When Did Your Parish Start Holding Hands At The Our Father?

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Do you remember when your parish started holding hands at the “Our Father” prayer?

**I’m not exactly sure when our parish started holding hands at the “Our Father”. I remember parishioners doing it in 1990 but I don’t remember how long before that it had been going on. **

In 1991 we were in a Catholic church in the Midwest and they hadn’t started holding hands yet about four or five years later they had begun the holding hands practice.

I would like to know the history of the holding hands practice any info would be appreciated.
 
**ZENIT - The World Seen From Rome **

**Code: ZE03111822

****Date: 2003-11-18

****Holding Hands at the Our Father?
**ROME, NOV. 18, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum.

Q: Many say we should not be holding hands in the congregation while reciting the Lord’s Prayer because it is not a community prayer but a prayer to “Our Father.” Local priests say that since the Vatican has not specifically addressed it, then we are free to do as we please: either hold hands or not. What is the true Roman Catholic way in which to recite the Lord’s Prayer during Mass? – T.P., Milford, Maine

A: It is true that there is no prescribed posture for the hands during the Our Father and that, so far at least, neither the Holy See nor the U.S. bishops’ conference has officially addressed it.

The argument from silence is not very strong, however, because while there is no particular difficulty in a couple, family or a small group spontaneously holding hands during the Our Father, a problem arises when the entire assembly is expected or obliged to do so.

The process for introducing any new rite or gesture into the liturgy in a stable or even binding manner is already contemplated in liturgical law. This process entails a two-thirds majority vote in the bishops’ conference and the go-ahead from the Holy See before any change may take effect.

Thus, if neither the bishops’ conference nor the Holy See has seen fit to prescribe any posture for the recitation of the Our Father, it hardly behooves any lesser authority to impose a novel gesture not required by liturgical law and expect the faithful to follow their decrees.

While there are no directions as to the posture of the faithful, the rubrics clearly direct the priest and any concelebrants to pray the Our Father with hands extended – so they at least should not hold hands.

One could argue that holding hands expresses the family union of the Church. But our singing or reciting the prayer in unison already expresses this element.

The act of holding hands usually emphasizes group or personal unity from the human or physical point of view and is thus more typical of the spontaneity of small groups. Hence it does not always transfer well into the context of larger gatherings where some people feel uncomfortable and a bit imposed upon when doing so.

The use of this practice during the Our Father could detract and distract from the prayer’s God-directed sense of adoration and petition, as explained in Nos. 2777-2865 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in favor of a more horizontal and merely human meaning.

For all of these reasons, no one should have any qualms about not participating in this gesture if disinclined to do so. They will be simply following the universal customs of the Church, and should not be accused of being a cause of disharmony.

A different case is the practice in which some people adopt the “orantes” posture during the Our Father, praying like the priest, with hands extended.

In some countries, Italy, for example, the Holy See has granted the bishops’ request to allow anyone who wishes to adopt this posture during the Our Father. Usually about a third to one-half of the assembled faithful choose to do so.

Despite appearances, this gesture is not, strictly speaking, a case of the laity trying to usurp priestly functions.

The Our Father is the prayer of the entire assembly and not a priestly or presidential prayer. In fact, it is perhaps the only case when the rubrics direct the priest to pray with arms extended in a prayer that he does not say alone or only with other priests. Therefore, in the case of the Our Father, the orantes posture expresses the prayer directed to God by his children.

The U.S. bishops’ conference debated a proposal by some bishops to allow the use of the orantes posture while discussing the “American Adaptations to the General Instruction to the Roman Missal” last year. Some bishops even argued that it was the best way of ridding the country of holding hands. The proposal failed to garner the required two-thirds majority of votes, however, and was dropped from the agenda.

zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=44754
 
Holding Hands During the Lord’s Prayer

In one of your previous columns, you addressed the reason for gestures at Mass. I am puzzled however by a seemingly new gesture: that of holding hands during the Lord’s Prayer. I feel very uncomfortable doing it. I heard it is actually a violation of Canon Law because it assumes an intimacy or communion before the “real communion,” the Eucharistic celebration. Why do pastor’s allow it? — A reader in Alexandria

Throughout the Mass, various gestures are prescribed for both the priest and the faithful worshipers. For example, we begin and end Mass by making the sign of the cross; during the Confiteor, we strike our breast; we sign ourselves with the cross on the forehead, lips, and heart at the proclamation of the Gospel; during the Creed, we bow at the words professing our faith in the incarnation of our Savior; we kneel during the Eucharistic Prayer and after the Lamb of God; and we receive Holy Communion either on the tongue or the hand.

All of these prescribed physical gestures help make the act of worship at Mass one which involves our whole being, body and soul, thought, words, and actions. They also help create a spiritual disposition to receive our Lord in Word and Sacrament. Moreover, these gestures are prescribed, just as the readings from Sacred Scripture and the Order of the Mass are, to make the Sacrifice of the Mass a unified act of worship throughout the whole Church — in a sense, every Catholic is doing the same thing, the same way. To find the rubrics (regulations which govern the Mass) concerning these gestures, one may turn to the General Instruction of the Roman Missal (1970), On Holy Communion and the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery Outside of Mass (1973), Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery (1980), and Instruction on Certain Norms Concerning the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery (1980).

However, in all of the liturgical documents for the universal Church or of those particular ones issued by the United States Bishops Conference, no where is the holding of hands during the Lord’s Prayer mandated. Frankly, this gesture arose among the various liturgical innovations in the aftermath of Vatican Council II. Perhaps the holding of hands was introduced with good intentions to highlight the unity of the congregation as they pray, “Our Father,” not “My Father.” Yet, if unity is the key, then should we not be holding hands throughout the entire Mass?

The unity that is sought really comes later and after a spiritual progression: First, we fall on our knees as the priest offers the sacrifice of the Mass: we recall not only our Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection but also our need as individuals to offer ourselves to Him. Second, we pray in the words our Savior taught us, the Lord’s Prayer, in which we ask, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,” even the person next to us in the pew. Third, we offer the Sign of Peace, a gesture found in the earliest Masses to show a genuine unity based on peace and forgiveness. Finally, we receive Holy Communion, which truly brings us into communion with our Lord and with each other. Looking at the logic of this spiritual progression to real unity, the holding of hands at the Our Father is extraneous.

Can a congregation hold hands anyway, even if it is extraneous? While no one can find fault if a husband and wife, or a family want spontaneously to hold hands during the Lord’s Prayer, the priest does not have the right to introduce, mandate, or impose it. The Code of Canon Law (1983) does mandate: “The liturgical books approved by the competent authority are to be faithfully observed in the celebration of the sacraments; therefore, no one on personal authority may add, remove, or change anything in them” (Canon 826.1). (Note that this Canon repeated a previous mandate found in both Vatican II’s Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (1963) and the* Instruction on the Worship of the Eucharistic Mystery*, No. 45 (1967), which was issued to address certain abuses arising in the liturgy after the council.) Therefore, a priest who introduces, mandates, or imposes the holding of hands during the Lord’s Prayer is violating the norms set by the Church.

read more
catholicculture.org/docs/doc_view.cfm?recnum=1175
 
June 12, 2005

Ed Peters Has An Interesting Idea

(Jimmy Akin)

Y’know how people in many parishes can’t seem to keep their hands to themselves during the Our Father?

In many parishes they get grabby and, though in American culture holding hands with another person is a gesture of intimacy (sweethearts do it, spouses do it, parents and children do it, complete strangers do not do it), suddenly the person next to you wants to engage in the gesture with you, a complete stranger.

In my own case, I solve this problem by clasping my hands in front of me and closing my eyes. 99.99% of the time that takes care of the issue, though I did once experience an elderly woman using her fingers to pluck at my elbow in an attempt to pierce through my obviously meditative attitude and get me to Conform to the handholding she wanted to inflict on me.

Needless to say, a lot of folks find this (unauthorized) grabbiness disturbing, and there has been perplexity at the episcopal level concerning what to do about it.

In come some helpful liturgists, who have suggested that instead of holding hands, people imitate the priest, who happens to be in the orans position at this moment, with his hands outstretched in prayer.

This has the advantage of not automatically inflicting hand-to-hand contact on the people next to one in the pew, though in an especially crowded pew it is not a sure recipe for avoiding all bodily contact. (One may experience a whack to the face, or at least the uncomfortable experience of becoming visually acquainted with the back of a stranger’s hand better than you know your own.)

One detects in the liturgists’ suggestion a further motive besides avoiding excessive touchy-feeliness (particularly since liturgists have themselves been excessively touchy-feely in recent years). Could it be . . . a desire to get the laity to imitate the priest and thus further blur the lines between the two?

“Oh, surely not!” you’re saying. “Liturgical planners have been scrupulous since the reform of the liturgy about making sure the roles of priest and laity are at all times clearly distinguished. Just ask them! They’ll tell you!”

However that may be, the Holy See has been concerned about the laity unduly aping the priest at Mass, and in the 1997 Instruction on Collaboration, an unprecedented conjunction of Vatican dicasteries wrote:

6 § 2. To promote the proper identity (of various roles) in this area, those abuses which are contrary to the provisions of canon 907 * are to be eradicated. In eucharistic celebrations deacons and non-ordained members of the faithful may not pronounce prayers — e.g. especially the eucharistic prayer, with its concluding doxology — or any other parts of the liturgy reserved to the celebrant priest. **Neither may deacons or non-ordained members of the faithful use gestures or actions which are proper to the same priest celebrant. **It is a grave abuse for any member of the non-ordained faithful to “quasi preside” at the Mass while leaving only that minimal participation to the priest which is necessary to secure validity.

This instruction, incidentally, was approved by John Paul II in forma specifica, meaning that the pope invested it with his own authority and is binding on us with the pope’s authority and not merely the authority of the authoring congregations.

Now, what gestures are proper to the priest celebrant? The orans gesture when praying on behalf of the people is certainly one of them. The priest celebrant and no others (not even concelebrating priests) are directed to make this gesture in the rubrics.

In some places, some laity may spread their arms whenever the priest spreads his in a kind of “Back atcha!” motion. I’ve even seen some do a phenomenal pantomime of tossing an invisible ball to the priest by swooping their palms close together and then spreading them apart as they assume the orans posture. But this is clearly apart from the rubrics.

If the orans posture is one proper to the priest celebrant in the liturgy then the laity should not be imitating it.

But Ed Peters raises an interesting question:

SHOULD EVEN THE PRIEST CELEBRANT HIMSELF BE MAKING THIS GESTURE DURING THE OUR FATHER?
READ MORE
jimmyakin.org/2005/06/ed_peters_has_a.html*
 
about half our parishioners use the orantes posture for the Our Father, which works at the earlier Masses but at the crowded noon Mass is a real safety hazard. I have had my glasses knocked off, and small children have to duck when people start flinging their arms out. Even if I felt like doing it I wouldn’t because in most places if they can see your hand they will grab it.
 
I am thinking that a significant number of souls feel something lacking in the Mass or have a sense that they have little control over how a most significant part of their lives is carried on. I don’t think some of these gestures are being adopted because people are being rebellious or overly filled with pride. When the idea of a God who comes down to be with us on the alter is weak, disbelieved, or maybe just not understood It would seem to me to be human nature to try to put some meaning in a required weekly exercise. If one has no control over much of their life it is an attempt to gain a little. I am cynical enough to believe that a significant number of Catholics show up on Sunday because their families of origin always did; perhaps because of some vague sense of its a sin not to, or because a significant number in our culture still holds that on Sunday you go to church. Our Popes have recognized the problem when they call for a New Evangelization among the members of our Church. Not a few of us are basically heathens in disguise.
 
I didn’t know how to vote on this poll. We have always had isolated hand holding: husbands and wives or families-never the whole church. Our bishop let it be known that hand holding was not advised, but he told the clergy that he would not forbid it. Our pastor has discouraged hand-holding. However, this is not communist China, so we don’t run up to the people and warn them of imprisonment if they disobey.
 
I put can’t remember. Our parish has held hands from day 1. Just can’t remember when day 1 was. In the late 80s I think.
 
My parish doesn’t hold hands, thankfully, and I am quite sure we’d get lectured by the priest if we ever attempted to.
 
It’s always been that way at my parish, until the new GIRM that is, but I’ve been Catholic only since 1993. I don’t miss holding sweaty palms but you still have to shake hands with 'em.

My husband is a cradle Catholic, 66 years old, and he says he thought they held hands way back in pre-Vat II days and didn’t know why we stopped. But his memory tends to be bad.
 
Our parish has only been around since the 1980s and handholding was the practice from the very beginning.

I was not a member of the parish from which the new parish was formed but hand-holding had been around since the 1970s at the neighboring parish of which I was a member.
 
Some people, usually family groups, hold hands. Some people put their hands at orans, then lift them higher at the Doxology. I do what Jimmy Akin does, even before Jimmy thought of it- I fold my hands right in front of me, clasped. My husband does one better: He folds his hands, fingers pointing to Heaven as he was taught in grade school, and closes his eyes, just in case somebody gestures. I think that’s why he always tries to sit on aisle. 😉
 
I never saw either holding hands or the orans position before the charismatic movement started in the Church in the 70’s with the introduction of the New Mass…and especially at “folk masses.” I honestly thought in this country it was a ‘hippie’ thing but it seems to have spread.

Since we already have ‘unity’ in the Holy Spirit, I would really like to know when and why people started doing this and why?

Is there anyone ‘older’ here who could say when and why they started doing this? They certainly weren’t taught to do this before the 70’s.
 
I had done it my whole life. I don’t anymore, and the parish still does hold hands, so ya.
 
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sconea:
Since we already have ‘unity’ in the Holy Spirit, I would really like to know when and why people started doing this and why?

Is there anyone ‘older’ here who could say when and why they started doing this? They certainly weren’t taught to do this before the 70’s.
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I’ve been wondering the same thing.

Did the holding hands start on the east coast or the west coast? I doubt if it started in the Midwest, more than likely it started here in California. Judging by the poll and the people who voted between the years 2000 and 2005 it looks like it is still spreading.
 
Deacon Tony560:
I didn’t know how to vote on this poll. We have always had isolated hand holding: husbands and wives or families-never the whole church. Our bishop let it be known that hand holding was not advised, but he told the clergy that he would not forbid it. Our pastor has discouraged hand-holding. However, this is not communist China, so we don’t run up to the people and warn them of imprisonment if they disobey.
Click to expand...
This one’s easy.
If strangers are holding hands and the one’s on the aisle are limply lifting hand to heaven, that is what the poll is about.

Why is it at the Our Father that people need to hold each other?
Why not at the consecration? Why not at the gospel?
 
I first encountered it in a midwest college in the late 70s. When I started there it seemed to be a well-entrenched practice. I didn’t encounter it again (except at an occasional childrens Mass) until 1998 when we moved from NJ to Texas. Almost all of the Churches here do it while none did in NJ (I am sure there were some, just not any we attended).

I don’t know if it has since “spread” to NJ since the last time I was there I got to attend TLM. 😃
 
We used to hold hands but under direction from the Bishop our Priest instructed us to desist. He told us to prayerfully fold our hands or use the orans position. He further defined the orans position we should use as “not with arms outstretched.” He said outstretched arms appears to draw attention to the person and away from Our Father. I took his instruction to mean no wider than shoulder width.

One other interesting note, our Deacon used to assume the orans position for the Our Father. He no longer does. I asked him about this and he said he received some guidance from a fellow Deacon regarding this posture. I intend to push to get the alter servers to assume a hands folded posture for the Our Father so they can act in solidarity with the Deacon.

Personally I assume the orans posture for the Our Father and fold my hands for the doxology. I like to pray the Lord’s Prayer together with the congregation, and if the Bishop recommended this posture then it works for me. (I do think it odd that many parishioners elevate and stretch out their arms during the doxology. I think it is the force of habit. When we used to hold hands we would elevate our joined hands in unison during the doxology for some reason or another)

Christ’s Peace

TJD
 
I don’t remember, but it was a long time ago. I expect it grew out of the gatherings we had as small Marriage Encounter groups, Mass in the parish homes during the 70"s, Charismatic Prayer meetings, and Cursillo where these smaller groups formed a circle and said the Our Father together. Once a certain critical mass arrived the practice probably moved into the Sunday Liturgy. It was certainly not something that we were told to do by the priest or Liturgy Director. Just an organic change which it plays hell to try and suppress.
 
We’ve held hands for as long as I can remember. In fact, I don’t recall ever going to a Catholic church that didn’t. I never knew something was wrong with the practice. So, what is wrong with it?
 
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