Churches without kneelers?

[buffalo]

No. Kneel anyway.

 

[Fludgecow101]

So I found something about this church again. A lady asked the priest there why they didn’t have kneelers. He replied they didn’t want to spend the extra money on it. She then said if she had the money for kneelers and would donate them to the church, would they use them. The priest then said we(meaning something like the church commitee or something) have decided not use kneelers in this parish so no, they wouldn’t accept the kneelers. They don’t have the power to do something like that, do they? Should anything be done?

 

[buffalo]

So I found something about this church again. A lady asked the priest there why they didn’t have kneelers. He replied they didn’t want to spend the extra money on it. She then said if she had the money for kneelers and would donate them to the church, would they use them. The priest then said we(meaning something like the church commitee or something) have decided not use kneelers in this parish so no, they wouldn’t accept the kneelers. They don’t have the power to do something like that, do they? Should anything be done?

Yes, according to the GIRM you should write your Bishop, if no luck the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington, and then finally the Vatican.

 

[diggerdomer]

Kneeling is required during consecrations.

GIRM (43):

In the dioceses of the United States of America, they should kneel beginning after the singing or recitation of the Sanctus until after the Amen of the Eucharistic Prayer, except when prevented on occasion by reasons of health, lack of space, the large number of people present, or some other good reason. Those who do not kneel ought to make a profound bow when the priest genuflects after the consecration.

So…we have a norm in the United States that is particular i.e. an adaptation of the universal Roman Missal. It’s a norm, and a “should,” but does leaves options open for other postures (a profound bow) for the reasons noted above. Also, of course, the priest does not kneel. We need to be careful I think not to simply say kneeling is always required, period.

Cheers

 

[tampasteve]

There is no mention of kneelers being required in the diocese in question. The only mention that I am aware of is that they are recommended (but not required) in the Eucharistic Reservation Chapel and the “reconciliation” room. Other than that the statements call for the seating to be arranged so as not to hinder the disabled…I suppose one could stretch that to imply that kneelers are not advised. The Bishop has stated that kneeling during communion is allowed but not the norm for the diocese.

Steve

 

[benedictgal]

Yes, according to the GIRM you should write your Bishop, if no luck the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington, and then finally the Vatican.

According to the GIRM, you should be kneel in the areas indicated by the rubrics. Even though the GIRM does not specify that you must have kneelers, but, it would stand to reason that a parish shouldn’t just do away with them completely if the intent is to discourage kneeling.

Now, regarding the chain of command, what you described is not the procedure, at least per Redemptionis Sacramentum.

Originally Posted by Fludgecow101
So I found something about this church again. A lady asked the priest there why they didn’t have kneelers. He replied they didn’t want to spend the extra money on it. She then said if she had the money for kneelers and would donate them to the church, would they use them. The priest then said we(meaning something like the church commitee or something) have decided not use kneelers in this parish so no, they wouldn’t accept the kneelers. They don’t have the power to do something like that, do they? Should anything be done?

After Fludgecow’s conversation with the priest, the next step would be to take it up to the Bishop. From what I can deduce, I do not believe that it is up to the Parish Council (in collaboration with the pastor) to do something that would prevent the following of the norms, or at least, serve as a barrier against doing so. If the bishop does not respond, then the course of action would not be to go to the Papal Nuncio. The letter would simply be returned to the bishop. The next step is to write to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Holy See’s curial office charged with all things liturgical.

 

[benedictgal]

GIRM (43):

So…we have a norm in the United States that is particular i.e. an adaptation of the universal Roman Missal. It’s a norm, and a “should,” but does leaves options open for other postures (a profound bow) for the reasons noted above. Also, of course, the priest does not kneel. We need to be careful I think not to simply say kneeling is always required, period.

Cheers

Kneeling for the actual conssecration is the universal norm. The kneeling after the consecration up through to the Great Amen is the American adaptation.

I live along the Texas-Mexico border. There are times when I have gone to Mass in our sister city, Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The Mexican Episcopal Conference uses the norm that you described. The faithful stand at the Mysterium Fidei, but, kneel for the consecration. Unfortunately, when their faithful come to our side for Mass, they stand when we kneel and it throws everyone in for a loop and the celebrant has to give a hand-signal motioning everyone to stay kneeling.

 

[BSHoop96]

GIRM (43):

So…we have a norm in the United States that is particular i.e. an adaptation of the universal Roman Missal. It’s a norm, and a “should,” but does leaves options open for other postures (a profound bow) for the reasons noted above. Also, of course, the priest does not kneel. We need to be careful I think not to simply say kneeling is always required, period.

Cheers

I think it has been pretty well said that “there are reasons” and we get that.

 

[Fludgecow101]

Ok thanks guys. From Bishop Lynch’s past history I doubt he will do something about it but I’ll try doing something abiut it anyways. I think I’ll get my bro to write, he’s good with this type of stuff.

 

[Frosty]

According to the GIRM, you should be kneel in the areas indicated by the rubrics. Even though the GIRM does not specify that you must have kneelers, but, it would stand to reason that a parish shouldn’t just do away with them completely if the intent is to discourage kneeling.

Now, regarding the chain of command, what you described is not the procedure, at least per Redemptionis Sacramentum.

After Fludgecow’s conversation with the priest, the next step would be to take it up to the Bishop. From what I can deduce, I do not believe that it is up to the Parish Council (in collaboration with the pastor) to do something that would prevent the following of the norms, or at least, serve as a barrier against doing so. If the bishop does not respond, then the course of action would not be to go to the Papal Nuncio. The letter would simply be returned to the bishop. The next step is to write to the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, the Holy See’s curial office charged with all things liturgical.

Pews and kneelers are church furniture, IMO, the pastor and the parish council have every right to decide whether they want them in their church or not. There are lots of churches which do not have kneelers, only chairs, and people still manage to kneel. It isn’t a liturgical issue at all so why would anyone write to the Congregation for Divine Worship about it? I remember reading an article a years or so ago in which Cardinal Arinze was asked if his Congregation received many letters from parishoners complaining about this or that or reporting on liturgical abuses. He laughed and replied that “Yes, indeed it did. Hundreds and hundreds a week from all over the world but the greatest majority of them came from the United States. The Americans are very prolific letter writers.”. Actually I think he mentioned the percentage was about 75%.

 

[benedictgal]

Pews and kneelers are church furniture, IMO, the pastor and the parish council have every right to decide whether they want them in their church or not. There are lots of churches which do not have kneelers, only chairs, and people still manage to kneel. It isn’t a liturgical issue at all so why would anyone write to the Congregation for Divine Worship about it? I remember reading an article a years or so ago in which Cardinal Arinze was asked if his Congregation received many letters from parishoners complaining about this or that or reporting on liturgical abuses. He laughed and replied that “Yes, indeed it did. Hundreds and hundreds a week from all over the world but the greatest majority of them came from the United States. The Americans are very prolific letter writers.”. Actually I think he mentioned the percentage was about 75%.

However, I would not be too quick to discount this issue altogether. The fact that some parishes do not have kneelers is quite disconcerting. The GIRM notes that we are to kneel during certain parts of the Mass. Why put up a barrier to something that we should be doing? Are we going to do away with the pews so as to prevent people from sitting? That does not make sense.

Furthermore, the fact that a lot of the letters sent to the CDWDS come from the United States indicates that this is a symptom of a deeper problem.

 

[diggerdomer]

Is the deeper problem a case of being too anal retentive, though?

 

[benedictgal]

Is the deeper problem a case of being too anal retentive, though?

No. I think that it is a poor understanding of what kneeling means. I direct you to the magnificent homily that the Holy Father preached last year during the Solemnity of Corpus Christi:

At this point we cannot forget the beginning of the “Decalogue”, the Ten Commandments, where it is written: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex 20: 2-3). Here we find the meaning of the third constitutive element of Corpus Christi: kneeling in adoration before the Lord. Adoring the God of Jesus Christ, who out of love made himself bread broken, is the most effective and radical remedy against the idolatry of the past and of the present. Kneeling before the Eucharist is a profession of freedom: those who bow to Jesus cannot and must not prostrate themselves before any earthly authority, however powerful. We Christians kneel only before God or before the Most Blessed Sacrament because we know and believe that the one true God is present in it, the God who created the world and so loved it that he gave his Only Begotten Son (cf. Jn 3: 16). We prostrate ourselves before a God who first bent over man like the Good Samaritan to assist him and restore his life, and who knelt before us to wash our dirty feet. Adoring the Body of Christ, means believing that there, in that piece of Bread, Christ is really there, and gives true sense to life, to the immense universe as to the smallest creature, to the whole of human history as to the most brief existence. Adoration is prayer that prolongs the celebration and Eucharistic communion and in which the soul continues to be nourished: it is nourished with love, truth, peace; it is nourished with hope, because the One before whom we prostrate ourselves does not judge us, does not crush us but liberates and transforms us.

In the Spirit of the Liturgy, he took the point even further:

Kneeling does not come from any culture – it comes from the Bible and its knowledge of God. The central importance of kneeling in the Bible can be seen in a very concrete way. The word proskynein alone occurs fifty-nine times in the New Testament, twenty-four of which are in the Apocalypse, the book of the heavenly Liturgy, which is presented to the Church as the standard for her own Liturgy.

…When kneeling becomes merely external, a merely physical act, it becomes meaningless. One the other hand, when someone tries to take worship back into the purely spiritual realm and refuses to give it embodied form, the act of worship evaporates, for what is purely spiritual is inappropriate to the nature of man. Worship is one of those fundamental acts that affect the whole man. That is why bending the knee before the presence of the living God is something we cannot abandon.

In saying this, we come to the typical gesture of kneeling on one or both knees. In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the verb barak, “to kneel”, is cognate with the word berek, “knee”. The Hebrews regarded the knees as a symbol of strength, to bend the knee is, therefore, to bend our strength before the living God, an acknowledgment of the fact that all that we are we receive from Him. In important passages of the Old Testament, this gesture appears as an expression of worship.

At the dedication of the Temple, Solomon kneels “in the presence of all the assembly of Israel” (II Chron 6:13). After the Exile, in the afflictions of the returned Israel, which is still without a Temple, Ezra repeats this gesture at the time of the evening sacrifice: “I … fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God” (Ezra 9:5). The great psalm of the Passion, Psalm 22 (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), ends with the promise: “Yes, to Him shall all the proud of the earth fall down; before Him all who go down to the dust shall throw themselves down” (v. 29, RSV adapted).

The related passage Isaiah 45:23 we shall have to consider in the context of the New Testament. The Acts of the Apostles tells us how Saint Peter (9:40), Saint Paul (20:36), and the whole Christian community (21:5) pray on their knees.

Particularly important for our question is the account of the martyrdom of Saint Stephen. The first man to witness to Christ with his blood is described in his suffering as a perfect image of Christ, whose Passion is repeated in the martyrdom of the witness, even in small details. One of these is that Stephen, on his knees, takes up the petition of the crucified Christ: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (7:60). We should remember that Luke, unlike Matthew and Mark, speaks of the Lord kneeling in Gethsemane, which shows that Luke wants the kneeling of the first martyr to be seen as his entry into the prayer of Jesus. Kneeling is not only a Christian gesture, but a christological one.

I realize that these are long quotes, but, when a parish intentionally decides not to have kneelers, I suspect that there may be a deeper reason and, perhaps a lack of understanding of the importance of kneeling on the part of the decision-makers. Obviously, you can’t have kneelers at St. Peter’s Basilica when you are dealing with several thousand folks assisting at Mass. However, a smaller parish should have kneelers. Why create barriers?

 

[diggerdomer]

What??? St. Peter’s Basilica does not have kneelers???

Sorry, I’ve never been to Rome…but oh my gosh, I can’t believe they don’t have kneelers! I just assumed given our situation in the U.S.A. that kneeling was so integral to the Eucharistic liturgy in the Roman Catholic Rite…I’m sorry, I’m pretty baffled and upset. I still kneel, of course, at the prescribed times, but I’m really confused about the importance of it if there aren’t any kneelers in Rome.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Cheers.

 

[benedictgal]

What??? St. Peter’s Basilica does not have kneelers???

Sorry, I’ve never been to Rome…but oh my gosh, I can’t believe they don’t have kneelers! I just assumed given our situation in the U.S.A. that kneeling was so integral to the Eucharistic liturgy in the Roman Catholic Rite…I’m sorry, I’m pretty baffled and upset. I still kneel, of course, at the prescribed times, but I’m really confused about the importance of it if there aren’t any kneelers in Rome.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Cheers.

Hold your horses, pardner.

Let me clarify that. Just because St. Peter’s does not have several thousands of kneelers for all of the faithful, that is not to say that they do not have kneelers period. I have never been to St. Peter, but, when they show shots of the faithful, they are seated in chairs, but, they still kneel. Something else to consider is the fact that there are kneelers provided for the curial officials who assist at Mass (but are not concelebrating) as well as for dignitaries (the Diplomatic corps comes to mind). There may very well be kneelers at the side chapels that are spread out all over the basilica. In fact, I think that there are kneelers in the reservation chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is kept.

As I said, the logistics of having rows and rows of kneelers is not feasible if you are going to have thousands of faithful coming in to assist at Mass.

I have not heard of any parish in Rome missing kneelers. With all due respect, please do not put words in my statements. I only spoke to St. Peter’s, not to the entire diocese.

 

[diggerdomer]

I wasn’t putting word in your mouth, I was only asking about what you referred to regarding St. Peter’s. I’ve never been there, so when you referenced it I of course appreciated the information. I didn’t know that you hadn’t been there either. So…are the faithful seated in chairs or kneeling…or both? Sorry, again never having been there I’m just curious about how they celebrate Eucharist. I’m interested to know, and I hope they don’t sacrifice right worship for mere convenience or logistics.

Cheers

 

[Frosty]

What??? St. Peter’s Basilica does not have kneelers???

Sorry, I’ve never been to Rome…but oh my gosh, I can’t believe they don’t have kneelers! I just assumed given our situation in the U.S.A. that kneeling was so integral to the Eucharistic liturgy in the Roman Catholic Rite…I’m sorry, I’m pretty baffled and upset. I still kneel, of course, at the prescribed times, but I’m really confused about the importance of it if there aren’t any kneelers in Rome.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Cheers.

No, St. Peter’s Basilica does not have kneelers nor do many of the other great cathedrals in Europe. The point is that that you do not have to have kneelers in order to actually kneel. Not having them isn’t a barrier. We are spoiled here in North America in thinking that we must have nice cushy kneelers to rest our knees on. There are still many older churches without padded kneelers and kneeling on those hard wooden ones aren’t any easier than kneeling on the floor. My cathedral still has the old wooden ones and because of the way they are attached to the pew in front, one has to kneel as straight as a rod because there isn’t really any room between the kneeler and the front pew. I’d rather kneel on the floor because it makes it really hard on one’s back to kneel in such a position.
People can kneel anywhere. I’ve knelt for Mass in sodden, muddy fields, hot grainy beaches, on hard marble floors and dirty narrow aisles in stadiums. We only put barriers up in our own minds when we worry about what to kneel on.

 

[diggerdomer]

Is the barrier the lack of kneelers, or the perceived preference among some for kneeling as the most appropriate posture of reverence, though? I mean if there are really that many places in Europe without kneelers, doesn’t that raise the question of how integral kneeling is to our worship? Thanks again for the info on European churches.

Cheers

 

[Frosty]

I wasn’t putting word in your mouth, I was only asking about what you referred to regarding St. Peter’s. I’ve never been there, so when you referenced it I of course appreciated the information. I didn’t know that you hadn’t been there either. So…are the faithful seated in chairs or kneeling…or both? Sorry, again never having been there I’m just curious about how they celebrate Eucharist. I’m interested to know, and I hope they don’t sacrifice right worship for mere convenience or logistics.

Cheers

Most of the faithful sit in chairs and kneel on the floor. Masses in St. Peter’s are beautiful. There is no sacrificing right worship whatever. I’ve been fortunate to have been able to attend Papal Masses there many times over the years. Actually, my very first one was fourty years ago this coming Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. It was a full Papal Mass, celebrated by Pope PaulVI, with all the ceremony including the sedia gestatoria and the flabellae. It was quite an experience!

 

[Frosty]

Is the barrier the lack of kneelers, or the perceived preference among some for kneeling as the most appropriate posture of reverence, though? I mean if there are really that many places in Europe without kneelers, doesn’t that raise the question of how integral kneeling is to our worship? Thanks again for the info on European churches.

Cheers

Oh, tons of churches in Europe do have kneelers. My point is that we don’t hve to have them in order to kneel. I believe that kneeling is a very important and appropriate posture of reverence at certain times in the Mass. Especially at the Consecration. Personally, I can’t imagine standing then. In fact, if I had my preference, I’d kneel throughout the entire Liturgy of the Eucharist.