The contrast between the TLM and the standard Mass became especially pointed when the electric guitars came out and some parishes started trying to be more hip. However, in today\u2019s world where everybody is trying to be hip, it is paradoxically the appeal to tradition and sanctity that is becoming more punk rock in its own way, and by all accounts TLM parishes are drawing a much younger crowd.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSitting in the back of an elaborately decorated church, even though I wouldn\u2019t have understood what he was saying anyway, I was at first disappointed when the priest was mumbling a little bit, not quite speaking loud enough for those of us in the back. However, I had had enough interactions with TLM Catholics that I could hear their response to my complaint in the back of my head:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt doesn\u2019t matter if you can\u2019t hear the priest; he\u2019s not talking to you, he\u2019s talking to God. It\u2019s up to you to appreciate the privilege of being able to be in the presence of the priest\u2019s interaction with God as he consecrates the Eucharist.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nNot only in Catholicism but also in the US religious landscape in general, including in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the 20th century saw a general trend in the direction from formality to more informality in worship services, and more ritual to less. For us the analogue to the Mass reforms would undoubtedly be the simplification of the Endowment, both streamlining it and making it more user-friendly. The temple robes, the oaths, removing the Adamic\/Hebrew phrases, the length, etc.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTo be absolutely clear, I am not proposing some kind of Traditional Adamic Endowment movement. I fully support the Church\u2019s decision to streamline the Endowment, and I see why they did it. (Although I will admit to being a little disappointed when the option of the live Endowment was done away with). For one, we recognize the right of the President to reveal new doctrine, for Catholics the ability of the Pope to promulgate a new practice is much more fuzzy, so in a way comparing Mass changes with the Endowment changes is apples and oranges.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nRather, in the spirit of the TLM Catholics, at a very high level, I am pushing back against the idea that simpler and supposedly more appealing to the participants is necessarily always better. There have been changes made to the Endowment in the past, and I assume there will be changes made in the future, but there <\/span>are<\/span><\/i> tradeoffs when we move in the direction of more simplicity and user-friendliness, it isn\u2019t all upside and no downside. For example, we would lose a lot of the beauty and power of the Endowment if it was, say, ten minutes long, done in simple Sunday clothes in your local relief society room set apart for the purpose. I like the robes, I like the altars, I like the veil and taking the decor of the celestial room seriously as a true-to-life representation of the presence of God. While it would be infeasible to do this at scale with crowded Endowment rooms, taking my covenants while kneeling at an actual altar has a more intentional vibe about it, and I am glad that there is still some of that over-the-altar-based covenant making in posthumous sealings.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhile I doubt anybody will be clamoring for wrist-length garments in the hot sun again, I even like garments (there, I said it). When Ben Kingsley was cast for the role of a Maori character in the movie Ender’s Game<\/em>, he wrote about how thrilling it was to be wearing the traditional Maori facial tattoo in character and carrying the powerful genealogical and cultural symbolism around with him moment to moment. I kind of feel the same way about garments as an empowering priesthood apparel that I constantly carry with me, and as a marker of my own membership in God\u2019s peculiar chosen people. <\/span>Again, while I would be obedient to whatever decisions were made on this point, if we were to do away with the garment outside of the temple, which I believe was on the table at one point if I\u2019m recalling my history correctly, I think we would lose something. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOf course, not all changes were made for the purposes of simplification and efficiency; while it might be fun to take an oath of vengeance again, I am glad that the ceremony has become more egalitarian.<\/span><\/p>\nThis TLM perspective also has implications for our sacrament meetings. A common complaint is that sacrament meetings are too boring. In a sense this is not a complaint that we can lay at the feet of high Church leadership since sacrament meeting sermons are handled very locally, and there\u2019s a lot more to say about this, but still, it\u2019s a point well taken, and I appreciate attempts to make sacrament meeting more appealing.<\/span><\/p>\nEven so, they will simply never be as entertaining as prestige television or a good comedian. If entertainment is the point we will never win, or even come close to competing with the alternatives available today, so for sacrament meeting to be worth our time we need to lean more heavily into its spiritual component. We are privileged to be in the presence of the blessing and partaking of the Lord\u2019s supper. You can accept that or not, but if you don\u2019t it will be your loss. Again, this is not an excuse for rambling talks, rather to point out the point of it all even if the talks happen to be rambling.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Due to some things I’m involved in, I recently attended a Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). For the uninitiated, after Vatican II the Catholic Mass was changed to be more user-friendly. It was conducted in the vernacular instead of Latin and was shortened. While in the past the priest traditionally faced towards the East as he was blessing the Eucharist, facing towards God and the coming of Christ, gradually it became more standard for priests to face the congregation.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10403,"featured_media":47512,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,2900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comparative-religion","category-temples"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/The-Holy-Sacrifice-of-the-Mass.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10403"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47511"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50262,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47511\/revisions\/50262"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n