Local News
Letter to the Editor: Youth Need Education On Latin Mass
Published: September 13, 2007
To the Editor:
Like Carroll Sterne (Letter to the Editor, The Georgia Bulletin, Sept. 6), I grew up in Christ the King parish before Vatican II.
Since the “spirit of Vatican II” took over that council and misrepresented it, I have longed for the dignity, reverence and timelessness of the Tridentine Mass. And, yes, I hung in there and have even sung in my parish choir for 20 years.
The Novus Ordo Mass is rarely celebrated in the way envisioned by the reformers of Vatican II. Our pope and some of the bishops are trying to restore for Catholics the chance to recapture the ceremonies that truly reflect the Glory of God. As we know, the documents of Vatican II reiterated that “the sacred liturgy is above all things the worship of the divine Majesty …” The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy states that “… use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites.”
The Tridentine Mass is hardly like “theater or a nice opera.” What is like (bad) theater is some celebrants’ infusion into the Novus Ordo of their own words, their own interpretations, and so forth. Better we should have opera than myriad idiosyncrasies and the banal music and people-centered lyrics of many of the modern composers.
The Tridentine Mass could stand some simplification, perhaps, with fewer bows and genuflections. I suspect if Mr. Sterne attended a Tridentine Mass he would be very surprised at the number of young people present. If generations and centuries of young people loved the Tridentine Mass, what is wrong with trying to educate our own youth instead of cheating them of the immemorial beauty of the Latin Mass? Do they deserve any less?
Theresa Miller Matt, Athens
