I wonder if this also covers the “and also with you” gesture that some people make in response to the priest. Y’all know what I’m talking about? It just occurred to me that this is also a “priest” gesture, as is the orans.
I think when I wrote about this earlier, this was part of what I had in mind, as the gesture is (to my eyes, anyway) a brief, modified orans gesture that essentially mimics the priest’s gesture.
—> This issue is not that important to me. The debate, however, goes way over the top here and is entertaining to read. I guess that’s why I’ve replied. I am sorry for the sarcasm/snark in some of my responses. I needed some perspective, and guess I found it just now re-reading over the entire thread.
Fair enough, AC…I’ll give some additional perspective.
Some of us did not grow up in the Catholic Church. In my case, growing up, I was nominally Methodist; I can’t even say we were C&E Christians at this point, because I don’t recall any Christmas we went to church and could probably count the number of Easters we attended on the fingers of one hand, and have leftovers.
Around age 19, I had some health issues which lead to what many might term a “conversion experience.” A high school buddy I talked to decided to take me out to his church. It was a far cry from Methodism, that’s for sure. It was a Pentecostal church, and for those that are in the know, a so-called “Oneness” Pentecostal church at that. There was plenty of “praise and worship”, holding hands, laying on of hands, and other “stuff.” What seemed to be lacking (although I didn’t recognize it at the time) was the sense of the sacred. It was as though there was an unwritten 11th commandment that said, “Thou shalt not leave more than two seconds unfilled with noise of some sort.” It wasn’t unusual for services to last 3-4 hours, and it was non-stop pandemonium the whole time.
After about 8 years in that church, I left after some doctrinal disputes (I had the unmitigated temerity to insist that the doctrine of the Trinity was scriptural.) After bouncing from one church to another (almost all of them were Pentecostal/Charismatic to one extent or another), I settled on the Assemblies of God. There were some good folks there, I enjoyed myself, and even began the process of seeking my ministry papers (for lack of a better term, “ordination” in that denomination.) About the same time I started listening to this wacky nun on the shortwave radio. She was a hoot and I enjoyed her sense of humor, and her holiness, which came through despite my doctrinal reservations. I also listened to some former Protestant ministers like Scott Hahn, Marcus Grodi, Jeff Cavins, etc. I was a little flummoxed that folks from my background would actually become Catholic! It was fairly common to find ex-Catholics in the Assemblies of God, but the other way around had simply been inconceivable.
Well, long story short…I made that fatal mistake. I eventually attended my first Mass. It was all over. Here was what I had been missing, hidden behind all the hooplah and fanfare. The sense of the sacred. To a starving soul, just crossing the threshold of the church and sensing … something. I couldn’t put my finger on it then, but it was most assuredly Christ’s presence. There was peace. Solemnity. That ineffible attraction that one who thirsts has while being drawn to the Living Water. I was… home. THIS was my pearl of great price!
So to me, when I see other “things” that distract from what I have come to hold as sacred, my frustration shows. Holding hands in and of itself is not an issue for me, and to be honest, in a setting outside the Mass, I’d likely welcome it. What distracts and annoys me is the cavalier sense with which some inject their own spin on things into something they have no business monkeying with. The liturgy is sacrosanct. One does not “tinker” with the details, no matter how seemingly small or “harmless” they may be. I’ve studied the history of the Mass, and even in some of the smallest gestures or prayers, there is significance. For instance, in the prayers over the gifts, those prayers are virtually unchanged from their Judaic roots. There is a 3,500 year precedent for that one little prayer! Can you see if we start meddling willy-nilly and flying fast-and-loose with the details, we’d eventually have a Mess instead of a Mass. And all it took was one little change.
Eventually, that didn’t feel proper either so I stopped.
and then they are the ones that go and sanitize.
). The Church seems very slow to make decisions. I think that it is because they want to give things very careful and studious thought. Also, it seems that there is so much on the Vatican’s plate that they might not have gotten to it yet. After all, they have the whole world to deal with. We just have a small part of it.
