T
tjfitz
Guest
I agree with the original poster on this one. My family and I lived in Ireland from 1996 to 2007 and it was my experience there that Masses were quick, efficient and very devotional and reverent and inspiring. The shortest Sunday Mass we experienced was 28 minutes, but we never were at a Mass longer than about 45 minutes. The sermons/homilies were almost always wonderfully eloquent and meaningful, but maybe that is just because the Irish are so articulate.
We got back to the US, and it seems like Masses are an ordeal rather than a spiritual experience. Way too much stopping of everything for music and singing; the altar servers having to find the lectionary, walk across the altar to the priest and then he to find the right spot and begin reading; lectors coming from remote parts of the church (in the case of a woman lector in high-heels, the clack-clack-clack sound of her heels as she makes her way to the altar, then the same back to the pew while we are “thinking” about the reading–some of us probably thinking “Get on with it!”); and before Holy Communion is distributed, the mob of Extraordinary Ministers to be given Communion under both forms. I could go on, but I don’t want to sound too crabby.
My Dad used to say that he remembers his mostly-Irish parish in Iowa that if Mass went longer than 40 minutes, people started leaving.
We got back to the US, and it seems like Masses are an ordeal rather than a spiritual experience. Way too much stopping of everything for music and singing; the altar servers having to find the lectionary, walk across the altar to the priest and then he to find the right spot and begin reading; lectors coming from remote parts of the church (in the case of a woman lector in high-heels, the clack-clack-clack sound of her heels as she makes her way to the altar, then the same back to the pew while we are “thinking” about the reading–some of us probably thinking “Get on with it!”); and before Holy Communion is distributed, the mob of Extraordinary Ministers to be given Communion under both forms. I could go on, but I don’t want to sound too crabby.
My Dad used to say that he remembers his mostly-Irish parish in Iowa that if Mass went longer than 40 minutes, people started leaving.