Bells At Mass

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At my parish - for solemn masses like Easter and Parish Feast Days - the Bells at the sanctuary are rung continuously as the GLORIA is being sung. I couldn’t find any document to support this practice. Can anyone enlighten on this.
 
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Peter:
At my parish - for solemn masses like Easter and Parish Feast Days - the Bells at the sanctuary are rung continuously as the GLORIA is being sung. I couldn’t find any document to support this practice. Can anyone enlighten on this.
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No bells should be rung in a Latin Rite parish from the beginning of Holy Week to the Easter Vigil Mass when the Gloria is sung once more.

When the Gloria is sung, the Gloria pattern is rung on the bells as the Church blooms into full majestry with the coming of Easter.

No, this is not a specific rubric from the GIRM – just a long held tradition. It’s tradition in many parishes to use wooden clappers in place of the bells. The clappers are more subdued then the bells.
 
Decades ago the humorist Robert Benchley said, “Generally speaking, women are generally speaking.”

May I make a similarly broad generalization (but not a generalization about broads)?

Any priest who opposes the use of bells (usually for reasons like those cited above) should not be invited to preach because liturgical obtuseness always is matched with homiletical obtuseness.

Translation: If you can’t appreciate what the bells are for, you don’t have enough smarts to compose a good homily.
 
Karl:nonsense. I have heard some great homilies from priests who had nothing to do with ringing any bells. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
 
Unfortunately, in this case Karl was right on the nose about the homilies. Needing to be charitable though I will say our Pastor is very smart, only lacks wisdom and faith.
 
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Crusader:
No, this is not a specific rubric from the GIRM – just a long held tradition. It’s tradition in many parishes to use wooden clappers in place of the bells. The clappers are more subdued then the bells.
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Interesting. At Mater Ecclesiae (which is a trad. parish), the clappers are only used on Good Friday. The bells are used during the remainder of Lent.
 
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otm:
Karl:nonsense. I have heard some great homilies from priests who had nothing to do with ringing any bells. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc?
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You seem to have missed my point entirely.

I said, “If you can’t appreciate what the bells are for, you don’t have enough smarts to compose a good homily.” I didn’t say, “A priest who prefers not to use bells can’t give a good homily.” It is possible to “appreciate what bells are for” and yet prefer not to use them.
 
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Benjamin:
I certainly disagree with this statement. My alter boy days are long gone but I can remember that this was the second place in the mass that I would pay close attention to. I didn’t want to embarrass myself by not ringing the bells at the proper time.
I miss the bells.
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I’ve asked my oldest son (10-1/2, and a current altar boy in a parish which uses the bells), and he agrees that he has to pay very close attention to what the priest is doing in order to ring the bells at the right time, and only at the right time.

As far as the OP’s query, he says that anyone who says there are no ‘magic moments’ needs to go back and learn what happened at the Last Supper & is happening at Mass (IOW, they’re in need of major remedial catechesis, but those aren’t my son’s words, but is the gist of what he’s saying).
 
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Crusader:
No bells should be rung in a Latin Rite parish from the beginning of Holy Week to the Easter Vigil Mass when the Gloria is sung once more.

When the Gloria is sung, the Gloria pattern is rung on the bells as the Church blooms into full majestry with the coming of Easter.

No, this is not a specific rubric from the GIRM – just a long held tradition. It’s tradition in many parishes to use wooden clappers in place of the bells. The clappers are more subdued then the bells.
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If it’s not a rubric, is such tradition of ringing the sanctuary bells while the GLORIA is being sung authorised? I guess not all traditional practices are authorised by the church. How can we determine if such practices are authorised?
 
Bud Stewart:
My parish has put away the server bells, and I miss them.
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I am so sorry to hear that. The ringing of the bells has always been my favorite part of the Mass.
I always thought of the gentle sound of the bells was a very reverent way of announcing the presence of Our Lord. I don’t know if this is the true intention, but it certainly focuses the congregation’s attention to the altar.
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When I was a very little girl, our church used the Sanctus bells, and I always felt that something special was going on, even if at the time I didn’t really understand it. Then our parish church changed, and my parents decided to attend a different parish church. That one did not use the bells. I really missed them. Then, after several years, that church closed and merged with a very modern (church in the round, no crucifix, no kneelers, etc) church, and we again switched parishes. The first time I attended Mass with my mother at the new parish church, I was overjoyed to hear the bells at Mass. I had not even realized how much I missed them until I heard them again. I’m now in South Florida, and I attend a church in Miramar that uses the bells, and every week, I get that same feeling that I had that time with my mother in her church. I am just filled with joy at the miracle that is about to occur. It really does focus my attention on the altar much more accutely.

Have a great day,
Judy
 
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Peter:
If it’s not a rubric, is such tradition of ringing the sanctuary bells while the GLORIA is being sung authorised? I guess not all traditional practices are authorised by the church. How can we determine if such practices are authorised?
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As shown in an earlier post, ringing of the sanctus bells is allowed per the GIRM.

However, the silencing of the bells during Holy Week until the Gloria is sung at the Easter Vigil is not controlled per a specific rubric to my knowledge.
 
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Crusader:
As shown in an earlier post, ringing of the sanctus bells is allowed per the GIRM.

However, the silencing of the bells during Holy Week until the Gloria is sung at the Easter Vigil is not controlled per a specific rubric to my knowledge.
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Oh… maybe I wasn’t clear in my last posting.

Query:
Can the sanctuary bells be rung CONTINUOUSLY while the whole GLORIA is being sung. I couldn’t find any document to support this practice.
 
“Magic moments”?!? Even the choice of words shows a complete lack of understanding of the PROFOUND MYSTERY of the Consecration, the foundation of our faith. We are people of faith, we are not looking for some new-age, emotional experience. The tradition of bringing special attention to the most important moment of the most important prayer of the one true faith is completely appropriate.
 
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Peter:
Oh… maybe I wasn’t clear in my last posting.

Query:
Can the sanctuary bells be rung CONTINUOUSLY while the whole GLORIA is being sung. I couldn’t find any document to support this practice.
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No. The Gloria pattern is rung on tower bells during the singing of the Gloria at the Easter Vigil Mass.

Again, keep in mind this is not part of the rubrics as far as I know.
 
Much eariler in this post, I had mentioned that we use the ringing of the outside bells to signal the holiest parts of the Liturgy.
A few weeks ago, our bell tower was struck by lightning, but that did not stop us to have bells at the Liturgy.
Ringing the bells simply comes down to this…it’s a part of the celebration of the Liturgy and you FIND A WAY to make it so.

Go with God!
Edwin
 
Strange.

This is what my Parish Priest told us when I was very young, and explained about the bells:

Sometime during the Middle Ages, the Altar and the Assembly was seperated by a divider. It was believed in those times that the Mass was so Sacred that it could not be heard by the Assembly. So, the Priest said everything so softly that even the Altar Server couldn’t hear it. So, in order to inform the Assembly that the Consecration was taking place, the bells were run so people would look up from their prayers, and the Priest would raise the Host above the divider for people to see.

Now that the Consecration is viewed by everyone, the bells are no longer necessary. In my Parish, we haven’t had the bells rung during Consecration for almost 20 years.

We still do have our hand bells, and is used only during the singing of the “Gloria”.
 
One of my friends described a church she visited while on vacation… when it came time for the bells to be rung at the consecration, the altar server pressed a little doorbell button and there was an electronic “ding-dong”!

I wasn’t there to experience this… but real bells seem much nicer! But I suppose it could be worse - they could have used one of those musical doorbells! :whacky:
 
I joined the church 15 years ago…never heard any bells at mass in my parish. Once a concerned parishioner (who remembered their use) asked to have them reinstated…after being chastised by the priest for trying to take our parish back to the middle ages, she gave up… Now we have a new priest. One of the first things he reinstated was the use of the sanctus bells… to me it adds much to the mass, but more importantly my children are hearing them for the first time.
 
YES, LETS RING THE BELLS AT EVERY MASS IN EVERY CHURCH ALL OVER THE WORLD. THEY SERVE TO BRING OUR ATTENTION BACK TO THE MOST WONDROUS ACTION OF THE MASS.
 
Bring back the bells! For many of us they are part of the beauty of the Latin rite.
 
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