Tridentine Mass - Terminology

Terminology

Some Catholics prefer not to use the term "Tridentine Mass". In some cases, the objection is that linking the rite specifically with the Council of Trent obscures its continuity with the form that developed in previous centuries. Others object that using separate terms for the pre-1970 and post-1970 liturgies (rather than classifying them both as forms of the same Roman Rite) implies that the post-1970 liturgy constituted a breach with the preceding form.

The most widespread term for the rite, other than "Tridentine Mass", is "Latin Mass". However, the Mass of Paul VI is published in Latin in its official text, and is sometimes celebrated in that language.

Occasionally the term "Gregorian Rite" is used when talking about the Tridentine Mass, as is, more frequently, "Tridentine Rite". Pope Benedict XVI declared it inappropriate to speak of the versions of the Roman Missal of before and after 1970 as if they were two rites. Rather, he said, it is a matter of a twofold use of one and the same rite.

Traditionalist Catholics, whose best-known characteristic is an attachment to the Tridentine Mass, frequently refer to it as the "Traditional Mass" or the "Traditional Latin Mass". They describe as a "codifying" of the form of the Mass the preparation of Pope Pius V's edition of the Roman Missal, of which he said that the experts to whom he had entrusted the work collated the existing text with ancient manuscripts and writings, restored it to "the original form and rite of the holy Fathers" and further emended it. To distinguish this Mass form from the Mass of Paul VI, traditionalist Catholics sometimes call it the "Mass of the Ages", and say that it comes down to us "from the Church of the Apostles, and ultimately, indeed, from Him Who is its principal Priest and its spotless Victim".