Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
It’s Church, Don, but not as we know it. 🙂
Trust you had a great Christmas – best wishes to you and your family.
The same to you Don and the happiest of New Years!
Sad not too funny!
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‘course I am one of the characters missing in this characterization of us Catholics today- the woman wearing a head covering. Trying not to press lips together or look upset at the casual antics and irreverence of the priest. You know, one of those too uptight – need to relax and feel the love.
very good!
Were the “good old days” that much better?
I was 24 years old in 1969, when the Novus Ordo was introduced, so I well remember the Tridentine mass and the manner in which it was, for the most part, celebrated.
I recall attending Low Mass in Notre Dame de Paris – the choir, from the chancel arch to the high altar is 36m and the transept adds a further 14m, so someone in the front pew was 50m (162 feet) from the priest, under a vault 33m high. The nave is 60m long, so someone at the back was about 100m from him – about the length of a football field. There was no sound system.
A Low Mass was completely inaudible and the Sanctus bell served a very practical purpose. When the priest turned to us, we knew, of course, that he was saying “Dominus vobiscum,” but, had he said « Salut les copains » only the server would have been any the wiser.
Sermons were preached from the pulpit in the nave.
The celebrant’s manner was usually brisk, but reverent, and his gestures restrained; without a homily, mass lasted for some 20 minutes.
MPS, leave it to you to rain on the parade.
I have seen all of that and more too many times to count. Fortunately, none of that goes on at the Extraordinary Form.
I trust all had a Merry Christmas Day and I wish all a Happy New Year.
Pointed ridicule is the only remedy for this. Like looking in the mirror. Today they clapped for themselves, because God loves us.
Michael the way I see it, the old days were better. Even though in some huge churches, as you described, people could be at quite a distance from the altar, still the “active participation” came at the “sursum corda”
Active participation is a matter of the personal lifting of the heart (and mind) in worship. This SNL video makes plain the lack of active heart felt participation today. Some of that steady decline in same is, I think, because even though the mass is said in the most vernacular language possible, people have a tendency to wonder exactly what it is they are participating in. The language and change of orientation and “friendliness” of the shared supper has not succeeded. So many of the those younger than you and I who are really turning to the Church are doing so not because of worship-lite, but as a response to the summons to “step up” that they find in Tradition.
Michael, it wasnt always the sepulchral liturgy, even at Notre Dame in the old days, as this fervent (and fiery) version of the Te Deum (alternatim) by Pierre Cochereau with the old Cavaille-Coll/Cliquot organ reeds demonstrates:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDqL6pjpjY
These people are singing like they believe in something: THAT you have to look for in the standard Padre Pat’s church.
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Although, I really did like the video-clip’s stridently aggressive lector-ette bludgeoning the reading into the congregation’s grey matter…
Steve Phoenix
I happen to regard Haydn’s Nelson Mass (Missa in Angustiis) as one of the great moments of Western Music, I love Mozart’s Coronation Mass and I know few things more lovely than Fauré’s In Paradisum. I love the early composers – Josquin des Prez and Guillaume Dufay, but it is the music, rather than the form of the rite it accompanies that is important here.
Thanks to the determination of leaders and teachers of the Church over these past fifty decades, there is a comedy of a floor show with familiar aspects.
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I agree that the music has transforming power, from an audience of egos to a congregation capable of worship.
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Thanks to Saturday Night Live, heretofore (until a user name is ever imagined), it’s Patricia.
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Happy New Year, and the blessing of strength to endure it, to all.
The Sunday Missal, prayer book, will help everyone through the Mass in any language.
Steve Phoenix and Michael Paterson-Seymour: As long as they do not clap for themselves after singing.
Yes, I agree: no “acclamations” (clapping): but this vignette from Notre Dame with the great Cochereau at the “old” Notre Dame Cavaille-Coll organ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohDqL6pjpjY
…is probably from the 1960’s or so, when at vespers on New Year’s Eve, a plenary indulgence was granted all who attended a solemn oration of the Te Deum, to thank God for all the events of the now-concluded year—yet another Catholic custom we have mostly lost. (As Rorate-Caeli.blogspot observes, the counterpart was to sign the Veni Creator, also accompanied by a plenary indulgence under the usual conditions, if done so on January 1st, to invoke the H.S. on the nascent year.
The fervor and the fieriness of the full-organ responses (which represents the heavenly choir answering the human earthly one) conveys a profound faith that Padre Pat’s parish has of course lost.