My Initial Doubts about the Latin Mass
Posted by Dr. Taylor Marshall
By now it's no secret that I attend the Latin Mass and that I am the Chancellor of a College that offers the Latin Mass seven days a week - Fisher More College. However, I've not always been partial to the Latin Mass. For a few years after my conversion to the Catholic Faith, I was cautiously curious about the the "old Mass." I perceived it as exotic, antiquarian, and even as a dangerous. Although I had some esteem for the "old liturgies," I was not convinced of the merits of the Latin Mass and the culture, which for better or worse, surrounds it.
My wife and I starting taking our family to the Latin Mass around Feast of the Ascension of 2010. Before we made this move, however, I had some serious misgivings about the Latin Mass, which we also call the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite. Our concerns were some of the common concerns that others still have and voice regularly. I cannot speak for everyone, but I'd like to go through my own personal misgivings about the Latin Mass and then explain how I overcame them, or, to be blunt, learned to live with them.
What caused our family to make the move?
A Personal Reflection
There were a lot of things that caused us to make the transition. Part of it was my attachment to aesthetically beautiful liturgy from my Anglican days. Most of it had to do with my alarm at the liturgical abuse that we witnessed. For example, the first time that my four year old daughter saw female "altar boys" serving at the altar, she tugged on my sleeve and said, "Daddy, look. I wanna be a girl priest, too." Not encouraging.
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