Anyone who has spent a lot of time in the Eastern Churches knows that the Western Mass is an anamoly compared to them. If you serve at altar in the Byzantine Church, you are literally behind the iconostasis and you don't see the congregation (sometimes there is even a curtain drawn). The fact that people can see the Mass in the West has not always been the case, and turning the altar around in a Byzantine church wouldn't make sense because people can't see it anyway.
Having been a Byzantine monk and a traditionalist seminarian (and a master of ceremonies in both), I sometimes forget that most people don't really know what the priest does up there, though it was my job at one time to know the meaning and precise times of all the ritual actions. Then again, they are just that: the priest's actions. That's why I refuse to bring a missal to a traditional Mass anymore: I have no business praying the priest's prayers with him, since I am not a priest.
I am of the opinion that what is missing is that the priest's and the layman's prayer at Mass are inherently different. I don't think we could have the whole "arcana" thing anymore, nor can we throw out catechumens and non-Catholics before the Mass of the Faithful. But maybe we should at least keep in mind that the early Christian may have been horrified at the idea of broadcasting a Mass to millions of people, regardless if they were Catholic or not. And that should be enough to give us pause.
I haven't read the accompanying articles, so I may be way off base with this, but nevertheless:
This quickly becomes a discussion of the idea of participatio actuosa, so let's play with that a bit.
The Mass has been traditionally described as a mystery, and given that it re-presents the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, an act historically dated 1975 years ago, as happening here and now, the description seems just. Of course, if you do not accept the traditional description, it seems not just but pretentious and silly. So let's call it "problematic" for the moment.
So: how does one participate in a mystery -- something that by definition one cannot understand? If one is Nancy Drew, one participates by "solving" the mystery. Those who excel in the solving of mysteries -- Nancy, Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, and my personal favorite, Matt Scudder -- are hailed for their superior powers of analysis, their intelligence, their keenness of perception, etc. People look up to them. Having people look up to you feels good. Thus, there are subjective as well as objective reasons for seeking to solve mysteries.
If one participates in a mystery by analyzing -- that is, "solving" -- it, then it appears to me that one must begin with the accumption that it CAN be solved. This means cutting through the cant, alibis, and phony cover stories which render the mystery unsolvable. One of those cover stories, it seems to me, would be transubstantiation. So let's begin our analysis by throwing that word play out the window, along with "mystical body", Christ present in the tabernacle, etc, etc. Then we can get down to some real analysis.
Oops, not so fast, let's retrieve part of what our analysis had eliminated at first blush: the term "body" What good is a "mystery" without one?
In this case we are talking about a "body" of people. Hmm, what are they doing? Praising, singing, hugging, strumming, making V signs in all directions like Churchill after a quart of bourbon. And the fellow up front, clearly the leader, conversing with them about love and praise and this fellow Jesus -- he is clearly setting the tone for this behavior, although it often does not seem to lead to any uniform responses on the part of what seems a rather disorganized lot.
So what does the words, the gestures, the behaviors reveal? Despite all the cant about God, Jesus, Spirit all being present, they are not visible, and the actual forms of participation of the people suggest that they are not missed. What is really going on here is humans interracting with exaggerated -- may one say stilted? -- signs of regard for one another. I see the same sort of thing at corporate pep rallys where I work.
So it appears that these people have solved the mystery by concocting behaviors that minimize what cannot be explained in terms the "body" of people within four walls. Case closed.
From the burning bush God told Moses,"Take off your sandals for you are on holy ground." Does God really care whether anyone has shoes on or not, or is the point that recognition of divine presence requires modification of behavior, an outward sign of the acceptance of the human relationship to the divine?
Religious ritual, in the first place, is recognition of the mystery of God- which no one is likely to solve this side of the grave. The degree of awe in the presence of God may not be directly proportional to the solemnity of ritual but lack of awe surely does nothing to amplify the need for ritual. There is a tension between setting God completely apart and approaching Him with too little respect. Whether awe is learned through practice of ritual or ritual develops out of awe is a circular question that can probably be answered, "Yes."
The different rites deal with this tension with different formalities and different degrees of removal of the sacred acts from the congregation. The mystery of the Mass, which they all express, is the mystery of how man relation to God through Christ.
Everything about that offering depends on the identification of the specific offering of bread and wine at a given Mass with the offering of Christ at the last supper and the identification of that offering with Christ's passion, death and resurrection.
The mystery is how this can be. The identification of the Last Supper with Calvary at least means that Jesus ritual offering was not in any way differentiated from the physical offering of his life as worship. What he offered the Father was His entire self. The identification of the offering of bread and wine at any given Mass with Christ's worship and action means at least that the church has to be identified with Christ and the priest, therefore, is standing in the place of Christ with the sanction of the true Church. All of this would to necessitate some sort of mystical union, a mystical body. And we are back to Baptism into Christ's death and resurrection.
As for particpatio actuosa, if the layman is part of this church and this church is Christ and the bread and wine offered is His Body and Blood, what can participation mean except doing what Jesus did? The Mass is all about offering the sacrifice.
In 1st Corinthians St. Paul argues against eating meat from pagan sacrifices because doing so might be taken as participation in the sacrifices. He goes on to write about the Eucharist and says that participation without recognizing the body is unworthy. He would seem to be saying that reception of the Sacrament is acceptance of participation in the sacrifice as well as recognition of the Body.
This we should approach with awe and humility and full awareness that it is Christ not us who accomplishes it.
Liturgy,ritual should somehow express all of it.
Mr. Vasquez,
A late medieval loose parallel to the Eastern iconostasis found in Western churches is the ornate Rood Screen, or Choir Screen (usually made of stone, wood or wrought iron), dividing the chancel from the nave. Apparently these were generally removed in Catholic countries following the Tridentine reforms, but many can be found surviving in other parts of Europe and in England. An example I remember is the one at Yorkminster in York, England, where it is virtually impossible to see what is going on in the choir or at the altar beyond it from a vantage point back in the nave. Evidently it was not considered important that the laity be privy to the details of the Eucharistic prayer. The important thing was that they understood that The Sacrifice of Christ was being offered for them -- something which any peasant would have known. While these screens were removed in Catholic countries (I'm not certain of the reason why), it's clear that they were a Catholic development and found throughout Europe. The French term for the Rood Screen is reportedly jubé, and the German term, Lettner.
Westminster Abbey has one, too, as do many of the medieval cathedrals in England. Interestingly, though, the choir sat inside the rood screen.
Let's see, where was I? Oh yeh, the Mass is a mystery, and one of the ways to participate in a mystery is "solve" it, which is done by stripping away the unsolvable layers and dealing with that remains. I am not a Wittgenstein type of guy, but I think this is what he meant when he chirped that "the world is all that is the case". So if Wittgenstein were to participate in the mystery of the mass, he would attempt to "solve" it somewhat along the lines I suggested in my note above.
One may also participate in a mystery by NOT solving it: by, in fact, revelling in the mysteriousness of it. There are those who will hold that the fact that the mass is a mystery, that it cannot be reduced to behaviors, and innovations, and petty creativities, is the best available proof of its eternal and sanctifying truth. The ritualistic uniformity of it, when allowed to unfold, and not be smothered by innovative, performance-oriented flourishes, defines and demonstrates itself best, and participants ought to have enough sense to witness it, rather than "solve" it as a sort of dinner theatre audience-participation mystery.
This may be part of what Garrigou-Lagrange was getting at when he wrote that:
"The excellence of the Sacrifice of the Mass, says the Council of Trent, comes from the fact that it is the same sacrifice in substance as that of the cross, because it is the same Priest who continues to offer Himself by His ministers; it is the same Victim, really present on the altar, who is offered; only the manner of offering differs: whereas, on the cross there was a bloody immolation, there is in the Mass, by virtue of the double consecration, a sacramental immolation through the separation, not physical but sacramental, of the body and blood of Christ. Thus the blood of Jesus, without being physically shed, is sacramentally shed."
IMO, there are far more Wittgensteinians attending Mass these days than Garrigou=Lagranges. Liturgical events of the last forty years have in fact allowed a Wittgensteinian approach to flourish.
"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio."
Not knowing anything about Wittgenstein, I can only say that I think I agree with you for the most part, RR-D.
I like the idea of ritual uniformity that remains essentially unchanged through the ages. The TLM fills the bill much more satisfactorily than the NO.
Ritual, though, is a sort of language for expressing the unexpressible, or at least the mysterious. At some point, a human agent or agents decide on the form that this language will take. This is as true of the TLM as it is of the NO. In a sense, the question is whether the TLM and the NO express the same thing in, so to speak, different languages. In terms of translation, assuming that the TLM is the source text, is the NO a reasonably accurate expression of the mystery expressed in the TLM.
Translations, as the old saw says, are like women, some are faithful and some are beautiful but it is possible to be either without being both.
To the extent that the Church tells us that the NO is a valid rite, and that the NO does at least nod in the direction of sacrifice as defined in the Tridentine quotation, I'm not prepared to condemn as an unfaithful.
Neither, though, would I call it beautiful. It falls into the category of translation which catches enough of the meaning to be acceptible for some purposes but misses the emphasis, style, beauty and charm of the original. Translations of this sort read as though the translator is trying to follow a tune on an instrument he can barely play. They are painful to the ear.
Editing this sort of work presents problems for an instructor. Translators are invested in their work. They think they have done it well. They don't often take criticism willingly. Although the one who is paying the translator can edit wholesale, fire the translator, or do whatever he wants, the teacher can do that only to the extent that the student translator is willing to accept guidance, is capable of improving his skills, and can be made to comprehend the reasons for correction. This takes patience, humility on both sides, and a willingness to preserve whatever can be preserved of the translator's work.
In this analogy, we are not in the position of an editor. Whatever good we can effect will come only by securing agreement that is probably best gained by demonstration rather than condemnation.
Without being able to read B16's mind, I'd guess that is what he is trying to do.
In working with translations, I've found that it is rare to find one, however poor, that doesn't at least make me think of something in a new light. Sometimes, even in bad translations, I've seen flashes of brilliance or insights that I would not be capable of.
As a general rule, translators should try to write a little better than the author of the original text. I think it is safe to say that we are not dealing with anything like this in the case of the NO.
All ana
All analogies break down at some point. I realize this one can be picked apart like any other.
Dan,
Sorry, but your defense of the NO strikes me as all too typical: set the bar as low as you can, and then give the hobbling athlete a boost in clearing it -- even though your very phrasings and diction betray your own concerns.
Examples:
"I'm not prepared to condemn it as an unfaithful"
Not exactly a ringing endorsement, that.
"To the extent that the Church tells us that the NO is a valid rite, and that the NO does at least nod in the direction of sacrifice as defined in the Tridentine quotation, I'm not prepared to condemn as an unfaithful."
So double negatives are the closest you can get to a defense? This alone should tip one off as to the scope of the problem.
" It falls into the category of translation which catches enough of the meaning to be acceptible for some purposes but misses the emphasis, style, beauty and charm of the original. "
Here we arrive at the crux of the matter, even though it is unclear whether you are referring to the ICEL translation or to the NO liturgy as a whole. You speak of the "style, beauty and charm [!] of the original".
The point of a liturgical ritual is not its "charm". To refer to it that way is to miss the point by a mile. What matters is the lineage, not the "charms." The fact that this liturgy grows directly from the words of Jesus Christ, that it was established and maintained by his disciples from earliest times over centuries with only incidental revisions -- the fact that it is true to the Redeemer, true to His words, true to His sacrifice -- so true as to be "the same in substance", as G-L says above -- this is what is important. Truth is what matters, not "style" and "charm".
Given that the TLM liturgy is "the same in substance" with the sacrifice of the cross, to burble, as Bugnini and his papal sponsor Montini did in the sixties, that it is somehow insufficient or inadequate to the needs of a modern age, is to say in effect that the sacrifice of the crosss itself is somehow insufficient and inadequate to the needs of this wondrously unique age. That is an astounding assertion for any Catholic to make in any age, IMO.
I'm not accusing you of anything, Dan, but I think your language reveals that, in spite of your gut feeling that "something" is askew, you accept the relativistic assertion that liturgy is not a substantial thing, but merely a matter of "style" and "charm". This is the line that has been promoted assiduously for several decades now, and it is hand-in-glove with the cultural line that life itself is merely a matter of "lifestyle". But in our hearts, we know that that is not the case: if it were, then religion would be nothing more than a matter of suave accessorizing.
Ralph, you misread me. I did not mean to defend the NO but only to say that it is a reality that will not simply go away.
The NO has been the norm for over 40 years. It has the approval of the Church and is the only liturgy that a great many Catholics have ever known. If we ever get back to a single, dignified and ageless liturgy, the NO will have had some effect on what it will look like.
The idea, for example, that liturgy should be in a dead or ancient language is itself a very hard sell to a great many people. This may be due to ignorance and bias in some cases and selective memory in the others but it is, nevertheless, a fact. However much we may want a return of the TLM, we can hardly hold that liturgy is invalid if it is not in a dead language.
One weakness in my analogy of translation was that I made the TLM the source text. That presumes that the TLM and the meaning of the Eucharist are one and the same.
It makes the TLM the absolute criterion against which the NO or any other ritual 'translation' of the faith underlying the Eucharistic celebration must be judged.
That is not exactly the case. Conformity with the faith determines the validity of the TLM not vice-versa. Liturgy is susceptible to reform to bring it more clearly in line with what it is supposed to express.
The question is not whether the NO conforms sufficiently to the TLM to be valid. The question is whether the NO actually improved upon the liturgy as an expression of what the church believes about the Eucharist. I believe we would agree that in many ways it did not.
There is, though, a dialectic going on. The NO has not overwhelmed the TLM completely. Nevertheless, I sincerely doubt that the NO will fade away and the TLM return unscathed. Rather than attacking the NO as an abomination, it might be better to look for the best that might realistically come out of a reform of the reform.
The TLM is, perhaps, vastly superior to the NO in many ways. Many of these ways are aesthetic. Some of its 'charms' are grace, elegance, beauty, stability, timelessness, and class but none of these are articles of faith. Even organic development, which the TLM has and the NO does not, is not essential to validity.
What makes a Mass valid could be reduced to a very short ceremony, consistent with scripture and faith and offered by a priest with the sanction of the Church. The essential form is not that complicated.
I don't accept any relativistic thinking that liturgy is not a substantial thing. I try to make a distinction between the substance of the liturgy and its accidents. I feel robbed of all those charming accidents. I also think that the NO underplays the specifically Catholic theology emphasized in the TLM. Nevertheless, the Church has sanctioned the NO and I presume that God has his reasons for letting that happen-- which may simply be to make us think about what the liturgy should really be.
Dan, I agree with many of your comments, and this "The idea, for example, that liturgy should be in a dead or ancient language is itself a very hard sell to a great many people" especially strikes me. The TLM would be vastly more accessible if *some* vernacular were employed. I think the Eastern Liturgies are a good model for this, as I, at least, have found them to be mysterious and beautiful and accessible at the same time.
Dan
"but none of these are articles of faith" ... is an interesting back-flip. They aren't "articles of faith" in the strict sense, but that doesn't get you off the hook, for they are the logical developments from the articles of faith. Article 1 about the Mass is that it is Christ's action. Article 2 is: "Domine Non Sum Dignus". God is timeless, so the Mass must exhibit the quality of timelessness. Grace became Incarnate, Grace comes to us in the sacraments, especially the Blessed Sacrament, and Grace abides in the tabernacle -- stable, outside of time and still beckoning to the modern world as to the world before the deluge, and the French and Russian Revolutions. The architectural design of a church building is supposed to create for us that separate space, but buildings suitable for the TLM and those suitable for the Pauline Missal apparently are incompatible: just ask those who keep warning us about turning back the clock.....
Dan,
40 years, you say? That number impresses you?
"If we ever get back to a single, dignified and ageless liturgy, the NO will have had some effect on what it will look like."
We have to "get back to a single, dignified and ageless liturgy" because of the "effect" of the Novus Ordo anti-liturgy upon the Mass. Your own statement implies that you accept the problematic nature of the NO, even though you seem to zone out when someone brings up the matter of logical consequences. I've seen that sort of non-computational all-is-well mantra before. Particularly in the last forty years.
If the TLM had not been placed into cold storage by Pope Montini, this forty year side trip into vulgarity and contemporaneity for its own sake would not have taken place, and those "great many Catholics" would not have been disconnected from the language of the Church, which the generations before them had no difficulty with, given the modest subset used during the Mass.
Are the generations of the past forty years particularly stupid people, Dan? Are they such knotheads that they cannot deal with a bi-lingual Mass booklet, and learn by osmosis?
Or is the language argument merely a phony talking point? All your representation of standard nonsequiturs proves to me is that, like so many other Catholics who approach liturgical validity from a standpoint of minimalism and relativity, you just don't get it.
Chris, I doubt that a defender of the NO would say that the Mass is not Christ's action and I haven't been to any Masses where the English equivalent of "Domine, non sum dignus" has not been said. The weakness of the NO is that it doesn't underscore the things you mention but I don't think you have demonstrated that it cannot be taken to include the essentials. BTW, the Church seems to think the NO is valid. Can we no longer believe the magisterium?
I don't make any secret of the fact that I wish the NO had never happened. For a while after it came into practice, I quietly recited the prayers in Latin while the rest of the congregation said them in English. (I was only 21 at the time.)
While 40 years is a drop in the bucket compared to the history of the church, it is a lifetime to what is probably the majority of Catholics at this point. The reign of Elizabeth I in England was long enough to outlast any real movement for restoration of Catholic practices. Without reference to the fanatic adherents to the NO, many of the very people who would benefit from having a real liturgy have never had one and they have grown up thinking that what they have is an improvement over what went before. These are not irreverent, bad people but, barring a direct order from the Vatican banning the NO, they are probably not going to opt for, or even be able to understand, its advantages.
Believe me, there is a red-blooded, all-American aversion to, if not hatred of, 'foreign languages.' Having worked my entire career as a linguist, I am continually surprised and frustrated by the lack of interest and outright dislike of foreign languages exhibited by the very people who were fed and sheltered by the proceeds of my language work. And these are people who go to church every week. It is not that they are stupid or could not deal with a bi-lingual Mass book, they do not want to have to do it. This is as much to my dismay as yours, Ralph.
In any computation of the damage done , the feasibility and cost of the repair has to be a factor. Reform of the liturgy was mandated by V-II was it not? Change in the TLM was inevitable. What happened may have been a cultural disaster, a trip into vulgarity and contemporaneity, a complete failure as liturgy, and a terribly botched reform. Nevertheless, reform was mandated and in any reform of the reform the result is not going to be a completely restored TLM. The very concept of reform implies that form is susceptible to modification.
Personally, I'd like to see some kind of mandate that every parish must be capable of the TLM and must celebrate it with due solemnity on a regualar basis. Then, those who have never experienced the ancient liturgy would see it and, perhaps, understand its value. But, don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
It is not a non-sequitur to say that the NO is formally deficient as liturgy and yet is valid. If you were to say that the NO fails to contradict heretical inte
If you were to say that the NO fails to contradict heretical interpretations, I might agree with you-- on a demonstrated, case by case basis. Being vulgar, though, simply does not qualify as heresy.
Dan,
This is your line of argument:
(1) the NO is not a "real" liturgy [your implication stops just short of saying this directly, so let us not split hairs]
(2) Catholics would benefit from having one [which is a bland way of putting it, especially from someone who avows that he took the deprivation of "real" liturgy especially hard]
(3) nevertheless, we can't have one.
Which begs the question, why not? Your answers to that question are all over the map, so let me boil them down in this way: the assumptions implicit in your line of argument seem to me to be as follows:
(1) present-day Catholics have no idea of what a true liturgy is, but WE do. They are good-natured ignoramuses at heart, so let them good-naturedly eat cake.
(2) you have noticed as you pursue your profession that Americans are averse, if not hateful, of foreign languages. (This, one might imply, is further proof that they are ignoramuses). First of all, this observation of yours is somehow supposed to trump the fact that, for centuries, the Latin Mass was offered in American churches without any signs of "aversion" or "hatred" on the part of the American Catholics who attended it -- a considerably higher percentage, I might add, than the percentage which chooses to attend the ignoramus-friendly native language Mass available to them today. Second, regardless of that inconvenient fact, you choose to write them off as ignorant and unlucky folks who will just have to go without. For someone who argues that, in effect, ignorant, insular America has reverted to a missionary status, you do not to have any particular problem with that.
(3) "Change was inevitable". Was degradation inevitable, Dan? Is that what our V2 leaders were after? Your position seems to be that "bare minimum" anti-liturgy is acceptable if too much effort is required to give modern Catholics -- ignoramuses who can't tell a liturgy from an "All in the Family" television script anyway -- anything more.
(4) The inevitable "cost of repair" canard: no one worried about the "cost of reform" in 1969, when the TLM mass of centuries was unceremoniously kicked out of our Churches and replaced with Novus Ordo "performances": it was simply assumed that the pew-cows would bovinely accept the change, and attrition would solve the rest of it. Now that the folly of the reform can be accurately gauged, why the sudden concern over continuity?
Heresy? That is your term, Dan, don't try to pass it off as mine. I am talking about the bare-minimum mindset -- your mindset, I think -- which argues that, as long as the minimalistic bare necessities of worship are included, anything must be allowed to go, even though we sophisticates know better, and would politely suggest a "charming" show of reverence at certain special moments.
The your argument is ingenious, in that it allows one to feel superior to the destructive hijinks of the anti-liturgy, while not committing oneself to doing anything about it.
Helpful reflections and discussion thanks.
Please pop by "Liturgy"
www.liturgy.co.nz
and consider placing a link.
Blessings
Dan:
Don't sell your fellow Catholics short. Many of them haven't the faintest idea that there is a legitimate alternative to what they find in their parishes on a regular basis. Those who are aware, or are exposed to the ideas available to them, and have the desire to serve God, DO listen and do long for that nourishment. I too am a student of languages, and similarly I bemoan the monolingualism which plagues our country, but I find that those who are willing to listen come to appreciate the value of such things, even if they never become language scholars.
Chris, I agree with your sentiments and hope that you are right. Unfortunately, I haven't met many people around here who are interested in improving the liturgy or, at least, I haven't met any who are willing to buck the social pressure and say they would like to see any changes. Maybe that will change. Their complacency about liturgy does not mean that they are bad people or that they do not want to serve God. They are good, charitable, Christian people.
Ralph, you can't have it both ways. The Catholic church, the only one we have, approved the NO. You may argue that those in authority made some serious blunders and that some of them had some dubious agenda. If you argue that the NO is bad, invalid, doctrinally unsound, heretical, or anything else you want to say about it, you are in disagreement with the Church. Of course, there are a lot of definitions of church and I don't know which one you like. I'm not sure what you are trying to say. It would be something of a non-sequitur, involving a lot of teaching about the church, to be arguing that the church is not competent to regulate its own liturgy. But, I'm not quite sure what you are trying to say on that score.
One of the things I'm trying to say is that the liturgy should be fixed but it does no good to try to raise personal preferences to the level of necessary doctrine. You lose your audience before you get them to listen to your reasons for thinking what you do. This should be a rational argument not an exchange accusations. It is not on the table that the NO is not a valid rite. Try convincing people who are content with it that they should not be.
Quod scripsi scripsi.
Pax vobis OMNIBUS.
" If you argue that the NO is bad, invalid, doctrinally unsound, heretical, or anything else you want to say about it, you are in disagreement with the Church."
Dan, this is just childish spite. At least I hope that's all it is.
First of all, I have not said that the NO is invalid or doctrinally unsound or heretical. This is the second time you've accused me of these things. Either you are not bothering to read what I have written, or you are slinging mud.
Secondly, your notion that "anything" I might say about the NO puts me "in disagreement with the Catholic Church" is incoherent. Since you have said many things about the NO in earlier notes, most of them not particularly favorable, I guess you are "in disagreement" as well. The truth is, you are capable of saying ANYTHING on this topic, and do not seem especially concerned that it make sense.
I am tired of this silliness. You are right that it should be a rational exchange, but you have done nothing to make it one.
Dan:
Let's look at the lived reality. Pauline Missal "We can't turn back the clock" types aren't truly living the "Spirit of the Liturgy": they act either out of fear or power (or possibly, both). They claim, somewhat amusingly, that the people have moved beyond the Latin Mass (by which they mean ANY Latin in any form) except, perhaps during the dreary seasons of Advent and Lent, or if it comes from Taize. The people for whom they claim to speak are prevented, sometimes by force and other times by peer pressure such as that exercised by the Office of Newsspeak Information Services, from ever experiencing properly sung Johannine Missal. Similarly, one of our seminarians commented "The Bishops are spending a tremendous effort to circumscribe something in which there is no interest".
To come back to my point earlier, I called Article 2 "Domine, non sum dignus". I don't mean by this that the words are in the text of the Missal, but rather that the ATTITUDE oozes from every pore of the 1962 Missal, where it is, politely, optional in the 1970 Missal.
And just when I was at a loss for words, Bishop Trautman provided them for me.
...hard to believe this news is true...
"Latin Mass to return to England and Wales
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/...-and-
Wales.html
By Damian Thompson"
==
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