1. Is this Rite of the Mass permitted by the Pope?When Pope Paul VI introduced his New Rite of Mass in 1969 he gave permission for the continuation of the Tridentine Rite in England and Wales, for example. Many priests were accorded the right to continue celebrating the Traditional Latin Mass, as well, and then, in 1984 Pope John Paul extended that permission to the whole world. In 1988 the Pontiff asked the Bishops to be generous in the application of the permission.
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that every priest has a right to offer this form of the Mass, which he calls the Extraordinary Form.
2. In the Traditional Latin Mass, do the people sing or say the prayers with the priest?Just as in the celebration of the Mass in the Ordinary Form (post-Vatican II Mass), the priest alone will recite many of the prayers of the Extraordinary Form of the Mass (1962 Missale Romanum). At a High Mass where the choir sings the Ordinary (unchanging) and Proper (changing) chants, the people are encouraged to sing the responses (i.e. Amen, Et cum spiritu tuo, Dignum et justum est, etc.), and if possible, the Ordinary (i.e. Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei). At a Low Mass the people can sing hymns along with the choir. At a special form of the Low Mass called the Dialogue Mass, which is celebrated in some places, the people may also recite some of the responses with the altar boys.
A newcomer to the Extraordinary Form of the Mass will notice that at a High Mass, the choir often sings while the priest is quietly praying at the altar. Because it typically takes the choir a longer time to sing its part than it takes for the priest to say his part, the two will overlap.
3. Does the Traditional Latin Mass fulfill the Sunday obligation?Of course! - as it has for nearly twenty centuries.
4. Why does the priest not face the people for most of the Traditional Latin Mass?The priest offers Mass facing the same direction as the people, because he and the people together are offering worship and sacrifice to God. He is not turning his back on the people to exclude them. Rather, as a Christian community, are all facing ad orientem (i.e. toward the east) waiting in joyful expectation for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ who will return to judge the living and the dead and the world by fire (Rite of Baptism, 1962).
What in the early Church determined the position of the altar was that it faced Eastward. To quote St. Augustine: "When we rise to pray, we turn East, where heaven begins. And we do this not because God is there, as if He had moved away from the other directions on earth..., but rather to help us remember to turn our mind towards a higher order, that is, to God."
This quotation shows that the Christians of those early days, after listening to the homily, would rise for the prayer which followed, and turn towards the East. St. Augustine always refers to this turning to the East in prayer at the end of his homilies, using a set formula, Conversi ad Dominum ("turn to face the Lord").
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