James MacMillan has a good article today in the Times:
I was in Amsterdam last week, conducting at the Concertgebouw. I found out that the FSSP (Priestly Fraternity of St Peter) have a thriving parish there, in the Sint-Agneskerk. I went along on Sunday for their beautiful Extraordinary Form liturgy. The Dutch church is a wasteland/joke/disaster area because of 30 years of liberalism. Basically there are no Catholics left here! Or so it seems sometimes, thanks to the usual rubbish. Thankfully there are some younger, faithful Catholics willing to swim against the tide.
I’m still a bit of a novice when it comes to the EF – Sunday’s was my third – but I am struck each time by just how devotional the atmosphere is, even on entering the church. Everything seems focused on the tabernacle. There is a palpable presence of God, which tends to be missing from a lot of churches now, which feel more like Glasgow Central station than a house of prayer….
“Ah, but we can’t go back to the past,” we hear the usual ageing handwringers cry. But the past is the past, and has no bearing any more on the new impetus to sort out the liturgy. Latin Mass can be in the EF and the Novus Ordo – that’s the beauty of Latin, and that’s why the Devil (let alone the Tabletistas) hates it!
“Oh but where is the active participation in the Latin Mass?” cry the liberal killjoys. But lay involvement is clearly possible to the fullest extent in the EF or Latin Novus Ordo. In the three EF liturgies I have attended in the last year, the assembly sang much, much more than one ever sees or hears in a Glasgow “Mass-for-Daily-Record-Man” or its depressing equivalent up and down the country. Everything from the Asperges Me, through the Kyrie, Sanctus and all the Dominus vobiscum/et cum spiritu tuos – sung by EVERYBODY. There is no point in using the past, pre-Vatican II practice as a weapon against the inevitable. None of the young Catholics now committed to good liturgy have any idea what the old curmudgeons are going on about when they moan about the bad old days. Their bad memories are irrelevant and have no bearing at all on the push for improvements. And these improvements will have a bearing on both forms the Mass, especially the English vernacular, I’m sure.
It's good to hear people singing Ordinary parts. But would people complain when more elaborate ones are scheduled, because they cannot sing? So it would become like OF where only simple ones have to be repeated for the sake of the congregation singing?
great polemic! "The Dutch church is a wasteland/joke/disaster area because of 30 years of liberalism." In certain Diocese of the US you could also say that
but I am struck each time by just how devotional the atmosphere is, even on entering the church. Everything seems focused on the tabernacle.
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Exactly the trouble with the EF parishes and liturgies. Everything is centered on the tabernacle, a dead language,with a staged liturgy, more a show and performance than true liturgy. Catholics do not go to church to worship the tabernacle, or to celebrate exposition. The altar is what should be central with holy communion received under both forms, in the language of the people, celebrated by married priests.
The EF masses today are little more than picturesque novelties and ,like all novelties, their appeal will wear off in time as their rigid rubrics and other deficiencies become more apparent. In NYCity recently an EF mass was canceled for lack of interest. I understand the same is already happening elsewhere.
When Benedict XVI has passed on, so will his motu proprio ,"Summorum Pontificum" to a much deserved retirement on the shelf to collect dust. So, it should too.
anonymous @ 5:00, you sound like you'd be better off posting on an Episcopal website. The only real vitality in Catholicism today is found in the restored Latin liturgy and traditional orders. Novelties such as clown masses, tie-dyed vestments, guitars, priest entertainers, banal language, and trite music has outlived its shelf life. You're living in a 1960s time warp. I pity you. Kumbaya!
"Exactly the trouble with the EF parishes and liturgies. Everything is centered on the tabernacle, a dead language,with a staged liturgy, more a show and performance than true liturgy. Catholics do not go to church to worship the tabernacle, or to celebrate exposition."
Five O'clock Anonymous, you're entirely right. We DON'T worship the tabernacle; we worship the One Who is contained within it. And it's for that very reason that, in the EF Mass, the priest takes the utmost care with the Host once It's consecrated–even holding his thumbs and index fingers together until almost the very end of the Mass, lest a particle fall to the floor and be desecrated.
I'm presuming you're in a parish where the tabernacle is somewhere off to the side, rather than centered on the main aisle of the church where everyone can see it?
Don't feed the trolls.
anonymous@5:00pm wrote "In NYCity recently an EF mass was canceled for lack of interest."
In midtown alone there are now 3 weekly sung Sunday EF masses where before SP there was one. There is also now a daily EF mass offered. I would estimate that since SP, the number of regularly scheduled EF masses in the entire Archdiocese of NY has doubled if not tripled. I believe only one NYC EF mass has been discontinued, a monthly Sunday mass that was started post-SP. While this growth may be modest, it is nonetheless growth during a time of periodic church closures and dwindling mass attendance.