Wednesday 3 December 2014

On low Mass...


The variations in the ceremonies practised in the celebration of the Eucharist make a division into two heads easy: missa solemnis and missa privata. The missa solemnis is the publick, or high Mass, and gives us the rule for the celebration of the Eucharist. The priest is assisted by a deacon and subdeacon....The private, or low Mass, on the other hand, must be regarded as the exception, and in this the priest is assisted by a server only. It is the presence of the deacon and subdeacon which makes the difference between high Mass and private Mass, and not whether any part of the service be sung. Now, it cannot be too often repeated that it is only high Mass which gives us the antient, typical ceremonies of the celebration of the Eucharist, and from which we may learn the true idea of the Eucharistic rites. Low Mass only gives us the rite in a maimed and imperfect, not to say corrupt and irregular way. Private, or low Mass, that is, a celebration of the Eucharist without deacon or subdeacon, was as little known to the Church at large for the first 800 years, as it is to this day to the Eastern Church. It seems to have come in when Latin ceased to be understood by the people, who betook themselves, therefore, to their private prayers. Low Mass robbed the mediaeval church of the idea of common prayer, which it is the glory of our Prayer Book to have brought back. The celebration of the Eucharist in private (I am only using the word still used by the Roman Missal) shews but small respect to the Christian mysteries. It may be borne with in country parishes where there is no one in holy orders but the curate himself, but to see in a church with a large staff the altar served by some boy taken out of the street, who probably does not know his Catechism, and has not been confirmed, while men in holy orders are doing nothing in the stalls of the choir, or only come into church to distribute the Communion, shews that there is little or no zeal for the solemnity of the Eucharist. It shews a contempt for the practices of antiquity, to which in all questions of ceremonial, as well as in faith and morals, the Church of England appeals.... Even the more learned Roman Catholick authorities dislike the boy server, and tell us that it is the deacon who is the proper minister of the altar. Dr John Wickham-Legg, ''On Some Antient Liturgical Customs Now Falling Into Disuse,'' in Transactions of the St Paul’s Ecclesiological Society, vol. II (London, 1890), 123-24.

Many contemporary Roman Catholic liturgists consider Dr John Wickham-Legg's scholarship obsolete and understood solely in the context of the late 19th century Anglo-Catholic ceremonial wars. For my part (in this passage at any rate) I would dissent only from Dr Wickham-Legg's supposition that low Mass evolved largely on account of the obscurity of Latin to the people. I would say that it was more a case of bad theology latent in the Scholastic movement than necessarily a linguistic problem, although the Latin language may have been a case in northern Europe. Otherwise, what he says about the distinctions between the services, that out understanding of the Eucharistic liturgy is by recourse to high Mass only, and that low Mass is defective is absolutely right. I consider low Mass, except in cases of utmost necessity, to be a liturgical abuse akin to turning away from the East or an extempore Anaphora, and the custom certainly contributed to the decline of the Divine Office as an act of corporate worship as opposed to clerical recitation in private.

Because low Mass is codified into the Roman liturgy with a set of rubrics and was given sanction by the Tridentine missal, people aren't prepared to admit what a mistake it was. If Trent really was an holy synod it would have abolished the custom as a mediaeval superstition. Unfortunately, it's seen to-day as complimentary to high Mass (seldom provided), with its own inherent qualities of contemplation, of quietude and piety. That it detracts from the nature of liturgy itself, and even from Scripture itself, "where two or three are gathered in my name," etc, puts the Traddies out of reckoning. So we're stuck with it.

16 comments:

  1. Four years ago I'd have been very busy moderating comments.

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  2. I would, except that I have an enormous translating job on and I'm already late! I take it you have read my work on http://civitas-dei.eu/Mass_of_St_Pius_V.pdf

    I will have to give the Wickham-Legg question some thought and research. I have always found his work very interesting.

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  3. In my bachelor days, while always preferring a Sung or Solemn Mass (if available), I always did find consolation in a Low Mass, especially while visiting "traditional" monasteries (such as Clear Creek here in the USA), when one could witness simultaneously a dozen or so Masses. It was something to see! Even in my seminary days, I saw it too, for example: http://icrsp.org/IMAGES-APOSTOLATS/IMAGES-2010/Gricigliano/Chapitre/Diverses/P100901%20133.jpg.

    Now, however, as a married man with several young children, the Low Mass is torture. How to engage the children in worship? It's not really worship, is it? It's gazing from afar, it's usually inaudible mumbling, it's worrying that my children are behaving and still enough as to not provoke the wrath of the pious ladies in the pews. We mustn't disrupt the "most beautiful thing this side of heaven"!

    I find myself agreeing more and more with the sentiments and opinions of Patricius, whose blog is recently discovered. I'm veering toward Orthodoxy myself and have almost repudiated my former love of the "traditional" Latin Mass.

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    1. That image is one of the most disturbing I've seen in a while for so many reasons.

      You can't engage children with low Mass because it's boring. If people were more honest with themselves they'd concede to that too! Low Mass is not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination; it's an aberration, certainly.

      Arguably the best thing for the Roman liturgy, which is for the most part venerable and attractive, is to take it out of the hands of the Traddies. Pearls before swine.

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    2. Then how about this one: http://www.institute-christ-king.org/uploads/gallery/2012_priestly_retreat/pic009.jpg

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    3. I veered towards Orthodoxy at one point myself. Despite their liturgical quality, I was not too fond of some of the close-minded attitudes of the Byzantine Orthodox (especially some of the ignorant vitriol I heard in an OCA church). I also could not get behind their abuses with regards to marriage and the compromise with contraception some of them have taken.

      The Miaphysite Orientals are much more pleasant group to hang with and a lot less legalistic. I attend local Malankara Syriac Vespers every Tuesday.

      However, I found a local Greek Catholic Parish was where I truly "belonged". After years of FSSP/SSPX (and worse), it was a comfort to feel at home in an ecclesial community.

      I agree with taking the Mass from the Trads. Let them keep their 1962 Low Mass pottage while the "indults" return to the true Roman Rite (I've heard some already do so).

      That Low Mass photo looks like a mechanical assembly-line approach to liturgy. How many stipends had they collected, I wonder?

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    4. Low Mass actually justifies the "blasphemous fable" stereotype of the Reformation. It's just about greed and superstition.

      As for me, I currently attend no church and say no office and my pre-1911 breviaries are gathering dust like all the other liturgical books I have collected over the years. But I may dust them off soon. I live in hope.

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    5. I gave up the Roman Liturgy a while back. Restoring it would take far more patience and power than I have at my disposal. I find most of the Oriental Rites more fulfilling anyway than the Roman Rite in its current state.

      I have both Byzantine and Antiochian Liturgical books for easy personal use. If I want to pick up the Roman Office, divinumofficium has the 1570 version and the Pre-Trent Monastic version.

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  4. It's quite a culture shock to see the Gricigliano lot in their "mass factory". I don't have much choice as I live in a place where no one is interested in religion except a few attenders at the local church. I am nearly always on my own, so it's low Mass or no Mass. I agree with you that Low Mass is an unsuitable form of public worship - one should at least have singing and incense. I have not received a stipend for Mass for at least a dozen years. This consideration about traditionalists was one thing that brought me to take Sarum seriously in the same spirit as going to the Byzantine Church. I wish others in the ACC would switch to Sarum, but things are as they are. They could be better or worse.

    The problem in the RC Church is knowing who but the traddies are interested in the pre-Novus Ordo liturgy. I don't envy you.

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    1. Daily in Bayerisch Gmain did I walk past a framed photo from your subdiaconate ordination. Funny how these things happen.

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    2. 21st March 1992 - Cardinal Stickler. There were six of us, I was quite gaunt with short brown hair at the time. Quite a few photos were taken and I have copies in an album. They were strange days compared with what my life became.

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    3. I remember always wondering who those newly ordained men were, since none of them were in the ICRSP when I was.

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  5. I do wonder, are there any good articles or books that deal with matters such as this (and preferably not too scholarly in nature)? I'm quite ignorant of this stuff, though in great sympathy with all you say.

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    1. I can't think readily of anything that isn't scholarly, particularly for the evolution of low Mass, as this is a very narrow subject often neglected. You can't go wrong with Robert Taft, though. He traces the history of the Divine Office from antiquity to the middle ages and touches upon its decline and replacement, due to the Franciscan Friars, by new devotions such as the Sacred Heart; the Jesuits and their meditative methods, etc. In terms of the obscurity of Latin, to which Dr Wickham-Legg alludes in his work, I'd recommend The Lollard Bible by Deansely - this is also useful for an understanding of the attitude of the ecclesiastical authorities to vernacular translations in the Middle Ages. For the cult of the Blessed Sacrament (higher, HIGHER!!!), Drury's Elevations in the Eucharist is highly useful. Publications of the Henry Bradshaw Society are highly recommended too, for both scholarship and the sources.

      I am loath these days to recommend Gueranger but The Liturgical Year is good to have handy.

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    2. Jungmann's Missa Solemnis is certainly good too for the evolution of pontifical liturgy to Missa privata. See vol 1. It's a scholarly work, but is an easy read if you avoid the footnotes.

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    3. Cheers. Happily reading Taft on the Divine Office in the East and West.

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