The Catholic Mass 101

I am a post-Vatican II Catholic. I am almost 60, but I have no recollection of the Latin Mass, although I have the vaguest recollection of the priest turning around and kneeling to receive communion. This lecture series turned out to be the organized introduction to something I've been doing my entire life.

I originally purchased this lecture series thinking it would provide a historical retrospective. Instead it broke down the units of the Mass into their respective parts. So we moved from the procession into the church, through the liturgy of the word, to the Communion rite, to music, and finally to the dismissal. Along the way, the lecture put terms that I've known vaguely into context, e.g., the “collect,” the “anaphora,” the “anamnesis”, and the “epiklesis.” The lecturer also pointed out things that I had not been aware of, such as the origin of the four eucharistic prayers and the fact that while the Catholic church places the epiklesis prior to the anamneses while the Orthodox churches do the opposite.

No one has ever bothered to provide most Catholics with this kind of soup to nuts presentation in my living memory. This is like “opera appreciation” where the more you know about what is going on, the more you love what is going on.

The lecture series consists of 12 thirty minute lectures. The presentation is comprehensible, concise and interesting.

My recommendation is that Catholics get this lecture series and listen to it.