The Roamin' Roman

Benvenuto! You have happened upon the blog of a wandering Catholic American college student studying for a year in Rome, the Eternal City. You will find here my pontifications, ruminations, reflections, images, and ponderings on my life in Rome. Ciao!

Sunday, June 4


The Mass was very nice, celebrated by a bishop (not sure who). It looked good, but the acoustics in there were pretty bad, you could barely hear anything.

What we did hear was fine, but in a seemingly random usage of langauges. You had readings in multiple languages (ok, it is Pentecost) but not just them. The introductions to the readings and throughout the Mass parts were randomly in Italian, German, English, French, and yes, Latin. It was... different. I say that if you really want to be universal, and use multiple langauges, use the universal language of the Church for the ordinary Mass parts and then use various languages for the changable parts - you know, like the Pope does.

The only really non-kosher thing was that the Gospel was read by multiple people, including lay people, and including some women, with a different language used for each line of the Gospel and the lines interspersed with everyone singing "Alleluia." Yikes.

Definitely an example of a misplaced liturgical innovation. I mean, apart from the lay reading of the Gospel being a problem in the first place, the only reason, I think, that anyone would think that is a good idea is in trying to "recreate" the langauges of Pentecost for the feast day. While it may be good intentioned, there's a slight problem - we are not literally at Pentecost. The whole point of the "diverse langauges" of Pentecost was that people miraculously understood them - there was no miraculously understanding going on today that I know of. The people who didn't have missals or didn't speak 5 languages basically didn't even get to hear the Gospel at all in the end. Kind of defeats the purpose, no?

However, that was the only sore spot in the liturgy (and the rest did look REALLY good!), so... offer it up and pray, I told myself. One consolation - the bishop sure didn't look happy, I think they forgot to tell him about that little part. Thus, hopefully it won't happen again.

3 Comments:

  • At 4:36 PM, Blogger Zadok the Roman said…

    The only really bad thing was that the Gospel was read by multiple people, including lay people, and including some women, with a different language used for each line of the Gospel and the lines interspersed with everyone singing "Alleluia."

    Egads!

    It wasn't by any chance the Sequence they had the laypeople reading?

     
  • At 5:20 PM, Blogger Maria Neva said…

    No, definitely the Gospel. The Sequence was sung quite beautifully in Latin.

     
  • At 6:33 AM, Blogger LadyHatton said…

    I loved your photos! One question, though: were those firemen standing guard in the black and yellow suits?

     

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