A pessimistic view of today’s Catholic liturgy:

The [post-Vatican 2] Pauline rite [Paul VI’s] is so radical a deconstruction and reconstruction of the Roman liturgy that it does not exist in the same tradition of organic development. It is a new departure, a new thing, not a revision of the old thing that had been handed down over the centuries.

As an artificial liturgical entity constructed out of pieces of the Roman heritage combined with modern scholarly inventions, any future reform of it would be no more than a variation on the new theme.

The only way forward is not to tinker any more with this “fabrication, a banal on-the-spot product” (as Ratzinger called it in 1992), but to return steadfastly and stalwartly to the Catholic and Roman liturgical tradition embodied in the preconciliar Missal.

Indeed, only in this way can the deepest aims and aspirations of the Second…

More on how the mass is reconstituted by free-lancing priest-celebrants.

Item:

May the Lord accept the sacrifice at your hands for the praise and glory of his name, for our good and the good of all his holy Church. . . .

. . . is commonly changed to “our hands” and “God’s name,” which never in my hearing has been explained to the congregation. It’s been simply done, slipped in, over and over until the people do it that way too.

This has been the pattern throughout imposition of the new mass. Words, gestures, stage directions have been all changed without pointing out to people their implications in terms of belief or (hidden or at least hiding) purposes. Better to signal it, over and over, than to (have to) explain it from pulpit or lectern.

Repetition is the mother of study. Or of…

Is there room for half-baked ideas, even half-vast ones, in a discussion of worship?

Let’s see.

* Praying for peace at mass is a good idea, but for an “end to violence” or even the specific “end to violence in Chicago”? Really? Who is kidding whom?

Praying for that is praying for the end of the world, which will be a wonderful thing, to be sure, what with Jesus returning in glory. His earliest followers prayed for that. But we might add an Augustinian “not yet.”

How about “less violence”? Or “fewer killings on our mean streets”? Something we can take seriously without calling for an end to life as we know it.

* Among social-justice issues, why do we never hear about vote-stealing? Never stole one myself or saw one stolen, though I was sorely tempted in the class-president election at Loyola U. in 1949. But I read about…

2011 PRAYER AND MEDITATION: No paragon of these am I, even if at 18 I left home to study them full time.

After two years of it (novitiate), I got my SJ degree, which I relinquished many years later but would rather not go into right now.

Even so, much of it has stuck. At Mass, for instance, I often enter the zone of prayer and meditation, which makes me a poor participant in the liturgy.

Doesn’t mean I think of nothing else (distractions, you know) or that I am superior to the fellow or gal next to me who belts out the songs and other responses.

In fact, you could argue I’m not as good because I seem to reject the communal aspect that characterizes today’s liturgy.

So allow me to hang my head in shame at that, asking only for tolerance, OK? I am what I am…

In 2011 I wrote:

Like the TV detective Monk, I have a gift that is also a curse: I pay very close attention at Mass.

So when the priest veers away from the approved text, I hear it and fume. Used to. Now I go into my free-fly zone. Frequently.

In this zone, I wool-gather, daydream, write columns and imaginary sermons, etc. This means that one minute I’m saying “Lord hear our prayer” with the other faithful, next minute that I know about, I am rising for the Our Father.

Awful, I know. Can only say I’m working on it.

The paying close attention thing is a bigger problem.

The priest subs out “His” for “God’s,” “disciples” for “friends,” “Almighty God” for “Almighty Father,” etc. Two of these reduce masculine references, sparing feminist sensibilities. The other is apparently meant to de-emphasize levels of authority in favor of intimacy.

Irritating…

. . . was a triumph of centralized planning, enough to make a statist weep with envy, I wrote in 2006.

The world over, Catholics got used to mass in everyday language. It became part of a worldwide social engineering victory — change by design, not by natural influences or “organically,” as you hear.

Vatican II celebrated the freedom of the children of God, but not in liturgy. Latin had to go. Latin went. Rebels were marginalized. Only recently (in 2005) had Latin returned with church authority’s blessings.

So it goes, change dictated from above for our own good by people who know what’s best for us.

A whole new mass developed after Vatican II, developed quite consciously by dedicated experts.

Young Jesuits like me debated the coming changes in the mid-50s. It was already foreshadowed.

This liturgy of the future, in the vernacular, would be as much communicating with…

. . . Nah. Penetrating. To the heart of the matter.

. . . Which is yet more on the “Shake, rattle” controversy — handshake as kiss of peace before communion.

Summarizing, offering selective observations by readers of ten-plus years ago.

* Bob O. suggests kiss and non-kiss (-shake) sections of church, the ushers asking your preference.

* Bob K. considers church ideal for meeting, greeting, and otherwise being nice to people.

* Margaret tells us that church is for God, not us: Ask not what God can do for you but what you can do for God.

* D. says timing is all off: you greet fellow or sister worshipers (discreetly) at the start of mass, not in the middle of it.

* Jennifer has no use for “power” as used by Bob K. — “our gathering of power from the spirit” — and sees psychobabble in this.

*…

. . . in March of ’06. . .

The divide is in terms of religion as therapy vs. as sacrifice, people-centered vs. God-centered, that separates Catholics.

From Reader Margaret, reacting to Bob K’s enthusiastic endorsement of the kiss of peace as widely practiced:

We’ve slipped from the meaning of Mass as sacrifice, not as gathering for celebration. The idea of “our gathering of power from the spirit” sums up the problem.

The New Mass is about what God can do for us – bless us, empower us, help us, raise us up on eagle’s wings, etc. . .

But the traditional Mass is a sacrifice, the reenactment of Calvary where the emphasis is on God and giving Him thanks and adoration.

Can a New Mass that so obscures its own meaning be from God?

Reader Jennifer finds Margaret’s comment that we have “slipped from the meaning of Mass…

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…