Solemn Latin Mass

[hiddenhome]

I have been to a Latin Mass at the Cathedral this morning

It was very moving.

Sounds fab, hiddenhome. My kind of thing... (even though I'm not Catholic!).

Was everything in Latin, or was it just the - err... not sure what the right word is - the 'standard bits' (??? Sanctus, Benedictus, Agnus Dei, etc.)?

[Clueless; but impressed.]

Everything was in Latin and the music was awesome

Lots of incense too!

It's the kind of thing you only see at The Vatican, but Pope Benedict wants more of it out there for Catholics around the world.

It's definitely worth attending one of you get the chance.

I go to a church which has a Latin mass every Sunday. Is really magical - totally different from the masses in English which I used to attend.

I love them. And all the bells and smells. We can only really access the full blown version at our main, city Cathedral.

Everyone says they are elitist but if you travel or live abroad it is the opposite, you can understand/access mass wherever you end up!

There's a balance (as with everything in life) but I don't think the English liturgy they replaced it with has half the beauty/mystery.

We're not Catholic but when we went to Austria some time ago in Lent, we went to the early morning mass at the Stephandom which was in Latin. The lessons were in German and inevitably they were the bits I didn't understand because the rest I could just about follow. The interesting thing was that it was filled to the brim with migrant workers of all ages from all round the world, who took out their Bibles in their own languages for the Gospel. Obviously they felt the same as me, that it was international and they could follow it, whereas trying to make sense of the German throughout would have been a step too far. Interesting effect of the Reformation on so many levels.

I?m a cradle catholic, born at the end of the 60?s, so I don?t remember the Latin Mass as it used to be, and generally am not keen on the full Latin Mass because it is strange and alien, I am used to been able to wrap myself in the familiar (English) words of the Mass I have always known ? it was always a bone of contention between me and my father who prefered the Latin Mass for the same reason ? he had known nothing else until he was 40 ? but when I lived overseas in a non-English speaking country I did learn to appreciate the universality of Latin, especially while I was still a novice at the local language.

We sometimes forget, now that Latin is no longer widely understood, that the original purpose of having Mass in Latin in the cosmopolitan world of the first millenium was so that people understood it - Latin was then the universal language and there were many local tribal languages. If it is treated as something mysterious so that the meaning of the words is lost on the people and they are excluded, like a theatre people watch but don?t participate in, then that seems wrong to me ? where it is treated as a way to include people of all nationalities and all languages in the prayers, then I can see its place

That's true, StrawberryIceCream, although it's also the case that, right through from the 1st century to the Renaissance and beyond, it would only have been the most educated people who actually understood the Latin; for most people it would have been as incomprehensible as it is to most people today, although obviously the key elements of the Mass would have become familiar even to people who didn't understand Latin more generally, just through repetition... Really interesting!