Category Archives: 2-Experienced

Garnered some years back while blogging on the sign of peace question.

Begin with Bob K.:

Sometimes it is good for Christians to reach out . . . and communicate with each other. The MASS is as good a time as any and better than most to do so.

It is when we GATHER TOGETHER to worship and celebrate the Transubstantiation and our gathering of power from the spirit . . . .

If we can’t talk to each other (whom we see and know and who are standing right next to us), how can we talk to the Lord (Whom we . . . have not seen or cannot see) or to the world (whom we are to evangelize)?

At that time of [mass], I make it a point to talk to those near me — the wheel chair kid, the three African-Americans who always sit in the last pew, being shy [in] an all-white congregation, older women I know who are widows, and some teenagers who rarely come — in each case to make them feel welcome.

Then D:

The logical moment to greet each other is when entering one’s favorite pew and finding another “regular” there, or if I’m there and the regular comes in after me.

That’s when I greet folks, but I don’t shake their hand because it’s not a natural gesture in that spot — the person kneeling or sitting, or walking in to sit or pray.

To the regular lady in the pew in front of me, I kneel and whisper in her ear as she sits in the pew. I find out how she’s feeling because I know she has a heart problem. She tells me a few of her aches and complaints, including about her husband in the pew with her, who she says doesn’t show her any compassion.

I wave hi across a section of pews to friends as they come in. That’s normal “greeting” and wishing-well time.

Why can’t a bunch of bishops realize shaking hands in the middle of mass after being cheek to jowl with everyone for 25 minutes is not natural? What do you think a survey in church would disclose about hand-shaking?

Bob O.:

My physician daughter shrugs aside the germ question, saying, “Just remember to wash your hands as soon as you get home.”

But what about passing a neighbor’s germs on to another? Saying, “I’m sorry but I’ve got a bad cold,” and pointing to your throat will work once in a while, but every Sunday?

How about wearing a sign that says, “UNCLEAN” or “UNSOCIABLE”?

The problem’s not too bad in parishes that haven’t been brain-washed too long by a liberal pastor. But for parishes that have been, the only solution is: Avoid them. I’ve been in some that had enough empty pews to allow enthusiasts to kiss-hug-shake everybody in reach, then scramble church-wide for more fellow enthusiasts or victims. It usually took up to five minutes before the church settled down.

The worst are churches where everybody is expected to hold hands and daisy-chain across aisles, etc., during the WHOLE Our Father. As someone who had to attend one too many rallies during the sixties where we had to pretend we were all one downtrodden race, hold hands, sway in rhythm and sing “We shall overcome,” I have a strong aversion to this.

Looking straight ahead and holding on to the pew with a death grip doesn’t always work. I’ve had a bright young thing give me a sharp rap in the ribs to let me know this kind of thing isn’t tolerated.

Give me the celebrant who knows the whole greeting of peace is optional and skips it, Save me from the celebrant who, contrary to Vatican directions, leaves the altar and parades down the middle aisle, handshaking both ways. [Bob was right on both counts.]

I’m not hard line on this, though, Why don’t ushers just greet Mass-goers and ask, “Kissing or non-kissing?” and wave us to the appropriate pew?

At last, Nancy:

I enjoyed your writing about “shake time.” In many non-Catholic churches, “prayers and concerns of the people” is an integral part of a church service. Parishioner participation in the issuing of those concerns sometimes becomes quite senseless (and long-winded), especially when issues are brought up that are out of the realm of the purpose for prayer.

Thus spoke the people. A few of them anyhow.

Back in my younger days, I considered the importance of ignoring what’s up front during Mass.

Various ministers were thrust up front by current rules. It’s not their fault, I told myself.

Politeness does not require looking at them, however, I added.

So don’t look, I said. Instead, mind your own business, reading and meditating on the day’s Scripture.

There’s too much going on up front, such as traipsing to and fro with book held high over forehead as if to ward off falling plaster, I said, prior to reading Scripture of the day.

It’s not helpful. Merely distracting.

Then you look up and see priest looking at you.

He can’t help it. Reverentially downcast eyes have not been part of his training.

But you can help it by not looking.

The bulletin warned us away from my illegal Latin mass church.

It’s a “chapel,” the bulletin said, “that advertises itself as ‘Our Lady Immaculate Roman Catholic Church.'”

But it’s actually not Roman Catholic, we were told, but is run by the St. Pius X society founded by Archbishop Lefebvre, who was excommunicated, etc. etc.

The bulletin quotes the Pope about the “grave offense” involved in adherence to the Society leading to excommunication.

I’m at risk, therefore, by now and then attending the Latin masses at Our Lady Immaculate.

Would  my  parish consider now and then having a Latin mass, so as to ween me away? For pastoral reasons?

A recent special mass for gays and lesbians at a neighboring parish was a one-time thing.

Maybe have a one-time thing for Latin mass embracers, who make no claims about being born that way but only say they were raised that way?

. . . Father Emil discussed “what Mass is all about” in the bulletin. It’s our coming “with full hearts to thank God,” he wrote.

Moreover, the Mass is “truly alive . . . when we bring to [it] the everyday things of our lives.”

Some of his best mass-time experience, he confessed, was when he is “truly bringing what was in [his] heart to God.”

The “sacrifice of the mass,” he said “refers to our self-offering to God.”

This self-offering “feels good” because it reminds him that God is “taking care of” his problems.

He said nothing about Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross and its redeeming value or its being re-enacted in the mass, whatever we bring.

He spoke only about what we bring.

Apart from his belief in God as protector, it’s as if there were no Christian tradition.

Pagans did this much, and probably still do.

If you are wondering what there is about liturgy that reminds you of Rotary Club meetings, picnics, and other gatherings that make you feel good, consider this foray into theology by a coming pastors, who does a good job and is probably as theologically literate as most.

. . . “THE PEACE OF CHRIST BE WITH YOU”? YES! — a 2006 cogitation.

It happens at mass after the Our Father, during which you may have held hands in a show of solidarity or watched others do so. It’s SHAKE TIME.

I liken it to violating a library’s silence by interrupting someone, extorting his or her response.

My friend Jake (not his real name) intends to pull his phone out and threaten to call 9-1-1 the next time he is approached while trying in his admittedly clumsy way to commune with the Almighty. An empty threat, yes.

A Catholic New World reader put it to Question Corner priest, John Dietzen:

I’ve had my arthritic fingers crushed. I’ve had parishioners blow their nose and then offer their hand to me. . . . I’m tempted to isolate myself in back [of church]. . . . [T]his . . . scenario is unnecessary and superfluous.

Father John says this scenario is not new. They did it this way in the middle ages and in New Testament times. Late middle ages, the kiss of peace was for priests only, but it is now (for several decades) “prescribed.”

No it isn’t. And no it wasn’t in 2005, when Fr. John gave his advice. It was (merely) “appropriate,” with qualifications, the Vatican said.

Indeed, there were warnings:

It is appropriate “that each one give the sign of peace only to those who are nearest and in a sober manner.”

“The Priest may give the sign of peace to the ministers but always remains within the sanctuary, so as not to disturb the celebration.”

Ditto “if for a just reason he wishes to extend the sign of peace to some few of the faithful.”

As what kind of sign, that’s up to a country’s the sign to be exchanged, that’s up to the country’s bishops “in accordance with the dispositions and customs of the people,” with the Vatican’s approval.

A “sign of peace” is called for, says Fr. Dietzen. Not quite. Appropriate, remember. “Deep roots” here. Handshake, embrace, or kiss may not be “the perfect” sign of peace, “but it can still carry a message we need to understand if we are to celebrate the Eucharist together as Christ intended.”

We weren’t doing that before?

So: Arthritis got you down? Just look at the one next to you and, without extending your hand, say, “Peace be with you.”

Don’t worry, says Father John. “No one will be offended.” How does he know that?

So doing, handshake refused, “you will be sharing a moment of the Mass that can be most prayerful and precious.”

It can be, he’s right. But question was about when it isn’t.

For intance, when the arthritic senior citizen, to take one example, has corralled what he takes to be the peace of Christ already, including a resolve to be nicer to people, and has to abandon his beneficent reverie with smile and nod to those on either side of him and sometimes to lots of others, some of them climbing over pews to get to him?

That’s one to stump Question Corners throughout the land.

Pick and choose the best arguments for the mass facing in same direction as people.

This one popped out:

Mass offered with the priest facing the people, versus populum, presents another problem, one that Francis has spent his entire pontificate denouncing—clericalism. In the words of Cardinal Ratzinger, by turning the priest toward the people, “an unprecedented clericalization came on the scene. Now the priest—the “presider,” as they now prefer to call him—becomes the real point of reference for the whole liturgy. Everything depends on him… Less and less is God in the picture.”

Precisely. He’s the focus of attention, the performer, the man of the hour. Not good.

The mass is a show. Of what? Of God’s great mystery reenacted, his dealing with men, women, and children) as we know it through Scripture and Tradition. It’s been a long, hard slog through the ages, starting with Abraham. Neither peep show nor lecture but something symbolic and much more .

Consider it as drama. Gordon Graham, Professor of Philosophy and the Arts at Princeton Theological Seminary, did in 2007 in an essay that explored liturgy, especially the Catholic Mass and its high-church Protestant counterparts “as a kind of drama.”

The Mass, he said, is “a dramatic enactment of the gospel in which all present participate in a variety of roles.”

A sort of choreography is in play, that is. He elaborates.

There is first the “Gathering of the People,” including “latecomers who join in the opening hymn” unknowingly in the role of “physically representing the church as it comes together for the purpose of worship.”

This is “particularly striking” he writes, where services begin with a hymn sung in procession., which “draws increasing numbers . . . as it progresses and, by means of singing together, forges them into ‘the people.'”

More commonly, all are in the pews already, turning and watching the celebrant and his train go by. Either way singing together and being “forged” into an ad hoc unity is operative.

Then, what is familiar indeed:

When the people are gathered, the celebrant leads them in penitential prayers [Kyrie], a quest for the state of mind and heart they require to hear the gospel proclamation in the right way.

Thus prepared, worshipers enter the drama’s first main act, the Liturgy of the Word.

An ordinary member of “the people” emerges from the crowd, as the
Hebrew prophets did, to declare to the assembled company the word of God as it is found in the Old Testament.

In response, the people, like the people of Israel, together sing (or say) one of the ancient psalms (or occasionally canticles) characteristic of Israel’s worship.

Good.

Then a second prophet emerges . . .  this time . . . of the “new” Israel, and there is a reading from the Epistles . . . The gradual hymn that follows allows for a change of pace.

As it ends, the Gospel is carried in procession from the altar to the people, signifying that the words of Jesus come down from God and thus are not simply those of a human prophet, however visionary.

Good.

This important difference is marked by the fact everyone reverently stands and faces the Gospel, having sat at ease during earlier readings. It is then the task of the preacher . . . to expand on the readings of the day, . . . so that the people properly understand the import of what they have heard in this first act of the drama.

When the word has been heard and [presumably] understood once again, the faithful are in a position to declare their faith, communally, in the Creed.

And having heard the word of God, striven to understand it afresh, and reaffirmed their faith, they are led by one of their own to enter into what is widely known as “the Prayer for the Church,” a prayer that places their hopes and requests before God in the name of Jesus.

Also familiar.

Together the faithful enact the cosmic drama of the world’s salvation. They are not the authors of this drama. Authorship lies with God. Yet, following the parallel with less awesome dramas, it is through their wholehearted participation that ordinary people realize this drama in human life.

That’s the idea.

We might say this: By participating in the drama of the liturgy, they are
the denizens of the new Israel. Like an actor in a part, they are both themselves and Christian disciples, and it is only by giving themselves wholeheartedly to the parts they are assigned that they make that discipleship a reality.

Beautiful. It’s the ideal.

How well it all done is an issue, of course. The author is philosophizing, of which I approve, except it reminds me of the old story of the two ladies, matrimonial veterans, walking out after mass where the young priest had preached about the joys of married life.

One noted what a lovely sermon it was. The other agreed, adding, “I wish I knew as little about marriage as that young man.”

Do we wish sometimes that we knew as little about mass as that philosopher?

Kelsey J from Grand Rapids, MI:

It seems to me like a needless distraction. I can glad-hand Mrs Smith any time I want. On Sundays, I’m there to see Jesus. Is this uncharitable or disobedient?

Fr. R., 31 January, 2019:

The Sign of Peace is a distraction where it is presently situated in the Liturgy, especially if effervescent personalities wave and chat.

A patrician friend of mine, when I said Mass as he was dying, asked me to omit the Peace because it made his butler uncomfortable. I have used that as a sufficient excuse ever since, regardless of domestic arrangements.

God save the butler!

If done at all, it should be liturgical: greeting just the person next to you with a formal gesture. Influenza has a salutary effect because in flu season the Peace is often suspended.

Shame if it takes that.

The real fault with it is that it is cloyingly bourgeois. If someone intrudes upon you with an unwelcome smile, just say politely: “Noli me tangere”. Our Lord said that to the Magdalene, and if it was good enough for him it should be good enough for us.

Hands off, sister?

Best answer yet for me, and I have perused far and wide for same.

Oh, and Fr. R.? He’s Fr. George William Rutler, NYC pastor of parish in hell’s kitchen who takes boxing lessons ever since he got coldcocked by a poor-box thief he caught in the act.

Also essayist and book author supreme. Uses wit and learning in the cause of Jesus and His church.

. . . “the rise of externalism.”

He was Warren C. Young, in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, in which he asked “Whither Evangelicalism?” citing an earlier complaint, “The Failure of Evangelicalism,” in Eternity magazine, in which that author raised two “timely” criticisms.

Evangelicals have lost the true sense of worship, and the Christian life is measured far more often by external criteria rather than by a biblical and spiritual emphasis.

Young, a teacher at West Side of Chicago-based Northern Baptist Seminary, warned:

If, because of irreverence and externalism [attention to externals, esp. to an excessive degree], Evangelicalism should be written off as an exhausted and empty thing, there may yet come a day when we shall find ourselves in the midst of a revival which some of us will not recognize as such, because it did not come out of our mold, and does not use our shibboleths. [Distinguishing characteristics]

They would be losing their character, he was saying, sounding like a Catholic traditionalist, seeing the Evangelical brand weakened and losing its appeal, “an exhausted and empty thing.”

It’s an odd or at least unexpected reference to turn up in a book about Catholic liturgy, you say? Unexpected, yes. Odd? No.

The same pretty much horrified concern pervades some commentary on the liturgical movement, much of it justified, as when coming from the likes of a founder of the movement, Dom Prosper Gueranger, as regards elimination from the mass of the custom noted in the 2nd blog about Paul Claudel.

The new, experimental mass in France drew fevered objections from the poet, dramatist, and diplomat Paul Claudel in a Figaro article a month before he died . . .

“It is true that in the traditional liturgy,” priest with back to worshipers, “the most moving part of the Holy Sacrifice is hidden from the faithful. But it is not hidden from their hearts and their faith.”

At Solemn High Masses of old, this sense of wonderment was such that the sub-deacon, one of the regulation three celebrants, at the foot of the altar remained standing during the Offertory, hiding his face with his left hand in reverence.

“We too are invited to pray,” he said, “to withdraw into ourselves, not in a spirit of curiosity but of recollection.

[Emphasis added throughout]

He took note of the (Catholic) Eastern-rite practice of in effect hiding the altar behind the iconostasis, a screen or partition with doors and tiers of icons.

Behind it “takes place unseen” by worshipers, he said, “the miracle of transubstantiation”; and “only afterwards” did the celebrant appear “on the threshold of the sacred door, the Body and Blood of Christ in his hands.”

Something like this “lingered” as a venerated custom in France “for many years,” he said; and the mid-19th-century pioneer in such matters, Dom Prosper Guéranger, “protested energetically against those who had the audacity” to do away with it.

There was nothing like that now, Claudel complained. Instead, the church’s “deplorable practice” had “turned the ancient ceremony upside down, to the great consternation of the faithful.”

“There is no longer an altar,” he moaned, asking, “Where is it, this consecrated stone which the Apocalypse [Book of Revelation] compares to the Body of Christ Itself? There is nothing but a bare trestle covered with a tablecloth, reminding us depressingly of a Calvinist workbench”!

The supposed “convenience of the faithful” required this: “Accessories” had to go, “not only the candlesticks and flowers, but the tabernacle! The crucifix!”

“The priest says his Mass in a vacuum!” he continued. “When he invites the people to lift up their hearts and their eyes . . . to what? There is nothing left in front of us to focus our minds on the Divine.”

Except the priest himself, of course, looking at you.

Of the faithful, “it would appear that not the slightest spiritual effort will be required.” Instead, “it seems necessary to stick the most sublime of mysteries in their faces, to reduce the Mass to the primitive form of the Last Supper and in doing so, change the entire ritual.”

“What is the meaning of ‘Dominus vobiscum’ [The Lord be with you] and ‘orate fratres’ [pray brethren] spoken by a priest” in this new mass, separated from his people [by the table altar] and requiring nothing of them [by way of concentration]?

It seems good to note here that stage directions meant everything to the superb dramatist Claudel, who rebelled at the changes he saw, as if stage design and directions were all wrong and that made all the difference to him.

Liturgy is theater, of course. The mass is staged. Ritual provides stage directions and dramatic impact is crucial. Why not?

More later on this stage-effect function of rites.

In a month after this article appeared, Claudel was dead.