After more than thirty years in the “Mormon” church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), I have begun the process of becoming Catholic. I have been attending church for the past few months now, going to Sunday Mass and one or two morning Masses.
In the fall, I will be taking RCIA classes, which will essentially be a prep class. It will give people who don’t think it’s for them the chance to bow out gracefully without feeling pressured to get baptized if they truly do not wish to do so.
For the past couple of days, Catholics everywhere are up in arms over an edict issued by the Pope, Pope Francis, a mandate that overrules a policy set by abdicated Pope Benedict. The reactions on both sides of the fence are passionate and heartfelt.
Essentially, Latin Mass is now forbidden except in rare cases that must be determined by senior leadership and perhaps even the Vatican.
Part of the problem seems to be that the Latin Mass apparently cast aspersions on Jews in terms of calling them to conversion and calling them blind to the truth. At least that’s my take on it. This article may help.
I’m not Catholic yet, but my stance on this issue is why would they change what works? Of course, I do realize that if they’re speaking ill of the Jews, that is problematic. So what you do is that you remove those references without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I’m sure the Pope didn’t just wake up one morning last week and decided to do this. I’m sure that he counseled with his cardinals and bishops and so forth. That being said, people are truly angry and to be honest, they have every right to be.
Let’s be clear: the Catholic Church condemns, in the strongest language possible, any attacks on and ill-speaking of Jews.
Now, if a priest wants to use Latin Mass, he has to get permission, and they have to agree with Vatican II, which changed Mass from Latin to be in the vernacular.
Either way, this topic is not going to die down any time soon. But it occurs to me that if they offer Mass in Spanish, Farsi and whatever else, there must be room, somehow, for Latin.