Wednesday, September 17, 2008

A Word about the Mass

Do you capitalized the word Mass when referring to the Eucharistic celebration of the Latin or Roman Catholic Rite? I was always taught that you did, the dictionary suggests this it ought to be capitalized as a proper noun, not to mention that it is the celebration that when in attendance, one is the closest to Heaven one could be here on Earth.
Here is the dictionary's take on this, what do you think?

Main Entry:
1mass
Pronunciation:
\ˈmas\
Function:
noun
Etymology:
Middle English, from Old English mæsse, modification of Vulgar Latin *messa, literally, dismissal at the end of a religious service, from Late Latin missa, from Latin, feminine of missus, past participle of mittere to send
Date:
before 12th century
1capitalized : the liturgy of the Eucharist especially in accordance with the traditional Latin rite2often capitalized : a celebration of the Eucharist masses held at three different hours>3: a musical setting for the ordinary of the Mass

1 comment:

Deanna said...

I have a funny story. A friend made a flyer about our Ministry Fair and it said join us after Mass. Great, we wanted to translate it into Spanish, so she put it into a translation program on the internet. I then had our Spanish speaking priest check it over and he starts laughing. "What's so funny?" He points to the word that should be 'misa' and instead the word Mass was translated into the word for 'flab.' Okay, nothing really to do with your post, but it reminded me of this.