidence that the Holy Spirit was in charge of Vat II-and that its consequences will be worked out more and more fully and correctly in the coming centuries, for the betterment of all.

fhansen said:

Sounds good. I'm not the Church of course, tho, Either way, I have great confidence that the Holy Spirit was in charge of Vat II-and that its consequences will be worked out more and more fully and correctly in the coming centuries, for the betterment of all.

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I hope so. The letter of Vatican II was pretty good. George Weigel had a book out about a year ago recapping the council and it was excellent.

discombobulated1 said:

Wow, 21 people viewed this but there are no comments? Are people afraid of speaking out against the wrongs in the Church?

If so, that is VERY telling...................

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Friendly Lutheran hand waving.

-CryptoLutheran

fhansen said:

One, thing, IMO, is that the majority of people will want the bulk of the Mass language to be in the vernacular. And that one point is actually more traditional-and rational- as I see it.

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There are important reasons for preserving the historic liturgical languages of the Church. Specifically, those used by the Apostles and the Church Fathers, which include, but are not limited to, Koine Greek, Byzantine Greek, Classical Syriac, Biblical Aramaic, Hebrew, Ge’ez (ancient Ethiopian), Coptic, Classical Armenian, Classical Georgian, Church Slavonic, and Latin, just to name some. Some of these languages have descendants which remain in vernacular use and have a high degree of intelligibility, and others do not. But they are important to our heritage and our hymnody and are worth learning.

Most Orthodox churches and Eastern Catholic churches accomplish this through the careful use of a mixture of the liturgical and vernacular language, and this is also what the Anglican parish of St. Magnus the Martyr does. Thus, the beautiful Latin hymns can be heard in their original language, and other things can be in English. Some Orthodox churches will do different parts of the liturgy in different vernacular languages at different services so regular attendees will hear everything at different times in their own language. In the US, Coptic Orthodox churches that are trying to revitalize Coptic but must cater to Arabic speaking Egyptian immigrants who stopped speaking Coptic as a vernacular language around the 11th century due to the Muslim rulers of Egypt cutting out the tongue of anyone not speaking Arabic; obviously, it is not worth losing one’s tongue over. However, given the opportunity to speak a traditional liturgical language, as most Israelis would say, I think they did something superb by reviving Hebrew, which had been out of circulation as a vernacular language since well before the birth of Christ our True God.

Therefore those churches that have vernacular speakers of a language such as the various Syriac and Aramaic derivatives spoken by members of the Assyrian Church of the East, the Syriac Orthodox Church, and the Antiochian Orthodox Church, and also I think by some members of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem (which despite the name has a substantial number of Arabic speaking congregations and members), are making efforts to conserve these languages, while others, such as the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria, are working to revive Coptic as a spoken language through youth instruction, and I think this is very important.

The same should be done for Latin. It is a beautiful language and learning it enables one to read a large number of texts which one might not otherwise have access to.

chevyontheriver said:

Could we just have the TLM carefully and accurately translated into English then?

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That is literally what some Anglican parishes of the Anglo Catholic variety, specifically those known as Missal Catholics, do. Likewise, it is also what many Western Rite Orthodox churches do. The Antiochian Western Rite Vicarate, in the United States, has an excellent liturgical service book called St. Andrew's Service Book, which contains two Eucharistic liturgies, or masses: the Divine Liturgy of St. Tikhon, which is an adaptation of the Anglican Holy Communion service to comply with Orthodox theological requirements, and the Divine Liturgy of St. Gregory Diologos, also known as Pope St. Gregory The Great, who made enormous contributions to both the Byzantine and Roman Rite liturgies. The Divine Liturgy of St. Gregory* is the tradiitonal Roman mass, almost identical to the Tridentine mass, but obviously with the important change in that it lacks the filioque, since the Orthodox Church largely regards the filioque as an error, and even those members of the church who are less concerned about it as a stumbling block to ecumenical reconciliation still do not want it in the service books, since there is the issue that it contradicts the canons of the Council of Ephesus, insofar as it represents an addition to or modification of the Nicene Creed.

Interestingly, composing new Creeds is also prohibited by the Council of Ephesus. Thus in one of my Protestant service books there is a collection of creeds, including a 20th century "Modern Affirmation of Faith", which is not quite as bad as it sounds, but it is still uncanonical according to the Council of Ephesus. But unfortunately many churches just ignore the canons of the ecumenical councils, which is regrettable.

A major goal of mine, in addition to increasing the Trinitarian and Incarnational awareness of Western Christians by popularizing the language of the Eastern churches in referring to God, is also to make more Christians aware of the ecumenical councils, especially the first three which are shared between Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, and also the Seventh, which condemns iconoclasm (which the Oriental Orthodox have also always rejected; indeed the Oriental Orthodox never fell under the control of iconoclasts, which did unfortunately happen to the Patriarchate of Constantiople due to political reasons during the war with the Turks. At any rate, as part of this, I want people to be aware of the canons issued by the Early Church Fathers, in particular those of the ecumenical councils, for example, Canon I of Nicaea, which disqualifies from Holy Orders men who have voluntarily castrated themselves or been castrated (which obviously would apply to men who mutilate their genitals in order to become "trans women"). These ancient canons are extremely important.


*The Divine Liturgy of St..Gregory should not to be confused with the Presanctified Liturgy he also wrote, which with only minor variations in wording, your church also historically used on Good Friday until Pope Pius XII arbitrarily rewrote it in the mid 1950s, whereas the Orthodox use it throughout lent. The Presanctified Liturgy of St. Gregory is sometimes called the Divine Liturgy of St. Gregory in Eastern Orthodox service books, so this is something to be aware of.

zippy2006 said:

Good posts. I want to point out that there is still a great deal of "liturgical seriousness" in Catholicism proper, especially following Ratzinger's liturgical theology. Such Catholics often refer to themselves as conservative (as opposed to "traditional").

This may have been obvious, but I wanted to correct a trend in the thread whereby it would seem that one needs to go outside of Catholicism proper, to the SSPX or elsewhere, to find liturgical seriousness. Francis has harmed the liturgical seriousness of the Church, but the work of his predecessors still has a lot of staying power.

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I am sure it exists; I've heard St. John Cantius in Chicago has a very reverent NO, and from a quick look at their livestreams that seems to be the case. But I have never seen anything remotely approaching that level of seriousness in person - at a minimum, there has always been an abuse of EMHCs as a way to increase lay participation. It seems to me that there is a high likelihood, depending on one's geographic region, that the only place liturgical seriousness can still be found in any meaningful sense is in one of the Latin Mass communities or in an Eastern Rite church.

fhansen said:

I suppose

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There would be enormous benefits to that. Really, there isn’t that much in the Novus Ordo that is exceptional or worth preserving. For example, consider Eucharistic Prayer 2, which was included because it was in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. Well, there are two problems with it: Annibale Bugnini and his colleagues restructured it so that it would follow the Roman pattern of the Epiclesis preceding the Words of Institution, which is contrary to the actual origin of the Anaphora (which is the Church in Antioch; the Anaphora of St. Hippolytus is actually a close relative of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom as used by the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Catholics, and the Syriac Orthodox Anaphora of the Apostles, and what is more, it remains in use, and has always been used by, the Ethiopian Orthodox). But apparently Bugnini was unaware of this, because if he had looked at the Ethiopian Anaphora, he would have realized that the version in the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus is akin to the version of the Alexandrian Divine Liturgy of St. Mark one finds in the Euchologion of St. Serapion of Thmuis, in that it was intended specifically for use by bishops, and omits the portions of the liturgy intended for the congregation, choir or deacons, except for certain responses.

There was obvious confusion over this, because the Roman Church moved away from the original approach of having different service books for different people, for example, a Euchologion for the bishops, a Liturgikon for priests, a Deacon’s service book, prayer books for the laity, and so on, in favor of a single missal that had everything, which was possible in the Roman Rite because traditionally there was only one anaphora, and the liturgy has considerable brevity compared to its Orthodox counterparts. The only exception to this was the hymnal (the Gradualia), and also books for use by bishops which contain masses that only bishops may celebrate. This was logical, and also it followed a change in Roman liturgical practice wherein the priest repeats all prayers said by, for example, deacons; indeed the entire Tridentine mass is prayed by the priest, as opposed to older iterations of the Roman mass, and also other liturgies such as the Eastern liturgies, where some prayers are said by the priest and others by the people, and still others are prayed together.

This misunderstanding resulted in the shortest of the prayers in the Novus Ordo Missae. There were similiar problems with Eucharistic Prayer no. 4, which is an adaptation of the Egyptian (coptic and, in antiquity, Alexandrian Greek) version of the Divine Liturgy of St. Basil (known to liturgical scholars as EgBAS).

So on the whole just using a vernacular translation of the Tridentine mass would be a huge improvement to the liturgy of the Roman church, in nearly every respect (assuming, of course, we are talking about one of its better recensions; specifically, I would suggest the exact version promulgated by Pope St. Pius X, and not the newer versions introduced by Pope Pius XII and modified by Pope John XXIII). But that being said, it would be better to keep portions of it in Latin, which was the goal of Sacrosanctum Concilium.

However, merely reverting to a vernacular Tridentine liturgy would not fix all of the liturgical problems of the Roman church: it would not, for example, address the fact that a large number of parishes are not using Gregorian Chant, which according to Tra le sollecitudini & Sacrosanctum Concilium , should, along with, according to Pius X, the work of certain composers such as Palestrina, form the core of the music of the mass, and many make use of instruments which are, or at least were, uncanonical, such as guitars, pianos, and so on. Or, the problem of various other liturgical abuses. Or the issue of plain-looking vestments, “wreckovated” naves in churches without altar rails or other traditional fixtures. Or, for that matter, the long-standing problem of under-utilization of the public celebration of the Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours), which to a large extent, is, outside of cathedrals and in monasteries, a private devotion of the clergy, a fact bewailed by Fr. Robert Taft, SJ, memory eternal, in his excellent liturgical work “The Liturgy of the Hours, East and West.”*

*Fr. Robert Taft also wrote A Short History of the Byzantine Rite, which is another excellent liturgiogical text which I strongly reccommend.

jas3 said:

I am sure it exists; I've heard St. John Cantius in Chicago has a very reverent NO, and from a quick look at their livestreams that seems to be the case.

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That is true, but they also celebrate the Extraordinary Form as much as the bishop allows (which unfortunately is not as often as one would prefer).

jas3 said:

. But I have never seen anything remotely approaching that level of seriousness in person - at a minimum, there has always been an abuse of EMHCs as a way to increase lay participation. It seems to me that there is a high likelihood, depending on one's geographic region, that the only place liturgical seriousness can still be found in any meaningful sense is in one of the Latin Mass communities or in an Eastern Rite church.

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I once visited a Catholic parish in Salzburg in the year 2000 which seemed very pious, but at the time I did not speak German, and was not as liturgically educated as I am at present.

At its best, the Novus Ordo is on a par with some of the more problematic newer liturgies of, for example, the Episcopal Church (for example, an unmodified 1979 BCP, which was, ironically, heavily influenced by the Novus Ordo Missae, along with the Lutheran Book of Worship).

fhansen said:

Sounds good. I'm not the Church of course, tho, Either way, I have great confidence that the Holy Spirit was in charge of Vat II-and that its consequences will be worked out more and more fully and correctly in the coming centuries, for the betterment of all.

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The only serious objection I have to Vatican II was the decision in Sacrosanctum Concilium to suppress the historic part of the Divine Office of Prime, which seemed arbitrary and capricious.

However, the Orthodox Church will never accept it, or any ecumenical councils subsequent to Nicaea II, adhered to by the RCC, (which obviously exclude the Eighth Ecumenical Synod of St. Photius in Constantinople, and what many Orthodox regard as the Ninth Ecumenical Synod, that being the Palamist synod which affirmed the writings of St. Gregory Palamas in defense of the Hesychasts against the unwarranted criticism of Barlaam).

The Liturgist said:

The only serious objection I have to Vatican II was the decision in Sacrosanctum Concilium to suppress the historic part of the Divine Office of Prime, which seemed arbitrary and capricious.

However, the Orthodox Church will never accept it, or any ecumenical councils subsequent to Nicaea II, adhered to by the RCC, (which obviously exclude the Eighth Ecumenical Synod of St. Photius in Constantinople, and what many Orthodox regard as the Ninth Ecumenical Synod, that being the Palamist synod which affirmed the writings of St. Gregory Palamas in defense of the Hesychasts against the unwarranted criticism of Barlaam).

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Yes, I wouldn't expect the OC to accept Vat II, of course.

discombobulated1 said:

well, as I am sure you know, Jesus knew all about how weak we are and how in need of HIM we are.. We need Him to watch over us from Heaven and intercede when things ... well, when an intercession is called for. Why God hasn't interceded to do something about some of these lawless popes we've had is a mystery

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Some popes in the past have been way worse while, FWIW, JP II was canonized for good reason and Benedict as well was one of the greater popes the Church has had. God's charism of infallibility extends only to official Church teachings on faith and morals. If He wanted to prevent man from sinning altogether He would've started with Adam.

fhansen said:

Sounds good. I'm not the Church of course, tho, Either way, I have great confidence that the Holy Spirit was in charge of Vat II-and that its consequences will be worked out more and more fully and correctly in the coming centuries, for the betterment of all.

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discombobulated1 said:

understand w hat?

I thought it was I who didn't understand.. your last sentence

??

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What didn't you understand. I try not to be too obtuse.

discombobulated1 said:

i don't get why people think that in the old days of (true) Catholicism, we didn't have the Mass in English!

There was the Latin on one side of the page and English on the other.

I guess it really has been a very long time..........

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Indeed, I myself have a hand missal, although the local Traditional Latin Mass I sometimes visit has much nicer hand missals than mine, which dates from the 1960s; theirs are more recently printed, and are beautifully illustrated hardcover books. Indeed they would make a lovely coffee table book. I forget the name, but I will try to recall it, as it is really the best printed missal I have seen. Whereas what I have is a simple leather bound hand missal from the 1960s which is adequate and compact.

One thing I like about the missal is how well organized it is among liturgical books. For example, the invariant parts of the liturgy are printed in the middle of the book, since one will open to those pages with the greatest frequency, and that is where the binding of any book will be the strongest, whereas the propers, which one only will consult in most cases once per year, are located before and after the invariant text. It is very well done.