In a response to my “liturgical ramblings“, James Morris commented that the priest is in persona Christi at Mass and that he was sure that Our Lord faced the apostles during the Last Supper, hence the justification for the priest being versus populum during the liturgy. My response is to stress that the Mass is first and foremost a re-presentation of Our Lord’s self-sacrifice on Calvary, and only in a secondary sense is it a re-enactment of the Last Supper. It could be said, in fact, that the Last Supper serves as a prefigurement of the Crucifixion. It points to the Crucifixion, much as St. John the Baptist points to Christ. To say that the Last Supper should be first is to see things back to front. Since the Mass is first and foremost the sacrifice of Christ of Himself to the Father, it is correct that He should be facing the Father, not the people. In a sacrifice, the priest and people face the same way, i.e. towards the altar of sacrifice. They are One. When the priest faces the people, he becomes the star of the show, like the chairman of the meeting or a performer on stage, with the congregation as his audience. This is not as things should be and is not appropriate for a sacrifice.
Mr. Morris also states his belief that the priest faced the people in the Early Church. I believe that this is disputed historically but, in any event, I do not find it a very convincing argument for the abandonment of centuries of ad orientem celebration of the Mass. Tolkien said that he couldn’t understand the mania for seeking to go back to the Early Church because he couldn’t understand why the sapling was considered superior to the full-grown tree. And in any event, he added, if you chop down the full-grown tree in order to find the sapling, you will only succeed in killing the tree.
It is an error akin to that made by the Protestants at the Reformation to see the Early Church as “pure” but the later Church as corrupt. The Church is the same Mystical Body of Christ and Bride of Christ today as She was at Her Birth. Christ’s Mystical Body and His Mystical Bride are One Flesh and this Flesh is not subject to entropy. She does not decay! The full grown tree is resplendent with two millennia of growth in doctrine and wisdom – and two millennia of liturgical Tradition. It is the Tree of Life. We should let it grow on us!
‘When the priest faces the people, he becomes the star of the show,’
See it’s that I don’t like; ‘he becomes the star of the show’
Do you really think that all the priests around the world do their seven years of training, pray, fast, study, to become…’the star of the show’
‘with the congregation as his audience’
I have never once felt that.
I am sure , in fact there must be, or else the Church wouldn’t have made the change, theology on my side.
Do we view Christian sacrifice in the same way as pagan sacrifice?
Are you saying that it was never sanctioned by the Pope. But ‘it caught on’ and so Pope had just to get in line.
If standing ad orientem is so important-why isn’t the priest instructed in the rubrics to stand so-and wouldn’t the practice of standing versus populum be expressly forbidden. If it is such an IMPORTANT thing.
How did the Church get it so wrong? Why is it still getting it wrong?
Brutus (In JC) comes to mind…
‘Oh, conspiracy…’
Thanks, Sophia, for your excellent historical clarification.
James, the priest and the people faced the same way in the Jewish sacrifice of the Old Law and through the vast bulk of the Church’s liturgical history. The Old Law and the New are united; they face the same way, which is towards the altar. Paganism, in this context, is a red herring.
Dear James Morris,
Yes, I am more or less saying that (although I don’t think either JPII or BXVI has exactly “sanctioned” the practice). The same sort of thing happened with Communion in the hand, which, in my opinion, is WAY more important.
These alterations didn’t catch on in a vacuum, of course. There were a LOT of priests and theologians and bishops in the U.S. in the 1960s who were of a very–well, not to be rude, but, borrowing from the language of politics, most of us would call it–a very “liberal” or perhaps “progressive” bent, who made a determined effort to have the Mass celebrated in a more “modern” way–e.g., facing the people, Communion in the hands, etc. They weren’t really concerned about what the pope or the Church might think–they WERE the Church, as far as they were concerned, and their judgment about what was appropriate trumped the rubrics.
I wouldn’t call this a conspiracy, though. Unless you call any attempt by a small group to get their opinions heard. I’d call it democracy. But that still doesn’t mean that the opinions are worth while!
P.S. In the other Liturgy thread, someone brought up “Spirit of the Liturgy,” and recommended that all of us who haven’t read it, read it (and it wouldn’t do the rest of us any harm to reread it, I’m sure). I heartily concur!
No more after this
But all these speculations always end up ‘rubbishing’ the new mass. It seems to me.
And the Popes have been hoodwinked.
Didn’t Cardinal Ratzinger refute this error in Spirit of the Liturgy? I am pretty sure he said that Versus Populum was not a practice of the early Church
Great Article!
Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi
“I am sure , in fact there must be, or else the Church wouldn’t have made the change, theology on my side. ”
Just as a historical note–the Church didn’t make this change. It is one of the oddities that I noted in my posts on the two different Roman rites: There is nothing in the rubrics of the Novus Ordo bidding the priest to face the people. That was something that various priests began doing after the new missal was published, and it caught on.
Rich
‘Didn’t Cardinal Ratzinger refute this error in Spirit of the Liturgy?”
There we have it again. If it is an error surely it is your bounded duty to have a word with the present Pope. Maybe take him aside, in a side ailse of the Sistine Chapel, have a word in his ear-‘I’m sorry Pope benedict, this is rather delicate but I have to tell you that you are facing the wrong way when serving mass’
Once you’ve done that, you can be satisfied that you have saved him ‘error’.
Rich,
I agree with you.
It has been the practice in the entire Church, East and West from time immemorial. Contrary to a prevailing misconception there is no evidence for celebration of Mass versus populum in the first nineteen centuries of the Church’s history, with rare exceptions. (Cf. The Spirit of the Liturgy, by Cardinal Ratzinger, pp. 74-84.)
While there is some positive symbolism in Mass versus populum, there is also a very negative symbolism. “The turning of the priest toward the people has turned the community into a self en closed circle. In its outward form, it no longer opens out on what lies ahead and above, but is closed in on itself” (Ratzinger, p. 80).
“Despite all the variations in practice that have taken place far into the second millennium, one thing has remained clear for the whole of Christendom: praying toward the east is a tradition that goes back to the beginning. Moreover, it is a fundamental expression of the Christian synthesis of cosmos and history, of being rooted in the once-for-all events of salvation history while going out to meet the Lord who is to come again” (Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, p. 75).