Sam
[The Tridentine Mass and undoubtedly all other liturgies in general]
Which other liturgies? There are many other rites within the RCC.
I am saying the N.O. does not measure up to any liturgy in Christendom, whether Western or Eastern.
The Melkite patriarch commenting on the Roman liturgy?!
This has nothing to do with the Roman liturgy. This has to do with liturgy, period, which is not a plaything or toy for committees or, yes, even the Pope, to fiddle with, and which demands the scrupulous care and protection it requires as a product of centuries that has accumulated the wisdom and careful additions of generations past.
As for the Patriarch, he had much to say to the West, including on the encouragement of the vernacular.
A new mass wasn't really drawn up it was just get rid of the accretions that had crept in over the years and restoring the Roman rite in its simplicity.
That's the claim, but is not the truth. The Roman Rite of today is essentially a new one despite the basic similiarities in structure with the old. The old one has undergone an extensive overhaul and any credible person can attest to the N.O.'s significant departure from the old Rite as to qualify as something new altogether. As for restoring something to its past simplicity (usually imagined), this is but an overused marketing slogan of reforming revolutionaries, which translates to measures as jettisonning the Offertory and inserting optional Canons.
The other thing is that even if one of the council fathers had made his will known in matters liturgical it was just one opinion the council father who was the pope exercised the final say.
Neither the Pope nor the Council prompted the Roman Church to carry out this liturgical project. And as for Pope Paul later directing this fiasco--dare I say it?--the Pope was dead wrong, as Popes can very well be.
Could you cite some of the breached norms?
The case is merely one of recognising the elephant in the sitting room. What the committee in charge of the new Missal put into effect was anything but organic change or growth; it was a dictat imposed from above that foisted a ready-made product of drastic change on the faithful that was the fruit of a five-year composition.
To an Eastern Christian, this is very apparent. Imagining a similiar sequence of events taking place in our Churches is a disturbing thought experiment that approaches the surreal when we imagine some people failing to recognise on sight the unorthodox nature of such an enterprise as the one Western liturgists engaged in, should it make its way to our side of the fence.
As for me personally, to acknowledge the introduction of the N.O. in your Church as something proper is to do likewise in the case of my own Church, something I would not dare be caught dead desiring for my own.
There's areligious implosion in the Western Church? So how come there are more RCs (and the numbers are growing) than EOs. If there was an implosion certainly the numbers should be dropping off. And what is a "religious implosion"?
There is a catastrophe of faith in the Western Church. Come to "Catholic" Quebec, where the number of Catholics there should satisfy you, but where less than 5% go to Mass, and goodness knows how many less hold fully orthodox beliefs.
In closing, this thread should not be dragged via a tangent into an argumentative discussion concerning the N.O. and T.L.M. as this is not the purpose of said thread in the first place.
In IC XC
Samer
