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The low Mass mentality (laity-style) and recent discussion

I remember a passage in Thomas Day’s Why Catholics Can’t Sing that might be relevant to the recent discussion to which Nick, Mark and others have contributed.

The author relates an anecdote told him by a couple where the couple went to Sunday Mass (pre-Vatican II) thinking it was the Low Mass. When the announcement was made that it was in fact a High Mass the couple (who doubtless had the same mentality that some clergy have, as illustrated by Fr. Jim Tucker in this post) tried to “get out of Dodge”, but were blocked on all sides. Resigned to their fate, they attended the High Mass, and ended up rather edified by it. At the very least, the High Mass wasn’t “Purgatory on Earth” for them, although they thought it would be going in.

I’ve followed the rumors about the liturgical disciplinary document forthcoming from the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship. And while a mandate to make the 1962 Mass even more widely available doesn’t look like it will be a part of the document, I wonder if anything would be said regarding a High Mass according to the 1970 books. (High Mass according to the Pauline Missal doesn’t require an indult.)

Where am I going with this? I don’t know. If anyone wants to steer this discussion further, feel free.

Posted 08.02.2003
by Aristotle A. Esguerra
3 comments.
Filed under: Book Excerpts; Why Catholics Can't Sing (Day).

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3 Comments

Peace, friend.

Let me steer it with this comment: the Roman Missal no longer recognizes “low Masses” per se. The presumption is always for music (and all the smells and bells, as it were). And I find this a more pleasing approach to the ideal of what Sunday Mass should be.


Todd
08.03.2003 @ 10:23 pm #

Good to see you again, Todd.

If I may give a contrasting statement that says the same thing - in practice, the Roman Missal no longer recognizes “high Masses” per se.

The presumption is nice for an ideal. Would it be too much to say, however, that the ideal is mixed with sanctioned subjectivity to the point that people can very well say, “There is no ideal”?

[Insert boilerplate thoughts about "navel-gazing" and cognitive dissonance here.]


Aristotle A. Esguerra
08.04.2003 @ 10:31 am #

I agree with Todd. The prevailing presumption is always for music, it being an integral part of the liturgy, etc. Ideally, the whole congregation must sing, and not just the choir.

I recently attended my first Indult Sunday Mass after so many (many!) years of the English Novus Ordo, hoping to hear and participate in all that glorious Gregorian chants of my childhood.

I shouldn’t have had such high expectations! It turned out to be a “Misa Resada” with most of the people tripping over one another in reciting their parts of the dialogue. There were exactly two musical parts, neither of which was the Asperges. The entrance hymn was “Holy, Holy, Holy” and the recessional was “Holy God We Praise Thy Name.” I love those hymns, but I didn’t go to the Latin Mass for those!

The explanation was that the schola had already sang at an earlier Latin Mass that day. And just like in pre-Vatican II, once a choir had assisted at the Misa Cantada, the rest of the Sunday Masses were Low.

Well, couldn’t a songleader/cantor/soloist have led the congregation chant this Mass? I mean, look at all those people who had wanted to sing!

No, sorry, said those in-the-know. There’s no Office of Cantor in the Indult. Haven’t you read Lucy Carroll in “Adoremus Bulletin?”

I did, too, but I doubt if even she could justify celebrating an Indult without a choir. Lucky her, she plays the organ at a monastery, where the congregation is uniformly trained at what to sing. And she did write that they use a cantor in the absence of a choir, which was rare. But the main point of her article was to shoot the cantor.

http://www.adoremus.org/0703Soloists.html

In the absence of a choir, might not a songleader be regarded as the “smallest of choirs?”

Bells and smells alone wouldn’t do. I feel that all Sunday Masses, including Latin Masses, should have music.


Marie
08.02.2004 @ 4:00 am #

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