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I just thought this interesting and wished to share it.
http://members.aol.com/liturgialatina/dominican/mass_ordinary.htm

Dear Brother in Christ,

Most interesting indeed!

I always wondered why some RC religious Orders had their own liturgies?

I can understand why even some western cities had variations on the Latin Rite. But religious Orders?

Why do you think they had?

Alex

Alex,

According to the best scholarship it is not so much that they developed their own rites but that as the diocesan churches enacted liturgical reform, innovation, and hybridization, the Orders and Monasteries, being conservative, retained the original useages. So what we call the Dominican Rite is nothing more than the Roman Rite circa the 12th/13th century.

In Christ,
Lance

Dear Lance,

Then is that sufficient justification for calling it "Dominican Rite?"

If it is only a variation of the Roman Rite, that is?

Also, when we think of "Rite," we tend to scold ourselves for not thinking of "Church."

What about the current Milanese Rite? Is it truly a Rite only and not also a Particular Church in our Eastern way of thinking?

Alex

Alex,

Dominican Use would probably be the more correct term. Only the Ambrosian and Mozarabic traditons (not counting extinct ones) truly constitute seperate Rites from the Roman.

I would say that Rite is the proper terminology for Speaking of the Mozarabic, Ambrosian, or other traditions of the Latin Church. In fact just the opposite from the Byzantine tradition, which has many particular Churches using one Rite, the Latin Church is one particular Church with multiple Rites and Uses. There is only one particular Church in the West(in the Eastern understanding of that term), the Latin Catholic Church. It has one law, the CIC, and one real patriarch, that of Rome and All the West, titular minor patriarchs in Venice, Lisbon, Goa, and Jerusalem not withstanding.

The Ambrosian (Milanese) is a Rite not a particular Church. It is but a Province of the Latin Church. And while they have defened their Rite from being supplanted by the Roman, they have never identified themselves as Ambrosian Catholics or as something seperate from the Latin Church of which the Pope is Patriarch. ANd why should they considering Milan has provided several Popes?

Rome does not recognize any Western Churches sui iuris a part from itself, and this is part of the problem with reconciling the SSPX. They want to be one and Rome is saying absolutely not.

In Christ,
Lance

Dear Lance,

What a fascinating insight!

We are many Particular Churches sharing one ritual (Byzantine) tradition - Rome is one Particular Church with several rites and traditions!

(Administrator, will you now relent and create an internet award, making Lance the first recipient here? )

And there is one further great insight in your post.

While our Particularity is rooted in history, there are some Westerners that seem to want to move in the direction of Particular Western Churches.

What is truly ironic is that the SSPX is rooted in the monolithic Latin Church model that it now wishes to move away from to safeguard its Tridentine traditions.

In other ways, it would seem that the Eastern model of Particular Churches in the plural is just what the ecumenical doctor ordered for the bringing back into communion with Rome certain separated traditions (Anglican, Lutheran) and some other Western Catholic traditions based more overtly on secular culture and also on Rites that have died out or have been suppressed such as the Celtic Rite/Church.

As I see it, the only way out for Rome, in both Eastern and Western contexts, is to pay closer attention to the model of Particularity, even in its own backyard.

In a sense, as one priest once suggested to me, the development and use of national liturgical languages and inclusion of more elements of local, secular culture in the liturgical celebrations brought out the viability of Particular Churches in the West that was never as evident before.

Alex

Lance and Alex,

I think there may be a confusion in how a particular Church is defined due to how the term is used in Vatican II. In the East, a Particular Church is identical to a Church "sui juris" or autonomous or autocephalus. This is how it is used in Orientalium Ecclesiarum . In Lumen Gentium , the particular Church is the local Church (eparchy or diocese) headed by the bishop and/or the individual autonomous Church in the East. From a Catholic perspective, the fullest(and canonical) sense of "particular Church" is the eparchy/diocese. In CCEO c.177 and the CIC cc.368&369, the eparchy or diocese is the "particular Church in which the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church of Christ is truly present and operative" (cf. Lumen Gentium n. 23 ).

"Rome does not recognize any Western Churches sui iuris a part from itself"

I think that the Mozarabic christians were once considered part of a particular Church, there are various documents ancient documents about marriage between Roman Rite and Mozarabic Rite christians in Spain, and I there was aclear difference between both rites I think.
I don't know if this was a "de facto" difference or if the Mozarabic Church was truly recognized as a different Church, but now, as you said, no western rite is recognized as a particular Church.

The status of the Mozarabic Rite, the Anglican Use and the particular liturgies of the religious orders is similar to that of the Tridentine Mass, it is just tolerated.
If an Anglican Use priest wants to say Mass outside their parish he can't celebrate it according to his own rite, for example.

I don't know what you think, but I've seen that the modern Latin Rite has been desintegrating in various "particular" rites and the differences have widened. I have attended several Catholic masses in various towns of my country and I know you won't believe it but almost every parish has a different Mass. The most interesting experience was in Chiapas were the Mass was quite special and reverent, there are no chairs in the parish but lots of candles of different colours and the ceremonies are all held in silence by the elders while the priest just does the consacration and communion is received with the chalice, and they have a lot of syncretism, but everything was very reverent.
I don't need to say that the traditions of the Latin American Church are very different from those in USA or Britain (maybe, a result of the aggiornamento? or lack of preparation of priests have caused abuses, but in the small towns this has never happened because people have not allowed liturgical abuse to appear)

It is also interesting that the Anglican Use, is now seen by both Catholics and Orthodox (Western Rite) as a variation of the Latin Rite, and not as a "particular rite".