Slate: Can the Latin Mass make a comeback?

[Book Lover]

http://www.slate.com/id/2165575/pagenum/all/#page_start

I attended Catholic schools in the '70s, among one of the first waves of Catholics who had never taken part in a Mass in Latin. At the time, our parish, like so many others, seemed gripped by a spirit of progressive reform. We had a youth group, we had relaxed and folksy guitar Masses, we had a hip young priest with long hair and sideburns. All of it—well, maybe not the sideburns—seemed to send the message that the Ancient and Eternal church was now New and Improved. Only occasionally would we hear reports of how things were back in the day. And nothing seemed more mysterious and otherworldly to us than the Latin Mass.

The shift away from services in Latin was just the most visible of the many changes that swept the church in the 1960s. As my liturgically clueless classmates and I were told, before the Second Vatican Council, Masses were celebrated in Latin by a priest who faced the altar, his back to the congregation. After Vatican II, Masses were in the vernacular, and priests faced their flocks. Many of the post-council reforms were meant to encourage the congregation to feel more involved with the ceremony.

<snip>

Writing in Commonweal in 2000, Bill Shuter called the Tridentine Mass "a solemn rite of extraordinary power" that "may be re-enacted daily, but is no everyday action." Traditionalists prefer the power of Latin to what they see as the banality of the liturgy in English. And many Catholics associate the Latin Mass with the church's glorious heritage of ancient music and solemnity in worship—a heritage some say has been lost in the liturgical changes that have been enacted over the last few decades.

<snip>

Catholics who have attended a Tridentine high Mass, or "sung" Mass, complete with choirs, plainchant, and the attendant "smells and bells" ritual, know it can be a transcendent occasion. But, as Steinfels and others have pointed out, it's all too easy to romanticize the old Latin Mass. Many Catholic churches celebrated the so-called low Mass, with the priest quietly speaking his part at the altar in Latin and the congregation standing by silently—and too often, lifelessly. According to the Catholic News Service, even then-Cardinal Ratzinger acknowledged in public statements that some aspects of the old low Mass left much to be desired.



I was born in 1968 and so have never really had a chance to attend a Latin mass, high or low. I would love to hear the good and bad about it from those who have.

[hedgehog]

1. I think that switching from Latin to the vernacular is based on a fundamental understanding of

our relationship with God.

Is God the Supreme Being, the totally other, "out there" someplace looking down on us in judgment? Then approach the Holy of Holies with ritual, incense and a magical language. Anoint a certain few to approach closely and bar all others. Treat the Church building as an extension of a Renaissance court full of pomp and ritual.

Is God our "daddy*", worried sick over us, watching over us, basking in every little thing we do, so in love with us that Jesus God became one of us , walked, ate, laughed and wept with us? Then join with Him in celebration and share that joy with one another. The church building is sacred because it is home and hearth.



* Abba more closely translates as Daddy than as Father.

[pnwmom]

9. I like your perspective on this, hedgehog.

The old high mass was all about awe and splendor.

The post Vatican II mass, ideally, was about love.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. I hope so. We are the only major religion that gave up its traditional language.

Judaism has not given up Hebrew; they still have service in Hebrew and young Jewish people must study Hebrew before making their Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah. Most Jews do not speak Hebrew as their everyday language.

Islam has not given up Arabic although most Muslims probably do not speak Arabic as their everyday language (besides Iranians, who are not Arabs but Persians, there are many Muslims in Asia, Indonesia, Africa, and, in recent years, Europe and the US and Canada. Still, they all pray in Arabic and I'm not sure translation of the Koran from Arabic into another language is allowed.

Only Christianity gave up what was the established language of Christians in the early centuries of the Church, namely Latin. As Rome became the center of Christianity, Latin naturally became the language of the Church. This had occurred by 79 A.D., which was only 46 years after Jesus was crucified, died, and was resurrected. Latin is still the official language of the Roman Catholic Church, the language used for official communications, but very few priests know it today and it's not taught in seminaries, except a few traditional ones.

(I'm not mentioning Asian religions just to keep this shorter. I've read the major literature of Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism but am not sure that any of them have a sacred language, a language that must be studied by believers, that is like Hebrew is to Judaism, Arabic to Islam, or Latin to Christianity. I'll probably look it up sometime now that the question has entered my mind, but perhaps someone already knows the answers. Another thing Judaism, Islam, and Christianity have in common is that all are monotheistic, while the Asian faiths are not.)


Why keep an ancient language alive for religious reasons? Because it is beautiful and mysterious and powerful. It helps us transcend the everyday in worship. It's part of the totality of the experience of worship in the Catholic Church, along with the "smells and bells," beeswax candles, statues, stained glass windows, etc. it's meant to take us out of our everyday world. We can return to the everyday world, and talk with fellow Catholics, over doughnuts and coffee in the parish social hall after Mass and at other parish events.

The Council of Trent had underlined the special reverence aroused by the use of the sacred language, Latin, instead of the vulgar tongues, which elicited "the contempt of men who find it easy to ignore things that are familiar to them and common." Trent was a dogmatic council, its teachings were to be obeyed.

Vatican II was a pastoral council, it merely made suggestions for alternatives, like saying Mass in the vernacular, with the priest facing the people during Mass, which meant a table had to be put in front of the High Altar so he could stand behind the table and use it to hold the ciborium, chalice, etc. It could not require that any of these changes be implemented, but they were, along with many more.

The Mass was beautiful when sung or said in Latin. There was more reverence, too, without all the talking before, during, and after Mass that often occurs today. People spent more time in prayer in and out of church. Watch older Catholics and you will often notice them arriving early to pray and staying after Mass has ended to pray. You'll also notice that they will kneel on the floor if there are no kneelers or if the crowd is standing room only like on Easter or Christmas Eve. That's if they are physically able to do so, of course, and I mean people up into their 90s, down to age 60 or so. Everybody went to Confession on Saturday in order to be able to receive Communion on Sunday. There were more devotional activities in parishes, like novenas, large group recitations of the Rosary, Adoration and Benediction. And if people couldn't hear the priest during a Low Mass, they read the Mass silently in their Missals as he celebrated it or prayed the Rosary or other prayers.


Pope Pius XII warned us "The day the Catholic Church gives up its Latin language is the day it returns to the catacombs."

[hedgehog]

4. Actually, Greek was the original language of the Church.

Kyrie Eleison, anyone? What many people consider THE New Testament was only translated by St. Jerome from Greek into Latin around 382. There are some different translations of certain portions; for example:

John 20:17

Douay Version, based on St. Jerome's translation:

Jesus saith to her: Do not touch me, for I am not yet ascended to my Father.


The New Oxford Annotated Bible, translated from the Greek:

Jesus said to her, "Do not hold onto me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father.

In the Orthodox traditions, the liturgy is held in the vernacular, but the use of screens to conceal the priest from the people is not something that I would like.

[tjwmason]

5. Not quite vernacular

At least not in majority Orthodox countries.

The Greek sung in church isn't the Greek spoken in the streets of Athens. The Russian (et al.) Orthodox use Church Slavonic. The Copts use Coptic, but speak Arabic in daily life.

It's only in places such as the U.K. and U.S. where a fuller vernacular is used by the Orthodox - even here some of them use the deliberately archaic and obscure "liturgical English" first adopted by the Church of England in the 1540s.

The use of a sacred language for worship is almost universal, and not limited to Christians either. Our Lord would have spoken Aramaic as he walked around with his disciples, but would have worshipped in Hebrew.

[DemBones DemBones]

6. I've searched the Catholic Encyclopedia and can't find any evidence to

support your assertion that Greek was the original language of the Church. Do you have a source?

St. Jerome did not translate from Greek into Latin but from Hebrew into Latin for the Old Testament and from a number of manuscripts, mostly Latin and Syriac, for the New Testament, making them into a unified Latin text. The Septaguint, the pre-Christian Greek translation of the Old Testament, has been used by later translators but St. Jerome worked from the older Hebrew manuscripts.

The Catholic Encyclopedia says the Greek "Kyrie" was in use in pre-Christian times. "Kyrie eleison" can fit into any religion.

But the main thing is that Latin was the language of the Mass around the world from the first century past the middle of the twentieth century.

When the Mass was still in Latin, a Catholic traveling to other countries could still hear the Mass s/he was used to, in the very language s/he always heard it. Now, Catholics who travel must usually hear the Mass in languages they don't understand.

The Italians say "Il traduttore è traditore"; "The translator is a traitor." It's almost impossible not to betray some of the original meaning of words when you translate, and the more translations something goes through, the farther it may travel from the original meaning.

However, I don't see much difference in the meaning of the examples you gave, am I missing something? The wording is a bit different but doesn't seem to change the meaning. In Latin Jesus says "Noli me tangere" which means "Touch me not" or "Do not touch me," so the Douay-Rheims is closer to the Latin, which in turn is closer to the ancient manuscripts.

The slight difference in wording in your example is not as serious as the Novus Ordo Consecration with "pro multis" being mistranslated "for all," which is not merely a translation error but a theological error. Finally, after forty years, the Vatican has issued an order to correct it and another badly translated prayer, the one we say before receiving Communion.

Catholics in most places are deprived of the option of attending a Traditional Latin Mass and that was not a directive of Vatican II. In fact, Vatican II had no power to issue directives, only suggestions.

[hedgehog]

7. To clarify:

Many view Latin as the supreme language. My mention of St. Jerome was meant to point out that many of our older Bibles are based on his translation of the original texts into Latin rather than on the original texts themselves. Although the entire notion of what is meant by "original texts" is subject to discussion among our more erudite scholars,I would tend to think that a modern translation comparing modern vocabulary to our current understanding of ancient languages would be superior to a translation of a translation. As you noted,"he more translations something goes through, the farther it may travel from the original meaning."

I would suggest that "do not touch me" can have a different connotation from "do not cling to me". The first could imply that the "toucher" (Mary Magdalene) is somehow unclean while the second focuses on Jesus's intent to return to the Father.

AS for the language of the Early Church, to quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

"Until the middle of the third century the Christian community at Rome was in the main a Greek speaking one. The Liturgy was celebrated in Greek, and the apologists and theologians wrote in Greek until the time of St. Hippolytus, who died in 235. It was much the same in Gaul at Lyons and at Vienne, at all events until after the days of St. Irenæus. In Africa, Greek was the chosen language of the clerics, to begin with, but Latin was the more familiar speech for the majority of the faithful, and it must have soon taken the lead in the Church, since Tertullian, who wrote some of his earlier works in Greek, ended by employing Latin only. And in this use he had been preceded by Pope Victor, who was also an African, and who, as St. Jerome assures, was the earliest Christian writer in the Latin language."

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09019a.htm

[DemBones DemBones]

8. Thanks for finding that.

I searched and searched and searched and could not find a thing about the liturgy ever being in Greek, and I hate unsolved mysteries.

It's undoubtedly true that there are some differences in meaning between the original manuscripts and St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate, and probably a different set of differences when the Latin Vulgate becomes the English Douay-Rheims. It's unavoidable.

I still don't think the Douay-Rheims and the New Oxford differ significantly on that particular verse, though your mileage obviously varies. :-) It never would have occurred to me that "Noli me tangere" implies that Mary Magdalene is unclean, since Jesus immediately adds "For I have not yet ascended to my Father."

I have thought about what you said and my belief is that Jesus chose to appear to her when she went to His tomb, which He would not likely have done if He thought she was unclean. The key part of the verse is "For I have not yet ascended to my Father" and I think that intention is clear whether Jesus says "Don't touch me" or "Don't hold onto me."

[pnwmom]

13. "Now, Catholics who travel

must usually hear the Mass in languages they don't understand."

What percent of American lay Catholics really understood the Latin we were hearing in our masses? Enough not to have to rely on someone else's (good or bad) translation? Maybe 2 or 3 percent?

Latin is a dead language, a foreign language in every country of the world (unless you count the Vatican as a country). I honestly don't see the value in keeping a dead language alive solely to serve a living Church. Using a foreign language seems to me to be a way of keeping the people at a distance from the celebration of the Mass; it turns them into mere onlookers.

[pnwmom]

15. Thank God for the problem of difficult translations!

It helps to keep us humble.

Or else all Christians would be like the fundamentalists, certain that they have understood the word of God exactly as God spoke it.

[DemBones DemBones]

3. Some Catholics like the Novus Ordo, as hedgehog does,

and they certainly have a right to their preference. However, I think her analogies create a false dichotomy between the Traditional Latin Mass and the Novus Ordo.

Conceiving of God as a Supreme Being who will some day judge us does not preclude thinking of God as a Loving Being; God is all that and more. Because he is the Supreme Being, we do anoint some to be priests, a tradition going back to the ancient Israelites, and we approach God in the Holy of Holies, the tabernacle with the reserved Presence. Ritual, pomp, incense and ancient languages also go back to the ancient Israelites.

That doesn't mean we can't celebrate with Him (and receive Him, most importantly) but the church building is sacred because of the Real Presence, because God is at home there. We visit Him and He is glad we do but we are there to worship, not just visit, should respect the holiness of the sanctuary with silence and prayer and save our conversation and laughter for after Mass, when we can talk with others in the parish family over coffee and doughnuts in the parish hall.

God is our Father but I don't think He wants to be a pal to His children. He's an old-fashioned father, I think, who wants us to obey Him as well as love Him and show respect in public especially. Outside of the sanctuary, we often talk to Him more informally and we can feel His presence anywhere if we're attuned to it. But in His house, which is wherever the Blessed Sacrament is, I think we should be very respectful.

O8)

[pnwmom]

10. I think you may be setting up your own false dichotomy.

Holiness doesn't have to be equated with silence. Or with pomp. Or with ancient languages, as opposed to modern ones.

What is more holy than the sound of a baby's babbling? Or her laughter?

And God, in my experience, is every bit as much Mother as Father.

[pnwmom]

11. I do not miss it one tiny little bit.

I was a child when it changed, and I can clearly remember trying to follow along silently in my missal while the Priest said his prayers in what sounded to me like gibberish. (Latin spoken very fast still can sound like gibberish.) There was almost no participation, not even singing (we just listened to the choir.) Maybe it was peaceful to adults, but to children it was very very very boring.

Everyone I know was happy with the change.

[hedgehog]

12. But if by chance you'd visited France at the time and gone to Mass there,

you could have heard the same gibberish instead of being forced to listen to French gibberish!

(Oh, I'm going to burn in Hell for that one!)

[pnwmom]

14. I'll be there on the welcoming committee, I'm afraid.

But for worse things than making fun of Latin.

[Tumbulu]

16. I am one who loved the Latin Mass

When I was a child all the Masses were Latin. I loved going to church and I used to go every morning in Lent. I could pray the entire time. A part of me could completely relax and get into this special spiritual place.

I was a teenager when the Mass changed. All of a sudden there was an English Mass and a Spanish Mass and the parish became split up by language and culture. Where we once were all Catholics we became separate groups. And the groups were not happy with each other.

After a few years of being unable to pray due to the noisy disturbance of the new Mass I stopped going altogether. First I tried going to the Spanish Masses as at least I could sort of pray, but even it was too rough and disruptive. I couldn't pray in peace anymore during Mass. I still go to churches and pray at times, but I mostly pray by myself.

Once, when in Wash DC I happened upon a Latin Mass. I heard it from the outside and went in in amazement. I felt all these emotions that I had not experienced since I was a child. I had tears streaming down my face for the entire Mass. Without the distraction of language (reciting words that I understand ) I was in this mystical spiritual place that I had forgotten about. I loved it. I sought out Latin Masses when I got home, but they were always too far away and at odd times.

I think that the loss of the Latin Mass was a loss of a very special asset of Catholicism and I cannot be the only person who stopped going to Mass for this reason.

Once one stops going to Mass, then it is easy to stop being a practicing Catholic. Which is what happened. Why am I posting in this group? I saw this thread and I felt compelled to participate. This is only my second post in DU as I am new.

[hedgehog]

17. There are many kinds of prayer.

Solitary prayer offers us many rewards. What happened with Vatican II was the realization that the Mass which at its heart is a sharing of the Word and the Body of Christ had become a place where people came together to pray alone. You've made me see something I hadn't seen before. When the Mass was shifted back towards communal prayer, the Church forgot to provide for solitary prayer. Given that most churches are locked except for Mass and the occasional Holy Hour, there is no opportunity to sit in God,'s house and pray quietly. Catholic means being both/and, not either/or. Maybe churches could be opened at regular times for those who want to come and meditate or prayer by themselves. Certainly appropiate music could also be provided whether it is live or recorded. Perhaps special images or icons could also be put on display at this time.

[Tumbulu]

18. But what about regular Latin Masses for those who long for calm in a rough and tumble world?

I like your points Hedgehog. In fact I like reading what everyone has to say. I think that this is an interesting and thoughtful group. Thank you for allowing me into your conversation.

In my extended family I have observed that the idea of the Latin Mass is somehow associated with the far wrong wing (I refuse to call it the right wing) . Anyone on the liberal or progressive side is expected to have loved the Mass being changed to a language that was understood by most. There is this almost reflex negative reaction to the idea of a Latin Mass that I have observed. These are all the extroverted types in my family as well. I represent the most introverted one in my entire extended family of over 20 first cousins.

Some of the cousins most like me became Greek Orthodox as at least they could pray in church still. Others drifted off. The ones who are more social either stayed active in the Catholic Church and are happy with it and the Mass or became Protestants. So perhaps the Catholic Church by changing the Mass has introduced a new kind of selection pressure.

I wonder how many people long for the beauty of what was lost. It seems to me that the the classics were replaced by the ordinary pop style of the day. And although having open prayer times at church would be nice, it is not the same as the solemn Latin Mass. As I said my reaction was so visceral. Now this may have been because this is what I grew up with- somehow that I was brought back to my childhood.

I would like to hear from a young person who has attended a Latin Mass. What do they think of it? Perhaps if one did not grow up with it it would not have anything wonderful about it at all. Perhaps it is just as upsetting to them as the English Mass is to me.

[DemBones DemBones]

21. Many young people are drawn to the Traditional Latin Mass.

At any "trad" site, there are a lot of young posters, from their teens into their thirties and few of us who remember the Mass before Vatican II. They want real theology, too. They don't want feel-good sermons. They want to hear about sin as well as Jesus/God is love. It doesn't seem to be a fad because the married ones in their twenties and thirties are having lots of babies (as many as 12) and homeschooling them, starting an alternate Catholic culture that looks like the Fifties or early Sixties in some ways. They like rock music, though, as well as Gregorian chant.

There are at least three orders of priests that were established to say the Latin Mass and their seminaries are full so there is more evidence of youthful enthusiasm for it.

Since the pope has said that the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) may be said by any priest, without needing permission from his bishop, a disturbing number of bishops have flat out said it wouldn't be allowed in their dioceses or "We have one Indult and that's enough" (there are no more Indults; the pope's motu proprio ended them by taking the power from the bishop to the priest) or "There's no interest here," which doesn't explain why Catholic bookstores can't keep the Latin-English Missal in stock. Since a Missal is $65 now, I assume these people are not only interested in but serious about the TLM.

I started investigating this about three years ago after realizing that the word anima had been translated as "I." So the prayer now says "But only say the word and I shall be healed" but should say "But only say the word and my soul shall be healed." Very different meanings. Worse, the words pro multis in the Consecration were changed to "for all," when they mean "for many." There is debate as to whether that renders all the Novus Ordo (NO) consecrations invalid. Only in Polish and perhaps Portuguese was it translated correctly as "for many." The pope has ordered these errors to be corrected but they're planning to take two years to do it, which is really dragging it out. Surely the don't print missalettes two years ahead, storage would be a problem. Just change the wording in the missalette and people will adapt. The lectors used to say "The first reading is from the Book of ________" and then they changed about a dozen years ago to saying "A reading from the Book of __________." No confusion ensued.

Most people who post here seem to prefer the NO, which is fine. There is room for both if only both sides will be charitable and Catholic.

If you would like me to, I'll send you a PM (private message) and give you a URL to a site that lists Latin Masses. There could be one near you that you don't know about. Of course, new ones are being introduced all the time now. I'm praying to get one nearer to me. My parish church is perfect for one because it's a very traditional old church and our pastor does traditional NO liturgies. I hope he will consider bringing in a priest to say a Latin Mass at least a few times to see what level of interest exists in the parish and other nearby parishes.

[tjwmason]

24. I'm a young(ish) person

28 if we're counting, so I was born long after the Latin Mass was abolished and I'm a strong supporter of the Traditional Mass.

My whole family is Church of England, indeed my father is a C.ofE. Priest, I was raised in very modern-styled Anglicanism. When I was about 12 (the same time as I was confirmed, C.ofE. do it younger) I started to become very traditionally minded and started to go to Prayerbook services (in England that means Book of Common Prayer 1662, all 'thee' and 'thou'). Then when I started university I came across Anglo-Catholicism, and realised that beauty and aesthetics can be part of worship (along with much else theologically).

What I find about the modern style services in both the C.ofE. and R.C.C. is that it simply drags in the style of the street - there is nothing 'special' nothing numinous about it. I strongly believe that the Mass is offered by the community (the People of God as Vatican II puts it), but when we come together we come together with God, with the Angels and Saints and this is a very special event. The modern English (particularly the dreadfully unpoetic and downright inaccurate translation) services simply don't do justice to the aweful reality of what the Mass is.

As for the notion that it is about the whole community gathering - I have found instances of both feelings at both styles of Mass. With the new-style Priest facing the people it often strikes that the Priest is like a performer, now it's about the personality of Fr. Joe* which is just as exclusionary of the people as the worst excesses of the "Irish Low Mass" of times past.

I have attended about as wide a variety of services as one can imagine - High Mass, Low Mass, Liturgical English, modern English, Latin, Traditional Mass, new Mass, Anglican Mass...I strongly prefer the Traditional Mass offered either in Latin or in Liturgical English as with some Anglo-Catholics.

I attend Mass at my local R.C. parish most Sundays, and the sheer banality of much drives me to distraction - I would never dream of saying the Rosary during Mass, but the mixture of hymns which were already dated when first written in the '70s, the pedestrian-flat English of the service...I can see why people are leaving in their droves, it simply doesn't inspire anything.

(*I say Fr. Joe because I don't wish to imply this is about any Priest in particular, I have never personally been acquainted with a Fr. Joe.)

[DemBones DemBones]

20. You certainly weren't the only one who felt that way,

witness the huge decline in the number of Catholics who attend Mass every Sunday, or even at Christmas and Easter, and the exodus of thousands of priests and religious from their vocations.

Latin Masses are very special to many Catholics because the emphasis is on God, not on the priest, not on the people, but on God and the prayers the priest says on our behalf as well as those we say. We could follow along in the Missal or just lose ourselves in private prayer. We could be alone while in the community and even if we had studied Latin, we didn't have to be distracted by the words because they weren't everyday words. It's like being alone in another country, speaking very little of the language, but feeling completely at home. We also had much more time to pray during Mass. Now you can barely get back to your pew and start to pray before Father stands for the closing prayers.

I'm glad to see you here, Tumbulu :hi: Don't worry about not being a practicing Catholic, as Pat Conroy wrote, "You can no more be an ex-Catholic than you can be an ex-Oriental."

[rug]

19. I don't miss the Latin Mass.

I was both an altar boy and a choir boy at a parish which was also the eastern provincial headquartes for the Dominicans. Besides Sunday High Mass, we would often serve weeklong stints as altar boys for the priests who celebrated low Mass daily on the side altars. Other than Midnight Mass on Christsmas Eve, which was enthralling because of the carols, not the Latin, I far prefer the vernacular Mass.

By the time of Vatican II, the Latin Mass had also acquired layers of dubious piety and politics. How often does this debate remind people of the madatory prayers for the conversion of Russia recited, in Latin, at the end of every Mass before dismissal? Or the prayer to St. Michael?

I never found the Latin Mass, high or low, to be mystical, transcendent or otherwordly. No matter how closely it was followed in the missal, attendance was passive, and congregants were often isolated from one another. A Novus Ordo Mass, celebrated reverently, is designed to be more inviting, more accessible and, ironically, more worshipful.

The Mass of the catacombs is not the Mass of Trent. Say what you like about it, at least the Mass that followed Vatican II was an attempt to restore that sense of immediacy and community.

[DemBones DemBones]

22. Just curious, have you been a Eucharistic minister

or otherwise served in the Novus Ordo? Because I found that I didn't get as much out of Mass when I was a Eucharistic minister and had to be thinking about my part. Maybe it's the same for altar boys?

I have also been with the choir and they sit up in the choir loft and talk, read newspapers, etc., when they're not singing, but then go to Communion, which I thought was strange. ( If they'd already received at an earlier Mass, it would have made sense for them not to pay much attention. ) And even if they paid attention to Mass, they do have to pay attention to when to sing, which is a distraction, too. I just think you miss a lot when you have a role to play in Mass.

Sometimes my mind wanders during Mass -- or my eyes wander to the bulletin but I haven't been busted for it yet! :D -- but I try to pay attention/

[rug]

23. No I haven't.

In fact that is one of my complaints about the Novus Ordo Mass. In my parish the priest makes a point of having the EMs, the altar servers, the organ player, the lector, all line up to receive communion before the congregation. First he gives them the host, then he repeats it for the wine. Ten minutes later, he finally steps down and gives communion to the congregation. The whole thing is pompous.

I've been to other parishes where the priest, with the assistance of EMs, goes directly to the congregation to distribute communion and only when they're finished do the others receive. The contrast between service in humility and self-importance is striking.

I remember being pretty busy when serving High Mass so I paid attention. At one point the altar boy (no girls) moved the book from the left side of the altar to the right side around the point it went from the Liturgy of the Word to the Liturgy of the Eucharist. This particular altar was up about four steps. The procedure was to take the book (on a stand), step down to the bottom of the altar, bow and bring it up to the right side. One Sunday I tripped over my cassock on the second step and dropped the book. I can remember it bouncing down those two steps in excruciating detail.

You're right about the distractions. They're inevitable and detract from the experience, no matter the language