Lets talk ad orientem

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Loud-living-dogma said:
You know, not everyone has the opportunity to attend Mass at a monastery, where it sounds like things are quite different than at the average North American parish. I can assure you that very few Catholics have the choice of kneeling at an altar rail on any given Sunday.
Is it true that Catholics were required to kneel for communion, then after the 1960s, it was forbidden in a lot of places?
Same for communion on the tongue, being distributed by a priest?
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The answer to both your questions is yes. Of course, those who could not kneel were accommodated.
 
The opportunity for catechesis is present in the pulpit if the priest will use it. And summer has the Eucharist readings from John.

We disagree that ad orientem is required; and given the low level of catechesis, that in itself may be the trigger for people to parish shop. I’d like to say that it would not, but people who are already well catechized do not need ad orientem; and those who need catechesis are likely the group that would object to ad orientem.
 
So what? Who cares what happened in the 60’s? It was a period of experimentation, sometimes illicitly. Law allows it now. I have heard zero incidents like the one you linked to, in 1985. And you know what? The holy Mass is not the place to make a scene. Take it up with the bishop. Dialogue is always a good place to start.

The law states that people can receive kneeling even if that’s not the normative posture. If the odd priest or bishop did not get the memo, well yeah life is like that sometimes. When parishes are devoid of priests or have their pastor yanked away for misconduct, I think we have bigger fish to fry.

And St Joseph’s Oratory is not a monastery. It is a popular basilica. It is run by a religious congregation but it is not a conventual church, it is oriented towards the spiritual needs of the faithful.

Here’s a challenge to all: instead of trying to stir up controversy all the time, just pray instead. The world, and the Church, will be a better place for it.
 
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That is pure poppycock and has nothing to do with what I was saying. It was a sad state of affairs when people came into Mass and simply st there. The Mass is the prayer of the Church - and we are part of that Church; saying the rosary can be done at home. This is not 1885; the Pope was well aware that people were simply enduring 30 to 45 minutes of their time.

If you think the Church currently expects people to be sitting in Mass, I would offer you the following from Sacrosanctum Concilium: "14. Mother Church earnestly desires that all the faithful should be led to that fully conscious, and active participation in liturgical celebrations which is demanded by the very nature of the liturgy. Such participation by the Christian people as "a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a redeemed people (1 Pet. 2:9; cf. 2:4-5), is their right and duty by reason of their baptism. "

That does not include saying the rosary or reading a private devotion during Mass. Notice the word “duty”.

And a fact - that there were no tabernacles for 9 centuries is not antiquarianism. It is a fact. I did not say they should be done away with.
 
That really was not an argument based on antiquarianism, any more that going back to ad orientem (or other traditional movement) is antiquarianism.

Mediator Dei, Pope Pius XII, Nov. 9, 1947 :
  1. Clearly no sincere Catholic can refuse to accept the formulation of Christian doctrine more recently elaborated and proclaimed as dogmas by the Church, under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit with abundant fruit for souls, because it pleases him to hark back to the old formulas. No more can any Catholic in his right senses repudiate existing legislation of the Church to revert to prescriptions based on the earliest sources of canon law.
There is no “perfect date” of Catholicism, whether it be at the time of Pope Pius V, Pope Pius X or Pope Francis. We only have the present.
 
Wait, you’re committing a logical fallacy here.
You are taking the idea that because some (by your personal ‘testimony’) EF Masses were ‘rushed’, that this somehow cancels out something else entirely --the orientation of the priest at Mass.

Sorry, epic logic FAIL here.
 
@(name removed by moderator) Thank you for the 1885 info and quote from Mediator Dei 108 by Pope Pius XII and for the Vatican pdf reference for saying the rosary during Mass. I’ve spent hours looking for backup. What search words or phrases did you use?

Have you ever been sincere about wanting to “give your all” to Jesus during Mass, then, despite those good intentions, found your mind wandering elsewhere? That would happen because I would have read the English in my Missal and be waiting for the next part. By intermittently praying the rosary in between the appropriate times for reading the English, my mind was constantly occupied, allowing no opportunity to drift. The reality of my saying the rosary in between reading the English parts and singing or saying Latin responses was a far cry from the dismissive comments I read on CAF.
 
You seem to have a lot of ideas based on your personal opinion that the Church prior to 1970 had the people just ‘sitting in Mass’.

I call bull. I was around. My 90 year old mother is still around. She calls bull on it as well.

She can still recite the Latin parts for the people. She knows what they mean, then and now.

Just because people in those times were expected (and the majority of them did what was expected) to experience Mass in a way which was more contemplative than the Mass today doesn’t mean they weren’t experiencing it at all.

Too many people seem to think that the ONLY way to ‘experience Mass’ is to be constantly talking, listening, kneeling, sitting, standing, singing. . .that there is no place for silence, for ‘listening’, for the senses other than sight and speech --for the senses of smell and touch. . .for peace, quiet, and for, dare I say it yes I shall–a personal relationship with God at one and the same time as one experienced a ‘community’ relationship with the others in the pews. Unity of posture and gesture and an understanding of why one did this gesture and not another. Attention not to constant sight and speech of somebody ‘in our face’ all the time, but to God, hidden and visible, in which the priest, who in the parts of the Mass devoted to specific intercession for us with the Lord, ‘led us’.

I’m not ‘cutting down’ the OF because I understand that there are parts which certainly do not contradict the EF and which could enhance it. For example, it is nice to have more Scripture, although having another reading at the EF would have been an easy fix. While I personally find at my parish the prayers of the people turning into a shill for the democratic party, again, adding in prayers specific to a particular congregation and its needs, provided the same is done with common sense and obedience, is something that could also have been added. Having the people more involved in singing is good (although having the chant as the documents of V2 called for would have worked in the EF as well).

Let’s see, what other ‘participatory’ measures are there today? EHMC. . . something that lasts for a few minutes. So maybe you have 4 or 5 people up there for a few minutes. Why couldn’t you have 4 or 5 altar boys instead, with a couple following around the priest and deacon, holding the paten underneath? Because you know, in the average church today, you find plenty of women in the pews still, and doing all the reading and the gifts etc. Who do you NOT find, across the board, across the US., in the majority of parishes? MEN. Go back to having male-only altar servers, keep women (and men) as readers, bringing up the gifts, saying the prayers of the people. . . and guess what, you will still have plenty of women and you’ll also have more men involved as well.
 
stpurl said:
Wait, you’re committing a logical fallacy here.
You are taking the idea that because some (by your personal ‘testimony’) EF Masses were ‘rushed’, that this somehow cancels out something else entirely --the orientation of the priest at Mass.

Sorry, epic logic FAIL here.
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No fail. The point as I took it was that rushed Masses were by their nature irreverent, and thus making the orientation of the priest, irrelevant. So yes, irreverence does cancel out any supposed benefit of the orientation. The Rule of St. Benedict says that monks should treat even the humblest tools of the monastery as if they were sacred vessels of the altar. An irreverent Mass does not even give the sacred vessels of the altar, their due, nor what they contain. It does the same to any liturgical gesture.

Rushed Masses still happen and are still irreverent, and still make orientation irrelevant.

Irreverence is not a Vatican II invention. It happened before, it will happen again. It is part of our fallen condition.
stpurl said:
She can still recite the Latin parts for the people. She knows what they mean, then and now.
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She’s fortunate that she’s literate. The Mass is offered in mission territories where not everyone is literate, much less able to comprehend Latin. Even in Western Europe, illiteracy rates high. As high as 70% in rural France in the 18th and early 19th Century, if memory serves.

My own mother, may she rest in peace, never graduated from High School. Latin was foreign to her. She took to the vernacular Mass like a duck to water. She was a very simple person, in a good way, and her simple faith and trust in God is what really mattered.
 
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It isn’t an either-or, it’s a both-and. It is not ‘simplicity OR education’.
You know, for the majority of Christendom the populace was not literate. How do you explain the deep faith of the people who virtually from AD 350 or so to 1850 or so weren’t able to read or write, but managed to know and love the Mass in Latin???
 
I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there. But I can say that Vatican II happened for a reason. Whatever may have worked in the past, no longer did. The world is a changing place. One adapts, or dies.
 
The only people I ever saw who just sat there were non-Catholic visitors. As has been documented, beginning in at least 1885, the faithful were encouraged to say the rosary during Mass, and it was quite easy for a fast reader to do so and still keep up with each part of the Mass.

I do recall early Sunday and daily Masses being much shorter than the average Sunday Mass of about an hour, but I have some questions. Have none of you who decry the shorter Masses ever had to choose between a fast Mass before work or no Mass at all?

Have none of you ever quickly kissed a spouse, child, or parent, while running for the car? Wasn’t it meaningful, even if mainly an air kiss? Or did it mean nothing at all? Did you cherish them less? Were your loved ones insulted? Or were they glad that you paused long enough to reassure them that you love them?

No doubt Latin-only missals exist, but I don’t remember ever having seen a Latin missal that didn’t have another language on the page facing the Latin.
 
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You do realize that a huge majority of things which were stated to have been 'mandated by Vatican II" never were, right?

Vernacular, no Latin? Never called for in the documents.
Removal of altar rails? never called for.
Four hymn sandwich, no chant? never called for.
Dropping devotions? Taking out statues? Wreckovations?
People standing around the altar? Hand holding at the Our Father?
Felt banners, glass chalices, ‘homemade bread’?

Never called for.

The EF? Never abrogated.

So when we talk about “Vatican II”, and how it happened ‘for a reason’, let’s make sure we’re accurate. It didn’t happen because “the entire EF was broken, and the OF fixed all the wrong things”.

You say that ‘what worked in the past no longer did.’
I call you on that. Tell us exactly what ‘worked in the past’ but somehow no longer did once we hit approximately AD 1970, and reference the Vatican II documents that explain why and how.

You’re really not going to find documents that support the majority of the things that all the "Vatican II happy’ Spirit people claim were needed.

You are going to find that a lot of what was working, and still works today, was removed, not because it no longer worked, but because a handful of people wanted to ‘try something new’. . because it suited their personal agendas. And I’m not saying that they weren’t honest and sincere. . .they were, however, often wrong. The people who still today bleat that we ‘had to’ change the EF in order to ‘get back to the ‘original way’ things were done were sincere, I’m sure, but they were also cray-cray. The cray cray part came from thinking not only that the ‘original services’ were somehow the ONLY thing God wanted, and all else after was ‘window dressing’ or unnecessary, but also that they actually KNEW what went on in the earlier services, and why, and how. Because they didn’t, and don’t. Basically the whole 1950s and 1960s ‘view’ was part of a greater societal ‘back to the land’ outlook. The hippies had it: We will go back to living like the early humans did. . .in harmony and peace, subsistence farming, we’ll spin our own wool, etc because’ the more primitive, the more authentic and therefore better it is’. . .
Well, those experiments didn’t work out too well.
Didn’t work out so great with the Church, either.
 
No logical fallacy. You are conflating the two paragraphs. The second on starts “If it is perceived more holy” which was the matter considered in the second paragraph. The point of that paragraph has only to do with that issue; the issue of ad orientem being a catechesis direction is the subject of the first paragraph.

Sorry, your misunderstanding. No logic fail.
 
There was a sociological survey done in the 1950s of what people were doing at Mass. Less than 50 % had a missal, and the rest were either saying their rosary, reading from a devotional pamphlet, or simply waiting it out until Mass ended (and those in the back leaving when Communion started). I will let you do the research. I went to a Catholic grade school graduating in 1960 and don’t recall any of my class mates having a missal. You may call bull, but I don’t think the sociologist was lying, as it reflected my experience.

Apparently your Mass is a bit busier than mine - which lasts about an hour and a bit. I am glad you are not “cutting down” the OF, I hate to think what you might have to say. Thank you for your reticence.
 
Liturgical research and experimentation began with the push from Pope Pius 10th, and continued on with Pope Pius 12th giving it emphasis. when the bishops gathered in Rome for the start of Vatican 2, many were familiar with the work that had been going on, and 14 months later Sacrosanctum Concilium was put to a vote. It was hoped by the bishops leading the document that perhaps 67% of the bishops would sign the document. When it was put to the vote, an astounding 99.814% voted in favor of it. or to put it another way, 2,147 voted yes, 4 voted no.

Was it a document which dictated line by line what changes were to be made? Of course not - that was not the purpose of the document.

Your post is interesting, as it focuses on the time period of the 1970s and 1980s. It is time to let go of what happened then and focus on the now. Most of that has passed with the exception of small pockets of old hippies in small congregations (I.e. Portland Oregon, which is another thread)
 
otjm said:
rest were either saying their rosary,
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When the nuns walked around with their marble-sized rosary beads they used to wear, you better be saying the rosary or staring at your missal.
 
CilladeRoma said:
Not true my friend.

After the council, conciliums were set up to implement the visions/ideas brought forth.

Out of those meetings came instruction, which you can find here.

Specifically, paragraph 91-
91. The main altar should preferably be freestanding, to permit walking around it and celebration facing the people. Its location in the place of worship should be truly central so that the attention of the whole congregation naturally focuses there.
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@CilladeRoma
Thank you for posting “Inter Occumenici Instruction on Implementing Liturgical Norms.”

I didn’t realize that such categories as Last Rites had also been changed until after I’d waded through the entire document.
 
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@otjm

In regard to ”Sacrosanctum Concilium,” you asked, “Was it a document that dictated line by line what changes were to be made?”

Yes and no. Yes, it provided for changes in about every facet of Catholic life. No, it left the actual wording of the Mass and sacraments to be decided upon later, within the boundaries set forth by Sacrosanctum Concilium.

Thanks to @CilladeRoma for linking that document, I read it word by word, two and three times in some sections. Actually, I was astonished by the far-reaching extent of the document.
 
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