Father, your perspective on Beauty hits the mark. In my lifetime of 60+ years, I have seen the needless removal of Beaty to be replaced by bland if not offensive versions. Your example of the violence done to existing Churches and the painful eyesores constructed since Vatican II is a good example, but the secular world has many such examples also.
As a Convert to Catholicism for 7 or so years I entered into the new Rite with no exposure to the Traditional Latin Mass, nor any understanding of the changes which had occurred post Vatican II.
Yet when I learned of the change in the Church, the forced suppression of the TLMass, and the clear destructive insanity that such clearly was - those who had generations of living devout Catholics suddenly ripped from the Rite that over 1000 years of Saints and Martyrs worshipped through, I suspected something was rotten in the Church.
Yet I was not Catechized well enough to go beyond that assuredly, and it was an assuredly as destructive of one who hears of a man that threw a burring torch into a barn full of hay may not know who or why, only that it was a destructive act.
About Beauty in Mass, after the Sunday new Rite Mass in the ornate main chapel of the Church (constructed long before Vatican II, I discovered that in the stripped minimized bare basement chapel a different Mass was celebrated an hour after the normal end of the net Rite was complete, and I started sitting in, and having no guidance it was a while before I worked out the missal and the different sheets for each week. It was a puzzle to me and more, something about it kept me going - and after a while I was no longer lost and confused.
When the TLMass congregation move to a different Church I had to decide between the two versions, and there was little debate, I went with them. It was not because I had noticed a general coldness of much of the older to elderly new Rite members (this a minority of exception), and some number of confusing seeming assaults on my dignity with contrived problems from the administrative secretary women that seemed to take a dislike I experienced over the years since Conversion, but more because the TLMass had an Order and I felt Justice that reflected a greater Truth.
Today as a Traditional Catholic that is much more Catechized through many sources including taking on-line Traditional seminary courses, Traditional Theological reading & history, and awareness of the century or more of direct Modernist attack one the Church, with the Infiltration that resulted in Vatican II (with a number of clear Heresies) and the violence to the Church that has followed - something that I sensed early in the disregard of the Health of The Body of Christ , or more clear it was and is an Attack and Sickening of Her - as was intended.
I find your statement of 'Trads' excessive ornateness as beyond not only my experience but beyond the basics of the Love of Clarity and Unchangingness of it, that the TLMass Offered today would be recognized by pre-VaticanII worldwide and access great lengths of years, so a Roman Catholic from Irland of the 19th century would find it little different.
It is with sadness that I found this article much like post Vatican II leadership, slippery and seemingly destructive of Truth, Justice, and Right Order. I hope I have misunderstood and that what seems a damning reflection on you is in fact a fault of my own.
May this comment find us all every closer to God, His Clarity and Peace.
Hi Steve, I'm not sure I followed all of that, but I do gather that you have found great meaning and value in the experience of the Mass through the pre Vatican II form of the Roman Rite (what was called the Extraordinary Form). I am happy to hear that, and I wish you well with it. I have written elsewhere about the development of the current form of the Roman Rite, which I believe to be quite beautiful too when celebrated appropriately. Whatever form of the Mass, I think it is important not to try to embellish it in order to create beauty, but to simply allow it to be what it is. To that end, I recommend reading the Holy Father's Desiderio desideravi which does a good job of describing the natural beauty of the Mass while also identifying the ways in which ideological approaches to the Mass empty it of its depth and meaning.
Father, your perspective on Beauty hits the mark. In my lifetime of 60+ years, I have seen the needless removal of Beaty to be replaced by bland if not offensive versions. Your example of the violence done to existing Churches and the painful eyesores constructed since Vatican II is a good example, but the secular world has many such examples also.
As a Convert to Catholicism for 7 or so years I entered into the new Rite with no exposure to the Traditional Latin Mass, nor any understanding of the changes which had occurred post Vatican II.
Yet when I learned of the change in the Church, the forced suppression of the TLMass, and the clear destructive insanity that such clearly was - those who had generations of living devout Catholics suddenly ripped from the Rite that over 1000 years of Saints and Martyrs worshipped through, I suspected something was rotten in the Church.
Yet I was not Catechized well enough to go beyond that assuredly, and it was an assuredly as destructive of one who hears of a man that threw a burring torch into a barn full of hay may not know who or why, only that it was a destructive act.
About Beauty in Mass, after the Sunday new Rite Mass in the ornate main chapel of the Church (constructed long before Vatican II, I discovered that in the stripped minimized bare basement chapel a different Mass was celebrated an hour after the normal end of the net Rite was complete, and I started sitting in, and having no guidance it was a while before I worked out the missal and the different sheets for each week. It was a puzzle to me and more, something about it kept me going - and after a while I was no longer lost and confused.
When the TLMass congregation move to a different Church I had to decide between the two versions, and there was little debate, I went with them. It was not because I had noticed a general coldness of much of the older to elderly new Rite members (this a minority of exception), and some number of confusing seeming assaults on my dignity with contrived problems from the administrative secretary women that seemed to take a dislike I experienced over the years since Conversion, but more because the TLMass had an Order and I felt Justice that reflected a greater Truth.
Today as a Traditional Catholic that is much more Catechized through many sources including taking on-line Traditional seminary courses, Traditional Theological reading & history, and awareness of the century or more of direct Modernist attack one the Church, with the Infiltration that resulted in Vatican II (with a number of clear Heresies) and the violence to the Church that has followed - something that I sensed early in the disregard of the Health of The Body of Christ , or more clear it was and is an Attack and Sickening of Her - as was intended.
I find your statement of 'Trads' excessive ornateness as beyond not only my experience but beyond the basics of the Love of Clarity and Unchangingness of it, that the TLMass Offered today would be recognized by pre-VaticanII worldwide and access great lengths of years, so a Roman Catholic from Irland of the 19th century would find it little different.
It is with sadness that I found this article much like post Vatican II leadership, slippery and seemingly destructive of Truth, Justice, and Right Order. I hope I have misunderstood and that what seems a damning reflection on you is in fact a fault of my own.
May this comment find us all every closer to God, His Clarity and Peace.
God Bless., Steve
Hi Steve, I'm not sure I followed all of that, but I do gather that you have found great meaning and value in the experience of the Mass through the pre Vatican II form of the Roman Rite (what was called the Extraordinary Form). I am happy to hear that, and I wish you well with it. I have written elsewhere about the development of the current form of the Roman Rite, which I believe to be quite beautiful too when celebrated appropriately. Whatever form of the Mass, I think it is important not to try to embellish it in order to create beauty, but to simply allow it to be what it is. To that end, I recommend reading the Holy Father's Desiderio desideravi which does a good job of describing the natural beauty of the Mass while also identifying the ways in which ideological approaches to the Mass empty it of its depth and meaning.