Extraordinary Form

[Anne]

I think it is a pity that the Extraordinary Form is called Extraordinary. I know that in this case 'Extraordinary' mean 'differernt from the ordinary', but In our limited English language the word Extraordinary often means superior or amazing or exceptional (someone has an extraordinary intelect or an extraordinary talent....) Whatever form of the Mass is our preference, the same amazing miracle happens whether it is in the Ordinary or the Extraorninary Form. but sometimes I get the impression that some people regard the Extraordinary form to be somhow better than the Ordinary form. Could we change the names to Old and New or Pre Vatican II and Post Vatican II or something

[alan29]

Maybe people have got used to that usage with extraordinary ministers (and some of them are!!)
A wee bit ironic that those two phenomena should share the same adjective. Or is that just me?

[nazard]

Of course, in liturgy the opposite of "ordinary" is "proper". Now that would have been a good name for the Tridentine Mass.

[musicus]

Of course, in liturgy the opposite of "ordinary" is "proper". Now that would have been a good name for the Tridentine Mass.

Except that the liturgical meaning of both words is quite different to their everyday usage!

[quaeritor]

Such anomalies will continue to appear as long as the Humpty Dumpty school of translation holds sway in Rome - any multi-syllabic English word that looks a bit like a Latin one is obviously a translation of it - especially, though not in this case, if it ends in "-ion"! "Un-favourites" of mine are "embolism" (on first encountering it I expected the celebrant to have an instant heart attack) and "fraction" (Yes, yes, i can do crosswords too, but what's wrong with "the Breaking"? - in English English a fraction is a small chunk, not the act of producing it. (When did you last hear a boy say "well, I just kicked the ball and it went over the fence and I heard the fraction of glass" ?)

(Haven't I ranted this before somewhere?)

(Exit mumbling incomprehensibly.)

Q

[contrabordun]

My theory is that they used one of those predictive text apps as found on mobile phones and simply typed the Latin text in, thus ending up with whatever English word shares the largest number of leading characters with the Latin.

[nazard]

I think you may be right. The standards of translation employed on producing English Liturgy have been appallingly low for the last half century. If anyone has any insights perhaps they would like to inscribe them on this plank...

[alan29]

Its just too awful. Much of it sounds like a bin man trying to speak like a duke and failing.
Am I the only one who has stopped listening to this mangled version of our mother tongue?

[JW]

It's very sad: priests trying and failing to recite the texts of the Proper, in English, in a prayerful way that means something to those who hear them. All the more difficult, of course, if your first language isn't English. Ho-hum!

[Southern Comfort]

The answer is quite simply to always insert a hyphen and both spell and pronounce it as Extra-ordinary.

[nazard]

I like it - emphasises the fact that it is outside the ordinary.