Reply to bonnie b:
Mea culpa if my post offended you in any way. It was not meant to be a personal attack on you or on anyone, merely, it was an attempt to present my opinion on the subject, as you had presented yours.
You said you didn’t understand “the fuss” about the orans position on the part of some. I simply attempted to explain why, in my case, I had difficulties with the posture and indeed with the attitude that SOMETIMES goes along with it–the whole relativist idea of “we’re all worshipping God even if we do so differently.” That is fine when it comes to individual worship, but one of the most important aspects of the Mass is that we worship there as individuals indeed but in UNITY. Unity of posture, unity of prayer, unity with God.
The Mass is not the place (IMO) for people to exercise differing postures or differing responses. The dissonance and discord arising at the Our Father with some holding hands, some orans, some standing stock still, is a clear breakdown in what should be a most unified place. We have just had the consecration of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Jesus; we’ve said the Amen to the priest’s doxology, we are in the midst of the prayer Jesus gave us, and we’re all “doing our own thing” ?
I don’t know how old you are, bonnie, but I was in school in the 70s and I remember very well how both the orans and the hand holding LEAPT into prominence, usually (though not always) right along with liturgical abuses which may have been “well-intentioned” but which were almost without fail due to someone’s idea that he (or she) “knew better” than someone else. Some priest just “knew” that having kids come around the altar was “better” than NOT having them, despite what he had been taught, despite what the church itself taught. Some nun just “knew” that saying “brother and sister” or “men and women” instead of “brethren” or “man” was “better”, even if it was cumbersome, even if it actually contraindicated or destroyed the original meaning of the scriptural passage or prayer. Some congregants just “knew” that the “orans” posture or hand holding at the Lord’s Prayer FELT BETTER to them than the “old way” of standing reverently still during the Our Father.
But our faith does not depend on feelings (though we should be careful not to gratutitously offend, and I hope this does not offend you personally). If a person does something wrong, even unintentionally, even thinking it good, I am NOT doing right by this person if I just “let it go”. That’s how we wound up in this situation in the first place. I can remember dozens, hundreds of parishoners over the years asking Father this or Bishop about the orans posture because they didn’t know why or how people were doing it, and them being told basically to MYOB, spirit of Vatican II, ecumenalism, charismatics, “old form of prayer posture”–so MANY “reasons”, but never anything which outright said, “This has been authorized by the Catholic Church as a proper posture at XXXXX BECAUSE XXXXX since XXXXXX.”
And again, I’m sorry, but after years of disquiet about all sorts of practices which have recently been addressed (Nunc dimittis!) by the GIRM and Redemptoris, I have to think that maybe, just maybe, I was right to question those prior liturgical abuses then, and I’m right to question the “orans” posture now. Not AS a posture, but as a posture WHERE it occurs, and WHY it occurs.
If the Church comes out with a specific authorization (see my sentence above), I will happily accept the “orans”; until then, it is a bone of contention. It’s not that I am trying to “impose MY will” onto you–if you said I was doing so, I’d have just as legitimate an argument that YOU were trying to impose YOUR will on me, and I certainly don’t feel that is the case, is it?
