Hi again,
I do think you are overreacting in a posture only situation, but it is perfectly understandable after your experience. How terrible for you, and your fellow parishioners.
And you are certainly prudent to be watchful for any signs of similar behavior.
I still do not think a request to stand is totally unacceptable, and I would not even question it, if there were no other questionable instructions.
Lux
In the big picture you are right. In the big picture all that matters is that we have the right answer to the question Jesus asked Peter. Do you love me? It does not matter if you stand on your head, how you cross yourself or if, whether you fast or don’t, or a parish maintains uniformity of posture, or anything much else.
One of the things I like about the Church, the bride of Christ, is the connectedness I feel with all the saints and Christians of the past. We are one body, not simply one with those who are alive now, but one with those who came before us. We believe in the communion of the saints. Love conquers death. Love is more powerful than the grave. The love of God is our salvation, but also the glue that holds us all together. We are connected spirtually in this love and can never be separated.
When we read about the imagery of heaven we get a sense of this unity. All the saints adore God and sing holy holy holy, with one voice. When He returns every knee bows and tongue confesses. They cast down their golden crowns, they bow before Him and cry out with one vocie and give Him glory. We are one, but all different. The picture I get is analagous to a big orchestra. All the instruments are in tune and play different parts to make a magnificent glorious symphony.
In a way Mass is like that. We gather together and He comes befroe us and we sing the praise of God with one voice. We kneel and stand and acclaim Him who is really with us in Sacrament. This is not a rehearsal for heaven. There is one Church. There is not one here and another one in heaven. We are together with all of those who came before us, at Mass especially. The Church one earth is joined to the Church in Heaven, one, and with one voice we proclaim God’s glory. The glorified Church in heaven may sing more gloriously seeing God face to face, but our voices are added to theirs. We worship the same person who is before us on the altar of sacrifice, in the hands of the priest. We behold Him who becomes our food and we are surrounded by the heavenly host.
The saints in heaven were once like us here on earth. They went through the same struggles and the love us and pray for us willing our good. One of the reasons I do not like changes in the form of worship is that it breaks continuity with the past. It seems to disconnect us, in a way. We Catholics believe the same things our predecessors believed, but we also are connected to them by what we do, or how we do it. Our voices echo the same prayers and hymns across the centuries. We do not sing with our mouths only with one voice, but with one heart. We give praise and glory with one voice and heart.
So is this important? Is it important how we do this? This is where the idea of uniformity of posture comes from, but also the unity is in the words. The uniformity is much greater than what takes place in the local parish according to the whim of the local priest and his peculiar quirks and notions of how it ought to be done. The local parish is part of the bigger choir to which it is united all over the world echoing God’s praise and worship around the globe and stretching across time. We sing with Saint Francis, and Padre Pio, and Dominic and Aquinas and Catherine, Peter and Paul and John, Agnes and Lucy, all with one voice.
When someone decides to impose his own tune he puts the one voice out of tune, into disharmony. It creates a clash.
This is how I see the big picture. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe none of it matters. Each local parish can do its own thing according to the dictates of its priest or celebrant and that does not matter.
I have a priest friend who was asked to say Mass at a parish where the regular priest was away for about a month. At that parish their priest had instructed people to do it his way. There were a couple of practices that were against the norms. The visiting priest refused to follow them, according to the style or variation the people were accustomed to. They became very upset with him. It was their parish after all. Who was he to tell them how to worship in their church?
So why is it that doing something so simple as following the universal norm, keeing harmony, becomes so difficult? What is it that makes a certain priest insistent that the people do it his way? Whether the issue is major or minor why do some local priests insist on being mavericks and singing their own tune? And why do others say we should sing with the universal choir?
:yup:
including my 4 older grandkids who have been raised Catholic in Catholic school. It was difficult to do when we were in the old church which was cramped and in the round so if you genuflected you often were doing it toward the people on the other side of the room. :ehh: Now we have a traditional church and people have forgotten their manners. :tsktsk: I do intend, at some time, to talk to my grandkids about it. If I tell the youngest, 13, whom we pick up from school twice a week, do you think it will trickle up to the rest? 
