Well well well: the Vatican is back to Mass in Latin.

[demoleft]

It happens sometimes.
You go to a concert of an old rock star and he doesn't sing the old ones, your beloved ones.
He's grown so tired of them and, mostly, they have no touch with the new generations of people.
You are upset but what are you going to do? Time goes by, things change. New songs replace the old ones.
But the voice - the spirit - is the same.

Ratzinger is an artist who never betrays his fans. The Mass in latin, with other old accessories, is going to be set as a recommended part of liturgy. The "break" in the traditional liturgy and the doubt on Pope's infallibility are so irritating to Ratzinger that he attributes the cause of the Church crisis to the 1962 event of the Vatican Council.
Back to the past, then. Discipline, discipline, discipline.

The windows opened by the never forgotten Pope of the time (Vatican Council, 1962) have been closed now. We don't know for how long.
The Church doesn't want to see out nor allow people to see in.
Another move in the chessboard of laicism VS theocracy. Now it's up to us.

Amen
Ps: I think the marketing adviser of Ratz is really a failure. The last of the poorest companies would have fired him out of job...

[Gman]

1. The New Mass is not being done away with

but, TWIUI is the priest won't have to get permission to say the latin mass.

[demoleft]

2. Yes, but the sense...

...of the move is perfectly clear. It's a step back to a less democratic, more aristocratic, more formal, less substancial form of liturgy. It doesn't matter what the community in front of the altar feels. It matters that every word is in the right place, spoken with the right sacred language.

Where plain, simple words are like fresh water to the believer when spoken with pure loving affection - which was the sense of more progressive Popes' plans.

I'm sure pressure will be made on priests all over the world to go the conservative way. There's nothing liberal in the decision.
This is conservative politics, I believe...

:-(

[acmavm]

3. I love the mass in Latin. And this way all the suffering and pain

I had to go through in third grade to learn it pays off again. That is, if I ever make it to Mass.

[soothsayer]

4. Me too! Sounded so much more mysterious and spooky in Latin.

I'll go back just to check it out! I wonder if the rogue priests who have continued doing it in Latin will be welcomed back into the fold?

[acmavm]

7. Yep, it was a big mistake to take the mystery and ritual out of the

Mass. People are stupid schmucks. We love that secretive thing, that feeling of 'belonging' to something we don't really understand.

[pnwmom]

12. I didn't love it. I was bored to tears -- and happy to see it go. n/t

[calimary]

36. It was actually a nice meditation time for me. I'd read through the missal,

look at the pictures, kneel there and daydream ('cause I couldn't see a thing the priest was doing since his back was turned). It made for a fairly mellow, quiet, contemplative time - when I could focus on other things. Made the whole thing very detached and alien and meaningless to me. Didn't involve me in the least, or have anything to do with me. Encouraged me to detach, too.

And I don't think that's what the Mass is supposed to be about.

[mediawatch]

5. same here!

I missed Mass in Latin. Glad to see it may be coming back

[MUAD_DIB]

9. The Church lost something when it moved away

from the Latin mass.

Some might call it mumboJumbo, but a certain amount of mysticism past away when it was removed.

[zanne]

6. Proving that you CAN turn back the clock.....

With the Vatican and White House in charge, time travel is possible.

[mediawatch]

8. bell bottoms came back

so can latin

[SpiralHawk]

10. Best movie line in a while: "I am a lapsed Catholic. I found that...

I felt shitty enough about myself on my own and that I didn't need their help."

- From "Looking for Kitty"

[RB TexLa]

11. Good, going to the local language should not have eliminated Latin

wasn't the point it.

[Solo_in_MD]

15. All this is doing is allowing the Latin Mass to be used without prior permission

Many larger churches offered one a week, espcially for the older parishioners. I see this more as a power to the edge kind of thing, which is good, not as some vast Papist conspiracy...then again I use my tin foil in the oven and not to make hats out of.

[RB TexLa]

16. exactly

[hedgehog]

19. Just how old are these parishioners?

I'm 53, and I barely remember the Latin Mass. The older women I know (80 ish, 90ish) aren't talkng about a Latin Mass. They want to know when the Pope and bishops will stop screwing around closing parishes and start ordaining female and married priests!

[Solo_in_MD]

20. No clue...when I last asked a priest about why it was sitll being offered, that is what he told me

It was a number of years ago.

[proud2BlibKansan]

35. I am 53 too

They went to English in 1965, when we were 12.

[pnwmom]

13. The Latin Mass was all about the Priest being special

and the rest of us, just mystified observers.

Which is the way Ratzinger likes it, in general.

[Benhurst]

14. Mumbo jumbo loses its power when the words are understood.

Way to go Ratzy! :bounce:

[RB TexLa]

17. So you feel you are not able understand Latin words? Why?

[Benhurst]

18. After the fall of Rome, only the educated understood Latin -- not the masses.

Until the Protestant Reformation, reading the Bible by the laity was not encouraged.

Mumbo jumbo for the masses, pure and simple. Mysterious incantations are less likely to be questioned.

[RB TexLa]

27. I have studied church history. But this is not the 1500s.

You do know they print the mass in English right beside the Latin, right? If you read through it, it really isn't that difficult to understand.

Here take a look.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/lmass/ord.htm

[Bridget Burke]

23. English Only!

In fact, Latin is quite similar to the Evil Spanish Language.

[spoony]

30. Yes that's why Protestantism never really took off.

Oh, wait...

[kskiska]

21. Why would they want to conduct mass in the language of Christ's persecutors?

Why not do it in Aramaic, so even fewer would understand?

[robcon]

31. It's not because it was the language of Chrit's persecutors.

It's the language of the empire (after Constantine) who made the Christian religion the state religion.

[Bridget Burke]

22. One follows the Latin Mass with a Missal

A book showing the "regular" text for Low Mass, High Mass or special occasions. With another section for the parts that vary, day by day. Usually, colored ribbons are sewn into the spine, so you can flip back & forth.

The Latin was on one side & English on the other. So I became interested in the language. (Something to amuse me during the dull bits.)

I haven't gone to Mass in many years. But I don't see this as a big problem.

[Javaman]

24. Oobie oh oobie es maos sub oobie nt

[truebrit71]

25. Does that also apply when they molest kids, and then cover for the molesters...

...or will that still be handled in the old fashioned tongue of 'Hypocrisy' that they usually use?

Keep it up Pope Ratshit, you are making your 'church' more and more irrelevant everytime you open your mouth...

[lovuian]

26. Can they turn back the clock...another way of Rome being

in control

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

28. When they bring back the auto de fe I'll start worrying.

Until then I'll remain an ex-Catholic. If they bring it back, I'll probably be a toasted ex-Catholic.

[demoleft]

29. What's language, what's action: Don Milani

Don Lorenzo Milani was a priest (1923-1967). Considered a rebel he was sent to a village lost in the country, as a sort of punishment. There he founded a school for the poor children of the terrirory, unable to go to public school and ignored by the nation.
The school of Barbiana (many links available) was soon to become an example of a new flexible democratic form of teaching, with the children at the core of the action - not the contrary. Don Milani was fought against by the official Church.
Link on wiki only in Italian, with pics:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Lorenzo_Milani

Here are some of his lines written at the time. My translation.

"It's the language ability that makes us equal. Equal are those people able to express themselves and understand others"

"When one is always trying to insert the word 'faith' in his sentences, one shows he has poor faith, as one thinks faith is something handmade you just add to life and not on the contrary a way to live life and to ponder."

"With just words to people you don't get any goal. On the divine level, you need grace. On the human level, you need to give example."

"I learnt the problems of other people are the same as mine. To solve them together is politics, to solve them alone is avarice."

"If school loses just one (problematic) kid it is no more school. It becomes an hospital in which sane ones are taken care of and ill people rejected"

"The wish to understand our thought and to understand other people's thought is love...It's the attempt to express truths...So that to be teacher, priest, Christian, artist, one who cares and one who's taken care of are practically the same thing."

"I loved you children more than I loved God, but I hope He doesn't care about these trifles and put all my love on his account"

"On a wall in our school we wrote 'I CARE'. It's the motto of the best young americans: I care, I want to care about it. It's the opposite of the fascist motto 'I don't care'"


Well, my friends DUers, this was a priest. He spoke italian, not latin, he tought children, not souls to save, he loved human beings, not sheep flocks. And he helped hundreds of poor, dejected, ignorant children to learn, become educated, get a job, make a different future. It happens when the Church is action for the people, when it lets people in and goes to seek them and invites them.

Don Milani thought the Church should go towards the people. Not close itself in its ivory tower.

So far away from Ratzinger, his conservative aristocratic politics, and his ideas on liturgy. Another Church, another time, another space.

[book_worm]

32. It's a shame that Pope John XXIII died so soon

he was a good man and a truly progressive Pope who would have brought much change. He convened Vatican II and opened the proceedings but died before they could be completed.

[tom_paine]

33. Is it true that the old Mass in Latin contians some anti-Semitic references?

I have read it, but have searched and cannot find an English Translation of the Latin Mass.

Anyone care to help, I would be much appreciative.

But I have read one of the criticisms against the Latin Mass is that it contains some anti-Semitism.

[demoleft]

34. So it seems and is perceived...

...by many not Christian, among which Jews and Muslims.
In the old latin Mass, abandoned after 1965, there are references to

1. the obscurity and blindness in which Jews live - opposed to the light the Christian God will bring to them unveiling their eyes
2. remarks concerning the responsibility of jews in the death of Christ - one of the reasons why the movie "The Passion of the Christ" was highly criticized.

Moreover some worry that the remarks on the necessity of the religious conversion of the not Christian may generate tensions with the Muslim cultures, expecially in these times in which many perceive the Iraqui situation and the bombings as a "crusade".

Mostly, I think, it is about abandoning the new style adopted in 1965 - that was meant to stay closer to a modern society, to many illiterate people (in Italy there were many at the time) - and to make a step closer to a community of religions and religious peace.

Which is not (I mean religious peace) exactly Ratzinger politics.
Sorry for replying so late!

Ciao

:hi: