I don’t understand this thread and the line of conversation.
The OP did not say that the priest asked them to bring linens. The OP said that they took it upon themself to bring linens to the priest.
The only time I ever have a problem as a server doing anything is when priest or deacon whispers, or mumbles, or points or nods their head and expects me to know what they want. If I am given a clear command, I comply.
No one is talking about arguing with a priest at the altar. I have no idea where that came from.
I am happy to clarify.
The Reader brought the linens at the Reader’s own initiative, which as a priest I compliment. S/he saw the situation and responded. I would have been grateful, as a visiting priest in that parish. If, perchance, I had not needed the linen, I would have simply left it aside. That we are talking about an extra corporal and more than one purificator indicates that we are talking about a not insignificant quantity of spilled wine – indeed there was a need. And the priest, in fact, had the Reader deploy the linen.
As a priest, I have said Mass with servers ranging from installed acolytes to seminarians to candidates for the diaconate to adults to children ranging down to age 7. I famously remember, and have related, one occasion where I was a visiting priest and, at the offertory, discovered that there was no corporal…neither on the altar nor on top of the chalice. I leaned over to the young server and “Please go to the sacristy and get a corporal”. The server looked at me and said “Father, I have no idea what you are even talking about!” So I said Mass without a corporal. I couldn’t leave the altar and I had no idea if anyone in the congregation had ever even been in the sacristy. Nothing to do.
I am happy for you and your parish if you are a knowledgeable server.
I will add, however, that as a priest, I make a judgment as to whom I turn to if I need something in the midst of the Mass. It may be the deacon. It may be the server…but I may judge that I am better off motioning to approach the Presider’s chair either the Reader or an Extraordinary Minister, particularly if I know one of them better knows the sacristy than the server does. The decision is properly mine, as the Presider.
As for your question: “
No one is talking about arguing with a priest at the altar. I have no idea where that came from”…it derives from the poster saying “
My problem is that I felt that it was inappropriate for me to move the chalices and ciborium to remove the dirty corporal and place the new one on the altar. What is the proper thing to do? Someone told me after Mass that he should’ve moved them himself, so I feel bad.” The Reader related though what happened and please note what the priest said: “
At the sign of peace, I took him a clean corporal and clean purificators. I asked him what he wanted me to do, and he told me to place it on the altar and take the dirty one.”
In other words, the lay person who criticised the Reader was
wholly in the wrong. If the priest said to do it, it is wrong to say to the priest that he should do it himself, as the critical lay person said; it is not appropriate at the altar to begin questioning the propriety of fulfilling the Presider’s explicit instruction. That is completely inappropriate.
Had the lay person who criticised the Reader have said that to me, had I been the Presider when I directed that person to change the linen while I retrieved the reserved sacrament…in other words, and to be clear, for someone to presume to say to me that “no, it is for you as the priest to change the linen,” I would have indeed said what I wrote: “Comply with what I instructed you or be gone.”
Which is why I reassured the Reader that what the Reader did was, in fact, completely proper.
