You miss attributed the quote. It was @phil3 who wrote that, no me. I just quoted him on my post.
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blackforest
Well-known member
Sorry - fixed it. Not sure why you both showed up on there, but I assure you that it was just a formatting error. 
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otjm
Guest
As heaven has no “place” since it is a state of being, that is a question without an answer.
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redal
Guest
Call be a traditionalist, but I guess the kiss of peace would really cause fits
…even though it is a deeply rooted tradition (St. Justin Martyr described a typical church service and noted that the kiss of peace preceded communion: “Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss. There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water”; and St. Augustine, “When the Sacrifice is finished, we say the Lord’s Prayer, which you have received and recited. After this, the ‘Peace be with you’ is said, and the Christians embrace one another with the holy kiss. This is a sign of peace; as the lips indicate, let peace be made in your conscience, that is, when your lips draw near to those of your brother, do not let your heart withdraw from his. Hence, these are great and powerful sacraments,”) …
and also in scripture (1 Peter 5:14, Romans 16:16, 1 Corinthians 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:12, 1 Thes 5:26).
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redal
Guest
“From silly devotions and sour - faced saints , good Lord, deliver us! - St. Teresa of Avila
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phil3
Guest
It was the part I disliked the most. I hope it says gone
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phil3
Guest
I love it …
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JSRG
Guest
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that. Every mass I’ve ever attended just has people do it to the people in their row and the row behind/in front of them. At most someone may walk across the aisle but even that’s rare (it’s not uncommon to see people do a wave or something to people across the aisle, but not actually walking over).
I did go to an Episcopalian service once out of curiosity, though, and then they did their sign of peace there was a ton of people walking around and shaking hands.
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Minks
Guest
Date when the “greeting” began?phil3:
Indeed you are. You’re going to a communal prayer service, the Holy Mass, where you are joining your fellow members of the mystical body of Christ to celebrate the Holy Mass in union with each other. There’s nothing wrong with your fellow members of the mystical body of Christ welcoming you to Mass.
Contrast this to shopping at Walmart, where everyone is on an independent mission of shopping for the goods they seek to purchase.
Besides many churches had greeters before Walmart was even a twinkle in Sam Walton’s eye.
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Redd_Jackal
Guest
A number of parishes here were also doing “turn and greet” at the start of Mass here. A practice which may have K of C origins.
The ushers were still shaking hands of everyone leaving the pew for Communion despite the warning and the Sign of Peace ending moments earlier. Old habits are hard to break.
It also gave certain folks an opportunity to flirt. We also had a few EMs shaking hands on the way back to their seats after distribution of the Holy Eucharist. Think nothing of disturbing folks praying of giving thanks after receiving.
Once, during the H1N1 scare, we were told to substitute a polite bow at the Sign of Peace. That lasted about one week btw.
The ushers were still shaking hands of everyone leaving the pew for Communion despite the warning and the Sign of Peace ending moments earlier. Old habits are hard to break.
It also gave certain folks an opportunity to flirt. We also had a few EMs shaking hands on the way back to their seats after distribution of the Holy Eucharist. Think nothing of disturbing folks praying of giving thanks after receiving.
Once, during the H1N1 scare, we were told to substitute a polite bow at the Sign of Peace. That lasted about one week btw.
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stpurl
Guest
Many CATHOLIC Churches? Um, Walmart has been around a long time. Founded in 1962. And at that time in the entire US the Mass was in Latin. I was 6 in 1962 and attended quite a few churches in the Northeast esp Philly (family moved a lot) and I do not recall ‘greeters’ at all. Ushers did not ‘greet’ people; in some of the larger churches they guided you to wherever there was an empty spot to sit but you didn’t SPEAK. You were in CHURCH.
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Minks
Guest
Absolutely as I remember it, also, which is why I previously asked @PeterT for the date when greetings were initiated.
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Maximus1
Guest
It makes sense. When you think about it, a handshake isn’t particularly biblical. It is cultural. A bow, or a friendly wink are perhaps not as good, but they are signs.
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phil3
Guest
I have had so many people try to force it on me.
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Irishmom2
Guest
Sometimes, it isn’t so much that they are forcing it on you as that they may not know you don’t wish to participate, as is your right. Just keep your hands folded in prayer. Most people will understand that. If you don’t wish to speak, just nod your head if someone turns around in front of you.
Back when this first began and I was a child at the time, there was one family in our parish that wanted no part of it. At that time, the sign or kiss of peace was only passed down to the next person in your row. We used to pity the person that didn’t know this family wanted no part of it. They looked straight ahead and didn’t even acknowledge anyone standing there next to them.
As a child, I just thought they were strange. As an adult, I understand what they were doing, but they handled their refusal in an odd manner.
Back when this first began and I was a child at the time, there was one family in our parish that wanted no part of it. At that time, the sign or kiss of peace was only passed down to the next person in your row. We used to pity the person that didn’t know this family wanted no part of it. They looked straight ahead and didn’t even acknowledge anyone standing there next to them.
As a child, I just thought they were strange. As an adult, I understand what they were doing, but they handled their refusal in an odd manner.
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ioannes_pius
Guest
Did the priest invite everyone to extend the sign of peace in those cases?
American Protestant churches had a history of greeters since the 1800s, many Catholic churches in the U.S. adopted the practice after the reforms of Vatican II in the early 1970s.stpurl:
Absolutely as I remember it, also, which is why I previously asked @PeterT for the date when greetings were initiated.
Walmart adopted the practice of having greeters in 1982:
The Original Walmart Greeter Lives In Crowley Lousiana
Lois Richard of Crowley is the original Walmart greeter. It began as an idea to stop shoplifting at her location. Sam Walton loved it and so do customers.
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stpurl
Guest
I missed the part about where Catholic Churches should emulate the practices of non-Catholic Churches. … .especially practices that started just a couple of decades ago.
I do find beauty in simple and plain things. I also find beauty in complexity, in things which have developed beyond; IOW while a simple design of a plain cup, done in well carved and well polished wood, is beautiful, a more complex design of a cup of silver or gold with a design which itself is based on a pattern such as a trefoil which in itself also speaks to “Trinity’ and which has been rendered by a master craftsman is beautiful, perhaps even more beautiful in its layers and nuances.
So at one and the same point it seems over the last 40 years that Catholics at the WHIM (as none of this was ever required in Vatican 2) of those whose personal esthetics and personal worldview at the point in the 1960s and 1970s of ‘back to the land’ and ‘spartan simplicity’ decided to model everything tangible in their Catholic Church, from missal design to burlap banners to tie dye vestments to bare altars, discarded statues, and ‘plain glass’, have been holding the rest of the US Catholic world (in many areas) hostage to that same ‘rustic’ ethos, where we ‘join our simpler brethren’ with guitars, greeters, pot lucks, etc.
I have no problem with any of these in theory. Pot luck suppers, people sent out (in a non Covid19 world anyway) to ‘meet and greet’ new people, even guitars, OK.
But force a mindset where we ‘have greeters’ because “the mega church and the non denom have them, so we should too because it’s ‘back to simple times’ and ‘community oriented’. . .is like painting a set of earbuds on the Mona Lisa to make her more ‘appealing’ to today’s youth.
I do find beauty in simple and plain things. I also find beauty in complexity, in things which have developed beyond; IOW while a simple design of a plain cup, done in well carved and well polished wood, is beautiful, a more complex design of a cup of silver or gold with a design which itself is based on a pattern such as a trefoil which in itself also speaks to “Trinity’ and which has been rendered by a master craftsman is beautiful, perhaps even more beautiful in its layers and nuances.
So at one and the same point it seems over the last 40 years that Catholics at the WHIM (as none of this was ever required in Vatican 2) of those whose personal esthetics and personal worldview at the point in the 1960s and 1970s of ‘back to the land’ and ‘spartan simplicity’ decided to model everything tangible in their Catholic Church, from missal design to burlap banners to tie dye vestments to bare altars, discarded statues, and ‘plain glass’, have been holding the rest of the US Catholic world (in many areas) hostage to that same ‘rustic’ ethos, where we ‘join our simpler brethren’ with guitars, greeters, pot lucks, etc.
I have no problem with any of these in theory. Pot luck suppers, people sent out (in a non Covid19 world anyway) to ‘meet and greet’ new people, even guitars, OK.
But force a mindset where we ‘have greeters’ because “the mega church and the non denom have them, so we should too because it’s ‘back to simple times’ and ‘community oriented’. . .is like painting a set of earbuds on the Mona Lisa to make her more ‘appealing’ to today’s youth.
It was no force mindset. It was adopting best practices. Catholic churches that started having greeters were getting a lot more positive feedback about the greeters than negative feedback, hence the concept of greeters start to spread in American Catholic churches.
It always amazes me how some Catholics seem to want to avoid any type of interaction with their fellow Catholics at Mass. Mass is a COMMUNAL liturgy and prayer service where the Catholic community of the parish comes TOGETHER to worship and praise God and participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass as the UNITED mystical body of Christ.
There’s plenty of time during the week for private devotions and prayers to God, but during Mass isn’t one of those times.
It always amazes me how some Catholics seem to want to avoid any type of interaction with their fellow Catholics at Mass. Mass is a COMMUNAL liturgy and prayer service where the Catholic community of the parish comes TOGETHER to worship and praise God and participate in the holy sacrifice of the Mass as the UNITED mystical body of Christ.
There’s plenty of time during the week for private devotions and prayers to God, but during Mass isn’t one of those times.
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stpurl
Guest
Communal— yes. “Forced’ community? No.
It amazes me how Catholics who lived before 1969 apparently had THRIVING communities and a wonderful sense of worship and praise as well as ‘private devotions and prayers’ (both-and, not either-or) despite not having greeters.
May I respectfully remind readers that not everyone is an extrovert? Not everybody ‘has to have’ the same type of action or ritual pressed upon them because it suited people in the 1970s?
May I also remind readers that a rather sizable number of Catholics have left, or have greatly limited, attendance at Mass in the last 40 years or so. From the same kind of anecdotal evidence that most posit to justify the ‘community focus’ practices (including ‘greeters’), it seems that as many who gave positive feedback about those practices and stayed were negative —and LEFT—or were negative but ‘sucked it up’ hoping that some day the Church would become inclusive again. . .
Edited to add that, of course, people may indeed say that they (in the 1960s) didn’t care to have the ‘introverted’ quiet ‘forced’ on them back in the day. Again, there are churches where greeters work beautifully in a congregation which itself may have always been more extroverted as a whole, where the lived experiences outside and in the faith were always happy and positive, and the worldview was always ‘diversity’.
And there are others where greeters were forced on an unwilling congregation by the whims of a priest or ‘council’ which had always acted in opposition to the view of the majority but used their power to ‘enforce’, drove out dissenters, mocked, derided, insulted any who dared to question them, etc.
If the latter group had been treated like the former group in the beginning, if the experiences had been happy and positive and the natural lives and experiences of the people had been taken into account, things might be different.
As it is, in many of the ‘latter groups’ the triumphant ‘we’ll do things OUR way’ power holders may have won the battle in the short term, but they will likely lose the war. It’s a shame. I’m sure that most people even if they personally might be unsure or even uncomfortable with something different or new could be at least not UNhappy if they were treated ‘right’. But it takes a LOT of ‘positives’ to erase even ONE negative, and if you take into account that many people today have had decades of negative experiences pushed on them as ‘this is positive, you should be GLAD to do this’, it isn’t surprising that a fair number of people are just a little exhausted with having their Catholic Church turned into a rather tacky version of the Protestant Church down the street. And the Protestants ‘do’ greeting etc a heck of a lot better!
It amazes me how Catholics who lived before 1969 apparently had THRIVING communities and a wonderful sense of worship and praise as well as ‘private devotions and prayers’ (both-and, not either-or) despite not having greeters.
May I respectfully remind readers that not everyone is an extrovert? Not everybody ‘has to have’ the same type of action or ritual pressed upon them because it suited people in the 1970s?
May I also remind readers that a rather sizable number of Catholics have left, or have greatly limited, attendance at Mass in the last 40 years or so. From the same kind of anecdotal evidence that most posit to justify the ‘community focus’ practices (including ‘greeters’), it seems that as many who gave positive feedback about those practices and stayed were negative —and LEFT—or were negative but ‘sucked it up’ hoping that some day the Church would become inclusive again. . .
Edited to add that, of course, people may indeed say that they (in the 1960s) didn’t care to have the ‘introverted’ quiet ‘forced’ on them back in the day. Again, there are churches where greeters work beautifully in a congregation which itself may have always been more extroverted as a whole, where the lived experiences outside and in the faith were always happy and positive, and the worldview was always ‘diversity’.
And there are others where greeters were forced on an unwilling congregation by the whims of a priest or ‘council’ which had always acted in opposition to the view of the majority but used their power to ‘enforce’, drove out dissenters, mocked, derided, insulted any who dared to question them, etc.
If the latter group had been treated like the former group in the beginning, if the experiences had been happy and positive and the natural lives and experiences of the people had been taken into account, things might be different.
As it is, in many of the ‘latter groups’ the triumphant ‘we’ll do things OUR way’ power holders may have won the battle in the short term, but they will likely lose the war. It’s a shame. I’m sure that most people even if they personally might be unsure or even uncomfortable with something different or new could be at least not UNhappy if they were treated ‘right’. But it takes a LOT of ‘positives’ to erase even ONE negative, and if you take into account that many people today have had decades of negative experiences pushed on them as ‘this is positive, you should be GLAD to do this’, it isn’t surprising that a fair number of people are just a little exhausted with having their Catholic Church turned into a rather tacky version of the Protestant Church down the street. And the Protestants ‘do’ greeting etc a heck of a lot better!
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