The Quality of the Celebration of the Mass has Slowly Improved at my Parish

[Ostiarius]

only seemed to be exasperated at the silliness of having one candle at the altar

Right. At least 2 are required. After the problem arose, I simply moved the candle back – which of course caused emotions to run high with some people – not clerics and we did not have a pastor at the time.

The following week I set-up for Mass again. Sure enough one candle next to the left end and the other to the right of the ambo.

I placed the second candle where it belonged – on the right end of the altar, and then placed an additional, identical candle in front of the centerline of the ambo. That still caused tempers to flare, so I just began ignoring detractors.

A couple of weeks later the liturgy committee (all laity) sent me an email asking me to appear at their meeting. Instead I sent them the article from the GIRM that says the altar requires at least 2 candles when a priest (vs. a prelate) is the celebrant. That ended that issue.

 

[tafan2]

Well, to be fair, the original poster only seemed to be exasperated at the silliness of having one candle at the altar and one at the ambo, and it is hard to withhold sympathy for that.

Understood that the poster did not call it that or approve, I was just referring to his statement.

 

[PetraG]

I sent them the article from the GIRM that says the altar requires at least 2 candles when a priest (vs. a prelate) is the celebrant. That ended that issue.

Funny how often that solves things. “Say the Black, Do the Red” won’t lead anybody wrong.
My parish has had priests who vary quite a bit on how they do things, but we’ve been lucky in that they’ve all prepared their homilies well and had an unvarying devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and the Mass. That is not to say that other priests lack devotion–not at all!–but it takes an effort to keep the external effect as reverent as the inner devotion is without falling into interjection of distracting personal “flourishes.” Or, we had an altar server who was very devoted, but when praying sometimes would let the jaw go slack and stare off nowhere in particular. That is no big deal when you’re in the pews but a it is a bit distracting to look as if you’re zoned out when you’re up in front with an alb on.

 

[PetraG]

It’s tough because those are all valid options for the Mass, so you can’t really point to any of those things as being “wrong.” But when taken together, it does sort of lend the impression that Mass is something to be rushed through as quickly as possible, which doesn’t seem to be the impression we want to leave people with.

The main thing, in my opinion, is this: What is done, let it be correct and let it be done well.
When that happens, people who like Mass that’s a different length, longer or shorter, or a different whatever, usually find the differences of opinion to be far less of a distraction. One feels that with a very good Mass, one can hardly quibble about those little things, because there are places with real distractions and and even real abuses or real laxity or serious departure from the norms going on. OK, so maybe you wish they used the organ more or whatever, but it’s small potatoes.

 

[Ostiarius]

But when taken together, it does sort of lend the impression that Mass is something to be rushed through as quickly as possible

Bingo!

For those without a lot of knowledge of the Mass, they were just confused why Mass now only took 40 minutes, and why it always seemed rushed?

For those with a knowledge of the Order of the Mass, we couldn’t understand why the briefest options were offered at every step in the Mass and by ALL our priests. I asked our pastor about it and all he said is that people would not understand “consubstantial.”

They would if it had been explained to them.

 

[DeniseNY]

I think if she were yelling, the whole post would be in caps. I think the caps are used here for emphasis.

 

[OraLabora]

I do remember a priest in the past explaining to us what he was doing to make the Mass shorter. How do you know one priest didnt say that to his parishioners in the OP parish?

That’s the point we don’t know. So in Catholic charity, we assume it was made shorter for the best of intentions. Two examples I already gave, the priest has another Mass to celebrate and he needs to leave at a time that allows him to get to it, or the priest has health issues. Another would be his parishioners asked for it to be shorter.

So while we don’t know the reason, we are to assume they were good reasons, especially since licit options were used.

At the abbey where I go to Mass, everything is in Gregorian chant and French plainchant. Sunday Mass is about an hour and a quarter, weekdays on ordinary ferias or memorials (i.e. no Gloria or Creed), about 35 minutes. The community is aging rapidly, with the average age now 70, and many monks in their 80s and a few in their 90s. In summer heat, they take measures to shorten the Mass: apostle’s creed (sung in Latin!) instead of Nicene, brief homily, if it’s a long offertory antiphon in the Gradual they omit it and there’s a brief organ piece instead, EP II (and they do use all 4 main EPs throughout the year) things of that nature. Everything is done according to rubrics, but it takes about 15 minutes less. It’s all done for a good reason, and within appropriate boundaries. Moreover as a conventual Mass, it is for the monks, not the laity though the laity are welcome to attend.

My point in all this rambling, is that there are many licit reasons to select a shorter licit option to shorten the Mass.

Plus, priests are human. We only typically see him at Sunday Mass, but he might have a full workload during the week. He has to administer the parish (no easy task) with tight funds, he has to make sick calls at all hours, he has to prepare a riveting homily for every Sunday, he has to preside at weekday Mass, he has to travel around to various retirement homes to celebrate Mass for shut-ins, he often has to celebrate Mass on Saturday evening and/or another Mass on Sunday at another parish half-way across the county (that’s the reality where I live), and at the same time keep liturgy geeks like us happy… or give us something to gripe about. So we end up judging his whole week’s performance on the one hour on Sunday that we see him.

It hardly seems fair. Nor charitable.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

That’s it exactly. We dont know but maybe the OP does. The rude comments in this thread are not charitable or Christ like either. One person started the rudeness and it has snowballed since.
I’m not taking anything away from our priests. They do work very very hard and have it difficult but there is a person on the other end of this thread too and a fellow Catholic. We don’t know their story either and they are talking about a 20 year span or more and were happy about improvements in their parish and happy about Mass and those are good things.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

Ok. Just capitals and exclamation points usually mean yelling.

 

[Irishmom2]

Exclamation points mean yelling?

Nope.

 

[MagdalenaRita]

Lol yes.
I said when placed with all caps

 

[Ostiarius]

To be fair, maybe your pastor has had the kind of parishioner before where he tries to explain something and said parishoner just tells him how he’s wrong then goes and makes threads about it on the internet.

4 in row? Not likely.

 

[RobertAdams]

You’d be surprised. All four might have even encountered the exact same parishioner.

 

[bardegaulois]

Reflecting on this thread last night, it occurred to me that maybe the length of Mass isn’t really the issue. I don’t, for instance, think anyone would question the appropriateness of a brief early-morning weekday Mass without solemnity for the sake of those who must commute to work. Here, a longer Mass with music and preaching would be inappropriate as it would force a choice between work and devotion among parishioners.

Less solemnity on Sundays and holy days is a different story, however, as these are days of precept that we are commanded to observe and to keep holy. If a Mass of the Lord’s Day is celebrated with as little solemnity as a ferial Mass, what impression do you think many of the faithful might get? We learn more through symbol and sign than we do through didactic teaching, and if the signs pointing to Sunday as a particularly sacred day are lacking, then I doubt any amount of preaching or catechesis on the Third Commandment can make up for that. In fact, if the signs and teaching don’t seem to match, then priests can open themselves, and by extension the Church, up to a charge of hypocrisy by some who come to reflect on it.

This is not the only matter considering which I’ve noticed this cognitive dissonance. Another touches confession, and the times available for confession at certain parishes. If a priest will only hear confessions for less than an hour a week, then his preaching about the power and necessity of the sacrament will fall flat among many of the faithful. Sadly, this happens frequently at many of the parishes in my locality. The sign and the teaching don’t match.

It’s often said that we believe as we practice and we practice as we believe. Orthodoxy informs orthopraxis and vice versa. But if what people witness in our liturgical and devotional practice seems somehow incongruous to what they know from their education and their understanding of the faith, you’re going to have a lot of frustration. The signs and symbols really need to be there in order for faith to flourish.

 

[prayerrider]

I think of banality as the intrusion of the profane into the space of the sacred. Like socializing in the nave.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I’ve seen one legitimate case of liturgical abuse in my life (liturgical dance, which, my, understanding, is that in some culture’s, it’s fine, my American culture is not one of those), but, everything else you said, how did that happen?

 

[prayerrider]

Very well said. I’ve been taking a catechist class online and I’m realizing how much “low Christology” dominates today, rather than a healthy balance of low and high Christology. This is reflected in course materials and I’m almost despairing of finding a course where Jesus Christ is referred to more than rarely as the Word and the Second Person of the Trinity…as God.

 

[bardegaulois]

Bingo. I write from the United States, whose general culture is broadly informed by lower-church forms of Protestantism, to the point where I’ve even referred to American culture in my writings as “secular Calvinism.” All of the signs and symbols around us point to that, leading those with a higher Christology – or, to reverse your earlier statement, a sense of the Incarnation as the intrusion of the sacred into the profane – to face an uphill battle at times. The changes in the order of Mass in the 1970 Missal, emphasizing the Mass’s communal aspect and downplaying its sacrificial aspect, don’t help either. Too much “lowness,” for lack of a better term, in our religious observance, can easily lead to the impression among many that the practice of our faith just isn’t that distinct from the culture around us. It should be no surprise, then, that so many have fallen away from the faith over the past few generations.