Describe the most liturgically abused Mass that you have ever been to

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Would anybody be willing to share a description of the most badly-done Mass that you have ever been to?

Has anybody ever been to a “Mass” that later turned out to be actually invalid(for example, wrong ingredients in the host or wine)?

DISCLAIMER: This is not meant to be a thread about how somebody might dislike the Novus Ordo Mass. This thread is about Masses(of whatever rite) that are done with awful liturgical abuses. Novus Ordo Masses done according to the rubrics do not count for the purposes of this thread.
 
The worst Ball state Campus I took my children and was apalled when I saw everyone standing around the altar from the consecration to communion. Of course it was a little difficult for my children and I to receive since there really wasn’t a Eucharistic minister but we waited on our knees until the priest was ready to give us freaks Communion.
 
Outdoor Mass, which isn’t wrong. However, there were liturgical dancers with rainbow ribbons on poles, more EEMs than you could shake a rainbow stick at, nobody knelt at any time, the priest and his co-celebrants were not in vestments, but in albs and rainbow stoles… yeah, I could go on. I had made my first communion the day before and it was a bit nerve-wracking. I switched to a parish that had no affiliation with the parish I speak of.
 
Palm Sunday - Liturgical dancers prancing down the aisle in man/woman pairs… dancing with palm branches, singing like druids :rolleyes: .
Priest in a navy blue vestment, chalice of some kind of petrified wood or something???
Priest giving the touchy feely homily up and down said aisle practically in your lap.
Crucifix no where in site, instead some kind of weird art on the wall. No statues, tabernacle hidden in a corner waaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyy over there.
 
I’ve never been to a Mass I knew to be or found out later was sacramentally invalid, but I have certainly attended plenty between a completely reverent Mass that I could imagine being a pleasing offering to Our Lord and that extreme. The worst is nothing like others have posted here, but if one is a bit of a purist as I am and uniform excellence has been removed from the possibilities of modern Catholic worship for all practical purposes, the situation is bad enough.
 
Bank One Ball Park, Phoenix. Confirmation Mass attended by Bishop Thomas OBrien.

Liturgical dancers. No kneeling. Beer and Las Vegas ads still visible. The most unliturgical “worship space” imaginable. It felt like a relaxed, casual ball game; and the people in the stands acted like it.
 
state university …Mass? …hardly

The priest used leavend bread…breaking it into bite sized pieces for communicants…dropping bread crumbs all over the floor as he distributed…

If the priest really thought that the leavened bread was Jesus, why was he dropping particles all over the floor?

I could see crumbs on the floor…and people were walking over them. My heart was crushed to the point of feeling like it was suffocated.

http://photobucket.com/albums/y188/ginnyroc/th_Teardrop.jpg

yea…I’ve seen plenty but that was the worst.😦
 
The worst was a priest who said Mass at a parish near my office (not my own parish). I used to go there sometimes for Holy Days. He changed the words of virtually every part of the Mass including the Lord’s Prayer. He kept the words of Consecration correct so I am sure he was well aware of the line between illicit and invalid. Most of the changes were to inclusive language (which he would say very loudly) but he also made up his own preface (he told us he wrote it himself). He skipped the Penetential Rite entirely (not just using one of the alternatives) and he also skipped the Creed. None of these are the usual “hot button” abuses but the sheer number of them in a single Mass was very disturbing.

As to invalid, when I was in college in Michigan, they used leavened, sweetened bread for Communion. As I understand this, (someone more knowledgable can correct me) this made the Consecration probably valid where proper matter would have made it certainly valid. :confused: They also distributed Communion in the hand before the indult but that is a lesser issue in the whole scheme of things.
 
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Toni:
The worst Ball state Campus I took my children and was apalled when I saw everyone standing around the altar from the consecration to communion. Of course it was a little difficult for my children and I to receive since there really wasn’t a Eucharistic minister but we waited on our knees until the priest was ready to give us freaks Communion.
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My worst Mass was also on the Ball State University campus at the Newman Center. The “presider” processed into the “assembled crowd” with four female “servers” wearing what appeared to be see-through nighties carrying bowls of incense and dancing around the “worship space.” They were followed by a flute player.

During Mass - in which the “presider” wore a “peace” chasuble with overlay stole - the celebrant often ad-libbed his texts, and when it came time for the Eucharistic Prayer, he would say parts of it from each side of the “altar” (which was actuall a square wooden table in the middle of the “gathering space.” This was out of respect for the “four corners of the earth”, I guess.

The Hosts were actually pieces of thick bread as well (not sure what they were made out of).

Of course, there were no kneelers in this church, so everyone stood during the Consecration (except me and a few others).

Since that time, much remains the same at this parish, except that they have built a new “church” which is actually more traditional (barely) in that they now have kneelers.
 
It was a mass ran by CHANNEL, this lay group that was huge in the Archdiocese of Seattle back in the late 1970s-early 1980’s.

It had it all: clowns, balloons, liturgical dancers, puppets, a priest wearning just an alb and some weird multi-colored stole/scapular thing, and a band that would make Dan Schutte and David Haas swoon.

I can still see it in my deepest nightmares.
 
Several years ago, my husband and I attended an evening Mass at a beautiful old downtown church. A man in a white shirt walked up the center aisle and began talking about Mass. I assumed that he was some sort of MC. As he talked, he started putting on robes that were draped on the front pew, and I realized he was the priest. We sang a song and there was no procession. The priest sat in the third pew back during Mass, and his homily was all about a Bob Dylan concert he had been too and about how insightful Bob Dylan was and about how Jesus would really like Bob Dylan. Before Communion, he told us not to worry about the church’s stuffy rules about receiving the Eucharist and everyone should come up if they wanted to, even if they weren’t Catholic. The priest played a Bob Dylan song as we came forward to receive the Eucharist in honor of the concert he had attended. I think there was more, but I’ve blocked it out. I’ve never been more infuriated at a Mass in my life. I later learned that this particular priest has very publicly proclaimed that he does not believe in the Real Presence. http://forum.catholic.com/images/smilies/ani/ani_banghead3.gif
 
Someone correct me if I’m wrong; but I’m pretty sure that there can be no transubstantiation if the elements are not present. You cannot consecrate grapejuice anymore than you can consecrate leavened bread.

There was no sacrifice, i.e. no mass was offered, at those “get togethers” that had leavened bread.

I also believe that even if the wine was a valid element and the bread was not; there still would be no sacrifice because for the sacrifice to be valid both elements must be present and consecrated separately.
 
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scriabin:
Someone correct me if I’m wrong; but I’m pretty sure that there can be no transubstantiation if the elements are not present. You cannot consecrate grapejuice anymore than you can consecrate leavened bread.

There was no sacrifice, i.e. no mass was offered, at those “get togethers” that had leavened bread.

I also believe that even if the wine was a valid element and the bread was not; there still would be no sacrifice because for the sacrifice to be valid both elements must be present and consecrated separately.
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I believe that leavened bread, if wheat flour, yeast, and water are the only ingredients, is valid and licit for the Eucharist in many Eastern Catholic churches, and VALID but illicit in the Latin Church.
 
:eek: I think I’ve learned from this thread that I need to stop complaining about my parish’s folk group mass so much. And that the tabernacle is off to the right. Which I still don’t like but compared to some of you guy’s stories…SHEESH. :eek:
 
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scriabin:
Bank One Ball Park, Phoenix. Confirmation Mass attended by Bishop Thomas OBrien.

Liturgical dancers. No kneeling. Beer and Las Vegas ads still visible. The most unliturgical “worship space” imaginable. It felt like a relaxed, casual ball game; and the people in the stands acted like it.
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Yep, I was there, and it was awful.
 
I can thing of a few Masses where things were a little strnage but thesse 2 were the worst.
In France, the priest appeared drunk and fell asleep during the readings - every week!. He mumbled and appeared to fall asleep again during the sermon occassionally too. He never gave a sermonand the whole Mass took about 30 minutes. The church was almost empty and my host family (I was a secondary school exchange student for 3 months in Britany) thought I was some sort of religious nutcase because I insisted on going every Sunday. They were “catholic”!
While on holidays in the USA, I went to several different churches/Masses. Most were totally normal Masses with nice friendly people but well, one church I went to was Catholic, maybe! I had never seen anything quite like it and never hope to again. The priest changed the words of everything, even the sign of the Cross (In the name of the Father and Mother, and of the son, and of the love of the Holy Spirit). There was a lot of clapping throughout the Mass but I especially remember the Gloria where “Gloria, Clap, clap, clap. Gloria clap, clap clap. Gloria Clap Clap Clap” was repeated over and over again. At one stage, the woman next to me hugged me and asked me to forgive her. I was too stunned to say or do anything. Some people were walking in the aisle shaking hands during the “sign of peace”. The family in front of me ate snacks throughout the Mass and kindly offered them to everyone around them. Holy Communion was some kind of large cookie that the priest broke into pieces and gave to people. There were crumbs everywhere. There were dancers wearing skimpy white dresses that danced up the aisle before the priest, around the altar and again around the Bible before the reading of the Gospel, which was read by a woman. I could go on and on but I think you get the picture. I really will never forget the “experience”.

Gearoidin
 
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Gearoidin:
I . Holy Communion was some kind of large cookie that the priest broke into pieces and gave to people. There were crumbs everywhere.
Gearoidin
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I remember being at a Mass like that. I wanted to go out afterwards, buy a red candle and have a Holy Hour on the carpet in front of the altar.
 
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GoLatin:
Would anybody be willing to share a
description of the most badly-done Mass that you have
ever been to?
Click to expand...
Code: 
 Any Mass in Diocese of Saginaw.
 Different abuses at different parishes:
 sweet cake-like bread; tabernacle hidden
 in a back barren room;  use of inclusive
 language (even taped over sections of Lectionary);
 nuns reading Gospel and giving homilies; one
 priest even called Mary a bi-ch; use of general
 confession and absolution; priest sitting in pews;
 and on and on - i lasted about 7 months working
 in Youth Ministry at 1 parish there. Very sad, new
 Bishop there now, hopefully he's making changes,
 he'll have to clean house though.
 
Hmm… My former principal (a woman) giving the homily about being inclusive. Of course I was young and didn’t know any better.
 
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