Comments for Of Matters Liturgical at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 14 out of 14 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 19 May 2013 20:09:48 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8419 Dear Dr. Royal, It is good to hear the more positive thoughts about the upcoming changes. Some of us who serve at the altar even hope this may be a wake-up call to the priests who (still) persist in illicit actions during the Mass. I'm impressed with your experience at the Melkite Liturgy, with the celebration of the Gospel. How much more meaningful for the congregation to come forward. I am reminded of the effort of a Jesuit priest (not of our diocese) who encouraged the congregation to process forward at the Offertory ... to bring their gifts to the altar, directly, along with the wine and bread. I've never seen it done again. Perhaps in another land, another Rite, another time. Thank you for such a positive article. - Deacon Jim Stagg Sat, 08 Oct 2011 16:58:49 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8410 Re: Howard Kainz Just so you know, in the new General Instructions to the Roman Missal (GIRM) a lay person giving a homily is absolutely prohibited (the person has to be an ordained male, that is a priest or deacon). Before, the instruction was just vague enough that one could wiggle in a layperson (or they argued it was allowed), but not after November 26th Saturday day Mass. A Mass where some Jo or Jane gives the Homily will still be valid, but it will also be illicit (actually, I contend it has been illicit all this time). If your parish persists in the practice you should report it to your bishop. We all need to nip rebellion to the reform in the bud. - Regina P Sat, 08 Oct 2011 07:47:16 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8388 Just up the road from St. James in Mt. Ranier is St. Jerome's in Hyattsville. The 10:30am Mass there is always beautiful and prayerful. Check it out if you are in the DC area. - dannyboy Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:31:53 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8387 Just up the road from St. James in the DC area is St. Jerome's in Hyattsville. The 10:30am Sunday Mass there is always beautiful and prayerful. Check it out if you are in the DC area. - dannyboy Wed, 05 Oct 2011 16:28:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8368 I do believe Pope Benedict and those one-at-heart with him are working steadily to restore the emphasis on beauty in the liturgy, and thus steering things back to "true north." While it is pathetic how bad the celebration of the Holy Mass has become [soccer-uniform-pop-Mass-of-convenience], there are many rays of light beginning to shine on the horizon. One of the most beautiful celebrations of The Holy Mass I have ever been priviledged to attend has been with the priests and religious sisters of The Family of The Incarnate Word, who run St. James Parish Church in the Mount Rainier section of Wash, DC. They receive communion in silence, and then, out of nowhere, you hear their small choir of religious brothers and sisters begin to sing Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus...at that moment...we all felt heaven come down to earth. Go to Mass there if you ever have the chance. - Chris in Maryland Mon, 03 Oct 2011 17:47:08 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8367 I've seen the Epistle chanted facing North and the Gospel chanted in the midst of the congregation. I don't know what use of rite it was except that it was in the Western Church. - Jim Mon, 03 Oct 2011 14:14:45 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8365 Manfred: no doubt, there was/is a swing away from Christ's holy sacrifice...and a construction to aid and abet that...one question...do you know what the corresponding rubrics/instructions for the 1962 Missal said? - Chris in Maryland Mon, 03 Oct 2011 13:17:10 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8363 1969 Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani (GIRM) #7, QUOTE! The Lord's supper, or Mass, is the sacred meeting or congregation of the people of God assembled, the priest presiding, to celebrate the memorial of the Lord. For this reason. Christ's promise applies eminently to such a local gathering of the Church. "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst." (Mt. 18:20) Thus was born the Novus Ordo Mass. Do you see the term sacrifice anywhere there? Neither did Cdl Ottaviani which led to the Ottaviani Intervention by him and others who saw this for the Protestant liturgy it is. - Manfred Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:52:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8361 In addition to Dr. Royal's insightful comments, Fr. Robert F. Taft, S.J., the foremost historian of the Byzantine liturgy, who is a frequent visitor to the Melkite parish Dr. Royal describes, has commented on its liturgy. Fr. Taft has called that parish's liturgy the "model" parochial Byzantine liturgy in the world. It is indeed a wonderful treasure for the whole Church. - Leo Ladenson Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:20:11 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8360 During my RCIA (2008/2009), the religious director at my parish sponsored several different rites for Wednesday evening mass during Lent. Chaldean (Iraq), Maronite (Lebanon), the Tridentine Latin Mass; Syro-Malabar (Indian); and Romanian. I have always felt that these liturgies (and I attended each one) were the heart of my catechetical instruction. The Chaldean mass was almost shaming in its solemnity. All were in their own ways both instructive and moving. (The Maronite rite, for example, emphasizes their history of persecution, of practicing the Faith in a hostile place.) I was told that Southeastern Michigan is home to all 22 Rites of the Church. The Church is a lot of things, but in its Sacraments it is not a "cultural ghetto." I am always reminded when the subject of the Liturgy arises of the passage in Joyce's ULYSSES in which a character comments "God is a shout in the street." That is exactly what He is not, not in Holy Communion. As Monsignor said one Wednesday evening before mass when parishoners asked if they could take Communion, "We're all Catholics here." - Graham Combs Mon, 03 Oct 2011 09:51:04 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8359 And see! How I have forgotten The Canon! I left out "Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus." These are they, the heroic martyrs and martyred Popes of the ancient liturgical prayer: "we honor Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, Cyprian, Lawrence, Chrysogonus, John and Paul, Cosmas and Damian and all your Saints: grant through their merits and prayers that in all things we may be defended by the help of your protection.” If we never are permitted to hear the roll call of "these honored dead" [to steal a phrase from our most liturgical President], do we not dishonor them, and impoverish our children's memory by making them, like us, drink from The River Lethe? - Chris in Maryland Mon, 03 Oct 2011 07:58:03 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8358 An extremely important article, and a major problem / opportunity for true reform going forward. Mr. Kainz's experience rings painfully true. And what explains the suppression of the Roman Canon by The Church liturgists in the U.S.? I wish my children could have their memories formed by the incantaion of those heroic Popes and Martyrs, "Linus, Cletis, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius, John and Paul, Cosmos and Damian," who gave their lives for Christ in the early Church, when to be a Catholic was a matter of life and death. How unjust to our children, that the memory of our beloved ancestors in the faith, who loved Christ to the end, should be erased from the memory of The Church? The implementation of the NO Mass in the vernacular was taken, not as a chance to open the faithful's ears to the echo of the ancient liturgy, but to silence and suffocate the tradition. And there was, in the Middle Ages, more richness and beauty in our Roman Rite, more akin to what Robert Royal experienced in the Melkite Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. Mass. In extension of Michael's point, a reading of Lazslo Dobszay's book, "The Bugnini Liturgy and The Reform of the Reform" is instructive about "the whole story" of the history of "reform" in the Roman Rite, and the existence of a variety of venerable forms of the Roman Rite, many of them Cathedral-based, up through the middle ages, which were available for the "resourcement," but which Cardinal B and his comittee cohorts chose to ignore, in the spirit of the 1960's iconoclasm. Hence...the impoverishment of the liturgy gives way to the banality of what Mr. Kainz, and so many, suffer through. - Chris in Maryland Mon, 03 Oct 2011 07:35:38 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8356 Yesterday a woman who assists with adult education gave the homily in our parish; and occasionally the Choir Director delivers the homily. I'm glad you realize that your situation differs quite a bit from what happens in other dioceses. - Howard Kainz Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:34:49 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2011/of-matters-liturgical.html#comment-8354 On your last point, it is worth recalling that the short Communion Verse of the Roman rite was once merely the antiphon of the psalm that was sung throughout the distribution. The older practice survived in many of the Gallican uses, which, unfortunately, disappeared with the reorganization of the French dioceses, following the Concordat of 1801. - Michael Paterson-Seymour Sun, 02 Oct 2011 23:55:25 +0100