Well, pages and pages could be (and have been) written about every single one of the topics you’ve raised. I’ll see if can say a little on each:
Why is it that Eucharistic ministers are now authorized,
A desire for more efficient distribution of Holy Communion, and an understanding the distributing Communion is not fundamentally a sacerdotal function.
why are females allowed to be alter girls,
There was a desire not to unnecessarily exclude women from roles which there is no theological reason to restrict to men.
why is the Tabernacle off to the side
Interestingly, I
just posted about this in the Traditional forum; you might want to read what the rules were in 1905. The practice of having a tabernacle behind the main altar was a baroque-era innovation anyway, so a relatively short “tradition” in the history of the church. If the question is why the tabernacle is
more often off to the side now than 60 years ago, I think the two main reasons are that with an altar facing the people there was a desire not to have the tabernacle behind the priest’s back . . . and the second reason you will see in the next section.
and the Priest in the middle of the Church, why does the Priest face the people and not the Tabernacle,
Here is the big misconception. The priest is
not facing the tabernacle. Permit to to quote my post from
here:
I think part of the motivation [for moving tabernacles] was to correct the misconceptions that I have personally seen several people on these forums strenuously insist on: namely, that the tabernacle must be behind the altar and the priest must face it because the Mass is supposed to be oriented toward the worship of Christ in the tabernacle (the priest is “speaking to the Lord who is present right there,” etc.); that the priest must not turn around to face the people because he would commit the grave insult of showing his back to the tabernacle; and similar disordered notions with absolutely no basis in traditional theology or praxis.
Just like the Precious Blood used to be withheld to correct people’s mistake that it was necessary to receive under both kinds, it is not altogether unreasonable (in the sense you occasionally hear that “They moved the tabernacle because they hate Jesus and the Real Presence!”) to correct the error of thinking that the tabernacle is in any way important to the Mass. The Mass lacks absolutely nothing when it is celebrated in the absence of a tabernacle (e.g., in a side chapel, crypt chapel, school chapel, hospital chapel, the high altar of St. Peter’s, or any other place where the Sacrament is not habitually reserved), though to hear the way some people talk about it you’d think the tabernacle was the linchpin element. (The very idea of a centrally-located, pigeonhole-type tabernacle is actually a comparatively late, most baroque, innovation.)
There is also the fact that in larger churches – cathedrals, places of pilgrimage, and the like – it has always been standard to reserve the Blessed Sacrament in a separate chapel so that adoration can take place without the distractions of the main nave, and other needful things can take place in the nave without offense to the Blessed Sacrament. This idea definitely got carried a bit too far in modern church constructions.
So this makes the other reason for moving tabernacles. The question remains, then, why altars were changed to face the congregation. If you do a search on “ad orientem” and “versus populum,” you will find thousands of comments about this issue. I think the briefest that can be said is that the motivation was that it would help make the congregation a real part of the Mass, rather than spectators.
You probably know, of course, that at many ancient churches, like St. Peter’s, St. John Lateran, and San Clemente in Rome, the high altars have always faced the congregation.
and why do the people read the readings now instead of the Priest.
Doing the readings was never supposed to be the function of the priest. At a traditional low Mass, sure, he does it by necessity. But at a high Mass, the Gospel is the responsibility of the deacon (not a priest), and the Epistle is the responsibility of the subdeacon (a person not in major orders at all). In the modern form, the Gospel is still required to be read by a deacon if present, and by a priest if not. The the issue comes down only to assigning the Epistle, and the Old Testament readings that were added to the new form of the Mass, to non-clerical readers. There is of course no theological reason why minor orders are needed to read scripture, and I expect that the motivations here were (1) the priest already has enough to read and say out loud in the modern form of the Mass, and (2) there was a desire to declericalize certain aspects of the liturgy that had been unnecessarily clericalized, and to emphasize the function of the laity not just in the public worship of the Church but also in transmitting the word of God.
I’m just not very educated on the matter and I really want to know what to say to people that ask because I do have friends that buy into this stuff and their trying to convince me that that this is the “true faith”
The best advice is always not to talk to people who are trying to covert you. You have little to gain. The other thing is not to get confused between things that are bad ideas or you can disagree with, and things that are theologically wrong. For instance, I’m largely against altar girls, since I think that restricting it to boys helps foster vocations. But I can’t look at swinging a thurible or carrying a missal and say, “You heretics, those are clearly jobs for
men!”
