Reverence in the Mass

[NihilObstatINRI]

From the Didache:
“You shall not be covetous or extortionate, or hypocritical, or malicious or proud. You shall not plan evil against your neighbor. You should not hate anyone; but you should reprove some, and you should pray for some, and you should love some more then your own life.”

I think my favourite part is this bit: “You should not hate anyone; but you should reprove some, and you should pray for some, and you should love some more then your own life.”
As Catholics who are active on the internet, we probably hear several times a day somebody harping on us for being uncharitable… and sometimes they’re right, sometimes we are, but sometimes we’re saying things that need to be said. To allow error and blasphemy and heterodoxy to go uncorrected is far greater an injustice than correcting it, even if the correction seems harsh at the time. At the end of the day, a correction made in the spirit of Christian charity is directed towards helping the other party to come to the Faith, or to deepen their Faith and their love of God.
I think it’s especially important to inspire our Catholic brethren to greater reverence in the context of the Holy Mass. If I could convince everyone I encounter of one thing, that would be it. I am reminded of what Cardinal Arinze said with regards to receiving the Eucharist kneeling. “If we believe, if we truly believe that it is Jesus, the Son of God, then why don’t we kneel, why don’t we crawl?”
Here is the video of him saying that:

youtu.be/Cc0g3UMRtMM
(Skip to about 2:10 if you don’t want to watch the whole thing.)

Basically what Cardinal Arinze says in this video, and which I agree with 120% is that if we truly love and respect and fear our God, that we should show it with our actions. It’s simple, but so often forgotten, or even denied. Those who say it are labelled as Pharisees, or spiritually prideful. No, we’re not. We believe that our exterior actions reflect and influence our interior disposition. That is why we kneel before Christ in our Holy Eucharist. That’s why we genuflect towards Him in the Tabernacle, and receive Him kneeling, or at the very least bow, if you must stand.
As we read in Redemptionis Sacramentum: “The Mystery of the Eucharist is too great for anyone to permit himself to treat it according to his own whim, so that its sacredness and its universal ordering would be obscured.” We are responsible for doing our part that the great Sacrament is never trivialized. We should fall down and worship Him, not treat the Mass like a community gathering or prayer meeting or an empty ritual.

 

[Digitonomy]

To allow error… to go uncorrected is far greater an injustice than correcting it, even if the correction seems harsh at the time.

I don’t think this is always true. A harsh correction of a trivial error can be counter productive, and it is often prudent to overlook such trivial things in the short term.

 

[NihilObstatINRI]

I don’t think this is always true. A harsh correction of a trivial error can be counter productive, and it is often prudent to overlook such trivial things in the short term.

A harsh correction should be and is a last resort, but I will argue that any correction is still better and more charitable than none at all.

 

[Digitonomy]

Let me give an example where I think that letting the matter go in the short term would be appropriate.

If I were seated near the front just prior to a funeral mass, looking back down the aisle to make sure my child was headed the right direction to the restroom, I would be able to tell the orientation of the person genuflecting as he entered the row behind me. Specifically, I might notice that he genuflected straight forward, directly toward the altar. Clearly he should have done so at an angle of about 45°, toward the tabernacle off to the side.

Some might feel that correcting the error at that point is critical, lest this person repeat the error the next time he attends mass. I would tend not to correct the error at that time by interrupting his prayers, or his quiet pre-mass contemplation. I wouldn’t even disturb him about this matter after the mass during the rest of the funeral-related activities.

Why? Because the error is minor, and there are better times and manners to approach and address it. But that’s just me.

 

[NihilObstatINRI]

Let me give an example where I think that letting the matter go in the short term would be appropriate.

If I were seated near the front just prior to a funeral mass, looking back down the aisle to make sure my child was headed the right direction to the restroom, I would be able to tell the orientation of the person genuflecting as he entered the row behind me. Specifically, I might notice that he genuflected straight forward, directly toward the altar. Clearly he should have done so at an angle of about 45°, toward the tabernacle off to the side.

Some might feel that correcting the error at that point is critical, lest this person repeat the error the next time he attends mass. I would tend not to correct the error at that time by interrupting his prayers, or his quiet pre-mass contemplation. I wouldn’t even disturb him about this matter after the mass during the rest of the funeral-related activities.

Why? Because the error is minor, and there are better times and manners to approach and address it. But that’s just me.

Well we obviously need to use common sense in order to separate actual errors (and I am using error in a more formal sense) from simple misunderstandings. In your example, on the superficial level we have a simple misunderstanding. Not worth addressing at that moment. Maybe worth addressing later. However, when we dig deeper we find a more serious misunderstanding (maybe not an ‘Error’, but certainly serious) in that this person doesn’t understand the purpose of genuflecting, and maybe has a faulty understanding of the Eucharist.
However, common sense comes into play again. If you’ve never met this person before, then there really isn’t a prudent way in which to offer correction. If you attempted to do so, it wouldn’t be correction at all, but just another busybody sticking their nose in other people’s business. However, if you know that person and communicate with them, then there will certainly be an opportunity to bring up the subject.

Of course it stands to common sense that every Catholic unintentionally believes some sort of error or heresy about the faith. This is going to be out of simple ignorance of the more technical aspects of theology. To root out every single one of these errors would be unrealistic, but I think we are obligated to address them when they are presented in a direct manner.