The Spirit works in mysterious ways. This isn’t one of them.
If you’re a daily Mass attendant, the odds are that you hear that norm violated a dozen times a week. Sunday Mass people typically hear it violated two or three times a week, at least.
Auto-editing or flat-out rewriting the prescribed text of the Mass is virtually epidemic among priests who attended seminary in the late Sixties, Seventies, or early Eighties; it’s less obvious among the younger clergy.
But whether indulged by old, middle-aged, or young, it’s obnoxious and it’s an obstacle to prayer.
I’m with this fellow, though less so since like Dr. Strangelove I have learned to stop worrying and love the — free-lancer.
Thing is, I can’t afford to be censorious in the matter. Talk about your obstacles to prayer. Been there, done that. No thanks.
Better to take it as part of the human comedy. Besides, currently I encounter far less of that lately: change of venue and all that, you know.
But I still encourage the writer, the eminent George Weigel, and applaud him.
Blithe Spirit 