H
HagiaSophia
Guest
Some interesting commentary from Fr. Schall:
Reflections On Saying Mass (And Saying It Correctly) | James V. Schall, S. J. | June 13, 2005
“Every time I am at a Mass on Sunday or a Solemnity where, contrary to the rules, the Creed is omitted, I wonder why. The Creed is that part of the Mass wherein we, individually and as a congregation, affirm out loud what, in essence, we hold to be true about the Godhead. We need to hear, affirm, and think about this Credo, as it is called; the Church needs to hear that it is affirmed.
I asked a friend of mine about this omission of the Creed. He told me of a parishioner he knew who noticed the same thing. He asked his pastor about it. The pastor told him that it was omitted because the Creed was “divisive!..”
" The logic of this dubious principle — skip what is “divisive” — is to believe and proclaim precisely nothing as the essence of our faith. Is nothingness what satisfies empty minds? Another friend told me that many of the younger priests he knew do not wear vestments at private Masses. I have even heard of Mass in swimsuits. There is no warrant for this shedding of proper liturgical garb, except perhaps in the failure of bishops and superiors to insist on the normal rules of the Church. Too much bother, I guess.
Often these days, I find petition prayers after the Creed to last longer than the Canon of the Mass itself, with seemingly interminable lists of things to pray for, not infrequently of dubious political or moral import. Quite often the petitions merely repeat what is already in the Canon, itself is also in the vernacular. Why pray for the Pope in petition prayers when we pray for him in the Canon?
What happens at the amazingly poorly named** “kiss of peace” **is too amusing to recount. No aspect of the current Mass is more inappropriately placed. It distracts us from what is going on at Communion at the very moment we ought not to be so distracted. I believe at the Brompton Oratory in London it is placed elsewhere. Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, praises the Church of Zaire for placing it before the Presentation of the Gifts. He adds that this placing “would be desirable for the whole Roman Rite, insofar as the sign of peace is something we want to retain” (p. 170). That is, we may not want to retain it.
The kneeling, standing, sitting, bowing, genuflecting aspects of Mass and Communion are up for grabs and cause all sorts of needless controversy. No two parishes or dioceses seem to be exactly the same or even think they should be. When we visit a new parish we often have that bewildered look about what is going to happen next. The old suspicions seem borne out in practice, that if you change one thing, on the grounds that it could be “otherwise,” then everything connected with it will be changed. I sometimes wonder whether every parish will not end up having its own liturgy, sort of like the reformation.
If there is anything clear in the later Eucharistic documents of John Paul II, the Roman and National Liturgical Commissions, and Benedict XVI, it is that each priest should say Mass every day, even if he has to do so alone, and, unless ill or infirm, properly vested.
What is even more clear is that, granted cultural variety, the Liturgy is not up for grabs so that we can refashion it to suit our tastes in either doctrine, wording, or movement. It is not the private property of priest or bishop. Benedict XVI recently said to the Roman clergy assembled in St. John Lateran, “we are not sent to proclaim ourselves or our personal opinions, but the mystery of Christ and, in him, the measure of true humanism” (L’Osservatore Romano, May 18, 2005).
This admonition, which is really a kind of charter of freedom from the reigning mood of recurrent adaption, is no doubt aimed at the “actor priests.” Josef Cardinal Ratzinger has often remarked that today the priest must, like John the Baptist, “decrease.” The show is not about him. He is not there to call attention to himself, expound his own ideas, or entertain the people, a temptation almost endemic, as Ratzinger also indicates, to “turning the altar around.”
The Mass is not a staged drama at which we applaud the talent of the performers. There really is room for quiet and awe. The priest is there to do what the Church asks in the way the Church asks. Both of these criteria are set down in official documents and are easy to understand by almost anyone who takes the trouble to read them……”
ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/print2005/schall_mass_jun05.html
Reflections On Saying Mass (And Saying It Correctly) | James V. Schall, S. J. | June 13, 2005
“Every time I am at a Mass on Sunday or a Solemnity where, contrary to the rules, the Creed is omitted, I wonder why. The Creed is that part of the Mass wherein we, individually and as a congregation, affirm out loud what, in essence, we hold to be true about the Godhead. We need to hear, affirm, and think about this Credo, as it is called; the Church needs to hear that it is affirmed.
I asked a friend of mine about this omission of the Creed. He told me of a parishioner he knew who noticed the same thing. He asked his pastor about it. The pastor told him that it was omitted because the Creed was “divisive!..”
" The logic of this dubious principle — skip what is “divisive” — is to believe and proclaim precisely nothing as the essence of our faith. Is nothingness what satisfies empty minds? Another friend told me that many of the younger priests he knew do not wear vestments at private Masses. I have even heard of Mass in swimsuits. There is no warrant for this shedding of proper liturgical garb, except perhaps in the failure of bishops and superiors to insist on the normal rules of the Church. Too much bother, I guess.
Often these days, I find petition prayers after the Creed to last longer than the Canon of the Mass itself, with seemingly interminable lists of things to pray for, not infrequently of dubious political or moral import. Quite often the petitions merely repeat what is already in the Canon, itself is also in the vernacular. Why pray for the Pope in petition prayers when we pray for him in the Canon?
What happens at the amazingly poorly named** “kiss of peace” **is too amusing to recount. No aspect of the current Mass is more inappropriately placed. It distracts us from what is going on at Communion at the very moment we ought not to be so distracted. I believe at the Brompton Oratory in London it is placed elsewhere. Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, in The Spirit of the Liturgy, praises the Church of Zaire for placing it before the Presentation of the Gifts. He adds that this placing “would be desirable for the whole Roman Rite, insofar as the sign of peace is something we want to retain” (p. 170). That is, we may not want to retain it.
The kneeling, standing, sitting, bowing, genuflecting aspects of Mass and Communion are up for grabs and cause all sorts of needless controversy. No two parishes or dioceses seem to be exactly the same or even think they should be. When we visit a new parish we often have that bewildered look about what is going to happen next. The old suspicions seem borne out in practice, that if you change one thing, on the grounds that it could be “otherwise,” then everything connected with it will be changed. I sometimes wonder whether every parish will not end up having its own liturgy, sort of like the reformation.
If there is anything clear in the later Eucharistic documents of John Paul II, the Roman and National Liturgical Commissions, and Benedict XVI, it is that each priest should say Mass every day, even if he has to do so alone, and, unless ill or infirm, properly vested.
What is even more clear is that, granted cultural variety, the Liturgy is not up for grabs so that we can refashion it to suit our tastes in either doctrine, wording, or movement. It is not the private property of priest or bishop. Benedict XVI recently said to the Roman clergy assembled in St. John Lateran, “we are not sent to proclaim ourselves or our personal opinions, but the mystery of Christ and, in him, the measure of true humanism” (L’Osservatore Romano, May 18, 2005).
This admonition, which is really a kind of charter of freedom from the reigning mood of recurrent adaption, is no doubt aimed at the “actor priests.” Josef Cardinal Ratzinger has often remarked that today the priest must, like John the Baptist, “decrease.” The show is not about him. He is not there to call attention to himself, expound his own ideas, or entertain the people, a temptation almost endemic, as Ratzinger also indicates, to “turning the altar around.”
The Mass is not a staged drama at which we applaud the talent of the performers. There really is room for quiet and awe. The priest is there to do what the Church asks in the way the Church asks. Both of these criteria are set down in official documents and are easy to understand by almost anyone who takes the trouble to read them……”
ignatiusinsight.com/features2005/print2005/schall_mass_jun05.html
) and/or from the almost Catholic University at Georgetown ( 
)