Oh I just can’t resist. This is so much fun!
At the very bottom of this issue, whether one likes it or not, is the issue of Charity, or, if you will, Love.
Christ repeatedly chastized the Pharisees for seeing the law, but failing to se the why of the law ( and many, if not most of those discussions started with the fact that Christ was not following the law). And before we go off the deep end on that, I am speaking of law, the specific, as opposed to Law, the general (or, the Torah).
What I see here is a good bit of Pharisee. The GIRM does not make any specific reference to exactly what body posture (holding hands, Orans [arms somewhat out to the side, palms up or out], hands at side, hands folded together, fingers overlapped, hands held together, fingers pointed upward) is apprpriate at the Our Father. And specifically, they chose not to address the issue with the latest GIRM, or any subsequent documents.
Calling it an abuse can only be founded in the philosophy of law that “what is not (specifically) allowed is prohibitied”, which is referred to as the Germanic philosophy of law. The Mediterranian philosophy is the reverse: “what is not specifically prohibited is allowed”. And the last time I looked, the Vatican was not in Berlin…
Consonant with that is the admonition that one is not to draw attention to oneself, as we are to worship in unity (there goes OpusDei’s comments about underwear on the head or standing on hands; cute comments but totally irrelevant).
JNB, I challenge you to show any studies which show that the loss of understanding of the Eucharist is rooted in what goes on during the Mass. Granted that lazy rubrics practice is interrelated with lazy attitudes, I would suggest that the direct cause of it is catechesis, and specifically some of the “bubblegum” stuff that has been pawned off on a generation or more since the '70s.
Detroit Sue: you get it. How do you feel when you go to shake someone’s hand (in any setting), and they refuse to shake? You know immediatley the rejection.
Opus Dei: we are not a community until Communion? Care to back that statement up with anything? It simply defies logic and the plain meaning of words. Is our communal action complete until the Eucharist? No. But not a community until then??
In one of the prior comments, it was said that it was becasue of the abuses, remarked on by JP II, that a document was issued (actually, at least two, the GIRM, and the subsequent one, which name escapes me). Exactly. And neither document remarked on holding hands, which, as I commented earlier, puts this whole issue somewhere towards the end of the spectrum marked “non issues”.
And Mr. Keating calls it an abuse. That’s nice. And on a scale of 1 to 100, many are putting it up in the 80’s and 90’s (holding hands and wiping your nose on their hand? abomination?). There is a masssive inablility of many conservatives to know what is abusive, and what they just don’t like.
I’ve gone to Mass where they don’t hold hands, and where they do. Neither one distracts me, or makes me upset; neither one interferes with my worship of God. My parish is one in which most people hold hands. We also have 24 hour Adoration, a building group of Pro life; we are one of the biggest churches in our area in terms of food pantry for the poor. We are following the GIRM fairly well, and the last directive not so well, and our pastor is in his 70’s and by no means a liberal. Neither is he a conservative. He is just true to the Magisterium. He does nothing during the Mass as an ad hoc. And if he is not anal about following the directives, well, at this point in his life I’m willing to give him some breathing room, as he is as reverential as any priest I’ve personally come in contact with who follows the rubrics right down to the last jot and tittle.
I used to go to a daily Mass, pre Vatican II, that was a 12 minute Mass. And he followed the rubrics exactly. Does anyone get the point?
To those of you who refuse to hold hands, and therby let the person next to you know that you won’t take their hand when they reach out, How will Christ judge you on that day: " Come in, you folowed the rubrics exactly, and showed that person who wasn’t where they could get off"; or will it be, “When you were at Mass, and that person next to you reached out to hold hands during the prayer I taught you, where was your Charity? Did I come to teach you rubrics, or Love?”