Orans posture prohibited during Lord's Prayer

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JimR-OCDS said:
What would be disobedience to God, by holding hands with the person next to you during the Lord’s Prayer ?
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I think the consensus I’ve seen in all of these threads is that no one is saying that holding hands is disobedience to God. Some are sticklers for tradition and believe we should hew more closer to it, and they’re dubious of the symbology or value of it. Some have in mind that the relationship between God and the individual, meaning they believe we should pray as individuals, together, and the holding hands doesn’t quite work there. Others just get a kumbayah hippy feeling they find foreign in their spirituality.

Me I just don’t like holding hands with people when praying. Like many have said it just feels distracting.

If I happened on the small rural parish, and was told it was the norm, then out of humility and in an effort not to stand out I’d do what others did. In a parish where people are not doing the same thing I stick with what I prefer, which are just two flat hands folded against each other.
 
tafan2 said:
I was not clear. It was a comment that if you see 100% of the people receiving communion, it would imply you see zero young children, and that would be sad.
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“If you don’t hear crying, the Church is dying.”
 
leonhardprintz said:
and they’re dubious of the symbology or value of it
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Count me among these. If people want to hold hands, go for it, I don’t care. But that does not mean I see any value in it, I don’t.

ETA: I believe the orans hand position is misguided. But I at least can see why people do it, as it is a posture of prayer that goes back a long, long time.
 
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I’m not advocating hand holding, just not accepting rejection of it when it’s offered.

Jim
 
Mass isn’t an individual form of worship, but communal

Salvation as never individualistic, but socialistic, per Pope Benedict XVI.

Jim
 
JimR-OCDS said:
I’m not advocating hand holding, just not accepting rejection of it when it’s offered.
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Not accepting rejection? Almost makes it sound like you’d grab that persons hand and hold it firmly for the duration of the Our Father, whether they like it or not.
JimR-OCDS said:
Salvation as never individualistic, but socialistic, per Pope Benedict XVI.
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I’d love to know what writing from Pope Benedict you specifically have in mind.
 
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Children during mass is a great good.

Now… I really dislike noise, and especially baby crying. If anything its a thousand times more distracting than hand holding during Our Father to me. But if I’m hearing it during a mass, then that’s an excellent sign and it makes me happy.

Always good to say a prayer for the parents as well. Children are a divine blessing but an infernal noise.
 
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JimR-OCDS said:
Mass isn’t an individual form of worship, but communal

Salvation as never individualistic, but socialistic, per Pope Benedict XVI.

Jim
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False dichotomy.
We are unique individuals who are part of a community. It’s both/and.
Salvation is not an ism either way, neither individualistic or socialistic. Salvation is for each unique individual saved as integral parts of the whole…as St Paul explains in his “parts of the body” talk.
Union with Christ in his body does not deny our uniqueness.

Our Hispanic community for instance, has unique expressions of religious culture and spirituality at Mass. They tend to be more spontaneous and charismatic, in the good sense of the word.
Would you have them lose their uniqueness and individuality so they worship “just like the rest of us”?
 
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JimR-OCDS said:
I’m not advocating hand holding, just not accepting rejection of it when it’s offered.
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People may have a perfectly good reason for rejection of hand-holding – arthritis, injuries, illness. It’s not for others to judge.
BTW, “I prefer not to” is a perfectly good reason. Trying to force someone to hold your hand when they don’t want to is very rude, and completely out of place in worship. I don’t tell others “you can’t hold hands because I don’t want to.”
 
Actually, trying to force someone to hold your hand would be assault. I’m sure no one is advocating that.
Years ago, I was poked with a sharp fingernail during the Our Father for not joining the hand holding chain. I didn’t press charges. Just ignored it.
 
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EnglishYew said:
Actually, trying to force someone to hold your hand would be assault.
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It might be where you live. Here, just physical contact is not assault. It must be done in a manner deemed offensive, ultimately decided by what others deem is reasonable. I sure would not take accept a charge like that.
 
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I doubt that it does happen. I really don’t worry about people suddenly grabbing my hand. I’m usually holding the Missal anyway.
 
You’re misunderstanding what I wrote.

When a hand is offered to me, I will not reject it

Hope this helps

Jim
 
From his Encyclical, Spe Salvi
Is Christian hope individualistic?
  1. In the course of their history, Christians have tried to express this “knowing without knowing” by means of figures that can be represented, and they have developed images of “Heaven” which remain far removed from what, after all, can only be known negatively, via unknowing. All these attempts at the representation of hope have given to many people, down the centuries, the incentive to live by faith and hence also to abandon their hyparchonta , the material substance for their lives. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews , in the eleventh chapter, outlined a kind of history of those who live in hope and of their journeying, a history which stretches from the time of Abel into the author’s own day. This type of hope has been subjected to an increasingly harsh critique in modern times: it is dismissed as pure individualism, a way of abandoning the world to its misery and taking refuge in a private form of eternal salvation. Henri de Lubac, in the introduction to his seminal book Catholicisme. Aspects sociaux du dogme , assembled some characteristic articulations of this viewpoint, one of which is worth quoting: “Should I have found joy? No … only my joy, and that is something wildly different … The joy of Jesus can be personal. It can belong to a single man and he is saved. He is at peace … now and always, but he is alone. The isolation of this joy does not trouble him. On the contrary: he is the chosen one! In his blessedness he passes through the battlefields with a rose in his hand”[10].
  2. Against this, drawing upon the vast range of patristic theology, de Lubac was able to demonstrate that salvation has always been considered a “social” reality.
and

This real life, towards which we try to reach out again and again, is linked to a lived union with a “people”, and for each individual it can only be attained within this “we”. It presupposes that we escape from the prison of our “I”, because only in the openness of this universal subject does our gaze open out to the source of joy, to love itself—to God.

Spe salvi (November 30, 2007) | BENEDICT XVI
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Read the entire Encyclical, it explains more about salvation being a social reality rather than just an event for the individual

Jim
 
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