What was the most egregious liturgical abuse you ever witnessed?

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Not having Mass on Sunday because on the Day before the Parish held it’s Annual Parish Picnic.
I was working in Kentucky, My wife drove up to visit me. We arrived at Mass for 30 minutes prior to start. There were 4 additional cars waiting for Mass. 30 minutes after Mass was suppose to start, I went around a chatted with the other Cars. All were from out of town.

Questioned the Catholic co-workers the next day. "We never have Mass on Sunday after the Annual Parish Picnic.

The Bishop over this Parish is the Head of the UCCB at the time and may still be. This was 3 years ago.
 
Oneofthewomen said:
That said, some of the worst abuses I have seen are those of the laity toward the hierarchy. People who ride their pastors with mundane and ridiculous demands, who publicly call their priests/Bishops with whom they don’t agree, heretics, spreading vicious and destructive lies about people, priests, sisters & Bishops, etc, etc, etc.
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The thread is about liturgical abuses: “What was the most egregious liturgical abuse you ever witnessed?”
 
11B said:
Hearing from our Pastor and reading in the bulletin that our parish needs X amount of donations each week even though the Pastor and a few others know our parish is financially set for decades due to a very large donation from a recently deceased member.
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I know a lot of missionaries who work for Catholic Christian Outreach (CCO), a campus ministry. Like some other missionaries, they need to fundraise their salaries. Sometimes after doing an appeal, someone will offer them a lump sum of money - like say, $60. That may seem like a lot at first, but the problem with that it means they can’t create a budget based off of recurring income. It simply isn’t sustainable longterm. Monthly donations on the other hand, the missionary can plan accordingly, and can try to create for themselves a sustainable financial support system for themselves.

It’s similar in some businesses. Would you rather random lump sums, or something monthly? What’s more sustainable and more worthwhile to plan?

I agree that the optics look bad if the parish finance council, pastoral council, and the pastors didn’t articulate the financial appeal well. However strictly speaking from a financial viability and sustainability standpoint, they do need to continue to ask for monthly, recurring donations - and should place the lump sum received in a reserve fund. It would be irresponsible and more of an abuse not to do so, in my opinion.
 
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I have never seen any, egregious or otherwise. I guess I am just unfortunate not to have anything to help me work up a good lather.
 
A new young priest at a parish I often visit does not commingle the species.
Is this a new change or an abuse?
 
MtnDwellar said:
A new young priest at a parish I often visit does not commingle the species.

Is this a new change or an abuse?
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You mean he doesn’t perform the fraction rite – he doesn’t place a bit of the consecrated host into the chalice of precious blood? That’s a serious liturgical abuse, but it obviously doesn’t invalidate the Mass.
 
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So taking all these liturgical abuses and adding them together, how much to we estimate that God cares on a scale of 1-100, if 100 is, say, genocide?
 
TheLittleLady said:
Feet of women washed at Holy Thursday Mass
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…which is now explicitly permitted.
First Holy Communion distributed by those other than a priest (EMHC, Deacon, etc.)
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This is the one I’m curious about. Where do you claim that this is written down as a ‘rubric’? I’d understand if you called it a custom, but an ‘abuse of a rubric’?
 
Yes. That’s what I mean. No bit of the host is placed into the chalice.
 
Unfortunately, the worst liturgical abuse I’ve witnessed was one I was involved in. 😦 One year on one of the Sundays of Advent, (I think 15 or so years ago - give or take a year) the entire Liturgy of the Word was replaced with a “Lessons and Carols” presentation. I’m in my parish choir, and we were enlisted in the presentation.

I didn’t object as strongly as I should have. I eventually confessed it.
 
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Not Catholic myself (Coptic Orthodox) but I attended Catholic school all through K-8. There was a Muslim girl in my class (she didn’t wear hijab, but we all knew she was Muslim) who would be allowed to go and receive Holy Communion. (Though I would consider this more the responsibility of the teachers/principal because i don’t think the priests knew).

Are lay Eucharistic Ministers allowed to refuse to give Holy Communion to someone if they know the person is not Catholic?
 
Gorgias said:
…which is now explicitly permitted.
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When it was done prior to 2016 it was a violation of the rubrics. Change in the law does not mean that the prior violations are now inconsequential.

For example, when someone received Holy Communion after fasting for one hour in 2003 it was not a sin. Same person receiving Holy Communion after fasting for one hour in 1955 was committing a sin.
 
TheLittleLady said:
When it was done prior to 2016 it was a violation of the rubrics. Change in the law does not mean that the prior violations are now inconsequential.
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Fair enough. The rubrics called for ‘viri’.

Not sure that rises to the level of ‘liturgical abuse’, though.

(BTW… Any response to my “First Holy Communion” question?)
 
Re: most serious I’ve seen – There was a while during the 1970’s when our parish was using parishioner-baked bread for Communion hosts, and they were including honey and other extraneous substances. I’m not totally sure that they avoided leavening, either, with all that sugar in their bread. It happened during the summer and mysteriously stopped after a few Sundays, so I think our pastor must have been away but stopped it when he came back. He was very good at putting the kibosh on anything against the rules.

Re: hymns – If music is used during Mass (ie, not before or after Mass), it must be sacred music, not secular music. During the Sixties and Seventies, a lot of people thought that intending a secular song to be dedicated to God would magically make it sacred. That’s not true. (It’s also insulting to the purposes of secular music, to pretend that waving a magic wand of performer intention should supersede the intentions of the composer and songwriter.)

This still does not constitute liturgical abuse – unless you do something even more serious, like using a secular song as a replacement for the responsorial psalm, or for one of the parts of the Mass. But the only way you could actually invalidate Mass would be to use a secular song to replace the Eucharistic Canon. So we can count our blessings there.

However, a lot of people don’t know that the Church strictly forbids the use of recorded music during Mass (MIDI is okay; but what is played or sung during Mass has to be a live performance, because music is an offering and prayer to God, not wallpaper).

Also, nobody should be having secular performances of any kind in a church (outside Mass) without the Blessed Sacrament being removed from the tabernacle. (The music or performance doesn’t have to be offensive; obviously you shouldn’t have an offensive or evil performance in church at all! It’s just that using the church as a gathering hall for non-religious purposes is different from going to church as a house of prayer.) It is a pretty serious abuse of the Blessed Sacrament, but it’s not a liturgical abuse.

The best way I’ve seen churches deal with it is that, if people want an explicitly secular song at their wedding or funeral, the parish has the song performed on the steps outside. For example, a lot of folks get their secular Scottish bagpipe and drum songs that way, while anything during the actual wedding or funeral Mass is strictly sacred in nature. There is a lot of blank space during the time before a coffin enters the church or a bride gets herself off the steps where people are taking photos to actually go to the reception, and music helps fill the time.

And that’s probably enough about that… But yeah, parish musicians have to know about this stuff and think about it, especially since it goes against the way things are done in non-Catholic settings. Sometimes it comes as a rude surprise if people don’t know about it.
 
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Music has always been a Big Thing. The early Christians believed that only vocal music was suitable for Mass, and you will find a fair number of Christian sects in the US who still feel this way. The Catholic Church has gradually adopted the use of instrumental accompaniment and various styles of music, but the rules are still pretty picky. Unaccompanied singing, preferably of chant music, is still our liturgical default. (There’s a reason it’s called “a capella” – “at the chapel.”)

MIDI is a programming language. If I have a keyboard, and I program it in MIDI to play a song when I hit a button, it is still being played live. Not the best way to do things, but it’s within the letter of the law in some interpretations. Other people would compare it to a mechanical music box or player piano, which constitute instruments “operated mechanically or automatically.” Such instruments are forbidden at Mass by the 1958 “De Musica Sacra,” which demands that any instrument played at Mass be “played by the personal action of the artist.”

Article 32 of the Directory for Children’s Masses is the only official instruction that has ever permitted use of recorded music at any kind of Catholic Mass. It reads as follows:
'"Care should always be taken, however, that the musical accompaniment does not overpower the singing or become a distraction rather than a help to the children. Music should correspond to the purpose intended for the different periods at which it is played during the Mass.

“With these precautions and with due and special discretion, recorded music may also be used in Masses with children, in accord with norms established by the conferences of bishops.”
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About three minutes later, several bishops’ conferences banned use of pre-recorded music even at kids’ masses… so you can see how that went over.

For those of us in the US, recorded music is a no-no unless it’s a kiddie Mass, even under the most recent regs, “Sing to the Lord.”
"93. Recorded music lacks the authenticity provided by a living liturgical assembly gathered for the Sacred Liturgy. While recorded music might be used advantageously outside the Liturgy as an aid in the teaching of new music, it should not, as a general norm, be used within the Liturgy.

"94. Some exceptions to this principle should be noted. Recorded music may be used to accompany the community’s song during a procession outside and, when used carefully, in Masses with children…

“Recorded music should never become a substitute for the community’s singing.”
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That said, if you go to Mass and your priest uses one of the Eucharistic prayers for kiddie Masses, he has a right to use any of the other kiddie Mass permissions that he feels like, and he may already be using them.
 
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