That Q&A is full of the same tired old “Vatican II isms” that simply aren’t true.
First, the liturgy is an organic whole. It doesn’t make sense to say, “What was the case in the liturgy in year ____ is the gold standard and nothing can ever deviate from it.” Otherwise we’d still be speaking Aramaic at Mass. Or Greek. Or, hey, Latin
.The liturgy is most of the time in a state of creeping change. Some people make the point that this or that is the more ancient practice. Sometimes it’s true, sometimes it’s not. However, even if it is true, so what? What makes something
necessarily better
just because it’s older? It certainly may be better, but you’d have to make that point on different terms; “older ergo better” is a complete non-sequitur. The Church does not and has never said this.
Furthermore, as far as I read, Vatican II says nothing, nothing whatsoever, about not kneeling anymore during the Eucharistic Prayer. The
universal requirement is to kneel during the consecration. In the United States, I believe the universal requirement is extended to kneel from the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer until after the consecration. Additionally, in many (most?) dioceses of the United States, especially in the east, the bishops have determined that we should kneel for the entire Eucharistic Prayer, up until the Pater noster. To repeat, Vatican II did not drop kneeling at Mass. In fact the constant universal practice in the Roman Rite since Vatican II, notwithstanding parishes that have for ideological (or practical as the case may (perhaps) be) reasons decided to stop kneeling, proves this.
Now we can argue about “kneeling means personal piety and standing means communal action” all day and night but it doesn’t mean anything because I can just as easily say, “Kneeling is as much a communal act as standing because, hey, the vast majority of the people in the church are doing it.” If everybody pats their heads and rubs their stomachs during the Eucharistic Prayer then that makes it a communal act… doesn’t it? In short, because the Church doesn’t say kneeling is wrong–and neither did Vatican II which is certainly part of the authentic magisterium–and because kneeling has been for many centuries part of the Roman Rite up to this very day, then well, kneeling isn’t wrong, in fact it’s good. The rubrics explicitly prescribe kneeling. If it was so icky and personal piety-ish and Vatican II really “dropped” it as the Q&A says, then the Missal wouldn’t say to do it.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying standing in Mass is per se bad–of course it’s not–I’m just saying the article is mostly incorrect.
Also, I get a faint whiff of cultural superiority any time I read about “feudal” stuff; it’s kind of like “ew medieval=yucky!” although the article only says the former, not the latter. It just rubs me the wrong way though, like when people say, “That is medieval!” with a giant =O
shock! face. Well I say, “And, your point is?”
