Liturgical Concerns

Needless to say I received very little support on my liturgical concerns. It seems people are apprehensive about speaking out when given the chance, though I believe it is our duty to do so. Perhaps they worry that by doing so they are attacking and therefore not supporting the Church.

My grave concern is with regards the new rites of the “celebration of Mass”. Why is the Mass no longer referred to as a sacrifice, Christ’s sacrifice?

The Mass now is more focused on community and hand-shaking and hand-holding and less on solemnity, meditation and what the Mass is all about. The Mass is basically the combination of the Last Supper and the sacrifice on the cross. That should be the focus, not so much on the priest.

There is an unrelenting promotion of personal exuberance by our parish priest, no less. As a result, religious ceremonies, including even the Mass itself, have been turned into a form of entertainment. The draw is no longer God, but is now “community” and “celebration.” The priest is no longer standing “in persona Christi” but a “presider.” The prevailing theme is that Christians are gloriously happy people. God is no longer the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.

Why are women treading the sanctuary and attending the Altar where even the Mother of my Christ would not venture?

There are other ways for a girl to serve God, but there are no better ways for a young boy to prepare for a possible vocation to the priesthood. The role of server was part of the process of becoming a priest. Allowing girls to serve has upset the natural progression of priestly ministries. There used to be a natural growth from youth to maturity beginning as an altar server and possibly becoming a priest. Now that serving at the altar has been cut off from this natural process, joining the priesthood has become more like choosing a job than discerning a call from God.

Why are lay men (and indeed women!) being made into “Eucharistic” ministers to give the Body and Blood of Christ where His priest and priest alone should give?

We learn from The Great Façade [by Christopher A. Ferrara & Thomas E. Woods, Jr.] that the Instruction called Immensae Caritatis, issued on January 29, 1973, by the Congregation for Divine Worship authorized the introduction of Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist to administer Communion in “cases of genuine necessity which are listed as follows: (a) when there is no priest, deacon or acolyte, (b) when these are prevented from administering Holy Communion because of another pastoral ministry or because of ill health or advanced age, (c) when the number of the faithful requesting Holy Communion is such that the celebration of the Mass or distribution of the Eucharist outside Mass would be unduly prolonged.

The Instruction stipulates that “[s]ince these faculties are granted only for the spiritual good of the faithful and for cases of genuine necessity, priests are to remember that they are not excused from the tasked of distributing the Eucharist to the faithful who legitimately request it, and especially taking and giving it to the sick.”

Today’s “Eucharistic Ministers” actually operates in defiance of existing Vatican norms. The main ambiguity which gave rise to today’s proliferation of the “lay ministers” was the justification of their use if Mass would be “unduly prolonged”. Now, how long is “unduly prolonged”? It depends who interprets it. The lack of precision gives rise to wide interpretation, and wide interpretation gives rise to the establishment of an abuse under the appearance of fidelity to Church regulations. And once a fad like “Extraordinary Ministers” becomes widespread, and everybody’s doing it simply because everybody’s doing it, then who even pays attention to existing guidelines anyway?

JPII made at least a paper attempt to curb the abuse which was completely unsuccessful. In his letter Domincae Cenae of February 24, 1980, the Pope restated the Church’s teaching that “to touch the sacred species and to administer them with their own hands is a privilege of the ordained.” Strangely enough, the document contained no threat of penalty to any layman, priest or bishop who ignored the Pope’s plea. A law without a penalty is not a law, it’s a suggestion. The clergy completely ignored the Pope’s plea.

It is the law of the universal Church in the Latin Rite (to which most of us belong) that we receive Communion in the traditional manner. To receive on the hand is only an “indult,” or concession, but the “indult” has now become the norm. Why are our pastors silent about the law of our universal Church on Communion?

Now we are at the point where Communion in the hand is viewed as a superior way of receiving the Eucharist and the vast majority of our little children are being misinstructed to receive First Communion in the hand. The faithful are told that is an optional practice, and if they don’t like it, they can receive it on the tongue.

The tragedy of it all is, if it is optional for the laity, in practice it is not optional for the clergy. Priests are instructed that they must administer Communion in the hand, whether they like it or not, to anyone who requests it, thereby throwing many good priests into an agonizing crisis of conscience.

It is obvious that no priest can be lawfully forced to administer Communion in the hand, and we must pray that more priests will have the courage to safeguard the reverence due to this Sacrament and not be trapped into a false obedience that causes them to cooperate in the degradation of Christ in the Eucharist.

Why is the Tabernacle not in the center position of the Sanctuary?

In our church, I find it odd that the tabernacle is situated to one side of the sanctuary while an open bible is situated on the other. This gives the impression that the tabernacle and the bible are of equal importance, which of course they are not. This arrangement probably came about because of the design of the sanctuary wherein the figure of the risen Christ occupies the central position. Since there is no more space for the tabernacle in the center, it has to be placed to one side. The open bible was probably placed opposite the tabernacle in the sanctuary to achieve some sort of “artistic balance.” The Institutio Generalis does not provide for the placing of an open bible in the sanctuary. On the other hand, Inæstimabile Donum has this to say:

“The tabernacle in which the Eucharist is kept can be located on an altar, or away from it, in a spot in the church which is very prominent, truly noble, and duly decorated, or in a chapel suitable for private prayer and for adoration by the faithful.”[ID 24]

Placing an open bible opposite that of the tabernacle in the sanctuary just to achieve some sort of “artistic balance” clearly goes against the teaching of Inæstimabile Donum. It not only gives the wrong impression of equal importance, it detracts from the proper worship and adoration of the Eucharist reserved in the tabernacle by drawing unnecessary attention to it.

Michael Davies saw the need to demonstrate that there was nothing in the Council documents and even in the postconciliar legislation that mandated or even recommended reordering the sanctuaries and de-centering the tabernacles (see his The Catholic Sanctuary and the Second Vatican Council [Rockford, Ill.: TAN Books and Publishers, 1997]). It is never required that the “president’s” chair be in front and center stage; it is never required that Mass be celebrated “towards the people”; and, for a time at least, it was taken for granted that the ordinary of the Mass would remain in Latin, as it had always been.

The Mass and our belief in the True Presence set us aside from the Protestantism that I feared attacking our Church from within. I apologize for speaking out but the laity has been invited to do just this, and for those who wanted to be as one with our separated brethren they should go out and invite them into our glorious Church and one true Faith, and not go out to join with theirs.