QotW: The Gospel of Grace

“The gospel of grace calls us to sing of the everyday mystery of intimacy with God instead of always seeking for miracles or visions. It calls us to sing of the spiritual roots of such commonplace experiences as falling in love, telling the truth, raising a child, teaching a class, forgiving each other after we have hurt each other, standing together in the bad weather of life, of surprise and sexuality, and the radiance of existence.”

— Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel: Good News for the Bedraggled, Beat-Up, and Burnt Out, p.77, Kindle Edition. 

Say the Black, Do the Red (Trouble in Charlotte Part 3)

Okay, I get it. 

I so totally get it. 

I finally understand why people hate the Novus Ordo mass. On a visit to an unfamiliar parish while on vacation, I caught a glimpse of the terror felt by, for lack of a better word, traditionalists who prefer the old Tridentine mass to the new mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970. 

At the same time I understood why Pope Francis in his Traditionis Custodes expressed a fear that the same traditionalists would somehow try to undermine the Novus Ordo by claiming that it is not a valid mass. And why, in the same document, Pope Francis severely restricted the celebration of the old mass.

This is the third and final installment about a letter that was leaked from the office of the Most Rev. Michael Martin, OFM Conv., bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Charlotte. This letter, which, to remind my two readers, was never published, was addressed to the priests of the Charlotte diocese and would have established liturgical norms largely intended to differentiate the Novus Ordo from the Tridentine mass.

In earlier installments we traced the history of the mass and looked at the reforms to the mass called for by the Second Vatican Council in 1963. The Council called for full, active participation in the mass by the laity, specifically by way of exercising their "common priesthood" by offering the Eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus along with the priest, though not in the same way as he exercises his ministerial priesthood. The reforms in the Novus Ordo take steps to accomplish this.

At the beginning of the 1962 mass, the priest and his server would make a general confession of their sins to one another and pray for God's forgiveness for one another. Because the laity now participates in the sacrifice of the mass, this general confession is now recited in unison by all present, rather than only by the ministers at the altar. The line "may almighty God forgive us our sins" is prayed solely by the priest on behalf of everyone because of his unique ministerial priesthood.

A major improvement over the old mass is the lectionary. Not only are the scripture readings in the vernacular, for everyone to hear (rather than the priest whispering the gospel in Latin to a box on the back wall), but the readings are now on a three-year cycle for Sundays. By going to mass every Sunday and holy day, one could hear roughly 75%-80% of the bible. And lay ministers may read the Old Testament and non-gospel New Testament readings. Because the gospel is either about Jesus or contains his spoken words, reading the gospel is reserved to the deacon or priest, his ministerial representatives. By hearing the readings clearly in a language which they speak, and lay ministers reading, the faithful can once again participate fully in the Word.

Something ancient which has been restored is the prayers of the faithful. After the homily/sermon and recitation of the Creed (by everyone), everyone prays together for the Church, the world, the public authorities, the community, the sick, and the dead (among other things). As the laity respond to each petition, they offer the prayers together with the priest.

Also of note—Latin has remained the official language of the mass. When Pope Leo XIV, an American, offers mass at St. Peter's in the Vatican, he says it in Latin. And he has a giant missal stand on the altar (which ironically the bishop's letter objects to). Vatican II did open up the possibility for use of the vernacular in some cases, and this is one area where the reform went farther than the council intended. In most parishes in the U.S., English is the norm for the entire mass. In parishes with a larger Latino population, there may be masses in Spanish in addition to the English masses. High holy days (e.g. Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil) may sometimes be bilingual, half of it said in English, half in Spanish. And just outside of downtown High Point, NC there is a mass every Sunday morning in Vietnamese.

Possibly the most meaningful change, one that truly reflects the common priesthood of the faithful, is at the beginning of the Eucharistic liturgy, when the priest addresses the congregation and says, "Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours, may be acceptable to God the Father almighty" (emphasis added). 

These are but a few examples, and I could cite more, of the faithful now participating more fully in offering the sacrifice of the mass as intended by Vatican II.

So why do people hate the Novus Ordo?

Because of priests like... well... let's call him Father Bob.

While out of town on vacation, my family and I attended mass on Sunday morning like we're supposed to. The building was huge but quite lovely, and full of people by the time we arrived. But the ushers and greeters did their best to help us find a spot and were incredibly friendly given the size of the crowd. Then Fr. Bob showed up to start the mass and immediately deviated from the text in the book. I mean, he didn't even look at the book.

My two non-catholic readers, I'm sure, are dying to know what's wrong with doing things differently than what's in the book. Well, from the 30,000-foot level, we are the Catholic—meaning "universal"—Church. 

We are not Pastor Tim's evangelical, non-denominational, storefront church situated between the laundromat and the Krispy Kreme. And we don't believe the same stuff as Pastor Stan's nondenominational evangelical free church which is just across the street in the old abandoned Harris Teeter building, separate from Pastor Tim's church, mind you, because they don't agree on the interpretation of Exodus 4:24-26. And please don't get us started on Pastor Jim's church that just split off from the Methodists because of something about lesbians getting ordained as ministers. 

You get the idea.

Because we are universal, we standardize. We standardize because the mass is not about Fr. Bob and pastors Tim, Stan, or Jim. The mass is about hearing the Word of the Gospel proclaimed and offering the Eucharistic sacrifice of the body and blood of Christ to God the Father in atonement for our sins, and those of the whole world. And that, ladies and gentlemen is a shining example of a B.F.D. We do not accept improvisation when B.F.D.'s are on the line.

We read the standard text from the book also because words have meaning, and the ones in the book have been carefully chosen to express a certain idea clearly. "Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries" is a lot different than "My brothers and sisters, here we are before God and our family. Let us admit our imperfections before coming to the table of the Lord." For one thing, sin is not equivalent to imperfection. For another, we might be family, but we're not just sitting down for a picnic at Aunt Ruth's 97th birthday party. We will be acting out our common priesthood along with the ministerial priest to celebrate a sacrifice. Might be good to mention it.

In the book, the missal, are printed two basic types of sentences: 1) instructions, called "rubrics" because they are printed in red type, and 2) dialogue which is printed in black. So the general rule when talking about liturgical instructions is: "Say the black, do the red!" 'Tis a very simple concept that should be covered on Day One of seminary.

But on our particular day, what Fr. Bob said wasn't written in black. In fact it appears nowhere in the book. The book says: 

The priest genuflects. Taking the host, he raises it slightly over the paten and facing the people says aloud: Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are those called to the supper of the Lamb.

Fr. Bob did the red but instead of saying the black he made up his own: "As we approach the family meal, let us remember that we become what we eat."  

You are what you eat. 

F.F's.S. 

What physical or mental ailments prevent this nut from doing his job properly? And where is his bishop? The Most Rev. Whomever of should be slapping wrists and taking names.

Even though Fr. Bob ad lib.'d his way through most of the rest of mass, this is not by any means the worst case of liturgical abuse ever. This just happens to be the one that hit home to me. It clicked. I finally understood deep within the recesses of my wretched soul why there exists controversy over Old vs. New. And especially over Latin.

If Fr. Bob had said this mass in Latin, there is an extremely low possibility he would have said "Es quod edis" instead of "Ecce agnus Dei". Most priests, I imagine, have not the skills in Latin to pull off something like that on the spur of the moment. He would most likely have had to plan it out and, hopefully, in preparing for his modification to the mass, he would have realized how stupid it sounded. 

Given that a) it's in Latin, leaving less room for verbal improvisation, and b) because it's more physically complex for the priest and server, there is far less opportunity for dumb shit like this in the old mass than the new. And many people have gravitated to the old mass because they just don't want to see dumb shit like this. (And, yes, dumb shit is a liturgically technical term.)

But, because the new mass is New, the gravitation toward the old mass, threatens the New because the New might not turn out to be good enough. It might be defective. It might not even be a valid mass. Pope Francis certainly seemed to fear that the Novus Ordo had a serious case of impostor syndrome: One of these days they're going to find out I'm not really any good at being a mass... So Francis severely restricted the old mass, to prevent those who prefer the old mass from talking bad about the new. The letter leaked from the office of the Bishop of Charlotte expressed the same concerns. The liturgical norms proposed in the letter sound downright conventional (with a couple of minor, odd exceptions). But its assertion that we have to drastically differentiate the New from the Old because people might see the New as inferior is 1) silly, and 2) originates with fear.

So there is fear of the Ordinary Form by, for lack of a better word, traditionalists, and fear of the Extraordinary Form by, for lack of a better word, progressives. Fear does not originate with the God we worship at mass. As St. John told us, "God is love" and "perfect love drives out fear." So a division that comes from fear does not come from God, no matter how much the prelates on either side of the debate would like to believe it. And if fear doesn't come from God, does it come from that other guy? 

Fear would dissipate on both sides if the bishops would get their Novus Ordo guys in line, not necessarily worrying about placement of the candles, but about actually using the missal and following the rubrics (for which our leaked letter is strong on both counts). If the Novus Ordo were celebrated reverently, according to the books, the traditionalists would have less to fear. The progressives (again, for lack of a better word) would also have less to fear from the traditionalists because they wouldn't get the impression that Fr. Bob's improvisation came directly from the great Satan hisself. But first, we have to approach each other in love. Because perfect love drives out fear. (For more information on love, read St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.)

I like the 1962 mass. 

I like the Novus Ordo mass.

I even like the Novus Ordo mass in English.

I like the Novus Ordo in English with the Kyrie sung in Greek, and the Gloria, Sanctus, Angus Dei, and Pater Noster sung in Latin because the melodies are heavenly (that's the point, right?) but are hard to pull off in English. I'm okay with the whole thing in Latin because I think that, in agreement with Vatican II but in contradiction to the bishop's letter, the Catholic faithful around the world are smart enough to learn a few lines of Latin to actively participate in the mass.

I have had the privilege of attending a few high and low masses according to the 1962 Tridentine missal. The high masses with the schola singing the Gloria, etc. are heavenly (that's the point, right?). I also got to see why the Council wanted reform. Getting rid of the 19 signs of the cross over the gifts was a good call. More importantly, after seeing the old mass I understood the new much more deeply. I knew enough of the Latin that when I saw the priest turn his head toward the servers and the faithful and say "Orate, fratres..." I knew we were at the beginning of the eucharistic liturgy: "Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours...." And suddenly, for me, there was a connection. A continuity. Not a rupture.

Pope Bendict XVI also saw a continuity between old and new, and in his 2007 apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum, removed nearly all restrictions from the celebration of the Old Mass, yet clearly established that the Novus Ordo was the ordinary form of the mass for the Latin Church, and that the Tridentine mass, celebrated according to the 1962 Roman Missal, was the extraordinary form of the same mass. They are "two usages of the one Roman rite." Not two masses. Not an old mass and a new mass. The same mass. Two sets of instructions. 

I wonder if the two forms, allowed to be celebrated alongside each other could influence each other and give us in the end a mass better than both 1962 and the Novus Ordo. Even if it remains that we have two forms of the mass, or if some Pope of the future finally abrogates the 1962 missal, we still have only one mass. 

The same mass to celebrate Jesus in his Word and in the Eucharist, as he offers himself as an eternal sacrifice made present through the priesthood of his One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, to the almighty Father through the Holy Spirit. One God, one Lord, one Spirit, one mass.

Want to celebrate the mass? Pick a book. Then say the black, and do the red.

The Liturgical Revolution (Trouble in Charlotte Part 2)

This is Part 2 of a series of yet undetermined length on the reaction to a leaked letter from the office of the Bishop of the Catholic diocese of Charlotte which would have established liturgical norms for masses in the diocese. The letter was never published so no norms have yet been officially implemented, although the talking heads on youtube sure sound pissed.

In Part 1, in order to understand the dilemma that our hypothetical norms might create, we traced very briefly the history of the mass. Jesus instituted the mass at his last supper, and in the A.D. 500s uniformity of the mass for the Roman church was enforced by Pope Gregory (of calendar fame). Minor modifications were made for roughly 1500 years, but the mass remained largely unchanged. 

The missal of 1962, the book of instructions and prayers for the mass, promulgated by His Holiness Pope John XXIII, crystallized the changes that had gone before. Having discusseed its development, I want to give a few notes on what mass was like accorrding to the 1962 missal of John XXIII...

In the 1962 missal, as in all masses since the 500s, the text was Latin. Period. No concessions for the vernacular, even for scripture readings. The homily, or sermon, was rarely preached (which, frankly, I like the sound of), but remained an option. During the Eucharist, the part of the mass where Jesus's last supper is reenacted and his body, blood, soul, and divinity are made present on the altar and then offered as a sacrificial Victim in atonement for the sins of the world, the priest faced away from the people in the pews. 

The priest facing away from the people follows the tradition of celebrating ad orientem, toward the east, toward the Holy Land, where Jesus is expected to make his triumphal return. It wasn't so much that the priest was turned away from the people, but that everyone was facing east, waiting for Jesus together. Ironically, St. Peter's Basilica was constructed such that the sanctuary end of the church faces west, so at the Vatican ad orientem means you face the people in the pews. 

But in any other church you couldn't see the priest's face. You couldn't see what he was doing hunched over a stone table whispering at a crucifix. There are a few times in the 1962 missal that the priest is instructed to turn and face the people, and in an audible voice say "Oremus" ("Let us pray") or . Other than that, you couldn't hear what he was saying because there was no amplification. And, if we're honest, he wasn't talking to you anyway.

In fancier masses, many of the parts would be sung by the choir, e.g. the Creed, the "Glory to God in the highest," the "Lamb of God," but they were sung in Latin. So even though you could hear them you still couldn't understand them.

And there was nothing for the faithful, the people in the pews, to do. Well, nothing much. You would stand during the gospel reading (although it's in Latin so you won't understand it, but you heard the Alleluia just before, which is of course in Latin but is pretty recognizable so you would know that the gospel was coming). If you wanted to know when the bread and wine became Jesus's body and blood, you waited for the sanctuary bells to chime. Then the priest would hold the bread or the cup over his head to give the faithful a moment to reverence and adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. But the priest still didn't turn around.

Somewhere in there, the priest would receive communion himself, then would turn toward the people and say "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world," and invite the faithful to receive communion who would then come forward and kneel at the altar rails. The priest would place the consecrated bread (the "host", the body of Christ) directly on the recipient's tongue and say:

Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vitam aeternam. Amen. 

Which is, of course, Latin but means "The body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you safe for eternal life. Amen." And, of course "amen" is actually Aramaic, not Latin. But everybody uses it.

A couple more prayers, the first couple paragraphs of John's gospel are read (in Latin), thus ended a mass that Pope Gregory himself would be proud of. Fifteen hundred years (roughly) of tradition and consistency. 

B.U.T... 

By the 1960s, Pope John XXIII saw a rising number of "revolutions" facing the modern world: the feminist revolution, economic and social revolutions, the rise of communism in the Far East, hippies, global civil unrest, a burgeoning outrage at the war in Vietnam, and, of course, the sexual revolution. In his response to the modern world, the Holy Father unwittingly kicked off a Liturgical Revolution.

John XXIII convoked the Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican (or, Vatican II) in 1962 in order that the Catholic Church might determine by what means she could better engage with the modern world. Often this is phrased as "the Church tried to figure out how to make itself relevant in the modern world," but this is not an accurate choice of words. When the Church lives up to her true vocation, relevance is not her focus. Proclaiming the Gospel is, whether the contemporary culture cares for it or not. The Church, like her divine Bridegroom, is a sign of contradiction. She's supposed to be counterculture. In a very real way.

The Council's approach was: see what you can update without ditching the past. There are fancy Latin words for this, but I don't know them. 

Early on in its proceedings, the Council turned its attention to the liturgy, most importantly the mass, and in December 1963 the Council, in its constitution on the sacred liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium (SC), promulgated its determinations on how the liturgy should be reformed in order that the "faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy" (SC 14). And further, when reforming the liturgy, "this full and active participation by all the people is the aim to be considered before all else" (ibid.). 

The idea of participation by the faithful comes from a strand of thinking that winds its way through the Council and is eventually formulated as the "common priesthood of the faithful" (Lumen Gentium (LG) 10). In the Council's most explicit description of how the faithful should participate in this common priesthood, the Council writes, "by offering the Immaculate Victim, not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him, they should learn also to offer themselves" (SC 48).

Did you catch that? The mass should be reformed such that the faithful can participate by offering the sacrifice of the mass "not only through the hands of the priest, but also with him." That's truly full, active participation. But what does that look like?

To make the people feel more like priests, the Council lays out various principles by which the mass should be reformed. A few include:

• Simplify the rites (with "due care being taken to preserve their substance");
• Make the connections between the various rites and other parts clearer;
• Get rid of old crap that we don't need anymore;
• Bring back old crap that we shouldn't have gotten rid of;
• Gregorian chant gets pride of place musically speaking; 
• We're keeping Latin (SC 50).

About Latin, the Council was clear. In no uncertain terms, everything else being equal, "the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites" (SC 36.1, my emphasis). But the Council did express concern for the vernacular, what they called the "mother tongue," and how it could be useful to the faithful. Because the vernacular "frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended," especially for the "readings and directives, and to some of the prayers and chants," and also to "apply in the first place to the readings and 'the common prayer,' but also, as local conditions may warrant, to those parts which pertain to the people" (SC 36.2; 54, my emphasis). 

However, the Council didn't recommend a complete rewrite of the mass text into English (or other language for that matter), but rather insisted that Latin would still be the language of the mass, but opened the way for the extended use of the vernacular in circumstances where it would be advantageous to the faithful. In fact, in order to help retain Latin as the main language, the Council insisted that "steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass [the standard parts of the ritual] which pertain to them" (SC 54).

Did you catch that? The people should learn their parts in Latin. The Council is assuming that ordinary people are smart enough to learn bits of other languages. I agree. Take a quick look around at the ethnic diversity of people not from the United States nor from North Carolina nor from the Charlotte diocese but who live here, and who speak their native languages fluently and at least some part of English language, and it will seem pretty damned obvious that people are smart enough to learn a little Latin. And it should come even easier to those persons who speak any variety of natural language that evolved from Latin, e.g. Spanish, French, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese. And given the number of Latin words that crept into English itself after the Norman Conquest (I know, I know... everybody blames the French), it should seem obvious that the majority of humans on the planet can learn short snippets of Latin like Et cum spiritu tuo, or Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus Dominus Deus sabaoth in order to participate fully in what is the source and summit of their Christian lives.

So, given the direction of Vatican II to reform the liturgy in order for the faithful to better participate in their common priesthood, Pope Paul VI (John XXIII had died before the Council closed) appointed a commission to implement liturgical reform according to the Council's direction and following its guidelines. And in Part 3 we shall discover the result...

Trouble In the Charlotte Diocese - Part 1

I don't understand all the ruckus about a letter that was leaked from the office of the Most Rev. Michael Martin (OFM Conv.), Bishop of the Catholic diocese of Charlotte. The letter directs parish priests in the diocese to follow specific liturgical norms when celebrating the mass. No one seems the least bit miffed that the letter was leaked by someone in whom the bishop had placed his trust, which trust was violated upon the aforementioned leak. Instead, Bishop Martin has been branded an anti-traditionalist who hates the old Latin mass and will stop at nothing to forcibly impose the Novus Ordo mass on unsuspecting and unwilling parishioners.

Okay, so maybe I exaggerated that last part just a little.

When I read the letter which, to reiterate, was never published by the bishop, I was intrigued and hoped to find something incredibly exciting within—nothing like this ever happens in Charlotte!—and I tried really really hard, but failed. The norms decreed in this letter are uncontroversial. They are based on instructions clearly defined in the Catholic Church's liturgical books: the General Instruction of the Roman Missal, the Roman Missal itself, the Second Vatican Council's instruction on liturgical music Musicam Sacram, and the Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium. There are a couple of points at which I think the bishop stretched slightly the text of these documents, which points I will discuss in a subsequent post, but he didn't stretch them past the spirit of the documents and the post Vatican II liturgical reform.

Before I move on, though, I should provide for my two readers (who happen to be non-Catholics) some background on what exactly the mass is, how it developed over time, what the Second Vatican Council wanted to do with it in the 1960s, and what we ended up with in 1970 when Pope Paul VI promulgated the Novus Ordo Missae, or new order of mass.

Our current controversy has its origin back in first-century Palestine when a radical rabbi called Jesus, from Galilee, who hung out with fishermen and tax collectors, and who claimed to be the Son of God and Jewish Messiah, celebrated a Passover seder with his twelve friends. On that particular night, when he was about to be betrayed by one of his twelve friends, he took bread, broke it, gave it to his friends and said, "Take this all of you and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you." No doubt baffled, the twelve did so. And when they had eaten, he gave them the cup, saying, "Take this all of you and drink from it. This is the cup of my blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me." This is the root of the mass.

But not yet the mass.

After Jesus ascended into heaven, his disciples were gathered together by the Holy Spirit into the Church, in Greek the ekklesia, literally the gathering. Details about what the early Church got up to are sparse, most of what we have comes from the Acts of the Apostles which tells us that "day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts." In this one sentence, but affirmed in contemporary extra-biblical sources, we see two things happening. First, being Jewish, the first Christians go to the Temple for scriptural readings and the prayers. Then, they meet in their homes for the "breaking of bread" which is what Jesus had instructed them to do at his last supper. These are the two major parts of the mass, Word and Eucharist. The language would have been Aramaic.

This form evolves and is somewhat formalized over the next 70 or 80 years, and by A.D. 150 or so, St. Justin the Martyr describes in chapters LXV-LXVII of his First Apology the basic outline of the modern mass which, again follows the movement of Word and Eucharist. St. Justin describes the prayers at second-century mass as what the president can offer "according to his ability." Was he just winging it? Who knows? But by the late third and fourth centuries we see specific formally composed prayers forming a ritual for the mass. 

As Christianity spread, the mass was celebrated in Greek throughout the Mediterranean world, and in other languages in other parts of the world. St. Patrick would have celebrated mass in Gaelic. People in Britain would have celebrated in whatever version of proto-English that they would have spoken at the time.

By the time of Pope Gregory the Great, Latin had become established almost universally in the west, and especially at Rome. Gregory, apart from giving us a superb calendar, standardized and revised the mass. Among other things, he moved the Our Father around, added some stuff to the Therefore, O Lord part of the eucharistic prayer, and standardized the chant in which the mass was sung.

There were a few minor changes here and there until after the Council of Trent (A.D. 1560s). Apparently the Protestants had stirred up trouble about using the vernacular language in the mass instead of Latin. The Council insisted upon Latin except in a few cases. They won. Pope Pius V in A.D. 1570 promulgated the revised liturgical books which revision had been decreed by the Council.

More minor changes followed occasionally. Somewhere along the way, reading the first chapter of St. John's gospel after mass was added. In the 1860s, Pope Leo XIII added a prayer to St. Michael the Archangel to defend us against the forces of evil after a vision he had had about the upcoming 20th century. Popes in the early 20th century began various phases of reforms to the mass, raising questions on when the vernacular (in our case English) could be used. How could the people participate more fully? Etc. No doubt the changes in the mass from the first century to the early 20th century ruffled a few feathers, but we see very little written about it, if at all.

By the mid-20th century, the mass still followed the form it had in the first century: Word and Eucharist. However, there may have been a few flaws. It was still in Latin. The scripture readings, prayers, chants, all of it. And there was nothing for the people to do except kneel once or twice and go forward to receive communion. All the exciting stuff happened on the altar which was affixed to the back wall and was done by a couple of guys you couldn't hear and wouldn't have understood if you could hear them.

Then, there was this little get-together of bishops in the 1960s.They said we ought to change the mass (again!). And it is with this that I will bore my two readers in Part 2.