Know thy Mass!

This was from my Anglo-Catholic "lola" who bought it in 1952 when she was studying in Minnesota. If I am not mistaken, Anglo Catholics in the American Episcopalian biretta belt used the American Missal which is an almost exact translation of the Roman Missal. In fact I was able to follow the Tridentine Mass in a Cubao Catholic parish using her Missa Anglicana and this catechetical comic book!

Nonetheless, forty one years after Vatican II's reforms on the Mass, most people have no clue on what is happening in the Mass. No wonder they text during the service. The Mass itself has ceased to be an occasion for catechism, but rather as a ho hum service which is most likely even made worse by bad homilies. But pre Vatican II Mass books for the laity had always a bit of catechetical information on what the Mass rubrics really mean. The pre Vatican II Mass books are much much closer in ethos to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer than the Mass books and Missalettes Roman Catholic have today. Both the Roman Missal and the BCP had a didactic function and that is to hand in the Faith (in Latin "Traditio")

In the scanned image above, the comics explain the Creed. This is an act of  what is called in Latin as "renditio" which means to "hand over". We hand over our understanding of the Faith at this point of the Mass.

All these need to be recovered in both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches. It is not surprising that modern Anglican prayer books and liturgies have taken cue from what Reformation historian Diarmaid MacCulloch calls "What the post Vatican II Roman Catholic Church threw out"

The saving grace is that Anglicanism preserved much of what the Roman Church threw out. And all hopes are with Anglicans on both sides of the Tiber to reflect and restore all these things of beauty and Faith.