Mass : Extraordinary Form

hinault

Yesterday 12th January 2014, I attended the Extraordinary Form Mass at Harrington Street Church, Dublin.

I am Catholic and each Sunday I attend Novus Ordo Form Mass which is the Mass that you find celebrated throughout most Catholic churches these days.

I have been deliberating going to the Extraordinary Form Mass for a while.

The reason why I have been deliberating is because the Extraordinary Form Mass is not widely practiced these days and to attend takes planning.

I can vaguely recall the Extraordinary Form Mass from my younger days but with Vatican II, the Extraordinary Form Mass was replaced by the Novus Ordo Mass.

Do any other Catholics here attend the Extraordinary Form Mass?
If you do perhaps you'd like to share your reasons for doing so?

The contrast between the Novus Ordo Mass and Extraordinary Form Mass is very apparent.

SoulandForm

Calling something that has just been the Roman Rite for most of the centuries of Christianity's existence the Extraordinary Form seems to me to be doing something very strange indeed; and also to show a total disconnect with the past- so disrespect meant towards you, but why not just call it the Roman Rite?

hinault

SoulandForm wrote: »

Calling something that has just been the Roman Rite for most of the centuries of Christianity's existence the Extraordinary Form seems to me to be doing something very strange indeed; and also to show a total disconnect with the past- so disrespect meant towards you, but why not just call it the Roman Rite?

I'm reading from page 2 of the Latin-English booklet Missal given to woshippers at Harrington Street yesterday :

"The Roman Missal of 1970, issued by Pope Paul VI, is the Ordinary Form (Novus Ordo).
The Missal of 1962 is the Extraordinary Form, the missal codified by Pope Pius V and last reissued by Bless Pope John XXIII"

SoulandForm

Incredibly strange terminology.

Anyway to answer your question- High (sung) Roman Masses are definitely worth going too. Low (said) Roman Masses not so much as often you cant hear what the Priest is saying and so its very hard to follow. I believe the idea of a Low Mass was an innovation of the 13 th century (though I could be wrong on this). That said what is good about it is that it doesnt allow the Priest to imprint his own personality on the service.

hinault

SoulandForm wrote: »

Incredibly strange terminology.

Anyway to answer your question- High (sung) Roman Masses are definitely worth going too. Low (said) Roman Masses not so much as often you cant hear what the Priest is saying and so its very hard to follow. I believe the idea of a Low Mass was an innovation of the 13 th century (though I could be wrong on this). That said what is good about it is that it doesnt allow the Priest to imprint his own personality on the service.

I'm only quoting the text used in the foreword to the Missal used yesterday.

The reason I refer to the distinction is also because some readers of this thread may not be aware that a new missal was issued in 1970 legislating for the celebration of the new Mass.

I found the Mass celebrated yesterday as a reverential act of worship.
The beauty of the Mass was heightened by the use of Latin and the sung responses to the text of the Mass by the worshippers and choir.

However I cannot speak Latin therefore my own participation in the responses was zero.
And I had to follow the lead of other worshippers as to when to stand/kneel throughout the Mass.

scidive

I attend both types of masses and I have to say the Extraordinary Form
I find is far more reverent compared to the Novus Ordo Form Mass. When I first went to the masses I was lost as to what was going on not understanding latin but since I started praying using the english translation missal has really enhanced the mass.

Peregrinus

SoulandForm wrote: »

Incredibly strange terminology.

Not that strange.

The Roman rite is so called because it's the rite of mass as celebrated in the diocese of Rome. That rite can and does vary from time to time, but each variation is still the "Roman rite".

At the moment, mass is celebated in Rome in two forms - the "ordinary form", i.e. the form which has predominantly been celebrated since the liturgical reforms which followed the Second Vatican Council, and the "extraordinary form", which was predominant from the liturgical reforms which followed the Council of Trent (in the sixteenth century) until the liturgical reforms which followed the Second Vatican Council.

Amazingfun

I've been three times now and enjoyed it. It's a lovely Church btw

hinault

Amazingfun wrote: »

I've been three times now and enjoyed it. It's a lovely Church btw

Harrington Street Church is a lovely church.
The stain glass window is as nice as the one at John's Lane, I think.:)

scidive

Looks like our current pope is not to impressed with the extraordinary mass which served the church well for over a millennium

"[Abp. Jan Graubner speaks:] When we were discussing those who are fond of the ancient liturgy and wish to return to it, it was evident that the Pope speaks with great affection, attention, and sensitivity for all in order not to hurt anyone. However, he made a quite strong statement when he said that he understands when the old generation returns to what it experienced, but that he cannot understand the younger generation wishing to return to it. "When I search more thoroughly - the Pope said - I find that it is rather a kind of fashion [in Czech: 'móda', Italian 'moda']. And if it is a fashion, therefore it is a matter that does not need that much attention. It is just necessary to show some patience and kindness to people who are addicted to a certain fashion. But I consider greatly important to go deep into things, because if we do not go deep, no liturgical form, this or that one, can save us."

lazybones32

scidive wrote: »

Looks like our current pope is not to impressed with the extraordinary mass which served the church well for over a millennium

So? Mass was originally spoken in Aramaic; should we learn that tongue too?
If people like celebrating Mass in Latin - fine. The language that the sacrifice is communicated through, is nowhere near as important as the the devotion, faith and love that should mark its celebration.

sellon

I would be interested in discovering more about the history of The Mass from the time of Christ to the present day. I believe after the Resurrection followers met in houses for the "breaking of the bread" which eventually became Mass but what type of progression too place to bring us to the Roman Rite (both ordinary and extraordinary) that we have today?

Anyone know of any book or online resource?

Peregrinus

In the early Christian community, as you say, people met in one another’s houses for “the breaking of the bread”. There are references to this in the Acts of the Apostles. As the first Christians were all or nearly all Jews, they probably understood this as the Sabbath meal and/or the Jewish Passover, but given added significance because of the community’s memory of the Last Supper and the Lord’s command to “do this in memory of me”.

Jews then, as now, celebrated the Sabbath meal/the Passover meal in the family setting. The Christians either from the very start or pretty early on seem to have been celebrating it in larger groups - but still in one another’s houses.

It seems from the letters of Paul that fairly early on problems began to emerge with this. The people in whose houses the meal was celebrated tended to assume or acquire some control over it (and of course they tended to be the people with the biggest houses, therefore the wealthiest people, therefore perhaps people who would expect status and leadership positions anyway). People hosting the meal started inviting some Christians, but not others. Different groups of Christians started to be identified by whose houses they gathered in. Some of the meals because ostentatious and lavish, thus reducing still further the group of people who could afford to host them. Others, apparently, became riotous or disorganised - too much of a party. And I suspect that as the Christians included more and more people who weren’t Jewish, the Sabbath/Passover meal background to the Christian celebration was something they didn’t know about or didn’t fully understand.

Another development that came along at the same time or a bit later was the withdrawal or exclusion of Christians from the synagogues. The Jewish Sabbath practice was (and still is) go to the synagogue on the Sabbath eve to pray, hear the scriptures proclaimed and preached upon, and sing hymns of praise, and then go home for the meal. The early Jewish Christians most likely did exactly this, except that they met as a Christian community for a meal with Christian significance. But as they ceased to attend synagogue they were missing out on scriptures, preaching, praise, etc.

Under these influences, two things happened; first, the “meal” element of the Christian celebration became more formal, more ritualised and more under the control and direction of community leaders (bishops) rather than individual wealthy Christians. Increasingly it was celebrated in public halls rather than private houses. And, secondly, it started to be preceded by prayer, scripture reading and preaching, to replace the synagogue services. This gives us the basic structure of the mass that we have today - a liturgy of the word, followed by a liturgy of the Eucharist.

Each Christian community celebrated in its own language. The first Christians were Aramaic speakers, but once Christianity spread outside Jerusalem there were Greek-speaking Christian communities. Non-Jewish Christians, and Jewish Christians living outside Palestine, were mostly Greek speakers. Besides, Greek was the common language in the Eastern Mediterranean used by people who didn’t have a common native language. So, apart from the Jewish Christian communities in and near Jerusalem, it’s likely that all nearly all Christian communities read the scriptures, and celebrated the breaking of the bread, in Greek. From about AD 55, about twenty years after the death of Christ, when the community felt the need to set down its memories of Christ in writing to capture them for future generations, they wrote in Greek. None of the four gospels was composed in Aramaic. And in about AD 70 the Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christian community was entirely destroyed when the Romans sacked Jerusalem in the First Jewish War; from that time on, for a couple of hundred years, Greek was the language used in nearly all Christian liturgies.

Even the Christian community in Rome used Greek. The vernacular language of the native Romans was of course Latin, but Rome was an extremely cosmopolitan city and Greek was widely spoken and understood and was used by most of the non-native residents of the city, and the early Christian community was largely drawn from them. I think it wasn’t until the fifth century or so that the mass in Rome started to be celebrated in Latin - though, once that happened, celebration in Latin became widespread throughout Western Europe.

From there on the “standardisation” of the mass as celebrated throughout the western church was a slow process, which wasn’t subject to much in the way of central control or planning. Each bishop had authority over the liturgy in his own local church, but they all regarded it as important that the liturgy should be familiar to, and accepted by, other local churches, so there was a tendency towards uniformity which mean that, when a new practice was introduced in one place, if people liked it it tended to spread to other places fairly rapidly. At the same time there were technological limitations. In order to celebrate mass, each church - i.e. each parish church, each place where mass was celebrated - needed a lectionary (a book setting out the scripture passages to be read at mass each day), a sacramentary (prayers for each day), a gradual (book of liturgical chants and music) and other liturgical books. But in the days before printing books were hand-copied and enormously expensive, and replacing all the books throughout a particular diocese would have been a colossal task, so it didn’t happen. If a wealthy church did acquire new books, they passed their old books on to another church, so old customs and practices would often survive in small and country churches long after they had been updated or reformed in the cities or in the monasteries.

So on the one hand you’ve got a basically uniform mass throughout western Europe, and on the other you’ve got a whole host of local adaptations, historical anomalies, exceptions, variations, etc . So in England, just to take one example, at the offertory the bread and wine were brought to the altar together; in most places, they were brought one after the other. In England, immediately after the consecration, the priest briefly stood with his arms outstretched (in a “crucifix” pose) whereas in other places he genuflected. In general, the further a local church was from Rome, the more minor variations and departures from the Roman norm there were.

And this situation persists, basically, until the printing press is invented, and centrally planned, systematic, detailed uniformity becomes possible. One of the many reforms instituted by the Council of Trent is a general “tidying up” of the mass as celebrated throughout the western church. Uniform liturgical books are drawn up, approved, printed and distributed and a great many of the local variations and exceptions are swept away. And this is what gave us the Tridentine mass, so called from the Latin name of the city of Trent, where the Council was held.

sellon

Peregrinus wrote: »

In the early Christian community, as you say, people met in one another’s houses for “the breaking of the bread”. There are references to this in the Acts of the Apostles. As the first Christians were all or nearly all Jews, they probably understood this as the Sabbath meal and/or the Jewish Passover, but given added significance because of the community’s memory of the Last Supper and the Lord’s command to “do this in memory of me”.

Jews then, as now, celebrated the Sabbath meal/the Passover meal in the family setting. The Christians either from the very start or pretty early on seem to have been celebrating it in larger groups - but still in one another’s houses.

It seems from the letters of Paul that fairly early on problems began to emerge with this. The people in whose houses the meal was celebrated tended to assume or acquire some control over it (and of course they tended to be the people with the biggest houses, therefore the wealthiest people, therefore perhaps people who would expect status and leadership positions anyway). People hosting the meal started inviting some Christians, but not others. Different groups of Christians started to be identified by whose houses they gathered in. Some of the meals because ostentatious and lavish, thus reducing still further the group of people who could afford to host them. Others, apparently, became riotous or disorganised - too much of a party. And I suspect that as the Christians included more and more people who weren’t Jewish, the Sabbath/Passover meal background to the Christian celebration was something they didn’t know about or didn’t fully understand.

Another development that came along at the same time or a bit later was the withdrawal or exclusion of Christians from the synagogues. The Jewish Sabbath practice was (and still is) go to the synagogue on the Sabbath eve to pray, hear the scriptures proclaimed and preached upon, and sing hymns of praise, and then go home for the meal. The early Jewish Christians most likely did exactly this, except that they met as a Christian community for a meal with Christian significance. But as they ceased to attend synagogue they were missing out on scriptures, preaching, praise, etc.

Under these influences, two things happened; first, the “meal” element of the Christian celebration became more formal, more ritualised and more under the control and direction of community leaders (bishops) rather than individual wealthy Christians. Increasingly it was celebrated in public halls rather than private houses. And, secondly, it started to be preceded by prayer, scripture reading and preaching, to replace the synagogue services. This gives us the basic structure of the mass that we have today - a liturgy of the word, followed by a liturgy of the Eucharist.

Each Christian community celebrated in its own language. The first Christians were Aramaic speakers, but once Christianity spread outside Jerusalem there were Greek-speaking Christian communities. Non-Jewish Christians, and Jewish Christians living outside Palestine, were mostly Greek speakers. Besides, Greek was the common language in the Eastern Mediterranean used by people who didn’t have a common native language. So, apart from the Jewish Christian communities in and near Jerusalem, it’s likely that all nearly all Christian communities read the scriptures, and celebrated the breaking of the bread, in Greek. From about AD 55, about twenty years after the death of Christ, when the community felt the need to set down its memories of Christ in writing to capture them for future generations, they wrote in Greek. None of the four gospels was composed in Aramaic. And in about AD 70 the Aramaic-speaking Jewish Christian community was entirely destroyed when the Romans sacked Jerusalem in the First Jewish War; from that time on, for a couple of hundred years, Greek was the language used in nearly all Christian liturgies.

Even the Christian community in Rome used Greek. The vernacular language of the native Romans was of course Latin, but Rome was an extremely cosmopolitan city and Greek was widely spoken and understood and was used by most of the non-native residents of the city, and the early Christian community was largely drawn from them. I think it wasn’t until the fifth century or so that the mass in Rome started to be celebrated in Latin - though, once that happened, celebration in Latin became widespread throughout Western Europe.

From there on the “standardisation” of the mass as celebrated throughout the western church was a slow process, which wasn’t subject to much in the way of central control or planning. Each bishop had authority over the liturgy in his own local church, but they all regarded it as important that the liturgy should be familiar to, and accepted by, other local churches, so there was a tendency towards uniformity which mean that, when a new practice was introduced in one place, if people liked it it tended to spread to other places fairly rapidly. At the same time there were technological limitations. In order to celebrate mass, each church - i.e. each parish church, each place where mass was celebrated - needed a lectionary (a book setting out the scripture passages to be read at mass each day), a sacramentary (prayers for each day), a gradual (book of liturgical chants and music) and other liturgical books. But in the days before printing books were hand-copied and enormously expensive, and replacing all the books throughout a particular diocese would have been a colossal task, so it didn’t happen. If a wealthy church did acquire new books, they passed their old books on to another church, so old customs and practices would often survive in small and country churches long after they had been updated or reformed in the cities or in the monasteries.

So on the one hand you’ve got a basically uniform mass throughout western Europe, and on the other you’ve got a whole host of local adaptations, historical anomalies, exceptions, variations, etc . So in England, just to take one example, at the offertory the bread and wine were brought to the altar together; in most places, they were brought one after the other. In England, immediately after the consecration, the priest briefly stood with his arms outstretched (in a “crucifix” pose) whereas in other places he genuflected. In general, the further a local church was from Rome, the more minor variations and departures from the Roman norm there were.

And this situation persists, basically, until the printing press is invented, and centrally planned, systematic, detailed uniformity becomes possible. One of the many reforms instituted by the Council of Trent is a general “tidying up” of the mass as celebrated throughout the western church. Uniform liturgical books are drawn up, approved, printed and distributed and a great many of the local variations and exceptions are swept away. And this is what gave us the Tridentine mass, so called from the Latin name of the city of Trent, where the Council was held.

Wow thanks for that. Highly interesting. You seem very knowledgeable on religious discussion, nice to see an academic approach for a change.