No kneelers

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Pax vobiscum!

A point that I think people are missing is that we are REQUIRED to kneel during the Canon. Us kneeling does not depend on whether or not there are kneelers in the church. The GIRM does not say, “The faithful shall kneel, unless there are no kneelers in the church, then it is OK to stand”. Posture after the Agnus Dei and after recieving can be determined by the bishop, but not the posture during the Canon.

In Christ,
Rand

 

[netmilsmom]

ya I can see it as well. We stand when the bride enters or when royality enters, it makes sense.

A bride is just another human.
Everyone I’ve seen bows or curtsies for royalty.

This is the King of Kings.
He deserves more.

 

[Wendy-Kay]

Pax vobiscum!

A point that I think people are missing is that we are REQUIRED to kneel during the Canon. Us kneeling does not depend on whether or not there are kneelers in the church. The GIRM does not say, “The faithful shall kneel, unless there are no kneelers in the church, then it is OK to stand”. Posture after the Agnus Dei and after recieving can be determined by the bishop, but not the posture during the Canon.

In Christ,
Rand

:yup:
No way to say it better! What is the point of having rules if we can just chuck them aside to follow what *we feel *is the most reverent approach? Why have shepherds at all? Not adhering to the GIRM sets a bad precedent for the laity that relies on example to know what is appropriate.

 

[anamchara]

A bride is just another human.
Everyone I’ve seen bows or curtsies for royalty.

This is the King of Kings.
He deserves more.

Your words persume that I believe that Christ is merely a human, surely you didn’t mean that. But it would be easy for someone else to misread your words. I hope this isn’t the case.

It would be nice if the OP comes back and lets us know what the priest says. I would really like to know.

 

[Lion]

Personally, if I attended that parish, I would kneel on the floor for the Consecration as well as after receiving Communion.

~~ the phoenix

Me too!

 

[Lion]

I am amazed that some Parishes don’t have kneelers. Kneeling has been the tradition of the Church for a long time. In fact does anyone know of a reference to people standing during the Consecration before Vatican II? Standing during the consecration seems to fall into the category of, “we are going to do things different now because the Church is progressive.” Kneeling shows much more reverence than standing and yes we stand when royality enters the room, but God isn’t royality…he is GOD.

What I do not understand is Churches WITH Kneelers and they don’t use them!!!
Kneeler or no kneeler, I’m kneeling. A miracle is taking place and my God is before me

 

[netmilsmom]

Your words persume that I believe that Christ is merely a human, surely you didn’t mean that.

you said

anamchara:

ya I can see it as well. We stand when the bride enters or when royality enters, it makes sense.

and I said
netmil(name removed by moderator):

*A bride is just another human.
Everyone I’ve seen bows or curtsies for royalty.

This is the King of Kings.
He deserves more.*

---

If you are looking to be offended, nothing I can say can keep you from it.

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

What I do not understand is Churches WITH Kneelers and they don’t use them!!!
Kneeler or no kneeler, I’m kneeling. A miracle is taking place and my God is before me

Pax tecum!

Yes, very true. In fact, we all knelt on the marble and stone floors of the basilicas in Rome and Assisi when I went for WYD in 2000. Not just for the Canon, but after the Angus Dei as well.

In Christ,
Rand

 

[tptram]

---

I will stand for a human–kneel for God.

AMEN

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

It is my understanding that in Europe, standing is still the prevalent posture during the Eucharistic Prayer and that this posture was common in all Cathedrals and houses of worship for many centuries before pews and kneelers ever came into being. I believe that standing is an ages old posture with the idea that you stand at attention before royalty (in this case, Christ the King) as a sign of respect. If you recall, we also stand at the invitations to pray which are made by the priest when he says: “Let us pray”. It is here in the United States that kneeling is the norm during the Eucharistic Prayer. It is pretty much assumed that if there are pews or seats in permanent houses of worship, then there ought to be kneelers as well, even if they are in the form of positionable cushions. From what I understand, if there are no kneelers, then the people ought to stand. Sitting would be an unacceptable posture during the Eucharistic Prayer. Here is what the General Instruction for the Roman Missal (GIRM)

In my experience, kneeling is still the prevalent posture in Europe, as it should be. I can think of only one church in 10 different countries where the congregation did not kneel. The universal norm of the Latin rite is to kneel during the consecration, but the precise boundaries of the kneeling period vary from conference to conference.

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

In my experience, kneeling is still the prevalent posture in Europe, as it should be. I can think of only one church in 10 different countries where the congregation did not kneel. The universal norm of the Latin rite is to kneel during the consecration, but the precise boundaries of the kneeling period vary from conference to conference.

Pax tecum!

This was my experience in Europe as well. As I said in my last post, even on hard stone and marble floors where there were no pews or kneelers, we knelt.

In Christ,
Rand

 

[hoosiertoo]

Are you very tall, Hoosier?

Not especially; I’m 6’ tall.

The pews are so close together in our church that my feet get into the kneelers behind me if there is no-one in that pew.

 

[Titus]

Being a European myself, I can say that kneeling is the norm (although sadly not often among altar servers) but we kneel after the ‘Holy, Holy, Lord’ until the ‘Through him, with him’ and then from at the ‘Lamb of God, you take away…’ until the priest comes down to give communion- is this the norm in the USA?

 

[Beno]

Originally Posted by Andreas Hofer
In my experience, kneeling is still the prevalent posture in Europe, as it should be. I can think of only one church in 10 different countries where the congregation did not kneel.

Having never been to Europe, I will defer to your experience about kneeling being the prevalent posture in Europe. Do you have any information about historical Mass postures in Europe?

 

[Andreas_Hofer]

Having never been to Europe, I will defer to your experience about kneeling being the prevalent posture in Europe. Do you have any information about historical Mass postures in Europe?

I only know things roughly off the top of my head, but it IS quite true that standing was the norm for the first millenium of the Church’s life. Kneeling entered Latin worship in the next few centuries - a product of feudalism’s influence on European life - and as far as I know has been the dominant if not exclusive posture during the consecration for at least the past 700 if not 800 years. When kneeling was first implemented, no one was sitting during the liturgy (sitting is, in terms of Church life, a fairly recent phenomenon), so churches were open spaces for standing and people knelt on the floor at the proper time. Some of the old European cathedrals built before or at the time kneeling became the norm were retrofitted with pews at some later point along the way, but others still do not have many of them. A good portion of Notre Dame, for instance, has moveable chairs instead of pews.

Actual Europeans could tell more about the survival of historical Catholicism in Europe, but in my experience it is a mixed bag, even within countries that one might say have their own distinctive feel in general. As far as posture goes, though, the Austrians were the most traditional in my experience, with roughly half of the churches I attended there even maintaining the option of the communion rail. As I said, though, I only ever ran into one church at which people did not kneel during the consecration in all the countries I visited (oddly enough, even the Byzantine Catholics in Prague knelt during much of their Liturgy), and the one at which no one knelt was a university chaplaincy rampant with other abuses - the priest even concelebrated under an Old Catholic celebrant without ever telling us the man was not a Catholic priest.

 

[Br.Rich_SFO]

I recently moved and now attend a church with no kneelers. Everyone stands during the Eucharistic Prayer and Consecration, which feels wrong to me. Would sitting be a more reverant posture?

What no floor? The GIRM says kneel after the Holy, Holy, Holy until after the great Amen. It does not say if kneelers are available. Obviously if you cannot kneel on the floor due to physical limitations don’t, sit on the edge of the pew if possible)