Sunday, July 08, 2007

Concerned Catholics, rabbis and priests question revived Latin Mass

USA Today
Updated 2h 43m ago

By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY

Pope Benedict XVI's decision to allow expanded use of the centuries-old Latin Mass, scarcely seen or heard in four decades, pleased traditionalists worldwide this weekend — and brought one critic to tears of dismay.

Traditionalists who have lobbied the pope for years for this are delighted with easier access to the age-old elaborate rites, rich with chants, gestures, and prayers that will sound the same for any Catholic worldwide.

Ever since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council swept in the modern Mass, celebrated in local languages with the priest facing the congregation, the long, complex Latin Mass has only been allowed when a bishop allowed the local priest to offer it. Benedict's decision allows any priest asked by congregants to offer it to do so — if they know how. Latin and the centuries old Tridentine Mass have not been taught in seminaries in 40 years.

Karen Hastreiter, 29, who never knew the Latin Mass as a child, praised the old Mass for its beauty. She told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, "Sometimes when I go to the English mass, there's just not that same sense of prayer. It really jumps out at you when you attend a mass that's really so God-centered. It's just a stark contrast.

That same contrast, however, sent Bishop Luca Brandolini, an Italian liturgy expert, into "mourning" for a conservative retrenchment that he sees threatening the reforms of Vatican II. He told the Rome daily La Repubblica" that " reform for which many people worked, with great sacrifice and only inspired by the desire to renew the Church, has now been cancelled."
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