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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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Latin Mass is beauty, strength, and Truth.

Interesting, do you have a functional understanding of Latin, or is the ritual more important than the message?

You get a latin-english and follow along. The good ones have kneel/stand/sit directions. This creates an understanding of the Mass in Latin, though it would be inaccurate to say you have any real control of the language. Prayers in Latin help as well.

The ceremony is so much better. A big issue with Novus Ordo masses is that they have an odd 1970s folk musical esthetic. Acoustic guitars and piano. "Hymns" that are woo-woo and highly emotive. Combine this with an all around casual disposition - A lot of altarboys don't actually know the order of mass and respond to subtle cues from the priest.

At a good Latin Mass, especially a High Latin Mass, all of the altarboys have been drilled on the order of mass and know their movements to a "T." It's a similar vibe, in my opinion, to a silent drill platoon. The garments are more elaborate and so it conveys a deeper seriousness to everything.

or is the ritual more important than the message?

Always had been.

Church Latin is not language spoken of streets of first and second century Rome. It is much older, it is formal ritual religious language used in Roman worship long before Christianity.

Christians saw no problem in appropriating this pagan language to worship Christ, just as later, when they had power to do it, eagerly reused old pagan temples as churches.

See work of Christine Mohrmann

Of course, this is historical detail you will learn only on obscure traditional Catholic places, because it torpedoes the whole purpose of Second Vatican council. The liturgy was never meant to be "vernacular", comprehensible to the ordinary plebs.

https://web.archive.org/web/20150912021156/http://liturgicalnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/mohrmann-1.html