The personality of the priest in the EF and OF

[eelpis]

It seems to me that in the EF the priests personality is reduced to be unimportant while in the OF it seems to be very important. “I must decrease and He must increase.” St John the Baptist.

Is there not a risk that the personality of the priest can stand in the way between the soul and Christ?

I’ve experienced it many times, perhaps that’s why I prefer the EF?

I beg your pardon but I cannot see why the Church would change something holy into something constructed at a desk by experts.

 

[benedictgal]

Incidentally, the Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments made some points relevent to what you are saying. I was blessed to hear him speak at the Gateway Liturgical Conference when I was in St. Louis, MO, back in November. Here is what he said:

Christ, the Main Celebrant at the Altar
And so, the correct approach to ars celebrandi of priests and even of the faithful would be to insure that they allow Christ to take over at the altar, becoming the voice, the hands and the being of Christ, or the alter Christus.

Sacramentum Caritatis affirms this very clearly when it states, “Priests should be conscious of the fact that in their ministry they must never put themselves or their personal opinions in the first place, but Jesus Christ. Any attempt to make themselves the center of the liturgical action contradicts their very identity as priests. The priest is above all a servant of others, and he must continuously work at being a sign pointing to Christ, a docile instrument in the Lord’s hands. This is seen particularly in his humility in leading the liturgical assembly, in obedience to the rite, uniting himself to it in mind and heart and avoiding anything that might give the impression of an inordinate emphasis on his own personality” (Sacr. Carit. 23).

In everything the priest does at the altar he should always let the Lord take control of his being. The words of John the Baptist are important in this matter: “He must increase and I must decrease” (Jn 3:30).

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen emphasized this when he stated: “the priest does not belong to himself; he belongs to Christ; he is not his own. He is Christ’s” (Those Mysterious Priests, Alba House, New York 2005, p. 221).

It is only in this way that the priest can truly interiorize the Holy Sacrifice of Christ and of His Church so that it becomes co-natural with him. For what we do at the altar, as Pope Pius XII’s 1947 encyclical, Mediator Dei, states, is not our own, but is “worship rendered by the Mystical Body of Christ in the entirety of its head and members” (MD 20). To be conscious of this before, during and after the celebration of the Eucharist and the other liturgical acts is extremely important.

Now, here is the end all and be all of the address:

Ego Pampering
Let us face it, all of us priests, bishops, and even cardinals, are human beings and so the temptation to place ourselves at the center makes us feel good — what I call “ego pampering”.

None of us is exempt from this, and now with the Missa versus populum [Mass facing the people], that danger is even greater. Facing the people increases chances of dis-attention and distraction from what we do at the altar, and the temptation for showmanship. In a beautiful article written by a German author, the following comments were made on the subject:

While in the past, the priest functioned as the anonymous go-between, the first among the faithful, facing God and not the people, representative of all and together with them offering the sacrifice … today he is a distinct person, with personal characteristics, his personal life style, his face turned towards the people. For many priests this change is a temptation they cannot handle … to them, the level of success in their performance is a measure of their personal power and thus the indicator of their feeling of personal security and self assurance.

(K.G. Rey, Pubertaetserscheinungen in der Katholischen Kirche [Signs of Puberty in the Catholic Church] Kritische Texte, Benzinger, Vol 4, p. 25).

The priest here, as we can see, becomes the main actor playing out a drama with other actors on a platform- like place, and the more creative and dramatic they become, the more they feel a sense of ego satisfaction. But, where can Christ be in all of this?

Unfortunately, there were some women in the audience who walked out on the Archbishop’s speech. This I found rather disconcerting because he spoke the truth.