What to do about liturgical abuses?

[robwar]

I have found that newcomers and visitors from Mexico and other South American countries are not use to kneeling during the consecration and most often remain standing when they first come here.

thanks for your suggestions and insight FAB, I wish there were more Deacons and Priests on CAF. I think it is sad that someone trained like yourself is still argued with over the areas of the liturgy by non-experts. Reading the Bible does not make me an expert on it and reading GIRM doesn’t make one an arm chair liturgy expert. What is the saddest threads on CAF or those over the liturgy and allege abuses most of which boil down to people’s tastes and likes.
If people spent more time and effort on applying Mass and Christ in their daily lives than going to Mass with GIRM in hand looking for the next thing done wrong and then squawk about it on the internet, we would have a vibrant Church that others will want to join not leave.

 

[Khalid]

There are plenty of priests and deacons here on CAF. I think there’s even a canonist.

Yes, “liturgical abuse” often does boil down to personal taste (which is one of the reasons, disregarding things like “liturgical exotic dancers” or priests preaching not priestcraft but “presidership”, [etc.,] I don’t advice writing the bishop or Rome), but, it is possible to celebrate an OF Mass with such irreverence while still following the letter of the rubrics it can often be beside the point.

Once that point has been reached for some people - where the Church building is indistinguishable from the office park surrounding it, the homilies are indistinguishable from those given to the Unitarian Universalist congregation, the congregation mimics the priest’s posture during the sacring and holds hands during the Paternoster, and the music is indistinguishable from the folk-rock station on the radio, and, additionally, still says “Yahweh”, altar girls, female EMHCs, few of them mentioned actually canonical liturgical abuse - there is a point where “what is wrong” overpowers the purpose of the Mass, “what is right”, in the eyes of some of the congregation, like Chinese water torture - no one drop is torture, but, given enough drops and enough time, the water drops (idiosyncrasies, liturgical abuses, etc.) overpower everything else.

Yes, the body is more important than the members: but we must not subdue the individual absolutely, to the impediment of spiritual progress. In an ideal world, everyone would have a good Mass, or at least, everyone would accept the Mass they had: but, in this world, where a man goes to a less-than-excellent Mass and is preoccupied and/or angered with the liturgical abuses (whether canonical or personal-opinion-based), reverence or lack thereof, and idiosyncrasies of the one he does attend, it is hard to argue that it is conducive to spiritual development.

In such a case - which is generally the case when a man post on the internet about it - the best advice is to find a Mass that, in its irreverent or non-traditional elements, does not distract a man so badly that he can not focus on the Mass-as-Mass itself.

And, in reference to one above post, the purpose of the Mass is the sacring (consecration), offering the sacrifice of the Mass to God, re-enacting the sacrifice of Calvary, and the reception of the Most Holy Body - not general “worship”, in the sense of “worshipping and praising the Lord”. We can worship God in that sense in a Protestant church, or at home: but we can not receive the Body there, not can their ministers offer the sacrifice to God, and all true worship is sacrifice (look at the Biblical pattern and follow it through the early Church). We can praise God on our own, but we can not offer the sacrifice without a priest, which is the purpose of the Mass, and the derivation of the very name “Mass” (which is a type of liturgy), from the Latin closing words, “Ite missa est”, meaning, “It [the sacrifice of the altar] is sent [to God]”.

But, if the OP’s question was just about, “is this Mass valid even if I don’t like the presentation of it?” or “is it a real Catholic Mass with a real Eucharist even if it’s decidedly non-traditional”, the answer is “yes” - not even the worst of the liturgical abuses make the Mass invalid (although they can make it illicit). To confect the Eucharist is required the words of institution with pure wine and bread according to the canons. If they words are said by a male with Holy Orders over the correct matter, the “Mass” - the sending of the sacrifice - is done, and the Eucharist is confected, and becomes the Body and Blood.

 

[PopeFrank]

I recently found out that the parish that I go to does quite a bit of liturgical abuse like holding hands during the Our Father and standing for the consecration.I didn’t know that these were against Church law until this weekend because I’m a neophyte and I’ve only gone to mass in two different places, and they both do the same things. Nothing invalidates the mass (from what I’ve observed) but it would be nice if we could follow the rules…

Anyway I doubt that by myself I’ll be able to change how things are done in the parish, but what do you guys suggest I do while I attend Mass there? As of right now switching parishes is not an option really, and I honestly do love the people there but the fact that we’re breaking the rules bothers me.

Any advice?
Thank you!

As others have said, holding hands is not a “liturgical abuse.” More important, why does it bother you? You need to learn how to ignore such distractions. If you don’t want to hold hands, close your eyes, bow your head and either clasp your hands in front of you or hold onto your missalette.

I’m not sure what the situation is with “standing” where you attend the Mass? I used to attend at a small chapel and there were not only no kneelers, there simply wasn’t room so standing was very appropriate. In a parish I sometimes attended, the former pastor ripped-out the kneelers (about half the pews hand kneelers) as a show of control/power. In that case I brought my little gardening pad with me to Mass so I had my own kneeler.

You need to pray very hard on WHY “the fact that we’re breaking the rules bothers me.” Is it a power/control issue for you? Why would you let something like that bother you in such an important setting when you can simply ignore either?

 

[PopeFrank]

Some of these questions do honestly make me wonder about why people get upset over such things?

The hand-holding matter is ridiculous. Simply ignore it. Those comments claiming that people will forcibly grab their hands simply don’t ring true. Also, iff there is room to safely kneel and you can do it without distracting others (might have to sit near the back) then just do it.

I think some need to look very closely at themselves to understand why such things bother them.

 

[robwar]

Some of these questions do honestly make me wonder about why people get upset over such things?

The hand-holding matter is ridiculous. Simply ignore it. Those comments claiming that people will forcibly grab their hands simply don’t ring true. Also, iff there is room to safely kneel and you can do it without distracting others (might have to sit near the back) then just do it.

I think some need to look very closely at themselves to understand why such things bother them.

I am beginning to think that this thread was started to get people arguing over the liturgy and is a troll since the OP hasn’t come one to clarify or even answer the question of where he or she got the ideas from. Likewise, none of us hear need a long lecture about the meaning of the Mass being a sacrifice, we all know that. Comments comparing the Catholic Mass as degenerating into a Unitarian service is even more ridiculous because it probably came from someone who has never attended that church. Reverence at Mass always begins in one’s heart and proper attitude and disposition and shouldn’t be dependent on really what goes on at Mass that in their minds isn’t perfect.

 

[PopeFrank]

I am beginning to think that this thread was started to get people arguing over the liturgy and is a troll since the OP hasn’t come one to clarify or even answer the question of where he or she got the ideas from. Likewise, none of us hear need a long lecture about the meaning of the Mass being a sacrifice, we all know that. Comments comparing the Catholic Mass as degenerating into a Unitarian service is even more ridiculous because it probably came from someone who has never attended that church. Reverence at Mass always begins in one’s heart and proper attitude and disposition and shouldn’t be dependent on really what goes on at Mass that in their minds isn’t perfect.

I strongly agree with your comments. There are obviously honest-to-goodness liturgical abuses out there. Some are so grave that we are required to take action. But hand-holding? Kneeling? Really?

It really would help a lot of people to gain some insight as to why they are angered by things like hand-holding and kneeling. Why the obsession? Why do they lack the ability to realize that such things are not a big deal and that they don’t have the authority to make changes anyway? All they are going to do is make themselves and others miserable.

 

[PopeFrank]

Go to an Eastern Catholic or Tridentine parish?

Or an Eastern Orthodox parish occasionally without receiving communion, to fulfill the quota of beautiful and reverent worship. It reminds me, yesterday I was at a Greek Orthodox parish for the Nativity of the Theotokos (since the feast was originally invented/written/introduced in the Greek East), and the liturgy was mostly in English. I realized that the modern NO Mass is not irreverent because of English (as I have thought myself in the back of my mind, and have heard many Trads more-or-less state as fact), but because of liturgical abuses (mainly), ad populum, altar girls, etc. The icons, gospel book, and church architecture help too. (Pre-Vatican II churches without the whole Liberal Methodist New Age look are good as well. A church building should not distract from the liturgy because it’s so “out there” like many post-1965 buildings are.)

If one was to celebrate a sung EF Mass in English (I do believe such things exist, I’ve just never seen it: note “sung”, as there’s no such thing as a spoken Orthodox liturgy), and it was done well (“smells and bells”), with at least plain song, I daresay it would be as beautiful and reverent, as the Latin Mass, and if the NO Mass was said in Latin with the typical range of abuses, it would be just as bad. Then again priests who bother to say or sing the Mass in Latin are less likely to be tolerant or encouraging of liturgical abuses in my experience.

Remember as is said, “Catholics go to Mass to receive the Body of Christ, not to look at the building or hear chant”, so on and so forth. But a well-sung liturgy in a nice building certainly doesn’t hurt.

Attending an Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy when a Catholic sacrificial liturgy is available does not satisfy one’s Sunday obligation. That’s very bad advice.

PLENTY of odd things take place during the celebration of EF Masses and Eastern Divine Liturgies as well.

 

[Khalid]

Please read my post more carefully. “Homilies like would be delivered to the Unitarians”, in connection with the “Chinese water torture” analogy and an affirmation that, regardless, the Mass is still valid. (The OP seemed he may have had scruples about that.) I listed many things that were not liturgical abuses (of which “Unitarian Univeralist homilies” was one of them) but which could conceivably be distracting enough to prevent a babe in Christ, or a man with an especially developed aesthetic sense, from worshipping God to the fullest, for we can not worship God to the fullest when we are thinking for the whole service about whether someone will grab our hand during the Paternoster.

Some are babes in Christ, and some are adolescents, and some are men grown: in an ideal world, every man could ignore what bothered him, and focus on what was good, but this is not that world, and, in this world, we do not want to turn the Mass in a tool to possibly turn away a man who is still a child in true doctrine. The mediaeval men understood this, that the aesthetics could be as important as the doctrine in drawing the whole man in to the worship of his Lord: why else did they build churches such as they did with such great symbolism? Why was the old Mass full of processions and chants and smells and bells? It is to draw the whole man in to the worship of God using all his senses. Providing a reverent environment helps men worship the Lord. Of course, the most spiritually mature could worship in an irreverent environment of any sort: but not all, or even many, are. It’s a matter of what Greeks called “economy”: if you’re going to a Mass and can not focus on the Mass, but instead on the problems, go to a different Mass. If you still can’t focus on the Mass, maybe you have a problem of authority, etc. as other posters have said. But we should assume the best.

In one Greek Orthodox baptism or chrismation an Orthodox priest spoke to me of (part of this must have involved poor catechesis), a family was baptized or chrismated (I can’t recall which), and, then, after, told that they must fast from the night prior to receive communion. Upon asking “We can’t even have coffee?” and learning that no, not even coffee, the family never came back to the Orthodox Church. I am not saying this is directly equivalent, but as an illustration: some are babes in Christ, some are adolescents, some are men grown. Babes in Christ can’t be expected to fast the full 200-odd days that are supposed to be fasts: nor can they be expected to pray well in irreverent situations, or to immediately be cleansed of all legalism and flesh and to see only the Spirit in everything.

 

[robwar]

Khalid,
You are delving into things that are going to be completely off topic. I have never been to a Mass (and I’ve been to lots of them in nearly 27 years of being Catholic) that someone forcible grabbed my hand in Our Father and even if that truly did happen to you, you are saying that that was so distracting to you from worshiping at Mass? You likewise mentioned Unitarian. What do you actually know about them? Have you ever been to Unitarian Churches to know what a sermon is like and then compare that to a homily? You are bringing up things that are personal tastes and ideas only. Not every Catholic shares them. My husband grew-up with the Latin Mass. He didn’t like it and repeatedly has said he will not go to an EF Mass. While it seems like to you that is the highest form of worship, not everyone thinks that. I have seen true “liturgical abuse” in being Catholic. One was at a previous parish where non ordained people gave the homilies. That is clearly a no. The other was with a nun in charge of the liturgy was changing the male Father, he etc. to generic parent etc. Again that is clearly a no. But on CAF with these threads complaining about abuse, i don’t see these examples I just gave ever mentioned. It is stuff like hand holding or the music, or female EMCH, receiving on the tongue verses hand, guitars in Church, the priest told a joke, there were no kneelers etc and so on. The only expert in this thread in the liturgy was a Deacon and yet, posters who haven’t probably had any training or at a Deacon’s level argued with him. The whole thing is pretty sad if you ask me.

 

[mdgspencer]

It would be better for our worship during the mass, as you indicate, if we could just ignore liturgical abuses. But people are different, and the fact is that some people do get upset. So, in practice, liturgical abuse are detrimental to some people’s worship (and it is something that should not have happened in the first place, which is part of the definition of a liturgical abuse).
Personally, I don’t like it when strangers want to hold my hand, as has happened to me during the mass. Some people are private persons, for one thing. Since you provide this example, I am addressing this, though it is not a liturgical abuse. Still it shows how worship can be hampered by some other thing claiming our attention in the middle of the mass…

The hand-holding matter is ridiculous. Simply ignore it. Those comments claiming that people will forcibly grab their hands simply don’t ring true.

 

[PopeFrank]

Two fantasies I definitely detect on these forums.

1. People forcibly grabbing other peoples’ hands to hold during the Lord’s Prayer.
2. That receiving Holy Communion on the tongue somehow makes it more difficult to intentionally profane the Blessed Sacrament.

I have seen both offered time after time to sell a certain view. Easy to see right through both.

 

[PopeFrank]

Khalid,
You are delving into things that are going to be completely off topic. I have never been to a Mass (and I’ve been to lots of them in nearly 27 years of being Catholic) that someone forcible grabbed my hand in Our Father and even if that truly did happen to you, you are saying that that was so distracting to you from worshiping at Mass? You likewise mentioned Unitarian. What do you actually know about them? Have you ever been to Unitarian Churches to know what a sermon is like and then compare that to a homily? You are bringing up things that are personal tastes and ideas only. Not every Catholic shares them. My husband grew-up with the Latin Mass. He didn’t like it and repeatedly has said he will not go to an EF Mass. While it seems like to you that is the highest form of worship, not everyone thinks that. I have seen true “liturgical abuse” in being Catholic. One was at a previous parish where non ordained people gave the homilies. That is clearly a no. The other was with a nun in charge of the liturgy was changing the male Father, he etc. to generic parent etc. Again that is clearly a no. But on CAF with these threads complaining about abuse, i don’t see these examples I just gave ever mentioned. It is stuff like hand holding or the music, or female EMCH, receiving on the tongue verses hand, guitars in Church, the priest told a joke, there were no kneelers etc and so on. The only expert in this thread in the liturgy was a Deacon and yet, posters who haven’t probably had any training or at a Deacon’s level argued with him. The whole thing is pretty sad if you ask me.

Amen.

 

[PopeFrank]

It would be better for our worship during the mass, as you indicate, if we could just ignore liturgical abuses. But people are different, and the fact is that some people do get upset. So, in practice, liturgical abuse are detrimental to some people’s worship (and it is something that should not have happened in the first place, which is part of the definition of a liturgical abuse).
Personally, I don’t like it when strangers want to hold my hand, as has happened to me during the mass. Some people are private persons, for one thing. Since you provide this example, I am addressing this, though it is not a liturgical abuse. Still it shows how worship can be hampered by some other thing claiming our attention in the middle of the mass…

The hand-holding matter is ridiculous. Simply ignore it. Those comments claiming that people will forcibly grab their hands simply don’t ring true.

Yes, you are right. Those people that do get upset over such things need to begin to realize why they do and then begin to deal with it. The onus is on them! More than likely it’s about the need/desire to exert control over others in a setting where it’s inappropriate to do so.

The absolute worth example I ever experienced was at a small Mass where a nun literally walked around and tried to life people back onto their feet after they all knelt at exactly the right point in the Mass. Something had to be very wrong for her to even attempt that. While getting upset over hand-holding is not in the same league as that, the genesis is the same. Exerting control.

 

[Khalid]

Attending an Eastern Orthodox Divine Liturgy when a Catholic sacrificial liturgy is available does not satisfy one’s Sunday obligation. That’s very bad advice.

PLENTY of odd things take place during the celebration of EF Masses and Eastern Divine Liturgies as well.

I did not mean to suggest that an EO liturgy fulfilled his obligation as a Roman Catholic (an EC liturgy does), but to suggest that he may attend one to worship in the general sense (as I mentioned in my above posts) in a reverent environment after his obligations were fulfilled. There’s no obligation to not attend other services or liturgies, just an obligation to attend at least one Catholic Mass, and to not receive communion at other services and liturgies.

Apologies for any misunderstanding, and thank you for forcing my clarification. “As iron sharpeneth iron, so doth one man sharpen another.”

 

[Khalid]

Khalid,
You are delving into things that are going to be completely off topic. I have never been to a Mass (and I’ve been to lots of them in nearly 27 years of being Catholic) that someone forcible grabbed my hand in Our Father and even if that truly did happen to you, you are saying that that was so distracting to you from worshiping at Mass? You likewise mentioned Unitarian. What do you actually know about them? Have you ever been to Unitarian Churches to know what a sermon is like and then compare that to a homily? You are bringing up things that are personal tastes and ideas only. Not every Catholic shares them. My husband grew-up with the Latin Mass. He didn’t like it and repeatedly has said he will not go to an EF Mass. While it seems like to you that is the highest form of worship, not everyone thinks that. I have seen true “liturgical abuse” in being Catholic. One was at a previous parish where non ordained people gave the homilies. That is clearly a no. The other was with a nun in charge of the liturgy was changing the male Father, he etc. to generic parent etc. Again that is clearly a no. But on CAF with these threads complaining about abuse, i don’t see these examples I just gave ever mentioned. It is stuff like hand holding or the music, or female EMCH, receiving on the tongue verses hand, guitars in Church, the priest told a joke, there were no kneelers etc and so on. The only expert in this thread in the liturgy was a Deacon and yet, posters who haven’t probably had any training or at a Deacon’s level argued with him. The whole thing is pretty sad if you ask me.

I’m trying, at least, to speak in hypotheticals (e.g. what, hypothetically, the OP could have meant, or others who complain excessively and inordinately about the liturgy could mean, as, has been pointed out repeatedly, these threads are common). I’m not speaking personally, outside of the suggestion in the first post - I attend a Melkite divine liturgy, and, aesthetically, consider the Liturgy of St Basil to be the highest form of worship that I’ve yet seen - and of course understand that these are subjective judgments, just as most of the things that bothered the OP were as well.

No one has forcibly grabbed my hand, although I’ve heard some posters on CAF say it has happened to them. Rejecting a hand offered also seems out of place with the spirit and community of worship, the social aspect of the Body of Christ (offending others, even), so, I can see that a man could feel stuck between “a rock and a hard place” in such a situation. And, yes, I’ve been to at least Unitarian-Universalist services (the point of the obviously poor and misunderstood comparison hinged on the fact that both some Catholic and all the UU homilies I’ve heard have very little if any traditional Christian content, but have much other general “spiritual” content in line with the zeitgeist), but not actual traditional Unitarian ones.