Interesting promo video released for diocesan TLMs

This is an interesting video below. It’s a nice effort to show the benefits of the TLM to that great Mass of people who have no experience with it. It also shows the rather……..different……..experience of offering the TLM in a parish that was obviously not designed for it.  No altar rails, the high altar set up atop the usual table altar, somewhat theater in the round sitting…….all the stable features of Novus Ordo parishes, but with the TLM.  You can see how they have to improvise to distribute the Blessed Sacrament.

While I very much appreciate the effort to promote and encourage both the offering of and assistance at the Traditional Latin Mass, I feel obliged to offer a couple of criticisms.  Well, they’re actually one big criticism with two aspects. On Youtube, the video is entitled “Tridentine Mass Promo.”  Really, “Tridentine” isn’t the right term, it should be called the Traditional Latin Mass.  Because this Mass was not developed in committee as the Novus Ordo was after Vatican II, it is the Mass that has been in use in the Church, more or less, for at least 17-1800 years, and for the most important parts, since the founding of the Church. All Trent did was codify and regularize the already extant Mass, while also eliminating some slightly different forms that had developed in some places over time.  That is why “Traditional Latin Mass” is a much more accurate term to use to describe what I and many others call The Mass of All Ages.

Unfortunately, the pastor of the parish, who seems perhaps less enthusiastic for the TLM than does the vicar or assitant who offers it, repeats the common falsehood that the Traditional or “Tridentine” Mass is really only about 400 years old, and was similarly the product of a Council as is the Novus Ordo.  Again, that is not the case, and any review of literature on liturgical and Church history should make that plain (provided such history wasn’t written by a modernist!).

I really can’t encourage people to assist at the TLM enough, at least for 3-4 Sundays continuous.  I know it’s a big leap, but everyone I know who has done so has been thoroughly glad they did.  My wife was just speaking with a couple who started assisting at the TLM about a year ago, and for a while they kept going to a very reverent Novus Ordo offered in Latin in the Diocese, a Mass that is truly superlative, comparatively speaking, in its own right. But over time, they have stopped going to the TLM, in spite of their great fondness for that very reverernt NO priest (a fondness I share), because, as they put it, there is simply no comparison between the two.  That’s something that I think takes a while to sink in, but after you’ve assisted at the TLM for quite a while, I think the level of appreciation becomes such that you realize you’re taking part in something that is both indefinable but also transcendent on a level that I and they just haven’t experienced at the Novus Ordo.  It’s just so blessed, it’s hard to describe.

I know there are a fair number of priest readers, and I thank you for your reading.  I beg and implore you to strive, in your busy schedules, to learn the TLM and offer it if at all possible.  From what I have learned, it seems the benefits for priests and their entire apostolate - not to speak of their sanctification – are even more tremendous than those experienced by laity.  Every priest I know who offers the TLM on a regular basis has been transformed by doing so, no matter their background.  It is a great transformation for the better that impacts in the most positive way all aspects of their ministry: catachesis, Sacraments (esp. more interest in Confession), spiritual direction, their own personal edification, etc.

If you’ve never experienced the TLM, please, do yourself a favor and go!  You will be most gratified you did, I believe.

 

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