Shake . . . rattle and roll? Nope. Shake hand with all your neighbors, and kiss the colleens all? Nope. Shake and say . . .

. . . “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.

Catholic mass “changed or mutilated to make it easier to understand” — Cardinals who objected

Something of a replay here, from earlier posts — a coordination if you will, with more from the dissident Alfredo Cardinal Ottaviani.

The supposed betrayal came to light officially, on April 4, 1969, when Pope Paul VI announced adoption of the Novus Ordo, “New Order,” of the mass.

Four and a half months later, on September 25, 1969, Cardinal Ottaviani and a colleague blew a whistle on it with an “intervention” accompanied by a cover letter which warned that the Novus Ordo “represents both as a whole, and in its details, a striking departure from the Catholic theology of the Mass as it was formulated” in the 16th-century Council of Trent.

Among other points made or stated, was that Catholics in general had “never, absolutely never, asked that the liturgy be changed or mutilated to make it easier to understand.”

(Catholics as a whole were not complaining, nor were they abstaining from mass attendance or other practices. Rather, they were in general accepting of the church’s worship arrangements. It was dedicated experts who were moving this thing and had been doing so for many years.)

“On many points,” the two cardinals said, the Novus Ordo “has much to gladden the heart of even the most modernist Protestant.”

The Mass, they said, had been “reduced to a ‘supper’ . . . The altar is nearly always called the table. . . . The Blessed Sacrament [was to] be kept in a place apart . . . as though it were some sort of relic. [Implicitly deserving of no more reverence than the bones of a saint.] . . . The people themselves appear as possessing autonomous priestly powers. . . . [the priest] appears as nothing more than a Protestant minister.” pickup

Question here: When did Ottaviani et al. become aware of all this? Had they kept track of the dozens, hundreds of conferences, work sessions, scholarly and other writings over the decades — in short of the hard-working cadre of operators of the “liturgical movement”?

Surely, these operatives had not told him, who with many others had never been seen as an ally.  They had worked the precincts of ecclesial prelates, maneuvered in the corridors of power, pressed buttons of the major decision-makers, winning some decisions, losing some but never giving up.

Their final achievement “teems with insinuations of manifest errors” against the Faith, the slashing critique said this “Critical Study of the New Mass,” as it came to be called. The old guard had lost a big one. Ottaviani, 79, and his colleague was Antonio Cardinal Bacci, 84. The study’s spadework had been done by a dozen theologians working under the direction of a man who was to figure mightily in subsequent events, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.

Ad Orientem As A First Step Toward Spiritual Renewal – Crisis Magazine

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 as drama . . .

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: I don’t like giving kiss of peace. Fr. Rutler: Not to worry.

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., :

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.

1959, An Evangelical bemoaned “decline of worship” and . . .

. . . “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.

Facing the people in 1955, Paul Claudel’s lament continued . . .

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.

When Will Pope Francis Update the “Hail Mary”? – Crisis Magazine

Has the time come? How about:

Hey, Mary, very nice person! The Lord is with us, and happy are we. Super is your child, Jesus. O, lucky one, accompany us on our journey. Amen.

Those who draw the line at such modernization should have a look at the man’s argument.

Run across while looking for something else: What kind of sinner are you?

From the minor friar:

When dealing with sinful habits the real moral and spiritual danger is perhaps not the occasional slip or fall into the behavior, but giving into discouragement, despair, or the doubt that God’s love is abiding that can lead to scruples.

The question of being a Christian is not whether to be a ‘saint’ or a ‘sinner,’ but of deciding what kind of sinner you want to be; the sinner who lets sins lead to discouragement and an increasing selfishness, or the sort of sinner who allows the experience of sin to lead to humility and an abiding awareness of the immense mercy of God, a mercy which one can then radiate to others.

Try that on for size, why don’t you?

Facing the people in 1955, Paul Claudel’s lament

From the eminent poet, dramatist, and diplomat Paul Claudel, January 23, 1955, in the French daily Figaro a month before he died:

I wish to protest with all my strength against the growing [unauthorized] practise in France of saying Mass facing the people.

He explained:

The most basic principle of religion is that God holds first place and that the good of man is merely a consequence of the recognition and the practical application of this essential dogma.

Basic, that. Let God be God in your worship. The rest will follow.

More:

The Mass is the homage par excellence which we render to God by the Sacrifice which the priest offers to Him in our name on the altar of His Son. It is us led by the priest and as one with him, going to God to offer Him hostias et preces [Victims and prayers]. It is not God presenting Himself to us for our convenience to make us indifferent witnesses of the mystery about to be accomplished.

We are not the focus for the priest.

The novel liturgy deprives the Christian people of their dignity and their rights. It is no longer they who say the Mass with the priest, by “following” it, as the saying very rightly goes, and to whom the priest turns from time to time to assure them of his presence, participation and cooperation, in the work which he undertakes in their name.

All that remains is a curious audience watching him do his job. Small wonder that the impious compare him to a magician performing his act before a politely admiring crowd. [Emphasis added]

This is a killer phrase, from a six-time nominee for a Nobel prize, dramatist supreme, analyzing the mass as we were to know it. Performance liturgy.

. . . more more more to come . . .