Here are just a few reasons why I don’t hold hands:
It is an innovation not found in the rubrics. Where we have not been instructed to observe a certain posture, we shouldn’t necessarily assume or invent one.
Inaesimabile Donum certainly instructs us:
The faithful have a right to a true Liturgy, which means the Liturgy desired and
laid down by the Church, which
has in fact indicated where adaptations may be made as called for by pastoral requirements in different places or by different groups of people.
Undue experimentation, changes and creativity bewilder the faithful. The use of unauthorized texts means a loss of the necessary connection between the lex orandi and the lex credendi. The Second Vatican Council’s admonition in this regard must be remembered:
“No person, even if he be a priest, may add, remove or change anything in the Liturgy on his own authority.” And Paul VI of venerable memory stated that:
"Anyone who takes advantage of the reform to indulge in arbitrary experiments is wasting energy and offending the ecclesial sense."
Whether they are few or many, one thing generally holds true: the hand-holders are often
aggressive.
If you close your eyes, or raise them to the heavens, folding your hands in prayer, you’re still likely to get backhand slapped on the arm by an aggressive liturgical innovator. How
distracting, disruptive and invasive is
that?!
“Pardon me, you’re talking with the Heavenly Father? So am I. Lemme grab your hand so we have a better connection.”
What?!! You then recite the remainder of the prayer, completely distracted from God, to Whom the prayer is directed, as your limb is being lifted and lowered involuntarily.
Some of us can focus better on Him (to Whom we’re speaking) if we’re not being pulled from other directions.
The Our Father focuses on the Heavenly Father, not each other. It is a
vertical prayer. The handholders inappropriately interject a
horizontal gesture.
It would seem that if handholders
genuinely cared about their neighbor, they would not want to impose
their gesture upon the rest of us who do not desire it. If they understood the unity of the Body of Christ, rather than their own “feel good” perception of it, they’d not glare at a neighbor who’s trying to offer prayer to God, while themselves reciting,
"forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those…"
Further, we offer each other a
Sign of Peace shortly after the Our Father. Why shake someone’s hand, if we’ve already been holding it previously? Hand-holding is much more intimate than hand-shaking, so the innovative gesture of hand holding then trumps the liturgical gesture instructed in the Missal during the Sign of Peace.
I’d like to be able to attend a Mass where everyone just did what they were supposed to.
