Lets talk ad orientem

[PetraG]

I know. I was trying not to do that. (BTW, I’m more “old geezer” than “young whipper-snapper”, myself. ) . Nevertheless, that’s what happens each time a new generation succeeds a previous generation, and if we refuse to admit it, then we’re just sticking our heads in the sand. We succeeded our elders, and in the process, we dropped some things that were important to them and added others. If we think succeeding generations won’t do the same – or that they have different perspectives than we – then we’re just fooling ourselves.

One thing you can guarantee about the current generation is that they have a lot of different perspectives, lol. Yes, things will change. The way they will change is hard to predict. If I were to predict it, though, I’d predict it based on those who are in seminary, and there are definitely more of them on the end that values the old way of doing things. (Or, as I like to point out to my progressive friends who bemoan all this: I suspect there are more seminarians on the conservative end because conservatives dream of their sons becoming priests whereas far too many progressives only dream of their daughters becoming priests.)
Having said that, I’ve heard enough vocations stories from priests to conclude that you never can tell who will become a priest or how different he might be when he becomes one.

 

[stpurl]

Believe it or not, I’ll go along with praying the rosary during the OF Mass being something not desirable (before or after is another story) unless the Mass is so invalid (say the words for consecration are, “This is the symbol of The Man of Earth’s children, take and eat and rejoice” so you KNOW the consecration cannot be valid, but you do not wish to push past 14 people in the pew so you remain in your pew and silently recite the rosary in reparation).

But it’s interesting that you bring up ‘preferred’. If something is a preference, it means that there are two possibilities and one is ‘better’. That means the other, while lesser, is still ‘licit’. It might be preferred to have the ‘acclammations’ etc but the others (individual etc) are not prohibited.

You know, it’s a funny thing. At my parish the priest omits the Gloria and the Creed, and for the responsorial psalm he will do usually a Hagen-Daas song in LIEU of the Sunday responsorial psalms, will do something like “Alle Alle” for the alleluia but not the response IN the Alleluia, so for our parish, when it comes to ‘full and active participation’. . .we aren’t. We really aren’t. We aren’t joining with all the other parishes in the Gloria, or the Creed, we aren’t joining with the Sunday (or daily) responses or acclamations that all the other parishes do. . .but hey, we are singing, and we are listening to Father say what he wants instead of hearing what the other parishes hear. How exactly is that different from your perception of the people sitting silently in the EF? No ‘missal’ to follow along with. No knowing what the priest has said from hearing it repeated each week because he changes it up. No responses because we don’t have the opportunity TO respond.

You know, give me the OF that most of you seem to have --I don’t care if the music is a hootenany or if Father speaks his homily doing cartwheels or if everybody holds hands and sings Kumbayah. . .just give me a Mass where the priest lets us do what we are supposed to do and say what we are supposed to say, and he does the same.

 

[PetraG]

Believe it or not, I’ll go along with praying the rosary during the OF Mass being something not desirable (before or after is another story) unless the Mass is so invalid (say the words for consecration are, “This is the symbol of The Man of Earth’s children, take and eat and rejoice” so you KNOW the consecration cannot be valid, but you do not wish to push past 14 people in the pew so you remain in your pew and silently recite the rosary in reparation)…

Push past them in the pew. Push past them, and never come back.

The Church has a wide variety of licit usages. In every one of them, however, there are limits.

Even if a certain parish has Masses that are valid, strictly speaking, that does not mean they are all equally edifying. It isn’t necessary for us to stick around in a parish where the Mass isn’t edifying when there is another valid Mass available that is.

 

[Brendan_64]

Anyone trying to spin praying the rosary or silently following in their missal into being “full, conscious and active participation” is just, well, spin. It is patently obvious what the bishops had in mind in Sacrosanctum Concilium.

If someone else is silently following their missal, or even praying the Rosary, then what business is that of anybody else’s, particularly other laypeople? Perhaps we should each focus on what we do during Mass and rather than what others do?

Fully conscious and active participation doesn’t necessarily mean external actions and external actions and words, I would agree they do form part of active participation, but the degree to which this is necessary is, I think, open to interpretation.

But really, perhaps we should all worry less about what others around us do (or don’t do) at Mass? Should we really be worrying that someone is praying the Rosary or not singing the hymns, or that someone else is holding their hands in the Orans position during the Our Father or being too ‘enthusiastic’ during the Sign of Peace? I would think that lots of us are probably guilty of this (I know I have been).

 

[EnglishTeacher]

I asked some older relatives who grew up with the EF about this, and interestingly enough they said that they experienced the same: they either prayed the rosary or tried to stay awake until Holy Communion because they could barely see what the priest was doing or hear what he was saying, and if it was in Latin could barely understand it.

If it makes any difference, nowadays the priest would normally wear a little clip-on microphone, so you can hear him just as well as when he faces the people.

The priest at our parish has been celebrating Mass ad orientem for a while now, and I actually didn’t think it felt like a big drastic change. It just seemed natural, and I don’t even think about it any more.

 

[goout]

Romano Guardini wrote The Spirit of the Liturgy in 1918.
Here’s the neat thing about Guardini’s thought: you don’t perceive any of this clingy personal preference bias that fills much of our discourse.

You can’t tell if he’s “conservative” or “liberal”. He defies categorization. His writing is profoundly well rounded and has a depth of thought.
And it influenced much of the thinking of Catholic thought for a century.

 

[phil19034]

The point is for the priest to not have his back towards the Tabernacle.

I learned something very interesting about Pope Pius XII at Mass this past Sunday. Pope Pius XII addressed the trend to move the tabernacles to a seperate room and said that it belongs behind the High Altar.

Point is: let’s forget the “liturgical East” argument. The main issue is that the rightful place for the Tabernacle to be located (per Pope Pius XII) is behind the Altar and the priest should not have his back to the Tabernacle.

God bless

 

[Gorgias]

(Or, as I like to point out to my progressive friends who bemoan all this: I suspect there are more seminarians on the conservative end because conservatives dream of their sons becoming priests whereas far too many progressives only dream of their daughters becoming priests.)

LOL! (I’m gonna hafta remember that line – it’s a good one! )

But yes, very true: successive generations can have significant (and significantly unpredictable!) differences of opinion from their parents’ generation!

 

[godisgood77]

It becomes easier to see why the Church is in the state that it is when I read these threads… We Catholics are so bound up in petty arguments about the most inconsequential things like the direction the priest is facing… too bad