What will happen to the sign of peace once Public Mass resumes?

[Horton]

This discussion has made it clear to me that it should be preserved. Many here still have to learn its lesson, that unity with Christ is about unity with someone who did not grasp at equality with God, but emptied himself to become like us. If the person next to you is a distraction from your preparations for union with Christ, with the whole body of Christ, there could well be something wrong with how you are preparing.

Judgemental much? According to you if we do not like the way the SOP is carried out we must not be Catholic enough? We must be preparing ourselves wrong during Mass? We must not be fully evolved as a Catholic?

 

[MagdalenaRita]

t’s fundamental purpose as Jesus intended was to remind people just before receiving His Sacrifice, that to be worthy of reception we must be fully committed to love of our neighbour and not just love of God.

Yes, completely agree with this. I do think that Jesus wants us to have forgiveness in our hearts toward those who have offended us. That isn’t always necessarily the one sitting next to us at Mass. We can shake someone’s hand at Mass but still feel unforgiveness in our hearts toward someone else.

 

[hope]

A small percentage of the faithful prefer the older liturgy, and I am among them. After Mass, you will never meet a friendlier, more sociable bunch of people. If you stop and “get snagged” by people, you could easily spend another whole hour just “shooting the breeze” about matters both religious and secular. The children play together in the churchyard. Often people go to lunch together afterwards. There is an email list, and whenever someone in the Latin Mass community (it’s diocesan and generously endorsed by the bishop) is sick, without a job, has circumstances requiring help, or what have you, an alert goes out and people rush to help. You don’t get much more sociable or agape than that. But during Mass, it’s “all business”. The piety is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Vocations are soaring among traditionalists. One could be forgiven for visiting the TLM and saying “now this is the way the Church is supposed to be”. Many say precisely that, and they keep coming back.

The first thing I want to mention to you is that your thoughts on the hand shake is shared by many. It had been discussed about moving it to the beginning of Mass which I wish they would do. The hand shake did not make sense to me as the congregation had been holding hands during the Our Father.

Your post on your Liturgy reminded me of my daughters parish. It is very small. There is only one Mass on Sunday. They arrive at 900 or before for the 9:15ish Mass. Afterwards they share coffee, juice and donuts. They are very welcoming. Her parish sounds very much like yours that it made me wonder if the reason was the size? In the 5o’'s, I never attended a Mass like it. Could the reason be the size? Maybe it is because the same people come to the same mass all the time? I have contemplated this at times because of her parish. I love attending there when I visit. It is a four hour drive so I couldn’t go every week.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Your post on your Liturgy reminded me of my daughters parish. It is very small. There is only one Mass on Sunday. They arrive at 900 or before for the 9:15ish Mass. Afterwards they share coffee, juice and donuts. They are very welcoming. Her parish sounds very much like yours that it made me wonder if the reason was the size? In the 5o’'s, I never attended a Mass like it. Could the reason be the size? Maybe it is because the same people come to the same mass all the time? I have contemplated this at times because of her parish. I love attending there when I visit. It is a four hour drive so I couldn’t go every week.

No, it’s because at TLM parishes, everyone is there for one very specific reason, and to a greater or lesser extent, their entire lives are counter-cultural. Larger families, more homeschoolers, various conservative and traditional lifestyles and life philosophies (Second Amendment, disaster preparedness — which has been totally vindicated by this CV crisis! — some people live on family farms, considerably right-of-center politics, and so on), a greater consciousness of modesty and decorum in dress, the list goes on. Those who prefer the TLM often see themselves as guardians of an ancient tradition which, if not for their efforts, would die out, never to be seen again.

More simply put, it tends to be an archconservative bastion in which many values and attitudes are from an era that most have left behind — “Catholicism as we once knew it”. It can be likened to people who seek to preserve traditional musical genres — “roots” country, bluegrass, and so on — or who seek to preserve historic architectural districts as opposed to bulldozing them to build something new and modern.

 

[hope]

Are than the TLM parishes as large as the OF parishes? Are there many Masses offered each Sunday at the parish? My daughter’s parish has one Mass and about seventy regulars attend each week.

 

[Gorgias]

Two things I would not like to see happen, one is to hold up two fingers in the peace symbol, the other is to bump elbows.

“Greet one another with a holy elbow bump”?

Yeah… it’s a difficult question. Yet, this is only a sign. It’s not the peace itself, which is something that Christ wishes us to have personally and among our brothers and sisters.

The “sign” we make, of this truth of our life of Christians, remains… even if the sign of it changes across various times and places.

If we focus on the sign, rather than the peace Christ gives us, we stand to be discouraged. If we focus on the peace itself, though, and realize that we signify it in various ways, well… we can achieve that peace!

So… be not afraid – peace be with you!

 

[stpurl]

One need not ‘take it out’. Repositioning it would make a great deal of sense. How about right at the start of the Mass? Before even the penitential rite? Before we ‘offer our gifts’, we can offer the peace, then go on together to be forgiven, and through the rest of the Mass. Keeps the ‘tradition’ and keeps the focus on God AND on ‘our neighbor.’

 

[Emeraldlady]

hope:

Your post on your Liturgy reminded me of my daughters parish. It is very small. There is only one Mass on Sunday. They arrive at 900 or before for the 9:15ish Mass. Afterwards they share coffee, juice and donuts. They are very welcoming. Her parish sounds very much like yours that it made me wonder if the reason was the size? In the 5o’'s, I never attended a Mass like it. Could the reason be the size? Maybe it is because the same people come to the same mass all the time? I have contemplated this at times because of her parish. I love attending there when I visit. It is a four hour drive so I couldn’t go every week.

No, it’s because at TLM parishes, everyone is there for one very specific reason, and to a greater or lesser extent, their entire lives are counter-cultural. Larger families, more homeschoolers, various conservative and traditional lifestyles and life philosophies (Second Amendment, disaster preparedness — which has been totally vindicated by this CV crisis! — some people live on family farms, considerably right-of-center politics, and so on), a greater consciousness of modesty and decorum in dress, the list goes on. Those who prefer the TLM often see themselves as guardians of an ancient tradition which, if not for their efforts, would die out, never to be seen again.

More simply put, it tends to be an archconservative bastion in which many values and attitudes are from an era that most have left behind — “Catholicism as we once knew it”. It can be likened to people who seek to preserve traditional musical genres — “roots” country, bluegrass, and so on — or who seek to preserve historic architectural districts as opposed to bulldozing them to build something new and modern.

But this seems to me the very error about tradition that Pope Francis warns about when he said “Tradition is the guarantee of the future and not the container of the ashes,” “Tradition is like roots [of a tree], which give us nutrition to grow… You will not become like the roots. You will flower, grow, give fruit. And the seeds become roots for other people.” “The tradition of the church is always in movement,” “The tradition does not safeguard the ashes.”

As people who’ve been so profoundly warned by Scripture about the characteristics of those whose emphasis is on preserving rituals at the expense of communion and growth in love, it should actually terrify us to hold those sorts of attitudes.

 

[stpurl]

Wait wait. This is from the person who just told us that the sign of peace is ‘one of the earliest liturgical traditions”?

Ouch the irony

 

[HomeschoolDad]

Are than the TLM parishes as large as the OF parishes? Are there many Masses offered each Sunday at the parish? My daughter’s parish has one Mass and about seventy regulars attend each week.

Generally, they are not. There are two types of diocesan TLM venues — churches dedicated to the TLM and only the TLM, and churches where the TLM is just one of several Masses. The latter is far more common. In either case they are smaller, more close-knit communities — everyone is there for pretty much the same reason, and it is a conscious choice and a conscious effort to get there — and in the case of churches where only one TLM is offered on Sundays, they often draw people from a wide geographic area who have no other connection to the host parish. In a sense they exist as a “parish within a parish”, and lest anyone find a reason to hate on that — “divisive!”, “lack of unity!” and so on — it is no more anomalous that when a Latin Rite parish hosts an Eastern Catholic mission or proto-parish, and surely nobody has a problem with that.

 

[Buks]

The SOP is “Flowering”, giving fruit? That sentiment may apply for half the congregation. But when the other half is clearly uninterested in any stranger (while loving the moment of affection with family and any friend they spot), it’s time to hit pause. IMO the theory the SOP works (minus the handshake now) but in practice we as a society can’t really handle it. Sometimes it unfortunately turns out to be a silly minute, and one silly minute in Mass is one minute too many.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

But this seems to me the very error about tradition that Pope Francis warns about when he said “Tradition is the guarantee of the future and not the container of the ashes,” “Tradition is like roots [of a tree], which give us nutrition to grow… You will not become like the roots. You will flower, grow, give fruit. And the seeds become roots for other people.” “The tradition of the church is always in movement,” “The tradition does not safeguard the ashes.”

As people who’ve been so profoundly warned by Scripture about the characteristics of those whose emphasis is on preserving rituals at the expense of communion and growth in love, it should actually terrify us to hold those sorts of attitudes.

I am really struggling to understand what in the world the Holy Father was talking about when he said this. “The tradition does not safeguard the ashes”? Come again? With all due respect, not every word the Pope says is perfect. And I’m simply furrowing my brow at some oblique, poetic observation. As far as “words the Pope says” are concerned, a lot of otherwise-devoted Catholics have made up their minds that Humanae vitae doesn’t make sense for them, and they are never asked about it in confession, it is rarely if ever brought up in sermons, and somehow they’ve gotten the impression that it is okay for them to approach the altar for communion.

But I digress. The traditional liturgy, as codified by the Council of Trent, was taken away in a manner that, in retrospect, seems harsh and ham-handed. Among a small minority, this produced confusion, scandal, and in some cases, open rebellion. Pope Benedict admitted that Quo primum was never abrogated and that, whatever people thought in the 25-odd years following the introduction of the Novus Ordo, any priest has a right to say this Mass. A single-digit percentage (I cannot think it is 10 percent or over) of Catholics prefer the old liturgy. At present, the Church makes it widely available — there are “holes” here and there on the map where the TLM is not readily accessible (I live in one of them), but many Catholics have easy access to it. The TLM world is a veritable fountain of vocations. That alone is reason enough to preserve it.

 

[Nepperhan]

I have had several friends and relatives who found that the Catholic liturgy was not moving enough. I hope that the sign of peace is retained.

You know, in my parish folks hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer!

 

[Emeraldlady]

Wait wait. This is from the person who just told us that the sign of peace is ‘one of the earliest liturgical traditions”?

Ouch the irony

Your error is not catching the distinction Pope Francis was making between preserving the universal in traditions, ie that which the essence of truth …and what is the cultural vehicle used to facilitate that at any given time.

So yes the sign of peace is witnessed in the earliest liturgy as a mode to experience communion with our brothers and sisters, providing a disposition to receive the grace of Communion in the Sacrament shortly after. Irony is more applicable when people spend so much time and emotion feeling negative in Mass about ‘abuses’ and ‘irreverent people’ they have to associate themselves with, and then receiving Communion. How can the grace of the Sacrament grow in such an infertile soul? It is literally the unworthy disposition Jesus proscribed to receive.

 

[Emeraldlady]

The SOP is “Flowering”, giving fruit? That sentiment may apply for half the congregation. But when the other half is clearly uninterested in any stranger (while loving the moment of affection with family and any friend they spot), it’s time to hit pause. IMO the theory the SOP works (minus the handshake now) but in practice we as a society can’t really handle it. Sometimes it unfortunately turns out to be a silly minute, and one silly minute in Mass is one minute too many.

Yes in your opinion, you see a ‘silly minute’. In my opinion I see a communion.

Emeraldlady:

But this seems to me the very error about tradition that Pope Francis warns about when he said “Tradition is the guarantee of the future and not the container of the ashes,” “Tradition is like roots [of a tree], which give us nutrition to grow… You will not become like the roots. You will flower, grow, give fruit. And the seeds become roots for other people.” “The tradition of the church is always in movement,” “The tradition does not safeguard the ashes.”

As people who’ve been so profoundly warned by Scripture about the characteristics of those whose emphasis is on preserving rituals at the expense of communion and growth in love, it should actually terrify us to hold those sorts of attitudes.

I am really struggling to understand what in the world the Holy Father was talking about when he said this. “The tradition does not safeguard the ashes”? Come again? With all due respect, not every word the Pope says is perfect. And I’m simply furrowing my brow at some oblique, poetic observation. As far as “words the Pope says” are concerned, a lot of otherwise-devoted Catholics have made up their minds that Humanae vitae doesn’t make sense for them, and they are never asked about it in confession, it is rarely if ever brought up in sermons, and somehow they’ve gotten the impression that it is okay for them to approach the altar for communion.

But don’t you see the irony? You can see that ‘otherwise-devoted Catholics’ ignore Paul Vi’s Humanae Vitae because it doesn’t make sense to them, but find no issue in ignoring Pope Francis today because ‘he doesn’t make sense’ to you. We don’t here homilies in Mass about the problems with traditionalists either. What’s good for the goose needs to be good for the gander in that regard.

 

[Emeraldlady]

The traditional liturgy, as codified by the Council of Trent, was taken away in a manner that, in retrospect, seems harsh and ham-handed. Among a small minority, this produced confusion, scandal, and in some cases, open rebellion. Pope Benedict admitted that Quo primum was never abrogated and that, whatever people thought in the 25-odd years following the introduction of the Novus Ordo, any priest has a right to say this Mass. A single-digit percentage (I cannot think it is 10 percent or over) of Catholics prefer the old liturgy. At present, the Church makes it widely available — there are “holes” here and there on the map where the TLM is not readily accessible (I live in one of them), but many Catholics have easy access to it. The TLM world is a veritable fountain of vocations. That alone is reason enough to preserve it.

There are issues observed with traditionalist seminaries surrounding the rejection of Vatican II fundamentals. Those cannot be suppressed if we are to pass onto the next generation all the attributes of God and signs of Christ coming again that took root in Vatican II. We have to let them flourish so that we don’t condemn the Son of Man on His return. If you have sufficiently embraced the Gospel, you will know the importance of seeing Christ in other people and the angels that are among us. How will we ever recognise Christ on His return if we have not recognised Him in our regard for others. Our enemies. The ignorant who do the best they know. Those seeking refuge from us. That’s what I’ve drummed into my kids. We can’t just flip off those passages of Scripture that don’t appeal to our worldview or politics, and think that we can sufficiently discern Christ in our midst.

 

[EnglishTeacher]

I am personally fond of the passing of the peace practiced in the Chaldean and Marionite Churchers. It is ritualized, orderly, and meaningful. It begins with the priest (or bishop), who passes the peace to the deacons, then to the subdeacons, etc., who then pass it to the first person in the congregation and each person passes it to the next.

I would be totally fine with this. That seems like a good and meaningful way to exchange the sign of peace.

But since the way it is done in Western parishes is nothing like this, I would be happy to see it fade away. It is just so very awkward.

 

[hope]

Thank you for you post. I appreciate your answer.

 

[TheRoamingCatholic]

In the weeks leading up to the suspension of the celebration , I found that Mass went alot smoother in the parishes where the priest just skipped the “let us show each other part” and went right into things. Until then I never realised how distracting and (it seems) I’ll timed, that the S.O.P really is.

I hope to see it given “The elbow” altogether, for good, personally.

 

[HomeschoolDad]

HomeschoolDad:

I am really struggling to understand what in the world the Holy Father was talking about when he said this. “The tradition does not safeguard the ashes”? Come again? With all due respect, not every word the Pope says is perfect. And I’m simply furrowing my brow at some oblique, poetic observation. As far as “words the Pope says” are concerned, a lot of otherwise-devoted Catholics have made up their minds that Humanae vitae doesn’t make sense for them, and they are never asked about it in confession, it is rarely if ever brought up in sermons, and somehow they’ve gotten the impression that it is okay for them to approach the altar for communion.

But don’t you see the irony? You can see that ‘otherwise-devoted Catholics’ ignore Paul Vi’s Humanae Vitae because it doesn’t make sense to them, but find no issue in ignoring Pope Francis today because ‘he doesn’t make sense’ to you. We don’t here homilies in Mass about the problems with traditionalists either. What’s good for the goose needs to be good for the gander in that regard.

Perhaps you don’t hear homilies about “the problems with traditionalists” because there aren’t any. And I chose the Humanae vitae example on purpose — it is a clearly defined moral teaching on a matter so grave, that if people fully understand what they’re doing, their very salvation is at stake. It is a sexual sin of the flesh, and all deliberately committed, complete sins of the flesh are mortal in and of themselves (given the classical three conditions, of course). Pope Francis’s soliloquy about ashes and roots is just commentary, not Church teaching. Two different things entirely.