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TheMc
Guest
Oh, ok. That makes much more sense.
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ProVobis
Guest
I’ve never been to an English ad orientem. Are the Propers read ad orientem? Just curious.
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TheMc
Guest
That part was difficult for me to phrase well, so that’s what came out.
The main way I “split” them into so called “caring” and “not caring” by how they celebrated Mass. Hey, it’s the most important thing they could ever do, so it’s not a bad measuring tool. Note that I still recognize that facing the people is OK, it’s just that ad orientem is better.
The “caring” ones are the ones that celebrate the church’s liturgy with care (one of them is a priest that knows both the OF and EF like the back of his hand, and is the Diocesan MC), and is obedient to the rubrics and prays the Mass as it is in the book.
The “not caring” ones are the ones who do not show much reverence during Mass, frequently depart from the rubrics, and even change words from the Mass. Or worse. You know the kinds of priests I’m talking about.
There is usually a clear divide between these two groups of priests. Note that I’m not encouraging this division of the priesthood, just uncovering the division that is already there.
No, actually, most of the “caring” ones actually face the people for their public Masses, mainly because we haven’t done a lot of catechesis around here. Yet.
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jwinch2
Guest
Thanks for clearing that up as I didn’t want to interpret a statement like that the wrong way.
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TheMc
Guest
Thanks for asking. I wanted to explain it right away, but didn’t have time.
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jwinch2
Guest
Cheers!
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JamestheOlder
Guest
The last paragraph of the CDWDS clarification should put and end to “finger-pointing”.
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Brendan
Guest
In , those podcasts that I pointed mentioned earlier from Fr. John Riccardo, Fr. John says the exact same thing.
It is easier for him to celebrate ad orientum as it is less distracting for him and he can give a more internal focus on the celebration of the Mass.
He doesn’t do it that way because too many people complaint.
And I expect that it is the same with the Holy Father. Too many people want to take pictures of him celebrating Mass.
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benedictgal
Guest
Here is a post from my blog that might help:
benedictgal-lexorandilexcredendi.blogspot.com/2011/05/ad-orientem-and-actuosa-participatio.html
benedictgal-lexorandilexcredendi.blogspot.com/2011/05/ad-orientem-and-actuosa-participatio.html
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Canto
Guest
Looking at the Order of Mass, the Missal says for example
- Then the dismissal takes place. The Priest, **facing the people **and extending his hands, says:
If the Priest was saying the Mass facing the people, why would the rubrics need to tell him to face the people? Mass facing the people is merely an option with no basis in the entire history of the Church east and west. Pope Benedict even says in the early days of the Church they reclined at a table all on the same side facing the east. At St Peter’s the Pope in facing the people is facing the east.
btw, not that you brought it up, but when some say the Priest has his back to the people, unless they are sitting in the very back pew, don’t such people have their back to the people behind them too.
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Digitonomy
Guest
That’s quit a sweeping statement.
Does Benedict say that each and every mass was so celebrated?
I take it from your first sentence this is a recent development.
Yes they do.
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jwinch2
Guest
I guess they had better get rid of the Churches which are designed in the shape of a cross since people will be facing the wrong direction.
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NPC
Guest
Where does Pope Benedict say this? I’m genuinely asking - because I’m thinking off the top of my head about The Spirit of the Liturgy where he certainly talks about meals in the early Christian period being eaten on the convex side of a horseshoe-shaped table. The Last Supper would have been eaten in this way, with the deciples reclining alongside the table - hence the reference to St John reclining at Jesus’ breast. I don’t recall a suggestion that the liturgy itself has ever been celebrated in the form of an ordinary meal, i.e. reclining, though I’m happy to be corrected on that.
Secondly, it is true that in St. Peter’s the celebrant faces the people because the altar is at the west-end of the church. However, it is not true to say that Mass has always been celebrated facing the people. Initially there was great emphasis on the people facing east during the Mass - thus, for the first part of the Mass (the Mass of the Catechumens) the priest faced east and the people faced west; thus they were facing each other. At the beginning of the Offertory a deacon would tell the people to “turn to the Lord” - i.e. to face east - the same direction as the celebrant. Therefore, in churches where the altar was at the west-end, such as St. Peter’s, the Mass was actually being celebrated behind the congregation. Now, Pope Benedict emphasises that the Crucifix should be the point of orientation for the faithful, even if facing “actual” east is not possible.
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Claire_from_DE
Guest
Perhaps many liturgical practices originate for practical reasons and then they become the custom and then we read theological meaning into them. For instance, the use of candles at Mass. Originally candles and lamps were used simply to illuminate the space. In the many years Mass was celebrated in the catacombs candles were needed because they were dark. But later, when Constantine made it possible to have Mass in government buildings with windows, candles were still used because they had become the custom. In the catacombs, where the priest and people stood was dictated by the space they were in. etc.
I’m Catholic. I do what the church leaders say in the matter of liturgy. If two practices are allowed, I do that which seems to me to bring me closer to Jesus. When the altar and priest faced the people I was delighted to see what I couldn’t see before. When Communion in the hand was allowed I was overwhelmed with gratitude. But if these things are changed, I will obey without protest. In the meantime, I resent hearing that what the church permits isn’t good enough.
I dislike it when people say something is “objectively better” because that is their subjective opinion. It would be fairer to say that they prefer something and then give a good reason. Many times this reason doesn’t carry weight with someone else.
I think it’s true that many priests are more comfortable not facing the congregation. It must be difficult doing the most sacred thing in the world with people watching you. But I wonder if Jesus always faced away from the apostles when He prayed to His Father while he was standing there with them. I don’t think so. I think He let them into this intimate moment because He loved them and to be an example to them. When I meditate on the last supper I imagine all the apostle looking right at Jesus as I do at Mass. And if the priest is acting in the place of Christ perhaps this is one reason that the Church permits Mass to be said this way. At present both ways are allowed, so I think we can discuss the merits of both ways but should not argue about it.
I’m Catholic. I do what the church leaders say in the matter of liturgy. If two practices are allowed, I do that which seems to me to bring me closer to Jesus. When the altar and priest faced the people I was delighted to see what I couldn’t see before. When Communion in the hand was allowed I was overwhelmed with gratitude. But if these things are changed, I will obey without protest. In the meantime, I resent hearing that what the church permits isn’t good enough.
I dislike it when people say something is “objectively better” because that is their subjective opinion. It would be fairer to say that they prefer something and then give a good reason. Many times this reason doesn’t carry weight with someone else.
I think it’s true that many priests are more comfortable not facing the congregation. It must be difficult doing the most sacred thing in the world with people watching you. But I wonder if Jesus always faced away from the apostles when He prayed to His Father while he was standing there with them. I don’t think so. I think He let them into this intimate moment because He loved them and to be an example to them. When I meditate on the last supper I imagine all the apostle looking right at Jesus as I do at Mass. And if the priest is acting in the place of Christ perhaps this is one reason that the Church permits Mass to be said this way. At present both ways are allowed, so I think we can discuss the merits of both ways but should not argue about it.
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Canto
Guest
"So, then, in expectation of His coming we worship towards the East. But this **tradition of the apostles **is unwritten. For much that has been handed down to us by tradition is unwritten.
St. John of Damascus: On the Orthodox Faith
“Despite all the variations in practice that have taken place far into the second millennium, one thing has remained clear for the whole of Christendom: praying toward the east is a tradition that goes back to the beginning. Moreover, it is a fundamental expression of the Christian synthesis of cosmos and history, of being rooted in the once-for-all events of salvation history while going out to meet the Lord who is to come again”
Pope Benedict (as Cardinal): Spirit of the Liturgy
Traditonally churches were built on an east west axis. Not so for some of the Roman churches, so in facing the east the Priest was facing the people as a consequence of this. However during the Mass the people would hear the words ‘turn to the Lord’ and they people turn, with their backs to the Priest, so they too would be facing east.
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Canto
Guest
Ah that’s what I was thinking of. In SOTLiturgy he quotes Louis Bouyer…
"‘The idea that a celebration facing the people must have been the primitive one, and that especially of the last supper, has no other foundation than a mistaken view of what a meal could be in antiquity, Christian or not. In no meal of the early Christian era, did the president of the banqueting assembly ever face the other participants. They were all sitting, or reclining, on the convex side of a C-shaped table, or of a table having approximately the shape of a horse shoe. The other side was always left empty for the service. Nowhere in Christian antiquity, could have arisen the idea of having to “face the people” to preside at a meal. The communal character of a meal was emphasized just by the opposite disposition: the fact that all the participants were on the same side of the table’
Msgr. Klaus Gamber stated: “Since there is no basis for it in liturgical history, nor theology, nor sociologically, the celebration of the Mass versus populum…”
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NPC
Guest
Yes - that’s the paragraph I’m referring to also. However, my point is that that passage is not saying that the Mass of the Early Christians was celebrated in the same manner as the Last Supper, with the participants reclining alongside a c-shaped table. It refers to how the Early Christians ate their meals, yes - but the Holy Mass, of course, is no mere meal. Pope Benedict is not saying that the Mass was commonly celebrated in this manner by the Early Christians.
I do, however, agree with the idea of the communal character being emphasised by all of the participants being on the same side of the table. Not that any of us are pushing the idea of celebrating the Mass reclining alongside a table, but we should heed the warning of Pope Pius XII in Mediator Dei not to simply return to Early Christian practices because they have the flavour of antiquity. We must also bear in mind, when it comes to some Early Christian practices, that the Early Church was not operating in ordinary circumstances, being largely an underground, persecuted Church.
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Digitonomy
Guest
Canto, thanks for that thorough response to my questions.
Your post raises some related questions: * Why, if eastward-facing churches were the universal practice, was St Peter’s built the opposite way?
Nonetheless, your claim was that
If mass was facing the people for any significant part of the liturgy at St Peter’s, it’s fair to suggest that there is some basis in history at least as far back as this practice began.
Your post raises some related questions: * Why, if eastward-facing churches were the universal practice, was St Peter’s built the opposite way?
- Did everyone turn to the side for awhile at churches with a north-south axis?
- When did non-traditional orientation of churches become more routine?
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Canto
Guest
He was talking in the chapter about ad orientum worship, and noted this to add weight to his arguments.
I like the Pope Pius quote and your point about ordinary circumstances. Ad orientum is not just of antiquity but is still practiced in the Church, an option was merely given to allow versus populum for the OF Mass of course, though rubrics suggest otherwise.
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Canto
Guest
Facing the east was the universal practice, however the Church was designed
In some places it meant that to face east a Priest faced the people
The point was facing east, the Lord, not the people
From what I’ve read Churches were generally built on an east west axis
This was not always the case such as St Peters, but the Priest still faced east when celebrating Mass
Pope Benedict has noted the Crucifix (and from memory the Tabernacle too) can act as a liturgical east where a literal ad orientum is not possible
dappledthings.org/essays_lightfromeast.php
For Stephen Schloeder, a noted church architect writing today with thirty more years of archaeology to draw upon, “**it is clear from **archaeological evidence that versus populum was definitely not the norm.”20
Directional symbolism frequently trumped practical considerations in the early church, despite Jungmann’s assertions of the opposite. One of Pope Benedict’s favorite liturgical historians, the late Monsignor Klaus Gamber, devotes the latter half of his book The Reform of the Roman Liturgy: Its Problems and Background to the archaeology of the eastward position.21 While Gamber notes that the earliest altars were freestanding, he explains this was principally “so ‘the priest could walk round it’” at the incensations of the Mass.22 In certain churches in Rome, the altar was so designed that facing the apse—symbolic east—was either difficult or impossible, and priest and people had an arrangement that, as we will see was almost wholly by accident, only very loosely resembled our current practice. However, this is not a survival of a primitive collegiality that privileged the people’s view of the sacred rites, but a different way of experiencing symbolic east, one of several variant forms that had coalesced in the early Church around the same cosmic rationale. One must make a distinction between two different ways of facing East. “Unfortunately,” explains Gamber (emphasis mine):
Nussbaum [a liturgical scholar of the period, writing in favor of versus populum] fails to make a clear enough distinction between church buildings with the apse facing East and those with the apse facing West—in the latter case, with the entrance facing East. Churches with the apse facing West and the entrance facing East are almost exclusively the basilicas of the fourth century, and among them predominantly those which were built by the Emperor Constantine. …] As early as the beginning of the fifth century, however, St. Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, reports that the apse facing East was the “usual” way of building churches. …] In Christian basilicas with the entrance facing East, the celebrant had to stand at the “back” of the altar, in order to offer the Holy Sacrifice towards the East, while in churches in which the apse faced East, the priest always stood “before” the altar . . .23
…even Leonardo da Vinci has all his apostles oriented in the same direction as Christ.27
It is interesting to note that **Joseph Jungmann, **shortly after altars began to be turned around in the 1960s, became disenchanted with the idea of versus populum that he had previously advocated so firmly. This radical shift by the apostle of versus populum remains the strongest evidence for the historicity of the older arrangement. Jungmann, after years of studying the issue and supporting versus populum, concludes that “The claim that the altar of the early Church was always designed to celebrate facing the people, a claim made often and repeatedly, turns out to be nothing but a fairy tale.”
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