Learning the Mass of Ages

His Eminence would like your attention drawn to a rather interesting article on the Latin Mass Society website regarding the learning of the old rite of Mass, now fashionably known as the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite.

Too often are ill-thought accusations thrown against the liturgy which sustained the Church for over 1500 years - converting sinners and sustaining saints and planting the seeds of devotion in those who would later become her great defenders and martyrs. These include accusations of elitism amongst those who frequent old rite Masses, that those who attend the old rite view the rest of the Church with suspicion and that the liturgy is hard to learn and engage with.

Whilst the accusations of snobbery have some truth in them (but let's face snobbery is a problem amongst all clerics, orthodox or modernist) the view that the old rite if Mass is hard to learn is pure  nonsense.

His Eminence once attended a Mass at the London Oratory, where the new rite is done exceptionally. The deacon and sub-deacon (or the two "Deacons" as the GIRM declares), during the Confiteor automatically went into "Old Rite Mode" and said the Confiteor of the 1962 missal. Undoubtedly this is the produce of habit but also of ease. The old Confiteor had a much better flow.

People forget that Mass in the vernacular was only ever meant to be by permission and was never meant to be the norm in the parish. Catholics have become lazy in learning their prayers and have lost the sense of having a sacred language. For us, as western Christians, it is Latin.

Of course, the author of this article has an advantage in that he is an actor and will have unusually high memory retention. But it is possible. It takes effort but is not the true worship of God worth it?