Consider the aftermath of an electrifying speech.  (8/28/2017)

In July the Vatican’s divine worship executive made a strong pitch for ad orientem masses (priest facing same direction as people) in a speech in England, was promptly countermanded by a higher-than-he at the Pope’s behest and was called in by the Pope himself.

What was that all about, including the prelate’s being summoned to the papal carpet before being reprimanded?

Well the prelate, Cardinal Robert Sarah, had “touched an ecclesial third rail,” Christian Browne wrote at the time in Crisis Magazine:

It seems that churchmen at the highest levels do not wish anyone to notice that certain practices associated with the Novus Ordo — Mass facing the people, Communion in the hand while standing, the use of laymen to distribute Holy Communion — have no grounding in the Missal of Paul VI, let alone in the mandate for…

A CATHOLIC LAMENT, broadly stated:

1. The Latin was mysterious, signalling the (bona fide) mysteries of the Eucharist, vs. today’s liturgical populism, downgrading the mystical and downplaying the sacral.

2. The priest saying Mass was a functionary, reflecting the ex opere operato aspect of what he did.

3. The priest at mass was (presumably) a priest at prayer, absorbed in that aspect, which meant he did not look at or survey people, even when turning to them to pronounce a blessing or solicit response.

4. As functionary or performer of the sacred ritual, he was severely limited. Ritual reigned, ad libbing unheard of.

5. People looked forward and saw the priest facing in the same direction, a crucial element in the transaction but not its focus. (Important point here and now, when the priest has become the focus, people look at him, there being…

We left only part way through this inspired rant by a distinguished scholar and analyst of all things Catholic, George Weigel, with this about how Father Freelance makes it up and he goes along while saying mass, “. . .  whether indulged by old, middle-aged, or young, it’s obnoxious and it’s an obstacle to prayer.”

George W. continued in that vein:

Especially now, I might note, given the restoration of the more formal rhythms of liturgical language in the English translations we’ve used since Advent 2011. Those translations are not faultless. But they’re a massive improvement on what we used to have . . .

How so?

. . .  by restoring sacral language that was peremptorily discarded in the previous translation, the current translation reminds us that Mass is far more than a social gathering; it’s an act of worship, the majesty of which should be reflected in…

A fellow does some noodling. What to do?

1. Overhaul sermon training. Make preaching an overriding emphasis. It’s a matter of getting people to know Jesus. If they do not get the preaching, how will they know Jesus?

2. Turn the altar around so the mass is no longer an extended sermon but a prayer in which priest and people are truly in it together, facing together toward God.

3. Restore Latin — for its own sake, a few of us feel, but as a special, ministerial language to be associated with the mass as unique in worshipers’ experience, unlikely to be compared to a family dinner, for instance.

4. Eliminate the handshake of peace as disruptive of this like-no-other experience.

5. Eliminate communion in the hand standing as distracting from and even disparaging the like-no-otherness of the ceremony, specifically the reality of transubstantiation. Eliminate wine communion.

6. Restore altar…

Priests who make it up as they go along.

If you’re a daily Mass attendant, the odds are that you’ve heard General Norm 22.3 of “Sacrosanctum concilium” violated on a weekly basis.

In all the sixteen documents of the Second Vatican Council, is there any prescription more regularly violated than General Norm 22.3 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy? Which, in case you’ve forgotten, teaches that “no . . . person, not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority”?

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…