Letters

Prayers after Mass

Ken Bayliss

Contents - Jun 2009 - Buy a copy now Editorial: Pentecost Sunday: birthday of the Church - Michael Gilchrist Cardinal Pell's UK interview: Liturgy, Missal translation, World Youth Day - Luke Coppen Vocations: Brisbane's Holy Spirit Seminary: promising signs of growth - Anthony Barich News: The Church Around the World Interview: American Catholics and abortion: the Church at the crossroads - Mariangela Sullivan Laetare Medal: Mary Ann Glendon's letter to Notre Dame's President FOUNDATIONS OF FAITH: The Last Things: death, judgment, Heaven, Purgatory, Hell - Br Barry Coldrey Sharia Law: Lights dim for Christians in Pakistan - Babette Francis Events - July: Australian Catholic Students Association: continuing spiritual impact - Br Barry Coldrey Youth: Forming a new generation of pro-life leaders - Patrick Langrell Letters: Church authority - Paul Fitzgerald Letters: Superior design - John H. Cooney Letters: Church in China - John R. Barich Letters: Persecution in China - J. Loring Letters: Holy Land Pilgrimage - Association of Hebrew Catholics - Andrew Scholl Letters: Ecumenism - Gary Crothers Letters: Prayers after Mass - Ken Bayliss Letters: Pontius Pilate - Grahame Fallon Books: The Catholic Church and Conversion, by G.K. Chesterton - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs, by Peter Kreeft - Michael Daniel (reviewer) Books: ISLAND OF THE WORLD, by Michael O'Brien - Luke McCormack (reviewer) Books: AD2000 Books for June Reflection: Pentecost and the power of the Holy Spirit for today - Fr Dennis W Byrnes

The Vatican approval of a part correction of the English translation of the Novus Ordo after 40 years of error in translation and theology of the liturgy won't shore up the 95 per cent exodus of young adults.

Those now over 50 years of age will remember the introduction of the "Dialogue" Mass between the end of Vatican II and the introduction of the Novus Ordo revolution of 1969. This Dialogue Mass was the precise English translation of the Latin Tridentine Mass - the medieval Latin word Tridentum means Trent.

The priest then said Mass assisted by altar boys still facing the altar. Only the altar boys, not the congregation, said the responses and women and girls still covered their heads with scarves or mantillas in reverence to Our Lord. There was the same reverential silence as at the Mass of all times.

After the Last Gospel the priest and altar boys knelt on the bottom step of the altar and the congregation knelt in their pews. The priest said the Leonine Prayers with the laity making the responses, then the prayer for the Conversion of Australia, and finally the thrice said "Most Sacred Heart of Jesus have Mercy upon us", with the seven years indulgence granted by Pope Pius X in 1904.

Since 1969 none of these prayers has been said after the Novus Ordo.

The way we pray (lex orandi) is the way we believe (lex credendi), but a false irenicism has made cowards of us. We forget too easily in our hurly- burly lives that we must still find time to save our immortal souls.

KEN BAYLISS
Holland Park West, Qld

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 22 No 5 (June 2009), p. 16