Dear Rev. K-I-A,

The Tridentine Mass was “..essentially the Mass of the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church for at least 1600 years”?  How remarkably prescient then to name the Mass after a Council that did not take place until 1545.  My quick math would lead me to think that this liturgy was normative for about 400 years.

Don T. Seemrite

Your point is well taken.

I will no longer use the term “Tridentine” when referring to Mass celebrated according to the missal of Pope John XXIII ( published in 1962), I will refer to it as the traditional Mass.

When I was a boy, in another century, we didn't refer to it as the Tridentine Mass either.  It was simply the Mass which had been handed down to the Roman Church from the times of Peter and Paul.

Admittedly, the Mass has added a lot of things since the first century, and is probably not as participatory, but some of the prayers of the traditional Mass come from the first century.  By the year four hundred, the Mass looked pretty much as it did in 1962.  It was a tradition, a “handing down.”  We know this from the letter of Pope Innocent I to Decentius of Eugubium.  (I’m not making this up.) 

The current, let’s call it the new Mass, wonderful though it is, was an invention of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini and a few liturgists.  It is said that Bugnini himself described the revised liturgy as “a major conquest of the Catholic Church.” 

The current Mass can by no means be called a tradition.  It was one of the most abrupt changes in the history of the Catholic Church or of any other religion.

Sincerely,

Rev. Know-It-All